Pentecost 10: A Life of Autarkeia

If you had a few brief moments to spend with someone who is wise, revered, deeply spiritual, what would you want to talk about? Say it is Desmond Tutu or the Dali Lama or Billy Graham. My guess is you would want to make the most of that time by discussing something of significance. Think about the people who approach Jesus and the questions they raise. Some get it right and make the most of the opportunity:

Lord, which is the greatest commandment of all?
Lord, can you teach us how to pray?
Lord, what must I do to inherit eternal life?

These folks are searching for answers to the most significant yearnings in the human soul. Others, well, their base concerns are indicative of a very different set of priorities:

Jesus, can you grant that my sons will sit at your side in glory?
Jesus, do you want me to call down fire from heaven on these people who have treated you so rudely?
And today… Jesus, can you please tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me?

Jesus was not concerned with power or vengeance or material possessions. He was firmly grounded in what the Greeks called autarkeia, a word which means ‘sufficiency,’ ‘contentment,’ or ‘enough.’ Aristotle described autarkeia as “a freedom from all things” or “to have need of nothing or no one.” The Stoics equated it with the word apatheia and espoused an even more extreme position of not even having desires.

In writing to the Christians in Philippi, St. Paul uses the word autarkeia in a slightly different way:

I have learned in whatever circumstances I am to be content [autarkes]. I know both what it means to be in modest circumstances and to be affluent. In any and in all circumstances I have been initiated into what it means to have plenty to eat and to go hungry, to be affluent and to be needy. (4:12)

For Paul, the Christian notion of contentment does imply doing away with all possessions, all relationships, and all desires. It means basing your sense of contentment on something greater than things that come and go, that fade or fail or find a way not to live up to their over-hyped expectations. What do you think was the source of Paul’s contentment; of his sense that he had enough of all he really needed regardless of the balance in his checking account or the newness of the automobile in his driveway?

“Jesus, can you tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me?” It is like going before a famous chef and asking how to make a peanut butter sandwich. And Jesus responds with a teaching on coveting, reminding all that life is about more than having possessions. I would like to say ‘amen’ to that, but, having just finished entering a month’s worth of receipts into my Quicken program, I wonder if my spending habits speak louder than my words.

Jesus’ teaching takes the form of a parable about a person who is already rich when a bumper crop comes in. What should he do with this huge bonus? The garage is already so full of stuff that he can’t park his cars in it. The attic and the basement are overflowing. Its 2,000 years ago and no one has yet thought up the self-storage business. So the rich man decides to build even bigger spaces to keep all of his things. And having it all in place, he imagines, will enable to him to kick back and lead a life of ease.

He is, in Jesus’ estimation, rich in things but impoverished in soul. There will come a time, perhaps even this very day, Jesus says, when all those things will lose their meaning and his spiritual poverty will overwhelm him.

One way to enrich your soul is to cultivate a sense of autarkeia, contentment; a belief that no matter what your circumstances you have enough of all you really need. Pondering this notion, John van de Laar, a Methodist minister from South Africa, wrote a reflection, which he called “Enough”:

Worry and stress are not hard for us, God,
we do them without thinking.

There is always the potential of threat
to our security,
our comfort,
our health,
our relationships,
our lives,
and we foolishly think that we could silence the fear
if we just had enough money,
enough insurance,
enough toys,
enough stored away for a rainy day.
It’s never enough, though;
The voice of our fear will not be dismissed so easily.

But in the small, silent places within us is another voice;
one that beckons us into the foolishness of faith,
that points our gaze to the birds and the flowers,
that, in unguarded moments, lets our muscles relax,
and our hearts lean into loved ones;
In unexpected whispers we hear it,
calling us to remember your promises,
your grace,
your steadfastness;
and suddenly, we discover
that it is enough.

Amen.

What helps do you to discover this spiritual sense of enough? In what ways do you live into it? And it what ways do you not live into it; forsaking contentment for the supposed blessings of a material life? Today, tomorrow, this week, for the month of August, what can you do to become more rich in spirit and less dependent on things?

The Counter-Cultural Prayer Life

“Lord, teach us to pray.” Isn’t it interesting that prayer is something we have to be taught. Unlike say language – which you learn largely by listening to others speak – prayer requires instruction. Or maybe it is like language. We all know how to pray, kind of, because we have all been exposed to it. We are formed by the prayers of this worship service. We know how to say grace and bedtime prayers. Some of us can offer extemporaneous prays at a bible study, or fellowship gathering, or as a healing ministry. Still, just as the disciples discerned by being around Jesus, we sense that there are depths and aspects of prayer that elude us just as we know our command of the language is limited when we listen to a great speaker or playwright or poet.

