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

A Sermon Preached January 20, 2011 at Crissey Farm

by The Rev. Jesse Zink

Jesse is a Transitional Deacon in the Diocese of Western Massachusetts and a Senior at Berkley Yale Divinity School, New Haven, CT

Epiphany 4 - Year B

Deuteronomy 18:15-20

Ps. 111

I Cor. 8:1-13

Mark 1:21-28

I am sure you have all seen one these before - it’s an iPod Touch. Now I can’t say for sure but I imagine this was built in a place called Shenzhen in China by a company called Foxxcon that manufactures products for Apple. It’s not just Apple, though. They also make products for HP and Dell.

Some of you may have seen the lengthy article in the New York Times this week or seen the earlier stories about working conditions at Foxxcon’s Shenzhen factory. Workers are not paid much money at all, living conditions are not great, and there was a recent spate of worker suicides.

One of the reasons Apple is able to be such a successful company is that it has succeeded in driving down production costs so far that it makes a giant profit on each item sold. Now the fact that I can stand here and hold this iPod in my hand is an indication of two things. First, relationships in this world are global in nature. That I am holding this puts me in relationship in some way with the workers in Shenzhen. Second, relationships in this world are broken. I can check my e-mail during class on this iPod and not think twice about the conditions people endured to get it into my hands. You don’t need me to tell you but this is not the only place in the world where there are broken relationships. Think about the ideological polarization of our country where our representatives in Congress can’t seem to summon the courage to actually - gasp - speak to someone of a different party In that, they are only reflecting what is going on in the country, where, sociologists tell us, Americans are spending more and more time with people who are more and more like themselves. 

I’m not that familiar with the lay of the land in the Berkshires or Great Barrington or this congregation but I am familiar enough with community living to guess that there are problem a few broken relationships in this part of the world. Now, on the one hand, this is pretty understandable. We are human. We pursue our own ends. We put our own good above that of others. We withhold forgiveness. We fail to engage people who are different to us. We sin. Original sin, I learned in seminary, is the only empirically verifiable theological doctrine. Just look around you - or within you - for the proof.

We’ve been reading Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians these past few Sundays and they are some difficult chapters to get a hold of. In them, Paul is answering questions the Corinthians have asked him but we don’t always know what the questions are so it can seem at times like we are only hearing part of the onversation. In this morning’s reading, the Corinthians have asked Paul what they should do about eating meat that was sacrificed in the temple.

Now, on the one hand, eating meat that was sacrificed to another god was harmless. The other gods don’t exist so you might as well enjoy the food and the company. The banquet hall of a temple could be a great place for what we might today call networking. Moreover, poor people’s only chance at meat in their diet might be some of what was left over from temple sacrifices.

On the other hand, Paul is concerned that new Christians, Christians who are not that deep in the faith, might get confused by seeing others eat sacrificial meat and think the other gods actually exist. The love that the Corinthians share in the community, which builds them up, means that those who would like to eat the meat might have to put restraints on themselves in deference to the weaker ones among them.

This is not a surprising argument for Paul to make. Throughout this letter to the Corinthians he is constantly reminding them of the importance of the relations within their community. In a few chapters, he will reprimand them for their practices around Communion. It was supposed to be a common meal but it had turned into a church potluck gone wrong. Rich people brought good food and shared it only with one another. Poor people had little to give and had little to eat. That, Paul, says is a travesty of what Communion is supposed to be. Then, after that, he will teach them about what it means to be the Body of Christ. All of you need one another, he tells them. And someone needs the gifts you have to offer. You are both needed and needy in this community. In placing so much emphasis on the health of the community, Paul is just doing what Jesus did. It was Jesus who told his disciples that by this all people will know you are my followers if you have love one for the other.

The quality of relationship between Jesus’ followers will affect their witness to the world. Later, Jesus is even more explicit. He prays to God that “they may all be one…so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” The quality of relationship in the community that seeks to follow in the way of Jesus is a central part of its witness to the truth of the Gospel it proclaims.

There’s a problem with this reasoning of course. Community is fine. But community can be wrong. If we restrain our behaviour for the weaker members of our community which is what Paul concludes in this section of the letter to the Corinthians we might constrain ourselves from the truly prophetic and important action this world needs. Indeed, in speaking to the people of Israel in his concluding sermon in the book of Deuteronomy Moses promises them that there will be other figures like them, people capable of leading them to new levels of obedience to God’s commands and people capable of interpreting what God is doing in their midst.

We need people like that among us who can tell us when our community has gone off track and can call us into new ways of following Jesus. As we look back at his birthday and approach Black History Month, I often think at this time of year of Martin Luther King. A group of religious leaders - including two Episcopal bishops - wrote to him and said they just wished he would not be so aggressive in his bus boycott but wait for a better time. If Martin King had listened to those members of his Christian community he might never had any success.

Instead, he wrote them the Letter from a Birmingham Jail in which he said that black people had for too long heard others say “wait” and that waiting had turned into never. Our life as a community matters, Martin King knew, but he also knew that God raised up prophets who weren’t always the most popular people in their communities.

