Love Is in Charge

A sermon preached by Lee Cheek, Lay Preacher at St. James & St. George Churches, Lent 1B 2-26-12

From the time I was a little girl, my dad had several stock phrases that peppered his conversations. He was widely known as a practical joker which was kind of a nice balance to his day job as the county juvenile parole officer. He often poked fun at himself, so when he greeted someone, he would point to his bald head and say, “I used to tell people ‘grass doesn’t grow on a busy street’ until someone told me it doesn’t grow on a doorknob, either.”

When I was preparing this sermon, I was reminded of another phrase that became his favorite during the last decade of his life. It went like this: “The Man Upstairs is in charge and I’m sure glad I’m not because I would make a mess of it!”

Sometimes I could hear the self-criticism in his inflection, but most times I heard a cheerfulness (and relief) in his conviction that there was someone more capable than he of holding together the threads of human society.

Dad was well acquainted with human mess-making, both his own and that of others. As a young sergeant in the army corps of engineers, he was horrified when he arrived at Dachau shortly after its liberation, even after having spent the previous two years ferrying live soldiers across the rivers of Europe and picking up the dead ones on the way back. Later, his work brought him into daily contact with violence-torn families in rural Arkansas.

A flood, as in Noah’s story (and older versions such as Gilgamesh) is a poetic way of speaking of human mess-making which begins with desire (often tinged with resentment) for an object or acclaim possessed by another, intensifying competition, seizure of the object (possibly by elimination of the rival), and revenge for what has been taken. If these events are not managed carefully at their different stages, violence accumulates and spreads like flood-waters that will destroy everything in its path.

Archaic communities survived such crises by channeling the violence in a single direction—on to someone whom everyone could agree was guilty of all the trouble. Ideally, someone who was a little different and easy to isolate.

The accused, in truth, was a victim, not the perpetrator, who became a human sacrifice which served to return calm to the community. Violence to cure violence.

The book of Genesis is a collection of stories about the theological origins of a particular group of Semitic peoples whose God Yahweh enabled them to recognize the victim as innocent, such as in the story of Joseph. Over the years Yahweh would give them two other ways to keep peace among them: the practice of animal sacrifice and its attendant rituals that would regularly siphon off any accumulated violence, and the law that managed the behavior that would lead to such a crisis. These more merciful and just solutions are seen in the stories of Abraham and Isaac and Moses.

Though accurate dating is impossible, the version of the Noah story we read today is ascribed to writers of the Priestly tradition who lived in the 5^th century BCE, in the period after the return of the Jewish exiles from captivity in Babylon. The story portrays Noah as the one human who says Yes! to God’s desire to wipe violence from the face of the earth and yet save a righteous remnant of humans for a new beginning.

The ark then is the image of God’s laws of mercy and justice, carefully constructed to be sturdy enough to keep the last people alive, safe from any future flood of violence. Noah’s Yes! is his trust in following God’s instruction, which would bring him to safety and a new creation where God never destroys. The Babylonian exiles, by their Yes! to God’s laws of mercy and justice, were safely returned to their homeland.

From the perspective of the newly returned Babylonian exiles, the story is a reassuring and hopeful theological reflection of a people whose world had indeed been destroyed by the corruption of the human heart—not only the cruelty of their conquerors but their own lack of mercy and justice that the prophets warned would herald their demise.

God’s unequivocal and binding covenant with Noah represented exiled Israel’s opportunity to start over with the God who loved them and brought them to safety. Whenever they saw the bow hung in the sky like a rainbow, they would remember that God would remember his promise to never start the world over without them. There would always be safety in the ark of God’s laws.

Five hundred years later, we meet John and Jesus on the banks of the Jordan River at a time of unrest in the land under Roman occupation. If we look closely we are struck by something similar to Noah’s story.

“And just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart.”

What John offers to Jesus as a purity rite, Jesus experiences as the occasion to surrender—to trust and say Yes!--to a fulfillment, a kind of filling out, of the spirit of God’s laws of mercy and justice which always pointed the way to self-giving compassion, forgiveness and love of others including enemies, and the absolute refusal of retribution. This Way of Love would be the new ark, the new vessel of safety for humanity’s survival of its violent and dangerous waters.

