African Easter

by Abioseh Nicol (1924-1994)

Good Friday

The Wounded Christ:

I am not your God

if you have not denied me once, twice,

if I have not heard you complaining,

or doubting my existence.

I am not your Love,

if you have not rejected me often.

For what then am I worth to you

if you are always sinless.

Pace these sandy corridors of time,

turn again and live for me your youth, listening

to the gently falling rain, the distant cock crow

then proceed once more to deny

that I had a part in your being.  Say

that I am an invention to keep you held

always in thralldom.  That I was

the avant-garde of your disintegration.

After me, the stone jars of cheap gin, ornamental 

glass beads, the punitive expeditions, your colonial status,

I have heard it all before; hide your face,

bury it, for fear that finding me, you may find peace.

For in this hour when the dying night lingers

unwilling to surrender its waking darkness

over your face and fevered brow, my torn fingers

will stray bringing such comfort

as may claim your doubting heart.

Easter Eve

The African Priest:

I have sat down by the waterside

watching the grey river pulling away.

I have listened me with willing ears

to your vesper bells across the fields.

Come close to me, God, do not keep away,

I walk towards you but you are too far,

Please try and meet me here halfway,

because you are my all, my all.

What are you, Negro, Lebanese or Jew,

Flemish, Italian, Indian, Greek?

I know within my heart exactly what you are – 

What we would like to be, but never are.

The warm blood sticks to your whipped shoulders

(Drink this in remembrance of me).

Only when the whirling throngs have raised red weals

on our complacent bodies, then we remember you.

Change our salty tears of brown remorse

into your flowing blood, it tastes the same.

(Oh, River Niger, you too have come from far away),

Fill my uplifted silver calabash

with your sacrificial wine.

And I, your least novitiate, will sip,

with my thick lips, your ancient memory

So God the Father who art above,

Christ His Son, our only love,

Holy Ghost, eternal Dove,

make me a goodly man.

Easter Morning

The African Intellectual:

Ding dong bell

Pussy’s in the well.

Another day…

Sleep leaves my opening eyes slowly

unwillingly like a true lover.

But this day is different.

The lonely matin bells

cut across the thin morning mist,

the glinting dew on the green grass,

the cool pink light before the heat of day,

the sudden punctual dawn of tropic skies, 

before the muezzin begins to cry, 

before the pagan drums begin to beat.

Easter morning.

But still for me

the great rock remains unrolled.

within my wet dark tomb

wounded peace remains embalmed,

the pricking thorns still yet my crown.

Easter morning.

Where are my ancestral spirits now?

I have forgotten for many harvests 

to moisten the warm earth

with poured libations.

Where are you now, O Shango?

two headed, powerful

man and woman, hermaphrodite

holding your quivering thunderbolts

with quiet savage malice;

brooding over your domain,

Africa, Cuba, Haiti, Brazil,

slavery of mind is unabolished.

Always wanting to punish, never to love.

I have turned away from you

to One who stands

watching His dying dispossessed Son 

shouting in Aramaic agony

watching the white Picasso dove

hovering above the Palestinian stream

watching and waiting, sometimes

to punish, always to love.

Sleep confuses my tired mind

still the bell rings

I must up and away.

I am a good Churchman, now.

Broadminded, which means past caring

whether High or Low.

The priest may hold the chalice,

or give it to me.  It depends

on where he trained.  I only mind

that he wipes the wet rim

not to spread dental germs.

A tenth of my goods

I give to the poor

through income tax.

Easter morning.

Yet you Christ are always there.

You are the many-faceted crystal 

of our desires and hopes,

behind the smoke-screen of incense, 

concealed in mumbled European tongues

of worship and of praise.

In the thick dusty verbiage

of centuries of committees

of ecumenical councils.

You yet remain revealed

to those who seek you.

It is I, you say.

You remain in the sepulcher

of my brown body.

Christ is risen, Christ is risen!

You were not dead.

It was just that we

could not see clearly enough.

We can push out the rock from the inside.

You can come out now.

You see we want to share you

with our masters, because

you really are unique.

The great muddy river Niger, 

picks up the rising equatorial sun,

changing itself by slow degrees

into thick flowing molten gold.

Expectations & Disappointments

I wrote a paper in seminary on a 1941 book titled The Nature and Destiny of Man written by a theologian named Reinhold Niebuhr.  In it, Niebuhr argues that we human beings are both finite and limitless.  We are limitless because we are made in the image of the Creator.  Our minds are capable of soaring to fantastic heights and our souls are endowed with the possibility of infinite expression.  But we are also creatures and thus limited.  We are confined to space and time.  We are imperfect and lack omniscience.  Niebuhr said that humanity is both free and bound, both limited and limitless, sinner and saint, subject to history and social forces but also the shaper of history and society, creature of the Creator but potential lord of creation, egotistical but capable of living for others.