“Teach us to pray.” Let me highlight several things about Jesus’ response.

This first one you may already know. Jesus teaches His followers to address God as ‘Father’ using the Aramaic word for ‘daddy’ or ‘pa-pa.’ God, the One who is Holy Other, is intimate, open, loving, available, and accessible. Think how revolutionary this approach to prayer really is, given that it emerged from a religious tradition that taught you could not even speak or write God’s Name.

“Abba” – da-da – “hallowed be your name.” Hallowed: we have lost just how subversive and counter-cultural this part of the prayer is. Let me explain.

In the Greek and Roman world of Jesus’ era, it was commonly held that the emperor was a god. Adherents to this notion were part of what is known as the Roman Imperial Cult. Several rulers took the title ‘Epiphanes,’ meaning ‘god manifest.’ Ptolemy V, who came to power as a youth, is described with these glowing terms: “great in glory,” “restorer of the life of man,” “king like the sun,” “child of the gods,” “living image of Zeus,” and “the god manifest for whom we give thanks.”

When Octavian defeated the forces of Anthony and Cleopatra in 31 BC he became Rome’s first emperor, the Caesar. A few years later the senate conferred on him the title ‘Augustus’ – a Latin word meaning “hallowed” or “revered.” Listen to this typical proclamation made to the August or Hallowed One:

Whereas Providence, which divinely ordered our lives, created with zeal… the most perfect good for our lives by producing Augustus [the hallowed one] and filling him with virtue for the benefaction of humankind, sending us and our descendants a savior to put an end to war…, and Whereas when Caesar appeared he exceeded the hopes of all who had anticipated his good tidings [in Greek, euangelion or ‘gospel,’ ‘good news’]”

All of this points to the culture and climate of that era. It was a time when the political, military, and economic leader was proclaimed at “hallowed” or “revered.” He was god manifested among humans. His acts and proclamations where evangelisms. Now, not everyone believed this, but everyone had to give homage to it. And the more you give homage to something, the more you live in to the reality it creates.

So do you see now how Jesus’ prayer life was counter-cultural and subversive? As Jesus prayed so Jesus lived. He lived in this life in warm, intimate relationship with God and acknowledged God’s kingdom as the supreme reign and reality in this world. Jesus was engaged in what the poet Czeslaw Milosz called “the passionate pursuit of the real.” His prayer life was aimed at exposing pretenders and rejecting contenders to the kingdom of the real.

So what does a passionate pursuit of the real look like? Well, in prayer, Jesus said it looks like asking, searching, and knocking. The writer Evelyn Underhill makes this observation:

“Note how all of them are attached to something done by us. The question of whether we will commune with God is left to us… God gives out of God’s treasury what we really ask, seek, and long for. God’s supply is infinite: it is our demands which are shallow, mistrustful, and vague.”

I see in this three-fold formula a pattern to the evolving, maturing life of prayer. At the earliest stage our prayer life revolves around asking: “God, give me this,” “God, fix that,” “God, get me out of a jam.” There seems to be no limit to what we can ask of God, to what we want from God. But somewhere along the spiritual way we may come to see and sense how we often ask for the wrong things. We are like a little child who for dinner wants ice cream, cookies, and popcorn. That may be want we want, but it is not what we need. It is not what is good for us.

In my own life of prayer I have sensed a movement from asking toward seeking. I began to wonder more about God’s way, God’s word, God’s wisdom, and God’s will. I knew I was asking for the wrong things, but I did not know what exactly were the right things. Consider what Jesus teaches us to ask:

…that we have the food we need (not want) for this day.

…that we be forgiven.

…that we not be alone in the midst of life’s trials and challenges.

Searching for what is right – for what is real - it seems to me is a near life-long process.

Emerging in my prayer life is more of what I think Jesus meant by knocking. It involves wanting to enter into the presence of God through silence, through meditation, through holy reading, and through being attentive to the world around me and the relationships of my life. It involves a conscious and deep desire to leave the hallowed world of today’s Caesars in order to enter the kingdom of Abba.

It is hard for me to sustain this desire for extended periods of time or as a daily practice and these times of knocking don’t happen as often as they could. I realize more and more that I am just a toddler in the life of prayer. But every now and then I find myself in line with the Prayer of St. Theresa of Avila:

Let nothing trouble you
Let nothing frighten you
Everything passes
But God will never change

Patient endurance
Will obtain everything
Whoever has God
Wants for nothing at all.

Now that is a counter-cultural notion indeed. It is subversive to the core of this age. It is a beautiful description of the real and whenever I attach myself to it I know that my prayer life is on the right track, especially when my actions follow.