So Jesus emerges from the waters into a new creation of open heavens—safe as Noah in his ark emerging to God’s new creation of undestroyed earth. But Jesus, unlike Noah, emerges with a new identity: the Beloved Son, Love’s first son.

But of course, no one on the shore that day would have seen anything like Mark described. This story—or for that matter, any story about Jesus—would and could only have been written after his post-resurrection appearances described by Matthew and Luke.

You see, even his closest friends who had been with him daily for three years did not really understand his teachings of the ways of Love because they—as the gospels honestly point out-- they thought they were in charge of making things turn out like God wanted.

But only after they had those peculiar experiences of being ever so casually greeted by a dead man (“Greetings!”), a dead man now alive who only wanted to love them, and who wanted to make sure they knew they were forgiven for their abandonment, betrayal and disbelief—only after being met by someone they thought would love them the least, did they finally understand that when evil is not repaid with evil, Love will survive even death.

Jesus’ mission—Love’s mission—had succeeded in exposing the lie since the foundation of the world that violence cures violence. Only love survives in the end. Love is in charge after all is said and done.

Can you imagine their desire to say Yes! to Love and Love’s ways?

Can you imagine their joy to be able to surrender to what Love would ask of them?

They were on fire to tell the world the extraordinary good news that

Love really is in charge after all and there is nothing, absolutely nothing that we can do to negate that.

Now, today, I ask you, can you imagine what this church—any church--might be like if we began to understand our real vocation in the world as awakening the desire to trust that Love is in charge?

Can you imagine what this church might be like if we were to wholeheartedly embrace Love’s “mission possible” of subversive tenderness toward each other and toward each person we meet in a day?

Think of it: if we embraced our identity as a band of crazy, mystical secret agents who really do desire to give it all up for Love, might we not see Sunday mornings as the time when we get together for a banquet and let Love have a big laugh at how we’ve messed things up the previous week?

Oh, would that we could come to embrace the hilarity and the pathos of it all!

This embrace of both pathos and, well, mirth are beautifully reflected in a little poem by a joy-filled, mystical lover of God and creation who said Yes! to giving it all up for the sake of Love.

As a Roman Catholic archbishop to Recife, one of Brazil’s poorest districts, Dom Helder Camara stood up to Brazil’s military dictatorship to champion human rights by linking the gospel to human liberation. Here it is:

When I stand before customs-officers and police-commissioners,

I smile mischievously, for no one detects

the divine contraband, the stowaway,

whose highly discreet presence is visible

only to angels’ glances.[i]

What is so utterly delightful here is that Dom Camara becomes the ark! I leave the rest to your imagination.[ii]

AMEN.

---

[i] Quoted in Dorothee Soelle: The Silent Cry (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), p. 292.

[ii] The preacher is gratefully indebted to the following authors for much of her sermon: James Alison (The Joy of Being Wrong and online article, “The Portal and the Halfway House, http://www.jamesalison.co.uk/texts/eng66.html); Anthony Bartlett (Virtually Christian); René Girard (Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World).

The woodcut of De Kaste Noe is from Martin Luther: Enchiridion piarum precationum : cum calendario & passionali, ut uocant &c. (Wittenberg, 1560), courtesy of the Digital Image Archive, Pitts Theology Library, Candler School of Theology, Emory University http://www.pitts.emory.edu/dia/woodcuts.htm

The Episcopal Tourist, Emmanuel Church Orlando

Work has taken me from the non existent New England winter to Orlando Florida to sing Rigoletto, Verdi's beloved tragedy. The opera has much more that its rightful share of beautiful melody and is filled with vividly colorful characters. On the first day of rehearsal, I watched the tenor sing La Donna E Mobile perhaps the most famous opera aria of all. A custodian was walking through our rehearsal space and he stopped to listen. The look of recognition and delight on his face was priceless. It reminded me that opera in Italy was popular entertainment, not something only for the elite.

Sunday I decided to go to church. Because of several big events here including the Basketball All Star game and the Daytona 500, we have had to change hotels several times. I found myself on the edge of Winter Park a very posh suburb. The day was cloudy and cool so I decided to walk armed with the map from my iphone. How I wish I had had this accessory for the past 35 years wandering in strange places.