Niebuhr believed we are drawn into relationships with other people when we see the infinite in them; when we see in a lover or a mate or a friend the mystery of that person, his or her unique capacity for good and beauty and strength and virtue.  Conversely, these relationships are challenged when we recognize the other person’s finite nature; when we see how small and powerless and petty a person really is.

Niebuhr’s thinking sheds light on one aspect of the hugely complex events that envelop the Passion of our Lord.  Throughout the Gospels we see people being attracted to that part of Jesus which gives flesh to true Divinity.  Drawn by his miracles and his healings and his signs and his teachings and his personal aura, they came from far and near to meet Jesus.  He seemed to be unencumbered by the elements of this life that drag down the rest of us.  He contended fearlessly with oppressive politicians and corrupt, uncaring religious leaders.  He demonstrated a boundless capacity for compassion to all who were sick, lonely, anxious, or despondent and for those who were not accepted in society’s upper echelons.  Demons cowered at his rebuke and the raging seas lay still at His command.  He was God from God, Light from Light... of one Being with the Father.

And, as you know, by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate of the Virgin Mary and was made man.  He emptied himself, as St. Paul says, and became humble as we are humble.  He was limited by thirst and exhaustion.  He was not able to right every wrong or exceed everyone’s expectations of Him.  His critics recognized his finite nature and wagged at the foot of the Cross, “He saved other but he cannot save himself.”  As he rode into Jerusalem, Jesus was praised by those whose held high expectations for what he would do and as he stood before Pilate the same people rejected him for disappointing them.

Expectations and disappointments: these are emotions born of our limitless potential and the finite nature of our physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual condition.  The cry of “hosanna in the highest” is raised for those from whom we expect great things and the shouts of “crucify” are aimed at anyone who lets us down beyond all measure.

It is a dynamic that we do not reserve just for the Savior of the world.  It plays out in every relationship between individuals, between groups, and between individuals and groups.  How many marriages have begun with two people singing hosanna only to end with demands for crucifixion?  How many politicians have strolled into office on a red carpet only to be booted out the back door when they fail to deliver the world to their constituents?  How many coaches have helped how many young people to graduate only to be fired because they did not win enough league championships?    How many churches have split when two sides can not agree on the ‘truth’?

We demand a kind of greatness and perfection from one another that only God can live up to, and even then, only on God’s best days.  As a result we have become an extremely cruel and unforgiving society that throws away those who disappoint us with a stunning, but predictable regularity.  We shun, sue, or sabotage anyone unfortunate enough to have their limitations exposed to our boundless expectations.  The cry may not be “crucify him,” but the intention is the same.

The great irony is that the words “crucify him” – aimed at those who, in their limitations, have disappointed us – these words are generated in us not from what is infinite and glorious and generous, but from what is finite and mean and unforgiving.  We condemn in another what fail to see in ourselves.

Each one of us has been victimized by unrealistic expectations and each of us knows what it is to be thoroughly uncharitable with regards to the short-comings of others.  It is an old phenomena, older than the Passion of our Lord for sure.  One of the things we learn from today’s story is that it should be O.K. to be human.  It should be O.K. to have limitations and to make mistakes.  We ought to cut some slack for others when they fail to attain the impossible standards we set for them.  We are not God.  We are not even gods.  We are limited human beings making our way through life as best we can. 

But we can be like God in this respect: God recognizes and accepts that we are finite and thus we will fall far, hard, and often.  The Passion of our Lord is the most powerful testimony imaginable of just how low we can sink.  Yet it also shows us that God’s mercy for us knows no bounds.  That very mercy is woven into the fabric of our being.  It is – should we choose to act upon it – a part of who we are in our limitless potential. 

Each week we come to the Lord’s Table to taste the bread and drink the wine which will promote in us that which is charitable to those around us.  Living on our own resources and left to our own devices, the cry of “crucify” seems to well up within us again and again and again.  Making ourselves present to God’s grace opens within us that which is limitless and capable of near-infinite mercy and compassion.  

Create in Me a Clean Heart

The time is the 5th Century BC.  The place is somewhere within the sphere of the Hebrew religion.  A person, most likely a man, lies sick; perhaps to the point of death.  Pondering his life, his physical aliments, and his many transgressions, this person realizes that first and foremost he must become right with God.  He writes these words, which are some of the best known in the entire Psalter:

Create in me a clean heart, O God,

   and renew a right spirit within me.

It is a verse found often in our liturgy and I can’t tell you how many times I have prayed its prayer with only a degree of sincerity.  Let me tell you about my heart.  There are evil things rooted in it which you may glimpse on occasion and there are some things which I will work very hard never to let you see.  There lurks still more in my heart that I try to hide even from those closest to me.  And if the psychologists are right, there are things in my heart hidden even from me.

