Cisterns & Fountains

Cisterns were common in the Middle East during the biblical era.  In such an arid environment it makes sense to capture as much water as you can when you can.  They ranged in size from a handheld jug to a large, dugout pit.  Unlike a well, which has its own water source and is self-sustaining, a cistern collected runoff, such as rain on a roof, and stored it for later use. 

The prophet Jeremiah used the image of a cistern to describe the bankruptcy of false religion by recording the word of God as saying…

…my people have committed two evils:

   they have forsaken me,

   the fountain of living water,

   and dug out cisterns for themselves,

   cracked cisterns

   that can hold no water.

Much of what we need in life has to come from beyond us.  Love, hope, joy, purpose, strength, meaning, peace all come to us by being in relationship with others and by being in relationship with God.  There are times when we have these things in abundance, as if we are connected to a fountain of living water, and there are dry times when our reserves are strained. 

It is difficult for us to imagine why God’s people turned to Baal worship.  For some, I suspect it had something to do with superstition.  For others, it was a way to fit in with the culture.  In a reading from a few weeks ago we saw how it became politically expedient at least to pay lip service to Baal once the king, Ahab, married the pagan Jezebel. 

Whatever the motivation, Jeremiah said that false religion was like a cistern in that it cannot provide on its own the things we find in the living water that is God.  Even more, he said the cistern of false religion is cracked.  It can’t even contain what we are looking for until we need it.

In our day and time, false religion primarily does not look like one faith tradition being superior and all others being evil.  Rather, the false religions of our culture look like uncontrolled consumerism, the cult of youth and appearance, an absolute investment in status and position, and an unwavering adherence to a particular political power.  Preachers today, who like Jeremiah back in the day, name these as being broken cisterns at best receive polite nods before being roundly ignored and at worst get run off for being uninspiring or controversial. 

Still, Jeremiah makes an important observation and raises a critical question.  His observation is this: life is challenging, it is demanding, and at times is beyond difficult.  Given this, Jeremiah poses his critical question: What do you do and where do you turn to replenish what has been depleted in your life?

For Jeremiah, to turn to false religion was to forsake God and resulted in God’s handing over a wayward people to a foreign military power.  My assessment of today’s false religions – consumerism, appearance, status, and power – is that they address a deep human need by delivering something only at the surface level.  Our longing for love, meaning, hope, peace, strength receive only a superficial benefit from these pursuits and thus we have to turn to them more and more, over and over again, all the while gaining a diminished return for our efforts.  God does not forsake us, we simply shut ourselves off from God’s living water; the water that replenishes us and refreshes us at the very depths of our longing.

What do you do and where do you turn to replenish the deep places in your life?

I continue to enjoy daily reading of various poets.  Of late I have been taking in R.S. Thomas, a Welshman and Anglican priest who passed away in 2,000, and Mary Oliver, who at present is America’s best selling poet.  Listen to her work When Death Comes and let it take you on its many twists and turns until Oliver reaches her final declaration:

When death comes

like the hungry bear in autumn;

when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;

when death comes

like the measle-pox;

when death comes

like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:

what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything

as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,

and I look upon time as no more than an idea,

and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common

as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,

tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something

precious to the earth.

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life

I was a bride married to amazement.

I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder

if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,

or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

On so many levels I hope that my journey mirrors the journey Oliver hopes for herself: to be a bride married to amazement, a groom taking the world in my arms, not to finish my time wondering if I had done anything worthwhile, not to give in with a sigh or a shiver or an ax to grind.  Like Oliver, I don’t want to end this world simply having visited it.  But I find myself wondering what does it take to nurture and sustain a life that will find the end Oliver describes.   My answer, as you may suspect, is less concrete and more poetic, less theological and more mystical.  What does it take to nurture and sustain such a life?  It takes something that fills you at the deepest level.  It takes a connection to the Fountain of Living Water. 

Here is what I like about today’s Gospel reading.  On its surface, Jesus’ parable of inviting to a banquet only those who cannot repay you – the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind – feels like a stinging critique of every guest list of every function I have ever attended.  But I see in this a deeper meaning and a generous invitation extended to each and every one of us. 

As far as Scripture records it, Jesus only hosted three meals: the first two were mass feedings and the final one we now refer to as the Last Supper.  Think about that night in the Upper Room.  At one level it would be accurate to say that Jesus invited his friends and associates, along with the one who was to betray him.  But at a deeper level, he invited people who were spiritually blind and poor and lame.