Pentecost 8: Hovering like a Feather on the Breath of God

Last Sunday I sat with Megan on a bench outside MCV Hospital in Richmond. At that point she had been at the facility for six straight days, sitting at the bedside of her son who was in the pediatric intensive care unit. Megan said that the prayers everyone is offering for Zack have been amazing. And she said that she has been blessed by all the prayers that have been offered for her. Then she said something that took me back. After six non-stop days of focused care and attention, with little sleep and so much heartache, she said, “I don’t feel like I have been praying enough.”

Megan’s remark played with several different things I have been reading or thinking about and I want to try to string them together for you. They raise basic questions about the nature of prayer and the goal of the spiritual life. And it plays with today’s reading from the gospel where Martha is tending to the demands of the guests and meal while her sister Mary sits at the feet of Jesus listening to His words.
I was listening to NPR as I drove to Richmond last week and became fascinated with an interview of a guitarist I had never heard. Steve Tibbetts’ music is influenced by his exposure to the sounds of India. Most of his recordings feature only his guitar accompanied by soft percussion.

The interviewer remarked about a comment Tibbetts had made in a press release: “I am partial to the sound of silence.” This struck the interviewer as odd for a musician. Then the interviewer noted how Tibbetts’ music made ample use of stops, gaps, and delay. The artist explained himself by observing how with most music today the goal is to push the maximum amount of sound and instrumentation into the space of a four or five minute song. Tibbetts’ approach is different. He wants each note to have its own space. He wants the hearer to be able to focus on the instrument and each sound that it makes.

The artist is not just commenting about music, but about our culture in general. We live in a Martha world of multi-tasking. We push more and more into the space of a minute or an hour or a day. What few gaps or spaces or stops there are in the day are uncomfortable because we are weaned on the frenzy of activity. Even if we wanted to give our time and attention to a single, important thing, it would be difficult, if not impossible.

Much of the devotional material I have been reading of late lifts up the spiritual value of attention, of the ability to perceive and focus on those moments of grace that are nourishing or even life-changing.
Denise Levertov, the daughter of an English minister, captures such a moment in a poem called “First Love.”

It was a flower...

Suddenly
there was Before I saw it, the vague
past, and Now. Forever. Nearby
was the sandy sweep of the Roman Road
and where we sat the grass was thin.
From a bare patch of that poor soil, solitary,
sprang the flower, face upturned,
looking completely, openly into my eyes.
I was barely old enough to ask
and repeat its name.

‘Convulvulus,’ said my mother.
Pale shell-pink, a chalice
no wider across than a silver sixpence.

It looked at me, I looked back,
delight filled me as if
I, not the flower,
were a flower and were brimful of rain.
And there was endlessness.
Perhaps through a lifetime what I’ve desired
has always been to return
to that endless giving and receiving,
the wholeness of that attention,
that once-in-a-lifetime
secret communion.

This is a description of a Mary moment. All of our diplomas and awards and certificates and accolades come to us for the work we do as Martha. No one ever gets a plaque for an instance of secret communion with a flower. Yet, if you have had an experience or two like the one Levertov describes you know exactly what she means when she says the rest of her life all she has truly desired is to return to that moment of endless giving and receiving.

As I listened to Megan I reflected on how I had watched her attend to her son as he lied unconscious in the bed. Nothing else mattered to her. Not the past, not the future. She was given completely to the present. Hers was an act of complete attention on the thing that mattered most.

The trauma of a horrific accident, the tragedy of death, and the significant celebrations of life, such as birth and marriage, have the ability to pear down the music of our lives to a single instrument and note and sound. They allow us (or force us) to be attentive to what matters at the moment. Prayer, I told Megan, is an act of focusing on God, the Ultimate Reality of existence. One of its goals is to develop our capacity to be attentive to what is most significant at any given point in time; to shed away all the other instrumentation and sound that is the Martha part of our lives. Observing Megan’s attentiveness to Zack was for me the experience of watching prayer in its purest form. She was like Mary, able to choose the one, needful thing when it presented itself.

But the reality is we do live in a Martha world. We cannot be like Mary 24/7/365. Finding a balance is essential. If we don’t cultivate our capacity to be like Mary our lives suffer, our humanity is diminished.

Paula Tatarunis, a Boston area doctor who describes herself as a poet, an Episcopalian, and a weed photographer, describes this struggle in a poem called “November 1938.” She wrote is about an experience she had at the Abbey of Solesmes, a French community renown for its use of Gregorian chant and plainsong.