There is a part of my heart, too large I am afraid, that is deeply bitter.  This part believes no adversity should ever befall me.  Its doctrine holds no adversary should ever prevail against me and no one close should ever disappoint me.  My heart spews forth an acid-like emotion when ever its arrogant assertions are violated.

Tell me about your heart.  What lies in its secret places?  Tell me about your heart.  What hides within its deepest recesses?  Is there hatred?  Immorality?  Bigotry?  Rampant pride and conceit?  Vindictiveness?  Does your heart covet?  Is it consumed with shame?  Is it controlled by an addiction?  Does it ever boil over into violence?  Or perhaps your heart is mostly passionless and indifferent; lacking hope and purpose.  Maybe it is broken and, to your estimation, wounded beyond repair.  Tell me about your heart.

Let me tell you about another heart.  It belongs to a character named Morrieaux in Michael Christopher’s play The Black Angel.  The play tells the story of a W.W.II German general named Herman Engel who was sentenced to 30 years behind bars for atrocities committed by his army.  At the time when the play takes place, Engel has been released from prison and is living in a cabin in a remote woodland location where he and his wife hope to finish out their days in obscurity.

Waiting in the wings is Morrieaux, a Frenchman, whose entire family had been massacred by Engel’s army.  Morrieaux had privately vowed that, if ever presented the opportunity, he would take Engel’s life.  His personal death sentence was kept alive over three decades by the fire of hatred which burned in his heart.  Now, with Engel free, the time has come.  Morrieaux stirs up nearby villagers into a frenzy and they plan to go to Engel’s cabin at night in order to burn it to the ground.  They plan to execute the general and his wife.

But even this is not enough to appease the hatred of the lead character.  As the play reaches its climax, Morrieaux posses as a reporter and goes to Engel’s cabin.  He grills the general about the details of the village massacre.  The years have taken their toll on the Nazi and in his feeble humanity he seems to Morrieaux less like the monster he had imagined and more like a tired old man.  Beyond this, some of the details of the Engel’s version of the story do not fit together as neatly as Morrieaux had imagined.  Doubt begins to contaminate the place where once only pure hate and vengeance had dwelt.

As the afternoon wears on, Morrieaux takes pity on Engel and tells him of the villagers’ plans for that very evening.  He offers to lead the old man and his wife to safety.  “I will go with you on one condition,” Engel tells Morrieaux, “You must forgive me.”  In his fantasies Morrieaux had rehearsed a thousand different ways in which he would kill this man, now he was willing to cancel the execution, but not the hate.  Morrieaux departs alone, his hate-filled heart in tact.  As he walks away we hear the villagers approaching who, with sacks over their heads, proceed to burn the cabin and murder the general and his wife.

The play asks the question why was Morrieaux unable to forgive?  Why was it easier to save a man’s life than to forgive him?  It was too much for Morrieaux to forgive because his hatred had been a passion too long lodged in his soul.  He could not live, he could no longer be the person he was, without his hatred.  He had become his hatred.  His hate did not belong to him, he belonged to it.

When I say the words, “Create in me a clean heart, O God,” the longer I go without offering up my bitterness, the more I sense it becoming me and me it.  Sometimes I cannot imagine what life would be like if I did not carry it in me.  Do you want to know something strange?  Thinking about the people I am bitter at without being bitter at them scares me to death.  How about you?  What about your heart?  Are you afraid to let it go?

I think back to the Hebrew Psalmist, whoever he was, lying close to death.  I wonder what it is about facing mortality that opens the desire within us to put our hearts right.  I don’t want to wait until the end of life to open myself to the Creator of heaven and earth to create a right spirit within me.

Our Gospel reading this morning records a one verse parable of our Lord:  “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”  The meaning of the parable then follows:  “He who loves his life loses it and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”  We don’t need the character of Morrieaux to show us how difficult it is to disdain the present condition of our hearts.  If we seek validation of this truth all we need to do is take stock of the things which we do not want to turn over to God’s creative renewing.

One time Jesus met a lame man who was sitting by a pool of water said to have magical, healing powers.  There were dozens of people around the water waiting for the chance to be made whole, but for some reason our Lord focused in on this particular individual.  Jesus asked him just one question, “Do you want to be healed?”  I always thought this to be such a silly question until I realized how desperately we all cling to the things that pull us down.  Every smoker knows how devastating cigarettes are to the body, yet each continues.  Alcoholics will watch their lives fall apart, along with the lives of those who care about them, all the while believing the bottle is their best friend.  Young people will engage is sexual activities which threaten not only their future, but their very lives.  Me, well I have my bitterness and you know what lies in the secret places of your heart.