By giving to each one of them his Body and his Blood he was in fact giving to each something they could never repay, even though all but one would be martyred for their faithfulness, devotion, and commitment to him.  The point of the meal was never to highlight the unworthiness of those disciples.  It was always to demonstrate what Jesus offered to sustain at the deepest level.  It was not about who deserved it and who didn’t.  It was about our Lord’s generosity and self-giving which knows no limitation, no bounds, and no exceptions.

We come to that same meal this morning through our table liturgy around the altar.  I suspect that we each bring to this moment something unique and distinctive to our present need and past experience.  This much I do hope… that you don’t come to this moment consumed with a deep sense of your own unworthiness.  Jesus has already said he invites to his banquet those who cannot repay him.  That is you and it is me.  So we are to come to this moment laying aside all that we are and should not be and all that we are not that we should be, and simply rejoice in being a valued, invited, loved guest. 

This meal feeds us at the deepest level.  It opens us up to life and love and amazement and wonder.  It helps us to be participants in life, not merely visitors.  It is a sign of the many ways God is for us the Fountain of Living Water.

Baseball & Abiding Peace

I will never forget the Ohio summer of 1991.  I had been married for two years, we were living in our first house, and Ellen was on the way.  It was the calm before the storm of children, a job search, and a kind of perpetual transition that marked my life for the next fifteen years.

For me, the thing that embodied the gentle serenity of that time was playing catch in the evenings.  Chris and Jake, two high school freshmen in the church where I served as an assistant, were best friends.  Every night possible, I would join them and Chris’s dad, Courtney, at the baseball field across the street from my home.  From after dinner well into the gathering dusk we would field grounders and shag fly balls.

If you have never played baseball it is hard to understand the joy of settling in under a lazy fly ball and catching it.  While that ball is arching its way through the sky there is nothing else in the world that really seems to matter much.  It feels as if time itself is standing still.  It is just you and the ball and nothing could be more perfect.

There are few thrills in life like breaking quickly on the crack of the bat to chase down a scorching liner headed for the gap.  Step after step, running with all the might and speed your body can generate, you and the ball coming closer together until at the last possible moment you stretch, leap, and feel it hit your glove.  You roll over on the ground, look in your glove, and there it is.  At moments like that you can almost believe in destiny.  You and the ball have been preordained from the beginning of time to come together at that glorious moment in that particular place.

Then there was the fellowship of us guys.  Chris and Jake constantly laughing and poking fun at one another; Courtney teaching, shouting encouragement, and praising our good plays;  Jon, a boyhood friend of mine joining us at my invitation.  That summer we introduced him to Suzanne, a young woman in the parish.  Some nights she would join us too.  Baseballs were not the only thing flying around that field.  Love was in the air.

As the summer wore on, I began to notice how the sunlight was surrendering to the nighttime a little earlier with each day that passed.  I remember looking at my watch as we walked off the field and realizing we had been cheated out of fifteen minutes of twilight which just the week before I had taken for granted.  I began to carry a gnawing feeling that these evenings were special and that they would not last forever.

When school started in September the days of shagging fly balls came to an end never to return again.  The next summer Chris and Jake had jobs and I had Ellen to look after and enjoy.  The summer after that Jon and Suzanne were married, I was interviewing all over the country, and my wife’s mother was ill.  Four months after we moved to Iowa, Courtney was diagnosed with a brain tumor.  Two months later he was gone.  I don’t think his son Chris has picked up a bat since then.

In our first reading this morning we heard from the Book of Ecclesiastes, a title that literally means “The Preacher”.  Here is a fellow that looks at his life and tries to discern its meaning.  He applies himself first to intellectual endeavors, then to the pursuit of pleasure, and finally to various forms of labor—everything from working late to gardening.  He comes to the conclusion that it is all vanity—hebel in Hebrew which means “vapor” or “breath”.  What is the point of anything, he wonders, when we cannot hold on to it.  At once we seem to possess it and then it slips through our hands like a mist and is gone.  And so we wake, we work, we eat, we sleep, but to what end?

There is a certain integrity to the Preacher’s words.  We do not control our moments or our lives.  All that we see and all that we enjoy will someday belong to another or just plain cease to be.  No sugarcoating can make it not so.  I must admit that at an intellectual level I find the Preacher’s thoughts to be sound, honest, and compelling.