If only I could enter
the sanctuary of the poem,
naked as a spirit,

my miserable flesh
shed in a heap on the porch—
like at Easter at Solesmes,

when the plain song
plucked me aloft
from my suffering

and I hovered like a feather
on the breath of God,
or dust in his splendor,

far above the malheur, dégoût et
pareses of my unworthy life:
love bade me welcome, Love.

“Malheur, dégoût et pareses” translates to “the suffering, disgust, and laziness” of life. When I first read that I thought Tatarunis found a way to summarize the totality of my Martha world in just three words. But what has stayed with me is the incredible image of hovering like a feather on the breath of God. It is an image I have tried to absorb. I have brought it back to mind when I am wedged into the Martha mode of life. It is an image of Steve Tibbetts’ music, of Megan’s bedside prayerful attentiveness, of Denise Levertov’s endless communion with a flower.

Hovering like a feather on the breath of God is who we are, but it is also something we often fail to recognize. The demands of our Martha work have a way of crowding out the singular sound of grace that Mary was able to hear. But the grace is there. It is always there. It never leaves us and we ride on it always whether or not we realize it.

The thing about Martha is she was right. Eventually the guests are going to get hungry. At some point the work needs to be done. There is no way to get around it. The problem is that, like many of us, she became absorbed by the demands of her work. The tasks at hand became all she had. She and they were inseparable from one another. But with each item she checked off her to-do list, she became less like a feather and more like a cold, hard stone. And, if there is one thing I know, it is that stones can’t hover on the breath of God.

So there it is, and handful of different things and thoughts strung together for you to ponder. As with all my sermons, I hope that you will take these ideas and images and play with them for yourself. And, as always, I love to hear about what you make of them and where they lead you.

Pentecost 5: Images of Discipleship

Today’s assigned readings revolve around the nature and challenge of discipleship and commitment. Is entrance into discipleship a one-time event which a person either accepts or rejects outright? What if you are not ready when the call comes? What if the demands are beyond your abilities? What if you are ready to sign-up, but get rejected? We see all of this and more in today’s lessons.

In the reading from the Old Testament, Elisha refuses to leave the side of his mentor, Elijah. When Elisha was first called to the prophet’s role he was plowing a field. He accepted the call without hesitation, reservation, or a fall-back plan. He slaughtered his draw team and threw a big barbeque to celebrate his new ministry. Now, with Elijah preparing to depart this world, Elisha is steadfast and resolute in his desire to inherit a “double-portion” of his mentor’s spirit. When it comes to discipleship he has been all in from the very beginning, but does he know all the pain and hardship and struggle that await him in this calling? Perhaps not, but Elisha will not be deterred and, in the end, his commitment will see him through.

James and John already were followers of Jesus, but in today’s reading from the Gospel of Luke, they demonstrate that they don’t quite understand His program. They are infuriated by a village that refuses hospitality to Jesus. The two brothers were known as “the sons of thunder”, in other words, they were a pair of hotheads. Hotheads indeed, because, using one of our contemporary phrases, we would say that they want to call in an air strike on the village in order to wipe it from the map. Rather than joining their indignation, Jesus rebukes them. All of this suggests that there are some things about our nature, about our personality, about who we are as we present ourselves to Jesus, that must change.

As Jesus and his followers make their way down the road toward Jerusalem, a potential disciple approaches Him and says, “I will follow you wherever you go.” Perhaps the emphasis should be on wherever, because Jesus responds that foxes have holes, birds have nests, but He has no place to sleep at night (maybe in part because He was not welcomed at the village). The text does not tell us whether or not this person followed, but the inference is that he did not fully appreciate the hardships associated with discipleship. It calls us to leave places where we are comfortable. It takes us to places we may not want to go. It puts us in situations where we may not be comfortable. It asks us to do things we may not want to do.

Somewhere on down the road, Jesus meets a person who He wants to be a disciple and so He extends an invitation: “Follow me.” “Well, I would like to,” the person responds, “but first I have to bury my father.” It seems like a reasonable concern, but Jesus tells the person to let others tend to the matter. It reminds us that the call to discipleship does not always come to us when it is convenient for us. In fact, the most urgent demands on us often come at times when we are least able to respond to them, forcing us to determine what really matters in life.

A final person approaches Jesus and volunteers to follow, but first has to go home and say goodbye. Jesus’ response is sharp and to the point, “You cannot put your hand to plow and look backward.” Disciples should never dive in if they are not ready or willing to see it through.

So here is the picture of discipleship painted by the people in these readings:

• One is all in, but somewhat naive about the road ahead.
• Two are in, but don’t fully get it.
• One wants to be in, but doesn’t appreciate how hard it is.
• One is invited in, but has too many other concerns.
• One wants in, but isn’t quite ready to give it his all.