Do you want to be healed?  If so, you must truly hate that part of your heart which you fearfully grasp with all of your might.  You must surrender.  You must die to that part of self where you have not let the light of Christ shine nor let the joy of the Gospel ring out.  You must let go, but letting go is exactly what we struggle most in life to do.  It is what we fear.   Just as the grain of wheat begins to grow only when it gives itself up to the unknown of the soil, we too will only begin to grow when we let go of the safe, the familiar, and the known in order to reach out for the new and unknown.  Not to let go is to assure death, yet we have been told since our early years, “Look before you leap; never quit your job until you have a new one; better safe than sorry; a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.”  So we just hold on to it.

Jesus Christ calls each of us to a radical faith and trust.  This call begs each of us to name as evil the familiar poison in our hearts.  This call questions, “Do you want to be made well?”  This call lifts up the example of the grain of wheat which remains alone until it dies to self.  And the person who issues the call gives nothing less than the example of His life.  Jesus Christ faced the greatest unknown of all –  death – and He triumphed.  Jesus Christ bids us, “Crucify the bitterness, the hate, the pride, so that I may resurrect your heart.”

St. Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old things are passing away.  Behold, new things come.”  May God give to you and to me the hatred of the present condition of our hearts and the courage to face the unknown so that our hearts may contain only the law and the light of the new covenant of Christ.  “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.”

Snakes & Dreams

Three years ago when we last heard today’s assigned lessons, I began my sermon with these words: “This morning we encounter one of most peculiar stories in all the Old Testament.”  That statement still seems like a pretty good place to start.  The story of the snake bites in the wilderness and healing power of a bronze serpent most likely would have faded into Old Testament obscurity had not Jesus tied his life to it metaphorically – “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up.”  For Jesus, the wilderness story is deeply revealing of the meaning of his own act on the Cross.

Now, I am sure you remember from that sermon three years ago how I brilliantly brought the Old Testament story to life and described every nuance and facet of the text, so I won’t need to go over that again.  Well, maybe just the cliff notes:

·  The people of Israel spent years wandering in the Sinai wilderness after Moses led them out of Egypt.

·  It was a barren land with few resources, yet God gave water to drink and food to eat.

·  The ‘eatable’ substance God provided was called ‘manna’ – a Hebrew word meaning “what is it?” 

·  Aptly named, this flaky, sticky stuff was the only food the people had to eat for years on end. 

·  When they grew sick of it – literally retching to get it down – they complained bitterly.

·  God, like the chef at a fine restaurant, did not take kindly to criticism of the menu.

·  The King James Version of the bible says that God send “fiery serpents” among the people who bit them.  Other translations just say “venomous snakes”, but there is a real mystery as to what exactly these creatures were… natural snakes or supernatural seraphim. 

·  Either way, people are dying and they reason it is because they offended God.

·  They ask Moses to pray for forgiveness.

Now, this is where the story really gets interesting.  God tells Moses to make an image of a serpent and mount it to a pole.  Whoever looks at the snake will be healed, God says, and whoever does not will die.  Notice that God doesn’t specify what material to use in crafting the image.  Moses, as if humored by the absurdity of it all, elects to make the snake out of bronze.  Now, he could have chosen any material – wood (easy to chisel), stone (he had already worked with it on the Commandment tablets), but in a word play/pun that Al Reese would surely appreciate, Moses decides to make the snake (nehash in Hebrew) out of bronze (nehoshet).  He makes a nehash nehoshet and do you know what, it works! 

The instrument of rejection, judgment, and punishment becomes the means of forgiveness, redemption, and healing because God’s power works through it.  The people of Israel hung on to that nehash nehoshet for centuries as a sacred reminder of God’s goodness, but destroyed it once people began to believe that it, not God, had mysterious, healing powers.  After that, Hebrew theologians became embarrassed by the details of the event and when the poet of today’s psalm set out to write a song of praise, he or she sanitized the story by omitting the weird serpents and snake pole, saying only that the people were afflicted and God spoke a word so they would be healed.  Most likely the story would have slipped into obscurity had not Jesus breathed new meaning into it.

The healing process could not have been any simpler, could it.  Look at the image and be healed or look away and die.  It makes me wonder why anyone would choose to look away.  Why would you not turn your gaze to the snake on a pole and be healed?

I want to explore this question by telling you about a strange dream I had last week.  I was riding in the backseat of a car down the street where I grew up.  As we passed the house where I was raised I saw that it had been stripped down to its structural bones and the new owners were in the process of renovating it.  I have a lot of dreams about that house – usually they involve it falling into disrepair or fix-it jobs I had done years ago are now going bad; the roof leaks, the plumbing is shot, the wiring is dangerous – that kind of thing.  Over the years I have come to believe that dreams about my childhood house have to do with regret.  I regret that something in my real world did not turn out well or has not stood up to the test of time.