My path lead me from a commercial strip into a residential area of homes by two lakes. There were plenty of huge old live oaks dripping with Spanish moss and large houses with beautifully manicured lawns. Eventually I came out on a busy thoroughfare and found the church situated in a much less wealthy area.

The greeters gave me a nice welcome and kindly showed me to their bathroom. After a quick freshening up after my 45 minute walk, I entered the sanctuary where the atmosphere was quiet and reverent. This diocese of Central Florida is known as being rather conservative theologically and somewhat insular so I was very curious. The rear of the altar area was dominated by the pipework of the 17 rank Heissler tracker organ. The quiet unnamed prelude was very soothing and appropriate for the first Sunday in Lent. There appeared to be around 70 present.

The processional was Forty Days and Forty Nights. The decalogue was chanted with the familiar Healey Willan responses. The lector read the Genesis passage very deliberately and clearly, no text was needed though it was provided. The psalm was sung in Anglican chant. After the Epistle, the Sequence Hymn was #443 From God Christ's deity came forth, not very familiar to me but a fine tune with splendid text. There was a very nice Gospel procession and the Rev Dr Malcolm Murchison proclaimed it boldly.

Perhaps attendance at the Ash Wednesday services had been below expectations as Father Murchison decided to recap those texts especially Joel and Psalm 51 stressing our sinful nature and our mortality. He reminded us that we have been uncharitable and polluted the earth. Lent prepares us for Easter. Sin has consequences. We need to clean the slate. He reminded us that the Genesis reading for today leaves out the flood and what lead up to it. There was rampant evil and wickedness. Mankind had used his God given gift of free will for rebellion. Sin is about broken relationships, with God, ourselves and others. He said that natural disasters in our time were caused by this!! He turned to Baptism saying that even as an Episcopalian he loved the symbolism of the Baptist Baptism with full immersion. We are first buried under the water, then raised up. Our first new breath takes in the Holy Spirit. However he noted that sin also is always being resurrected. He then quoted the end of Psalm 51

The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit;

a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

After this he said with rather grim expression "Thanks be to God".

The creed and form II of the prayer of the people followed. The peace was exchanged. A few people did come to me but I needed to make most of the effort. The choir actually an octet gave a valiant reading of Hassler's "Lord for thy Tender Mercies Sake".

The Eucharist form A was celebrated. The choir received followed by the Sunday school. This order confused me somewhat, but I asked the lady seated in the pew next to me. She said with a smile "Yes they do it this way, I don't know why and I don't approve".

Throughout the service I had noted that when responses by the people were called for there was a considerable delay before the congregation spoke. This caused me to come in solo until I caught their rhythm.

The recessional was "Lord who throughout these forty days" followed by an expert improvisation on that tune by the very fine organist. His hymn playing was lively and logical and I found it easy to sing with him.

Quite a few people came up to me afterwards during the postlude. Evidently there is no coffee hour as all seemed to head right out the door. I was introduced to the rector by one friendly lady who pointed out that I was the one with the voice. We had a brief conversation and he noticed my House of Deputies pin and asked what it was so I told him and he seemed a bit disturbed by that, but perhaps I am reading too much into it.

John Calvin appears to be alive and well in this parish. It is a bit severe for my taste, but nevertheless I am glad I worshiped here.

A Sermon Preached February 12, 2012

Epiphany 6 B, at Crissey Farm

by the Rev. Frances A. Hills

I’m thinking about what a difference there is between the man with leprosy in today’s first reading and the man with leprosy in the Gospel reading. The first man, Naaman is the commander of the king of Aram’s army. He is not a follower of the God of Israel. He doesn’t live in a Jewish culture. In his culture, and perhaps because of his importance, Naaman is still functioning in the society, in spite of his leprosy.

Hundreds of years later, the second man does live in a Jewish culture. He has no name or rank that we are told. We can assume he lived in a leper colony, or someplace where he was kept away from other people, because for the Jews a leper was an outcast. Unclean. Untouchable.

The first man, Naaman, is led to his healing because a young Hebrew girl, his wife’s servant, a girl who worships the God of Israel, has compassion on Naaman. She suggests there’s a holy man back in her native Israel who could cure him. Naaman tells his king, and his king sends him off with a letter of introduction and many gifts for the king of Israel…On the outside chance the holy man could heal Naaman. In contrast, the leper in the Gospel story seems to know for himself something about Jesus. He goes to him directly, empty handed, and asks for the healing he believes Jesus can bestow.