What this is is not a pretty picture. What it is is a mirror. In each of these folks I see little bits and pieces of myself. And yet the great mystery is that in spite of all I am that I should not be, and all I am not that I should be, I am on the road with Jesus; following the Way as best I can. Hopefully I am a little better at it today than I was yesterday. By the grace of God I will be a little better at it tomorrow than I am today. This too is a picture of discipleship and commitment. It suggests that we are to give ourselves to God as we are as best we can, being open all the while to what God’s love can help us to become.

St. Paul reminds us that there are markers along the way; a kind of measuring stick of our grace-filled transformation that he calls the fruit of the Spirit. Somehow, emerging in us as we say yes to God is the life of God; a life marked my love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Initially these are present because we will them to be; our commitment to follow makes us mindful to act in a way that a follower should act. But eventually, over time, we become intertwined with these qualities and bring them to bear in life as naturally as a tree bears its fruit.

Mary Oliver is a contemporary writer and poet who grew up in my native Ohio. For years her religion was the religion of nature, but now, late in life and after pain, loss, and hardship, she is beginning to look beyond the creation for the Creator. She describes her journey in this short poem:

Another morning and I wake with thirst
for the goodness I do not have. I walk
out to the pond and all the way God has
given us such beautiful lessons. Oh Lord,
I was never a quick scholar but sulked
and hunched over my books past the
hour and the bell; grant me, in your
mercy, a little more time. Love for the
earth and love for you are having such a
long conversation in my heart. Who
knows what will finally happen or
where I will be sent, yet already I have
given a great many things away, expect-
ing to be told to pack nothing, except the
prayers which, with this thirst, I am
slowly learning.

Mary Oliver gives us another picture of discipleship; one which resonates with my experience (and perhaps with yours). Trying hard, but getting nowhere, slowly learning, willing to follow but not sure how, holding on to the prayers we have found, willing and wanting more time to get it right. Discipleship.

Pentecost 3: Blessings Guarded / Blessing Sought

From my perspective, today is a good day to preach. As a preacher, all I ask of the readings is one good story; just one interesting story to pray over and explore and I am off and running. Today we have two. Gone are the Easter readings from the Gospel of John where Jesus says something like “I in you and you in Me and I in the Father and the Father whom you have known, but not known, except in Me, but you don’t know Me, so I will send another to you and the other will be in Me and in you and from the Father.” That kind of lesson does not set on fire my homiletical imagination. But today is a different story, or stories. We have a brooding, pathetic king, a over-bearing murderous queen, and an upstanding religious authority hosting a meal where a woman cries on the feet of Jesus. Now this is some interesting stuff, so let’s dive in.

I suppose there are many threads which connect the two stories. Let me focus in on one: the notion of blessing.

In the reading from the Old Testament, King Ahab wants to take over the vineyard of a person by the name of Naboth. This vineyard sits right next to one of Ahab’s many palaces and he comes to believe his life will be enhanced by owning it. It is a tale as modern as our consumer society. But when Naboth refuses to sell, Ahab goes into a deep funk, similar to what many of us might feel if we are turned down for a loan on a shinny new car or fancy new boat. We want it, we need it, we have to have it, we can’t live without it, but we can’t buy it. That is Ahab’s predicament.

What is interesting here is that Ahab can afford to buy Naboth’s vineyard outright. He can also trade with Naboth by offering more land and better land at that. The problem is that Naboth won’t budge. He simply will not play ball. And why? Because this is the land of his ancestors. Sentimentality runs deep in some people, doesn’t it. But this is much more than that. Naboth has a connection to his property that is deeply spiritual. We may not see it in the text, but every Hebrew of that era who heard the story would have understood it implicitly.

Do you know how Naboth’s ancestors came to own this particular piece of property? The answer is found in the Book of Numbers, chapter 26, beginning at the 52nd verse:

The LORD spoke to Moses, saying: To these the land shall be apportioned for inheritance according to the number of names. To a large tribe you shall give a large inheritance, and to a small tribe you shall give a small inheritance; every tribe shall be given its inheritance according to its enrolment. But the land shall be apportioned by lot; according to the names of their ancestral tribes they shall inherit.

In Hebrew thinking, God gave a family its land, or portion, through the drawing of lots. The 78th Psalm, which is a lengthy retelling of Israel’s salvation history, says this:

God drove out the Canaanites before them
and apportioned an inheritance to them by lot; *
he made the tribes of Israel to dwell in their tents.

Psalm 16 reflects a typical expression of gratitude for God’s generous gift:

O Lord, you are my portion and my cup; *
it is you who uphold my lot.
My boundaries enclose a pleasant land; *
indeed, I have a goodly heritage.