As the car drove on the driver turned around to face me.  It was my father (who passed away 32 years ago).  He was angry, very angry, and he had a gun.  He told me his was going to shoot me.  In my dream I remembering not caring if he shot me or not, but then I opened the door and ran away.  He was firing the gun, but missing.  I climbed up on a rooftop and watched as authorities wrestled him to the ground and it was at that point that I woke up.

I thought about the dream for a long time, trying to understand what it was all about.  Many of us, if not all, have an inner voice that speaks for the critical parent.  This is the voice that is always ready to come to the forefront when we fail at something.  For some, it even chimes in to negate the things we do well.  There are folks for whom that inner voice literally is the voice of a parent whose over-burdening criticism is never silenced over the course of one’s life.  My father was not that way, fortunately, but he still gets to play the part in my dreams from time to time.   In my dream world, it is a way for my own internal criticism to come to life as someone else.  In some real way, my dream was about me being angry at myself.  It was the manifestation of an intense regret for things done or left undone.

Here is the part of the dream I pondered for some time: why did I run away, why did I try to dodge the bullets?  An obvious answer is I was afraid, or that I wanted to live.  But in my dream I was not afraid.  I had no sense of terror.  I never pleaded “please don’t shot me.”  Here is another possibility… perhaps I ran away because I grew tired of the criticism.  That, in fact, is what the gun and the bullets represented, but if this is why I ran away why didn’t I shout something like “Stop shooting at me.” 

After pondering all of this for some time, it dawned on me that I ran away because I believed I could be forgiven.  It struck me as significant that at some deep, subconscious level there exists within me such a belief and such a hope.  I wonder if there are people for whom this is not the case; people who do not believe they can be forgiven?

So why would some people look at the nehash nehoshet while others would not?  The answer is as simple as, but as complicated as, some people believed they could be forgiven, others did not.  Those who turned away did so not out of arrogance and not because they didn’t believe in a snake on a pole, but because they doubted that their mistakes and failures and regrets could be forgiven.

This morning we hear some of the best-known and best-loved words of Jesus:  “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.  For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.”  Jesus says that just as Moses lifted up the snake, so too will he himself be lifted up on a Cross.  The implication is that those who look at him on the Cross will be saved and those who don’t will not. 

Jesus then plays out this teaching through a slightly different metaphor of darkness and light.  Some, he says, want to hide in the dark because their deeds are evil.  Others will come into the light because they are not ashamed for all to see their godly acts.  The truth is, we all have those things which we are willing to reveal and we all have those things which we want to hide.  The great act of faith and the incredible expression of hope is to look at the Cross, to walk into the light, to believe at the deepest level possible that you are forgiven and you are precious and you are loved.

When Jesus says those who look at the Cross will be saved, he is not saying salvation is the exclusive domain of Christians, and certainly he is not saying that it is the exclusive domain of certain traditions within Christianity whose adherents believe they posses something the rest of us miss.  Jesus is saying that salvation, healing, wholeness and fullness of life in this life and the next is open to every one.  All you have to do is look and you will find it.  All you have to do is face the light and you will be drawn toward it.  But if you cower in fear or if you deem yourself too unworthy even to look, then you will suffer an excruciating isolation from God – an isolation you yourself impose.  

Zeal for Your House

His disciples remembered that it is written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.”

This past Tuesday I gathered with Episcopal clergy from our area for lunch and fellowship – something we do every month or so.  One of our practices is to read and discuss the next Sunday’s Gospel lesson.  Reflecting on the text we heard just moments ago, the clergy as one asked the same question, “What would Jesus think if he walked into our church today?”  “Oh no,” said one priest, “This is the week of our annual rummage sale.”  Others spoke of offerings and collections and ticket sales and fund-raisers of one kind or another.  What would Jesus say about all of this?  Today’s reading just seems to draw out of us this response. 

But I want us to put this aside and approach the text from a different angle.  I want to move our reflection from the negative – what was Jesus reacting against – to the positive – what was Jesus advocating for.  Do you hear the shift in focus?  If we can figure out what Jesus was for then we can explore what inhibits it in our time.  The truth is that the Temple merchants and money-changers where shake-down artists that would make today’s pay-day lending operators blush.  Yes, some churches become too focused on money, and a few ministers have robbed blind their flock, but it is hard to imagine most congregations today reaching the scale of what was going on in the Temple that Jesus entered.

The disciples, in watching Jesus go to work, associated his actions with the ninth verse of the 69^th psalm.  In it, the author describes hardships he endures because he is zealous for God’s house.  Zeal is an interesting word.  According to Webster’s Dictionary it means an “intense enthusiasm, as in working for a cause; ardent endeavor or devotion.”  It has a positive connotation, describing something you are for.  And while “zealot” can be used negatively to describe a person fanatical, militant, or bigoted, it also has a positive association as “one who is animated by an intense or eager interest in an activity, cause” or the like. 