In the older story, the Hebrew king reads the Aramean king’s letter and panics: He assumes he is to be the healer, and he knows he is not a healer. Fortunately for all, the prophet Elisha steps forward and says he can do the healing. (He’s the holy man the servant girl referred to.) Elisha sends a message to Naaman to go wash himself seven times in the River Jordan. Naaman is insulted. How dare this holy man not speak to him directly and not do something for him directly to dispel the leprosy! And how dare he suggest he wash in the Jordan River—surely the rivers in Aram are better! Naaman was furious! Fortunately Naaman’s servants were wise & courageous and chided him: “If the prophet had asked you to do something difficult, wouldn’t you have done it?” Then why not try what he asks? So, reluctantly, the great commander of the Aramean king’s army washes himself in the Jordan and becomes clean of his leprosy. In the Gospel story, the man without rank or name simply asks Jesus directly for healing and receives it . . .

Two lepers, centuries apart. Both in their very different ways had to humble themselves to ask for healing. Had to trust somehow that God could heal.

In very different ways, both had to take some fairly big risks to ask for healing. Two lepers, worlds apart in rank, status and religious beliefs, received the healing they sought from a God of grace who shows no partiality.

I invite us to think today about places in our lives that may need healing… To help you think, here’s a definition of “health” that the World Health Organization uses:  “Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” Perhaps this definition can help us identify where we need to be healed—As individuals, people in relationship, people of the Church, people of the Berkshires, people of this Country, and people of Planet Earth.

And especially on this day, let’s ask the question, “What would it take for us, the people of St. James and George, to have a deeper sense of physical, mental, spiritual, and social well-being?”  What would it take for us to seek help from God for our own health? To ask for healing in any area of our minds, bodies, spirits, relationships that might need it? Can we admit we might need help? And if we need help, what risks would we have to take? What would we have to give up? What expectations about our status (hi, low) would be at play in our actions & reactions?  Would we, could we, like the leper in the Gospel, go to God directly for help? Or would we, like Naaman, need a compassionate servant to suggest a healer and/or people willing to confront us about our attitudes? And if we went to God for help, would we also grumble about the river we’re asked to wash in? Would we do what we are asked to do to get well?  Most importantly, would we have full confidence in God’s power and then simply be able to ask God to use it for us?

The way we answer these questions is critical to our health and well-being and the healing process at all levels. Some say, “God helps those who help themselves.” But perhaps a better slogan is, “God helps those who trust in God.”

Let us pray,

God of all mercies and comfort, our only help in time of need: We beseech you to behold, visit and relieve all your sick servants, your children who need healing, your world which is so broken, and our congregations that have been in exile for so long.  Look upon us with your eyes of mercy; comfort us with a sense of your goodness; preserve us from temptations; and give us patience under our afflictions. Help us listen to our hearts and to one another. Help us ask for what we need. Help us trust in your healing power.

And in your good time, restore us to health and peace, and enable us to lead the residue of our lives in your fear and to your glory; and grant that finally we may dwell with you in life everlasting.  Amen.

A Sermon Preached February 5, 2012 ~ Epiphany 5 B

By The Rev. Frances A. Hills, Rector

Today’s reading from Isaiah is a wake-up call to the power and vastness of God. Today’s Psalm underlines this, “Great is our Lord and great is his power; yea, and his wisdom is infinite.” (PS 147:5) The Isaiah passage also makes us aware that God is not impressed with any earthly power we may have, “He bringeth the princes to nothing; he maketh the judges of the earth as vanity.” God knows we humans weary ourselves in such striving for these earthly things of power and prestige…building our own empires.

But the LORD never wearies; and the LORD chooses to give strength and power, not so much to the earthly strivers and achievers, but to the faint and powerless. God gives strength not to those who are self-sufficiently climbing the “ladder of human success”, but to those who, with humility and patience, wait upon the LORD to renew their strength. Isaiah says those who do so, “Shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.” Isaiah is reminding us of our dependence on God, and that our God is the only true source of strength and power. 