So, to the outside observer, Naboth might appear to be foolish. From a business perspective his refusal does not make sense, nor is it particularly wise to resist the king. When Don Corleone says, “Let me make you an offer you can’t refuse”, well, it is best not to refuse. But Naboth is neither stubborn nor is he foolish. He response is deeply rooted in the belief that God’s portion and lot is to be guarded and kept. One does not do like Esau and trade your birthright for a bowl of porridge. Nor does one trade up or sell out the land that has been given by God. It is a blessing that must be cherished. It must be treasured. It must be valued. And it must be respected by all people (did you notice how, when he reports to Jezebel the source of his sadness, Ahab says only that Naboth refuses to sell his vineyard, leaving out the detail that it is his ancestral lot?).

That vineyard was foundation for Naboth. It was the ground on which all of God’s blessings rested. He knew it. He believed it. And he refused to sell it. What are the foundational blessings in your life? What is the ground of your being? A spouse, a parent, a child, family, a few close friends, an inheritance, this church, your health, your faith? Here is what I observe in my life and in our modern world: that which is most essential to me – call it God’s blessings in my life – tends to become what I take most for granted. I assume that these blessings will always be and therefore have a lower sense of urgency about them. Yes, sometimes there is a direct offer to sell my blessings or to trade them for something else, but most often the temptation is much more subtle than that.

We expect that a building’s foundation, once set, will stay strong and firm for a long time with little or no attention. The same thing is not true about our own lives, though I for one often act as if it is. In reality, the foundational blessings of our life need to be nurtured, guarded, and protected lest we think that the adornments and less-essential aspects of life are what give life its true meaning. Naboth is for us a symbol of this. He is a figure who knew what really mattered in his life and would not let anything else supercede it.

The unnamed woman in the gospel reading is not guarding a blessing, but seeking it. She brings who she is – a sinner – and what she has – an alabaster jar of ointment, and her pain and brokenness and her shame and her bitter tears and her darkness and her despair – and presents it all before Jesus. Jesus’ host, a Pharisee by the name of Simon is one who, as Paul writes, has every right to boast in his goodness based on the Law. The woman, on the other hand, has no shade in which to hide from the Law’s searing condemnation of her messed up life. And yet she, as Paul says, is justified by her faith. She is blessed not because she deserves it, but because she desires it above all other things. Her deep desire enables her to break through all that might hold her back from coming to Jesus, and make no mistake, what holds her back is stronger than any chains could ever be.

Of the two – Naboth and this woman – I would rather stand up and die protecting the blessings that I have than to be in a position of having to crawl before Jesus in utter, absolute brokenness. I would rather suffer for doing the right thing than own up to having done the wrong thing. I see this not only in myself, but in a lot of people, especially good church folk. It seems to me that the more faithful a person is in church life when things are good, the more difficult it is to be at church when your life has fallen apart, especially if that falling apart is in large part your own doing. There is a tendency to avoid God and God’s people when you have not lived up to the works of the Law. I guess the idea is that if you got yourself into this mess, you will reemerge after you have gotten yourself out of it. Shame is a terrible tyrant. It isolates us from the foundational blessings of our lives.

The woman in this reading is for a symbol of courage in the face of personal failure. She fights through all that might hold her back and presents herself – unworthy and broken open to the core of her pain – to Jesus. It is an astonishing act, not because she does not “deserve” God’s love, but because she desires it so deeply. She is like a person trapped under water whose last breath barely enables her to push to the surface to inhale life-giving oxygen. And whereas Simon might respond to this kind of reaching by citing the Law – the long list of who she is, but should not be – Jesus simply embraces her with the love born of God’s love for each one of us. And in that love, the woman finds the blessing she so desperately seeks.

What are the blessings in your life which need to be guarded, protected, valued, and cherished? What are the blessings that you need to seek? What holds you back and prevents you from accepting God’s deep, abiding love for you?

Trinity Sunday: Broken into Me

From the New Testament reading:

We boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts.

I mentioned last Sunday that I really enjoyed my week at the CREDO Conference in NC. It proved to be far more beneficial than I ever would have expected, hoped for, or imagined. I came away with much, but today, let me share this one facet: after just two days I realized that every participant (and there were 36 of us) and every faculty member (there were 8) had experienced some deep pain or wounding in life.

This reality began to emerge at daily worship where a different faculty member offered a reflection each day. On the first morning, a priest related how years ago (and this is a memorable line) his “wife went away to that place where unhappy women go and never return”, leaving him alone to raise their children. That led to a period of deep depression followed by alcoholism, which in term cost him his job, his bishop shunned him, and he ended up homeless for some period of time. Another day another member of the faculty described how one of his children, younger than two, was diagnosed with a rare form of spinal cancer and died six retching weeks later. That too was years ago… I can only begin to imagine the heartache.