I was thinking about this tension between prophetic action and community life this summer. I spent about a month visiting with other Anglicans in Nigeria. We American Episcopalians are related to Anglicans in Nigeria through the Anglican Communion the worldwide body of churches that have something in common with one another and some sort of relationship to the Archbishop of Canterbury. But you might have heard that relationships between American Episcopalians and Nigerian Anglicans are not all that great. 


For many years and certainly since the ordination in 2003 of Gene Robinson as the first openly-gay bishop in the church neither side has really seen eye-to-eye. Some bishops in Nigeria have anathematized us. And we have not always responded with Christian love and charity. It’s a broken relationship, just the same way my iPod embodies another kind of broken relationship or our Congress a third kind. There are plenty of people calling for prophetic action in the Anglican Communion.

Unfortunately, it’s often diametrically opposite courses of action. We haven’t figured out a way to hold together the loving restraint in our actions that Paul calls for with the deeply-held belief that the actions we are engaging in - whether in welcoming openly gay and lesbian people into full participation in our church or standing firmly opposed to the forces of secularism and revisionism that are stalking our church - are truly prophetic.

This slice of the global community is marked and marred by broken relationships Jesus’ prayer for unity is unrealized. Our branch of the church is just like the rest of the world a world that can produce a device like this iPod only by breaking relationships within the global community.

I had no idea what to expect when I got off the plane in Nigeria I had made some arrangements in advance with some Anglicans but in the weeks leading up to my departure I wasn’t always sure if they would work out. So it came as something of a surprise to be enthusiastically and warmly welcomed everywhere I went. It wasn’t just perfunctory hospitality to a visiting stranger. No, it was genuine welcome to someone who was like a long-lost brother returning home. “You are Anglican and we are Anglican” I heard. “We rejoice that you are here to worship and pray and study with us.” “Make sure you come back. And bring your friends. We want to meet them as well.” 

As I spent more time there and came to know people better and better they began to ask deeper and more probing questions. I spent a lot of time talking with one man, Paul, who was the dean of the cathedral in a diocese I stayed in about how Christianity was received and shaped in each different culture it spread to. “The Gospel can be at home in every culture,” he said. “But every culture has something that needs to be converted by the Gospel." He told me that in Nigeria he thought Nigerian culture needed to be converted

away from its heavy corruption, theft, and cheating in business and politics. “What is it that needs to be converted in your culture?” he asked me. It is a not a question I had given much thought to in the past

and I didn’t have a good answer at the time.

A day or two later I was with another priest and asked him to stop at a store so I could buy a new notebook. When we reached the cash register, he reached to pull out some money from his pocket but I beat him to the punch. “No,” I said, “I’m the one who needs this and I will pay for it.” He insisted I let him pay and it was only because I was faster in getting the money out of my wallet that I paid.

When we were back in the car, he said to me seriously, “You know, what you did disrespected me. In our culture you can’t turn down my offer of hospitality” I apologized to him. He said, “In our culture, we don’t have this independence you have in your culture.”

Thinking about that encounter I wondered if maybe I didn’t have an answer to the question Paul had asked me. What is it about our culture that needs to be converted? Perhaps it is our excessive focus on the individual. And the de-emphasis on community. It is no mistake that this is called an iPod, not a wePod. We don’t make wePads and wePhones - it is about I, I, I. And to make this iDevice we have to break relationships, ignore how others are living and being treated.

So perhaps in our world in this time, the truly prophetic act is to affirm that we are all part of the same Body. When I pass someone asking me for money on the street I often think, “I can’t be bothered right now and this isn’t my problem anyway.” The prophetic act might be to say, “What is your name? You matter to me because we are part of the same community.” When I see members of my church doing or saying things I think are wrong or silly I am often tempted to ignore them, cut them off, or mock them to others. The truly prophetic act might be actually to speak to the person I am having a problem with and seek to find out what it is that divides us and what it is that draws us together. When I politicians saying things I disagree with my response can often be, “Well, I won’t listen to them anymore. They’re clearly wrong.” What if my response instead was, “What is it that motivates you to speak like this?” “How can you and I have a relationship across our differences?” 

It is sad to say but in our time, talking to people who are different than us has become an unusual act. Taking the next step and saying that people who are different to us whether they live down the street or around the world are part of the same community we belong to is even more unusual - and, I believe, prophetic. It points out the truth of the Gospel message if we want to follow in the way of Jesus, we do that not as a group of individuals but as a community of people committed to one another in spite of and because of our differences.

For some of us that means working on relationships within a global community. For others of us it means working on relationships with people just down the street. Difference is all around us and the prophetic act is to engage it wherever we find it.

I spent some time in Nigeria in a remote part of an eastern diocese. Because of the mission history, the big church in the area is Methodist and the Anglicans meet in a single room. They get about six people on Sunday morning. I spent a Wednesday afternoon there, praying and talking with them. At the end of our time together, one older man stood up and said ,“Sometimes we are ashamed to be Anglicans in this village with our little church. But today you have come here. It is evangelism for you to be here. People will be saying, ‘That man came all the way from the United States to see that Anglican church.’” I didn’t know what to say in response so I told him we are all part of the Anglican Communion and the worldwide body of Christ and that is nothing to be ashamed of.