So with that in mind, I’d like for us to look at something in the Gospel. It’s how after spending some time in Capernaum and successfully healing people and casting out evil spirits (and no doubt being spiritually and physically spent), Jesus got up early and went to a solitary place to pray, to wait upon the Lord. What an extraordinary thing! After Jesus’ “rock star” experience of whirlwind healing and exorcising in Capernaum, he chose to get up early and “Wait on the Lord” in solitude. He went away to pray.

Now we don’t know the exact content of his prayer, but I like to think of prayer in general as “our love life with God”. Someone else (David F. Ford, Cambridge) says, “The main purpose of prayer is engagement with the reality of being loved by God.” I think we might assume that in his pre-dawn prayer, Jesus was experiencing his belovedness. And look at what happened…He didn’t get side-tracked by his popularity or success, but he got very clear about his mission and priorities. So when his disciples came to tell him that the people were calling for him again, he realized the people were coming for relief of their particular ailments. Now Jesus is all for relieving suffering and people being well and whole, but in the process, they were missing the essence of Jesus’ message. While receiving perhaps temporary relief from their personal woes, they were missing the big picture, which is about the community, the neighborhood, the other villages, and, ultimately, it’s about the Reign, the Kingdom, the Dominion of God. The healings were not just about the individuals being made whole, but about the Kingdom of God breaking into the world! In his prayer, in his love life with the Powerful Vast One that early morning, Jesus got some real perspective. He re-focused on his mission.

There is much in that for us to learn as individuals and as a congregation. Notice in this story, Jesus and his disciples have perhaps their first dispute. The disciples and the people of Capernaum want Jesus to go back to where he was, healing and making individuals comfortable. But through the prayer time, Jesus’/God’s desire is to move ahead to new places. The Gospel was not just for the people of Capernaum, but it needs to be spread throughout Galilee, Judea, and the world.

I wonder how much of the conflict in churches and other organizations is about similar things? Is our purpose to try to somehow become what we used to be, looking in the rear-view mirror, or is it to step out in faith to an unknown and different future?  We can exhaust ourselves trying to figure this out on our own. But if we go away and wait upon the LORD, if we pray and really experience our belovedness, God will give us strength and help us clarify our priorities.

What will God call us to do? What will God give us the strength to do? If God calls us to share the treasure of the gospel and its healing power with those beyond our congregation, instead of trying just to keep it for ourselves, what will that look like? Who are the people in our community and world God is calling us to join in mission? What unchurched, de-churched, unbelievers, disenfranchised, marginalized, sick, possessed, lonely and poor will God send us to love?

                  

It takes courage to even consider.

It is easier and safer to “stay in Capernaum” where we’ve had success…Miracles, people cured, everyone lined up at the door, and no apparent opposition. The good old days! It’s attractive, isn’t it? But if we actually seek God out in prayer, there’s the risk (high probability) that God will be reminding us of that bigger picture…the Kingdom of God, which we, like Jesus, are called to preach to the world, not just to ourselves.

There’s a Greek word (aphiemi) that’s used for the word “left” when the Gospel says of Simon’s mother-in-law, “The fever left her”. From this we can think about

leaving the past behind in order to enter into a new future. She left her illness behind and was restored to community. Now it’s pretty easy to leave the past behind when it’s demonic, evil, sickly, and full of failure; but leaving a successful past behind, in order to move ahead to an uncertain future, can be really difficult. And I don’t think it matters much if that “successful past” is real or just idealized. It’s still hard to let go, because we tend to want to “Keep on doin’ what we’ve always been doin’” even if it’s no longer effective or what’s appropriate.

But Jesus did leave behind his “success” in Capernaum, because he prayed to the God of vastness and power, and God showed him the big picture. His mission was clarified, and he knew he had to spread the Good News of the Kingdom to those beyond his comfortable circle. This is what happens when we quit trying to build our own empires, recharge our own batteries, and when we humbly wait upon the Lord for strength and clarity of vision and mission.

Are we willing to do this? Can we actually go to our vast and powerful God in prayer and risk having our own plans upset and re-ordered? Can we do this for our community? Can we do this for our world? Can we do this for the sake of the Kingdom of God?

                                                        

Some of the ideas of this sermon were taken from Brian Stoffregen’s CrossMarks.com