Talking with fellow clergy I heard stories of professional pain and personal struggle. The priesthood, I thought, exacts a huge toll on its ranks. But I know that we are not alone. I know from sharing in your lives that it is not just one career path which is singled out for challenge and that no one is immune from the worst that life has to offer. We all have known pain. We all have known suffering. For the most fortunate among us, the experience is largely in the past. For some, it is an on-going reality.

Since the beginning of the War on Terror in 2001, 1,085 members of our Armed Forces have lost their lives in Afghanistan; 139 so far this year. Over that same period, 4,400 American servicemen and women have been killed in Iraq: 30 this year. Whatever Memorial Day will be for many of us, it will be something very different for those who have lost a son or a daughter, a husband or a wife, a brother or a sister, an uncle or an aunt, a neighbor or a friend. For them, this weekend will highlight their loss, their emptiness, their suffering.

According to the version of the bible we heard read this morning, Paul says that we ‘boast’ in our sufferings. Boast is probably not the most useful choice of words. Other translations put it “we rejoice in our sufferings” or “we celebrate in the midst of suffering.” While rejoicing and celebrating focus the sense of what Paul is saying, it still sounds foreign. None of us should want to seek out suffering for suffering’s sake.

Paul’s great contribution here is the belief that suffering is not pointless. If we embrace the pain of life, rather than flee from it, deflect it on to others, or internalize as our own fault, something redemptive can take place. We learn how to endure (or, as another bible translation puts it, ‘persevere’). As we endure we forge a new identity that is rooted in character. From this emerges the hope that all we experience – all that is good, all that is bad, all that is mundane, all of it – when lived authentically and lived in God becomes the kingdom of God at work in and through our lives.

But this transformation is neither automatic nor guaranteed. For some, the experience of suffering is paralyzing, leaving the person lost and frozen in place. I thought about this when I came across a poem by Adelia Prado titled Divine Wrath:

When I was wounded
whether by God, the devil, or myself
- I don’t yet know which –
it was seeing the sparrows again
and clumps of clover, after three days,
that told me I hadn’t died.
When I was young,
all it took were those sparrows,
those lush little leaves,
for me to sing praises,
dedicate operas to the Lord.
But a dog who’s been beaten
is slow to go back to barking
and making a fuss over his owner
- an animal, not a person
like me who can ask:
Why did you beat me?
Which is why, despite the sparrows and the clover,
a subtle shadow still hangs over my spirit.
May whoever hurt me, forgive me.

If I am correct in assuming that every person knows some great suffering or loss or pain in life, I wonder for how many does Prado’s poem ring true. For how many has suffering led not to hope but to numbness or despair? Perhaps that is where it has taken you, but I imagine that those of us who are here in this house of worship have found at least some small way to boast or rejoice or celebrate. We know, at least in part, the experience of God’s love being poured into our hearts at the time and in the place that we needed it most. If you have received such grace than you are truly blessed, because, as Prado reminds us, it is not a given. I wonder how many people who ‘don’t dark the door of the church’ used to sing childhood operas to God at the sight of a sparrow and the smell of the clover, but now, like a dog beaten by its owner, don’t know what to say to God so they just say nothing.

During a reflection at the CREDO Conference, one speaker took a small clay pot and threw it to the floor, causing it to break into multiple pieces. “That was me,” she told us. “That was my life when our son came home from Iraq and then disappeared without a word.” Once or twice he called, agreeing to meet his parents in Chicago or Seattle, but then never showed. Finally, after several years she was reunited with her son. To dramatize the experience, the speaker took a second clay pot, one that had been broken but now was glued back together, and set it on a table. A candle was burning inside the pot and because not all of the broken pieces fit neatly together light was shinning through the cracks. “I am like this pot,” she told us. “My life was broken, but it has been put back together and God’s love shines through the suffering I have experienced.”

I pondered that image for some time in the silence of our worship and began to sense how I have been “broken into me.” It is a theme of have touched on before (like when I say the most important degree I have been awarded in life comes from the School of Hard Knocks). Who I am is part and parcel with what I have suffered. I could not and would not be who I am today without the pain I have known. Did God visit it on me? I don’t think so. Did the devil? No, I don’t think that either. Did I do it to myself? Sometimes. But for the most part most of it is just life. I focus not on the curse of the bad things, but on the blessing of how it has been redeemed by God.