As I was leaving, one of the women ran home to get a pineapple from her yard as thanks for my visit. That is the spirit of generosity and community that motivates some of our sisters and brothers around the world. I think we’ll find that when we encounter those who are different to us they are often eager to give and when we see that giving - represented in this case by a pineapple how can we turn away?

Amen.

A Sermon Preached December 11, 2011, Advent 3 B

by the Rev. Frances A. Hills, rector

Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11 and John 1:6-8, 19-28

Advent 3 already! It’s the week for JOY and GLADNESS, the week when we have our visitors from Ingersoll, Ontario, the week for the pink candle, and the week for Isaiah and John.

The passage from Isaiah is beautiful and familiar, because it’s what the Gospel of Luke quotes Jesus as reading from the scroll in the temple. This Isaiah passage is from what we call “Third Isaiah”. Third Isaiah was written to address the sad situation and people in the aftermath of the Babylonian Exile. They’d returned to their ruined, yet beloved Zion. The speaker assures the people that God’s Spirit has given him the power to speak a word of hope and salvation to them in their desolate straits:

“The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God: to comfort all who mourn; to provide for those who mourn in Zion—to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.”

In this, Third Isaiah invites God’s returning people to be clothed in salvation and to think about salvation--not so much in terms of “who will be saved and go to heaven” but as a quality of life in the here and now! It’s a quality of life that reflects God’s desire for the human community. In Isaiah 61, salvation means good news, healing, liberty, release, and comfort. It means a “jubilee year”…A year when debts are wiped away, slaves are freed, fields allowed to lie fallow, and land returned to its owners.

In Isaiah, salvation is imagined both as a restored city and as an abundant garden.

It says the other nations will see what God has done for Israel, and they will know,

“That they are people whom the Lord has blessed”. This affirms that God’s mission of deliverance is not just some other-worldly pie-in-the-sky thing. God’s salvation mission is real, tangible and “this-worldly”! In fact, others can actually see it!

As Christians I think we may often think of God’s salvation as being about the life of the world to come, and ultimately it is. However, we must not forget that God’s salvation is also God’s mission. It’s about transforming the world— here and now!

We’re invited to participate in this transformative, missional way of life—even in the midst of a fallen world. I’m suggesting salvation is the reality of our world, as it SHOULD be. The Reign of God NOW! The world God imagines, longs for...For us!

If that is so, then how do we participate in God’s mission? How do we help bring in the Reign of God in our day? Isaiah points us, and by quoting Isaiah, Jesus points us, to our mission…to turning our attention to those he names as recipients of the good news: The oppressed. The brokenhearted. The captives. The prisoners. The mournful. The faint of spirit…These are the lowest and weakest, the ones for whom God and Jesus have special concern.

Notice, this kind of faith and sense of mission has little or nothing to do with many forms of cultural Christianity that would make the Church an end in itself. Perhaps “John the testifier” as we see him in John’s gospel today, was making a similar statement when he took his testimony and baptism out from the city, out from the temple, away from the established religion, and into Bethany. As if to say, “It’s out here in the wilderness where you will ‘come back to life’.”

This is a far cry from making the Church an end in itself that exists solely for a building (if we had one!), or our programs, or the fellowship of like-minded folk

we so enjoy.  It’s not that any of these are wrong in and of themselves…They just can’t be the reason for the Church’s existence.

Instead, we need to exist for the sake of the poor, oppressed, brokenhearted, imprisoned, and mournful…in our community. In other words, we need more and more to join God’s mission, Jesus’ mission. And if we do, then I think the nations of the world, or at least our neighbors, will notice that we live differently: That we are indeed “A people whom the Lord has blessed”. So we would actually fulfill Second Isaiah’s prophecy (Is 49:6) and be, “A light to the nations, that God’s salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”  If we could closely align with God’s mission and live as a missional Church, seeking to help bring in the Reign of God, then we would live as people of good news, liberation, justice, and comfort in such a way as people would take note and be drawn to the ways of God. In today’s world Christians often get negatively stereotyped, in spite of how much money we may give to charity or how many missionaries we might send abroad. Many think of Christians as a group of people who are divided and hypocritical, who judge, fight, and exclude. If we really lived into God’s mission, we would stand as a sign of God’s blessing to all around us in this community. We would break those stereotypes.  We might really be that church the wonderful Hispanic woman at Taft Farm described us as being, “The Church Where All the Angels Fly Around”.

There’s a part of us that is that Church. We are “People whom the Lord has blessed”, and others sometimes see it! And I celebrate it!

I hope as we live into these last two weeks of Advent, we will remember not just that Jesus came, but also why Jesus came. His mission, our mission, is to bring in the Reign of God, to testify to the Light, to usher in a jubilee celebration in the here and now, as we await the day of his coming. Amen.

This sermon borrowed heavily from the “Theological Perspective” article on Isaiah of Scott Bader-Saye in Feasting on the Word, Advent 3 B.