But I cannot buy into them at an emotional level.  When I think back to those summer nights on the ball field, I know that they will never be again, and yet I never sulk about it.  I remember those days fondly and I ask myself why?  How is it possible to look back at what once was and will never be again and to be at peace?

The Preacher in the first lesson and the wealthy man in Jesus’ parable share at least one thing in common.  Both of their lives can be characterized as being a monologue.  The narratives about each employ only the first person singular throughout:

I saw...

I said...

I considered...

My field...

My crops...

My soul...

No other voices are sought, no other voices heard, no other voices considered.  Each thinks only to himself, speaks only to himself, and, in the case of the wealthy man, celebrates only with himself.  The language of these two passages suggests that each man views himself as being self-sufficient, autonomous, an entity unto himself, and alone. 

     

The wealthy man had functioned well within his monologue.  Unlike the Preacher of Ecclesiastes he had not come to the same conclusions about the vanity of wealth.  In fact, it was the ample abundance of goods that made his soul feel alive.  But that all changed in the twinkling of an eye.  He had lived so long listening only to himself that he had completely excluded the possibility of being addressed by any other voice.  With one little word, “Fool,” spoken by the Great Voice from beyond, his self-made world came toppling down.   

For each of us there must come a moment when we realize there is more to the world than just ourselves.  Most often it does not bring total destruction and ruin.  More often it brings life and renewal and an ordering to our priorities.  But for anyone who has built a life upon the premise that this existence is no more than a monologue in the first person, the voice of God will always be troubling.

What a great moment it is for each one of us when we discover for the first time, or perhaps come anew to an old truth, that life is in fact more than a monologue.  What a revelation it is when we begin to enter for the first time into dialogue with another and that dialogue gives way to conversation, and the conversion then evolves into intimate sharing.   This opportunity is there for each one of us if we are willing to consider the possibility that our neighbor is a human being, that our parents, brothers and sisters are more than cosmic accidents to our existence, that our spouse has become one flesh with us, and that our children are the offspring of that sacred union.

Not only is deep, intimate fellowship possible on a human level, it can be a divine reality as well.  Our monologues can give way first to dialogue with God, then to conversation, and if the mystics and saints of our faith are correct, even intimate sharing is possible.

How can we look back at what once was and will never be again and be at peace?  When your life is a monologue it is very difficult indeed.  But the moment you realize that yours is not the only voice in this world, and especially when you realize that there is a Voice from beyond this world, fear yields to abiding peace.  In Jesus Christ we have God’s pledge of love to this lost and hurting world.  We are promised that there is more to life than what we are able to see and know.  We are assured that we are a part of a reality that will transcend death through the triumph of Christ.

I don’t believe something as corny as we’ll all play catch again in the great by-and-by, but I do believe that our divisions will cease and our pain will end and that all of the fragments of our life will come together.  I believe that all our yesterdays are not lost.  They will somehow be present to us in eternity.  And I believe that joys we have known but have no more, the fellowship we have found with others who are no longer with us, and our deepest, most intimate sharing (which through its very nature is here one moment and then gone from us), are through the grace of God foretastes of a world yet to come—a Kingdom which will have no end.

The wonderful lesson we heard this morning from Colossians says this:  “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts.”  Someone once said the difference between a belief and a conviction is this: a belief is something that you hold, a conviction is something that holds you.  I am convinced of these things I say this morning because they hold me, not because I hold them.  They have come into my heart to rule not because I found them through monologue, but because through dialogue, through conversation, and through intimate sharing they have taken hold of me.   

The lesson is wrapped around the image of baptism.  In ancient times, every candidate for baptism was led to a body of water, stripped naked, and nearly drowned in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  They literally came as close as possible to dying to self so that they might rise up to new life in Christ.  As the candidates were brought out of the water, they were immediately clothed in a white linen robe (a forerunner of our christening gowns) so that even their attire would remind them they were beginning a new life.

“Put to death,” the lesson says, “whatever in you is earthly.”  That is a baptismal image to be sure.  It says in effect leave behind in the baptismal waters your impurity, evil desire, greed, anger, and the like.  Leave behind those things emblematic of the monologue of life.  “Clothe yourselves” with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and so forth.  Open your life to those things which are beyond you.  Do that and you will find that the vanities of life—those wisps which you want to keep so badly but can’t—give way to a peace that pervades all things.