Jesus’ zeal – his intense enthusiasm – was for the Temple to be a house a prayer.  One of the best articulations of a what this might look like is found in the least-used service in the prayer book, the liturgy for the Consecration of a Church.  On pages 568-569 we find three prayers: one offered to the Father by the bishop, one offered to the Son by a warden, and one offered to the Spirit by the priest.  As the church is being set apart as a house of prayer, these three prayers provide a rich description of what it should look like.

Everliving Father, watchful and caring, our source and our end: All that we are and all that we have is yours.  Accept us now, as we dedicate this place to which we come to praise your Name, to ask your forgiveness, to know your healing power, to hear your Word, and to be nourished by the Body and Blood of your Son.  Be present always to guide and to judge, to illuminate and to bless your people.

Lord Jesus Christ, make this a temple of your presence and a house of prayer.  Be always near us when we seek you in this place.  Draw us to you, when we come alone and when we come with others, to find comfort and wisdom, to be supported and strengthened, to rejoice and give thanks.  May it be here, Lord Christ, that we are made one with you and with one another, so that our lives are sustained and sanctified for your service.

Holy Spirit, open our eyes, our ears, and our hearts, that we may grow closer to you through joy and through suffering.  Be with us in the fullness of your power as new members are added to your household, as we grow in grace through the years, when we are joined in marriage, when we turn to you in sickness or special need, and, at the last, when we are committed into the Father’s hands.

This, I think, is a fair description of what Jesus is zealous for.  His actions point us toward this by pealing away every layer that covers or conceals what is central.  

One of the devotional books I am reading is a work by John O’Donohue called Beauty: The Invisible Embrace.  In it he writes that in China they tell the story of subjects from Mongolia who travelled vast distances to see the emperor.  Once they arrived in Beijing, they had to practice for months the decorum appropriate to that moment of encounter.  When the emperor finally passed, they could not even look up.  The whole journey was rewarded with a glimpse of just of his feet. 

Reflecting on this O’Donohue writes:

When we approach with reverence, great things decide to approach us...  When we walk on the earth with reverence, beauty will decide to trust us.  The rushed heart and the arrogant mind lack the gentleness and patience to enter the embrace.  Beauty is mysterious, a slow presence who waits for the ready, expectant heart.

In Jesus’ day it was the business of the Temple that worked most forcefully to prevent seekers from encountering God.  I think O’Donohue is on to something important when he identifies today’s biggest impediments as “the rushed heart and the arrogant mind.”  Rushed: the pace of life today is so crazy that is nearly impossible to sit down in a church and slow down long enough to be present to the moment.  Arrogant: coming here knowing what you need from God and when you need it and how you want God to give it to you.  There are times I approach worship the way a college student comes home from school, bursts in the front door, drops off a bag of dirty laundry, asks for cash, and is gone again leaving the parent bewildered and empty. 

We are in the presence of Greatness here, but do we approach this moment in a way that allows Greatness to open up to us?  On the first Wednesday night in Lent, we encountered this statement by Elizabeth Barrett Browning: “Earth is crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God.  And only he who sees takes off his shoes, the rest sit round and pluck blackberries.”  What is it that allows one person to see the burning bush while another sees only the berries to pick?  Certainly not being rushed and not having your mind already made up as to what you are looking at help.

This, I think, is what Jesus would help us to understand if he walked into St. Paul’s this morning.  The over-turned tables, freed sacrificial animals and birds, and the coins strewn out over the Temple floor are signs that we are here to encounter Greatness, to be open to Beauty, and to respond with praise worthy of the One who passes by.

His disciples remembered that it is written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.”

Pick Up Your Cross

Jesus began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, be rejected, and killed so that He could rise again, but Peter took Him aside and rebuked Him.

Every parent of a small child knows this scenario, or one like it.  The child is engaged in some kind of risky play… perhaps riding a bike or playing vigorously on a swing set.  One moment everything is fine, the next, disaster strikes.  A fall, a cut, a bump, a bruise… and tears, lots and lots of tears.  You rush to the child, hug, clean the wound, apply a band-aid, more hugs, and then… what?  What do you do next?  What wisdom, what counsel, do you give to the child?

Some parents caution: “Try to be more careful now.”  Some encourage: “Go on back to having fun.”  Some say, “Mommy (or Daddy) is going to be right here with you to make sure nothing like this ever happens again.”  Some try to protect: “Let’s not get back on the bike (or the swing set or whatever it was). It is too dangerous for you.” 

Each response sends a distinct and powerful message.  “Try to be more careful,” tells the child that it is safe to engage the world again as long as you learn from the past.  “Go back to having fun,” suggests that bumps and bruises are all a part of life’s natural ebb and flow.  “Mommy is with you,” conveys the message that the presence of a caring adult can and will keep you safe.  It is a promise that can be difficult to deliver, unless you become over-protective.  “Let’s not get back on the bike” sends a message that suffering and pain must be avoided at all costs.  Which message would you want to give to a child?