Ponder the suffering in your own life. The good news of Gospel is not that God shields the faithful from bad things; for if this were true it would mean that none of us who have suffered is faithful. No, the good news is that out of the brokenness – somehow and over time – something emerges in us that becomes a welcome and indispensible part of who we are. It is made possible only as God’s love is poured into us. It is of this that we boast and we rejoice and we celebrate.

Pentecost Sunday: A Living Together in Conversation

I have not had cable TV since moving to Suffolk and, for the most part, I have no missed it at all. More than anything else, it is most refreshing not to be exposed to cable news ‘talk’ shows; you know those broadcasts where the screen is split in half or, even worse, into quads and each person on the screen represents a different end of the spectrum of the particular issue and they all talk – loudly – at the same time. Every one is yelling, no one is listening, and no one is learning.

From its root origins, the word ‘conversation’ means “a living together,” “a manner of behaving,” “a keeping company.” Most talk shows are not conversation – a living together – but are ideological battlegrounds. And, from my perspective, the irony is that as the speakers speak without ceasing all at the same time, we the listeners are not persuaded. Oh, sure, we may become impassioned and even enraged, but no body – and I mean no body – is persuaded to change their mind by listening to the incessant babble. Rare indeed on the public airways is conversation; people with differing backgrounds and experiences and perspectives keeping company with one another in a way that enriches our common life.

Conversation is a challenge, even if the participants seek to understand one another. I was reading an account of a retreat where people where exploring the church’s history. At one point each person was asked to visualize an image they associated with the word ‘tradition’. The responses were varied and surprising. One person had an image of confronting an immovable fortress, threatening and ominous. Another image was of an ocean liner moving carefully but persistently through a turbulent sea. Someone else described encountering a compassionate sage, withered and wise. Another participant described tradition as being like wandering in a graveyard. Still another visualized climbing on the limbs of a giant tree that is alive, strong, and protective. Each person on the retreat had a very different association for the exact same word. Meaning what we say, saying what we mean, not having another have it mean something entirely different from what we anticipated, and actually listening in a manner which is open and engaged with what is being said are just some of the major challenges to authentic conversation.

Our first reading this morning is one of those brief, big stories from the Old Testament. The Tower of Babel draws on several themes. At one level it is a cautionary tale about urbanization over and against the value of a rural, agrarian society. It has an anti-technology bent while being firmly rooted in a desire to maintain the status quo. But more than any other theme, Babel tries to make some sense as to why there are so many different cultures and languages. It ponders why conversation – living with and keeping company – is so challenging. Through the story, the ancient Hebrews derived several powerful theological assertions. Perhaps the most forceful is the notion that God wills cultural and ethnic differences. Chief among these differences is language. God institutes this divide specifically to keep peoples apart and distinct. The story asserts that attempting to bridge these differences is a kind of dangerous overreaching, a laying hold a territory reserved only for God. The story paints the picture of a God who actively works to frustrate conversation among and between people.

While this theology sounds foreign in our day, it makes sense for a time when a small tribe of people is concerned with maintaining its distinctive culture, heritage, and religious beliefs. As this people blends into the multi-cultural environment they call the Promised Land they need a strong theological framework that will keep their identity in tact. The notion that God creates the differences among peoples and actively frustrates tribes from coming together serves such a purpose.

Today’s reading from the Book of Acts functions as a kind of bookend to the story of the tower of Babel and a new theology emerges from it. The Gospel event of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection is so central to all people in all places and times that God enables the Church to converse about it in every language. God, who had been the author of the language confusion, is now the source for overcoming it. No longer is God to be associated with just one specific ethnic group and heritage. God is now to be associated with the Church and the Church is to be broad and diverse, gathered together under the banner of Jesus Christ. Our new guiding theological understanding is that God fosters conversation amongst all peoples through the work of the Church.

For the Church this means that we are in the business of helping people understand one another. Listening carefully, being attentive to one’s own unique perspective, and speaking clearly are holy acts for which we seek God’s help. A collect we use in Morning Prayer asks God to guide us so that the Gospel may be truly preached, and truly heard. It is a prayer that taps into God’s deep desire to foster conversation.

As someone who engages in the act of public speaking on a weekly basis and who participates in multiple conversations each and every day, I am aware of how easy it is to misunderstand and to be misunderstood. I have been involved in numerous conversations where it seemed like the participants simply were not hearing what each other was saying. I have witnessed more than one conversation where the speaker did not understand what he himself was saying. But I think about those glorious times when a group of people, fogged in by their inability to understand different points of view, suddenly and miraculously were able to hear and comprehend the diverse perspectives of others in the group. Perhaps you have never thought of it in this way, but this is the work of Holy Spirit. It is always a mini-Pentecost when true conversation occurs, when people keep company and live with one another.