Here is another way to think about it… if God came to you and said, “I will give you either the ability to keep your child safe from all harm or the ability to comfort and heal your child,” which would you choose?  Based on today’s Gospel reading, I think it is safe to say the Peter would choose safety while Jesus would choose comfort and healing.

What is wrong with Peter’s approach?  Who doesn’t want to avoid pain and suffering and heartache and rejection and (ultimately) death itself?  Why shouldn’t Jesus get out of Dodge, head for the hills, hideout, and not be crucified?  What is wrong with that?  It seems smart.  It seems prudent.  It seems logical.  It feels right.  But, it comes with a huge, hidden cost: the price you pay for shrinking back from life.

Think about that child with the bruised knee or the bloody elbow.  What price does the child pay if he never gets back on the bike or if she never again climbs on the swing set?  Over time the child will become tentative, fearful, and withdrawn.  What happens if parent makes the child’s total safety his or her responsibility and never leaves the child’s side?  Over time it will diminish the child’s natural ability to engage challenges and to recover from setbacks; experiences every child faces on a daily basis.

It is also a struggle we in the adult world engage time and time again in many varied forms and fashions.  Think about what happens in life if you give your heart to another and somewhere down the road that person disappoints or rejects you?  You may regret ever opening up and trusting yourself to that person and you may vow never again to be vulnerable.  That is playing it safe, but it comes at a terrible price, doesn’t it.  You may be safe, but you will also be alone.

What if you take a risk to pursue your passion in life by starting your own business and it goes belly up?  You can chastise yourself for being so foolish and vow never to take another risk.  But which is worse: having your dream turn sour, or going through life with no dream or hope to guide you? 

When Jesus tells His followers that He must suffer, be rejected, and be crucified, he is showing us through his own life the most basic pattern of what human life is all about.  How could Jesus be our model if he led a life of privilege free of pain, suffering, risk, and death?  That was fine for the mythical gods on Mt. Olympus, but it cannot be the way of God incarnate in the fullness of our humanity.

But notice this about the pattern of living that Jesus himself engages.  It does not end with suffering, rejection, pain, and death.  At the end of this pattern there is always an experience of resurrection, of new life.  New life never looks like the child mopping fearfully with head in hands sitting on the porch step.  New life looks like the bruised, but bandaged child running and climbing and riding and swinging and going after life because he or she knows first hand the power of comfort and healing.

Jesus says, “Take up your cross and follow me because those who want to save their life will lose it and those who lose it will save it.”  In this I hear him say that you can’t walk well in life if you are fearful of all that might befall you.  You can’t always walk around the experience of suffering, you can’t always walk above it, and you can’t always walk away from it, if you want to walk in the fullness of life.  If you want to walk in the fullness of life then there are times that you must walk in suffering, with suffering, and even toward suffering. 

Walking this path, which Jesus names ‘picking up your cross,’ will be difficult at times, but it always leads to life… new, abundant, and whole.  Walking away from this life, leaving your cross and shrinking back, leads to fear, to regret, and to a gradual diminishment of what it means to be human.  When Peter suggests that this ‘safe’ path is the one our Lord should take, Jesus responds with the sharpest rebuke in all of scripture: “Get behind me, Satan!  I'll hear none of that!” 

So in the end we are always faced with a choice.  The first is this: We can engage life to the fullest extent possible.  This path, which has many, many rich blessings, is the life Jesus shows us in his life, but it comes at a cost.  It means you will have to know suffering, rejection, hurt, pain, betrayal, and death, but the promise of Jesus is the Easter promise of God’s comfort and healing.  That is one possible choice.  The other is to shrink back by limiting your exposure to hurt and pain.  While this path looks safer, it too comes at a cost.  The price you pay is the dulling of life, the diminishment of the human experience.  And, if Jesus is right, if it is Satan who encourages us to walk this road, then the path of caution leads to something usually not associated with it: it is a choice to experience hell on earth.

Jesus said, “Take up your cross and follow me.”

Our World & the Wilderness

Mark tells us that immediately after his baptism Jesus is driven into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit.  “Driven” is an interesting word.  Given that Jesus had just heard a voice from heaven and then is swept off into a desolate region, if it were a different person and a different circumstance we might wonder what sort of mental illness has gripped him.  But here, I think it is best to understand “driven” as “compelled.”  Jesus has just had a truly life-changing experience, but needs to make sense of what it means.  To do that he withdraws from society to a place that is austere, that is without distractions. 

It is during this time that Jesus comes to realize and internalize the most important truths of life:

• That he comes from God.
• That he belongs to God.
• That he is loved by God.
• That all of life is lived in God.
•  That he is called by God.
•  That one day he will return to God.

These are things he could only come to know in the wilderness.  It becomes that experience where he gains clarity, claims identity, and discerns purpose.

Perhaps no greater task lies before the Church today than to gain clarity, claim identity, and discern purpose: clarity about what is happening in our culture, identity as to how to be God’s people in our times, and purpose as to how to be evangelists of God’s love for our hurting world. 

C.S. Lewis, writing at the outset of World War II, observed “something in the world has changed, you can feel it the air.”  Often it is difficult to figure out what exactly has changed when you are living in the midst of it, but every now and then you get a glimpse.  Here is one: In 1999, a survey asked Americans, “Do you consider yourself spiritual or religious,”  “Spiritual” refers to an experience of faith while “religious” indicates involvement with an institutional organization.  54% identified themselves as being “religious but not spiritual.”  Just ten years later, in 2009, only 9 percent of Americans responded that way.  30% said they are “spiritual but not religious.”  That is a pretty dramatic change in just one decade, isn’t it.  It suggests that fewer and fewer people are interested in doing what we do here every Sunday morning. 

The culture is changing in ways we don’t understand and we in the Church are struggling to figure out how to share the Gospel with people who don’t think we can provide something to satisfy their spiritual hunger.  At least year’s diocesan council, our speaker, Phyllis Tickle, described what is happening through the metaphor of pay phones.  Since the invention of the pay phone, its use increased steadily up until 1989.  At that point the number of people placing phone calls through pay phones plummeted at a staggering rate.  If you looked only at that data you might conclude that people no longer want to be in verbal contact with one another, which, of course, is not the case.  Communication is more important now than ever, but pay phones are no longer where they turn to stay connected.  If we in the Church were in the communication business, you could say that we have built some of the nicest phone booths anyone has ever seen, but we can’t figure out why fewer and fewer people are coming to us to place a call.

I have been ordained for twenty-five years now and for most of that time I have been ministering in phone booths whose patrons are truly wonderful, kind, loving, faithful people.  More and more I sense that the last fifteen years of my active ministry are going to be spent figuring out how to be the Church in a world no longer interested in phone booths or churches, but longing to know kind, loving, faithful people.

Here is another way our culture has changed.  In 1960 only 5% of babies born were delivered by unmarried women.  In 2010 it has risen to 42%, an eight-fold increase.  Today’s children are growing up in very different home environments than the culture of my childhood.

Divorce plays into this as well.  I recently read the story of a twenty-something year old woman by the name of Ashley who was on a cross-country plane trip seated next to a twelve-year-old girl.  The girl’s mom had put her on the plane to visit her father.  She told Ashley that her parents were divorced and her dad had a job in Georgia so she flies there a couple times a year to visit him.  This was her second trip alone on a plane.  The two struck up a conversation that day and when the flight ended the girl said to Ashley, “I think you know me better than anyone else in the world.”  What does that say?

Our children are being born into social settings very different from what most of us here knew growing up.  Often their lives are marked by profound loneliness and they are alienated from the guiding institutions which helped to form and shape us.  How desperately do they need to gain clarity, claim identity, and discern purpose?  The Gospel compels us to minister to those so lost and hurting. 

We could go on, citing statistic after statistic that all point to the same things:

• The world has changed in ways we find difficult to comprehend.
• Organized religion is not nearly as exalted in our society as it once was.
• Those of us who love the Church struggle to understand why others don’t.
• For all that our modern culture can do for people, there is still a gapping hole that only God can fill.
• We in the church have not figured out how to share our faith in a way that resonates with people, speaking to the emptiness of their lives. 

I wonder if I – if we – can hear the baptizing voice of God speaking: “I love you and I have chosen you.”  Are we – am I – willing to pray for God’s Spirit to fall on us and compel us into a wilderness where we might gain clarity, claim identity, and discern purpose?  For years and years we were so good at communicating the Gospel by being a phone booth, but now phone booths are obsolete.  The Gospel, praise God, never goes out of style, even if the way we convey it has a shelf-life and does not last forever. 

One person is on the right track – Ashley.  She stayed in touch with her twelve-year-old friend long after the trip had ended through texts, phone calls, facebook friends… everything the digital age provides to help people connect and build a relationship.  Ashley found a way to share her faith in Christ with a young girl she met briefly on an airplane.  A year later that girl decided she wanted to be a follower of Christ too.  

The good news is that the faith is going to go on.  The ways it gets transmitted from one generation to another is a very different matter.  St. Paul’s is such a rich, wonderful deposit of Christian faith and living and it has so much to offer to those who are lost and alone in this world - and their number is staggering.  What can we do?  Perhaps it is time we got driven into the wilderness in order to gain clarity, claim identity, and discern purpose.