In my heart I go back to those summer nights on that baseball field more often than you might imagine.  Courtney hits the ball, it is coming toward me.  It hangs in the fading light of day like the first star of the night.  I never feel cheated when I leave the field which exists now both nowhere and everywhere at the same time.  Now time is not running out, it is only beginning.  Once again, I am opened up anew to the Great Voice from beyond.  My Lord tells me that I am in His hands and come what may, all things will be made right in the end. 

Listen for the Voice.  Allow the peace of Christ to rule in your heart. 

Prayer as Communion with Almighty Love

I was one of forty people who signed up for an introduction to Sociology class my freshman year in college. The first week the professor passed around a sheet of paper that listed twenty social issues – things like nuclear proliferation, legalizing marijuana, and prayer is school. Each student signed up to research and then argue a particular issue either pro or con. Over the course of the semester we made our presentations going up against the person who had signed up for the opposite position.

I remember vividly the day an intelligent, well-spoken young lady stood up to make the case for legal rights for battered women. She articulated her ideas thoughtfully and persuasively and backed them up with a myriad of statistics and citations. She sat down when finished and to the front of the room walked the stereotypical big, dumb jock. He stood before us and said, “I am here to argue against legal rights for battered women. The reason I took this position is that I sit in the back row in a seat next to the window. By the time the sign-up sheet got to me this was the only slot still open. I have thought and thought about it, but have not been able to come up with a single reason not to provide legal protection for battered women.” With that he sat down and, in my mind at least, earned an A on the assignment.

There is nothing acceptable, nothing redeemable, and certainly nothing funny about the abuse of women, and yet today’s reading from the Old Testament builds an entire theology around it. The bible employs many metaphors to describe the relationship between God and God’s people. A metaphor is a way of comparing a better known thing next to a lesser known thing in attempt to help people gain insight into what is lesser known. Some of the bible’s metaphors describing God as a parent and God’s people as children, God as a king and God’s people as subjects, and God as being a potter and God’s people as being clay.

In this morning’s reading Hosea builds on another common biblical metaphor – God as a husband and God’s people as being the bride. The prophet says that God’s covenantal love for God’s people is like a husband’s marital love for his wife. So far so good. But in his comparison Hosea says God’s people have strayed from God; committing the sin of idolatry by worshipping other gods. This, Hosea says, is analogous to a wife who commits sexual infidelity. God will punish Israel, Hosea states, just as a husband would punish his wife for being unfaithful. And it that culture in that day a husband’s punishment of an unfaithful wife had a definite physical component.

God the wife beater. Pardon the pun, but how does that strike you? If it does not sit well then you can understand why recent scholarship has turned a critical eye to Hosea’s theology. These scholars reject the notion that God tolerates sinful human behavior until God can no longer tolerate it and then blows up.

Hosea knew that the northern kingdom of Israel was about to be attacked by an infinitely superior Assyrian army. The handwriting was on the wall. The outcome was not in doubt. There was going to be massive devastation, horrific loss of life, and terrible suffering for those who survived. Hosea made the leap to declare the imminent defeat as a sign of God’s judgment. It was for him God the husband trying to smack some sense in a wayward wife.

And even though it does not sound like a very sound theological perspective, there are still plenty of people around who embrace it in one form or another. They are the “America-got-what-was coming-to-it” crowd that emerged after 9/11 and Katrina and every other major disaster.Is there another way – is there a better way – to understand who God is and how God is present in the midst of a catastrophe?

During my devotional time this past week I happened upon a reading from Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage in North Africa in the 3rd century. It is a letter he wrote to his flock during an outbreak of the plague in his city:

"There are certain people who are disturbed because this disease has attacked equally pagans and Christians. They talk as if being a Christian somehow guaranteed the enjoyment of happiness in this world and immunity from contact with illness… It disturbs some of our number that death seems to have no favorites. And yet what is there in this world that is not common to all? As long as we are subject to the same laws of generation we have a common flesh. As long as we are in this world we share an identical physicality with the rest of humankind, even if our spiritual identity singles us out. Until this corrupt form is clothed with incorruptibility, and this mortal frame receives immortality, and the Spirit leads us to God the Father, we share with the rest of humanity the burden of the flesh."

"When the soil is exhausted and the harvest poor, famine makes no distinction of persons. When an army invades and a city is taken, everyone suffers a common desolation. When the skies are cloudless and the rains fail, all alike suffer from the drought. When the ship goes around on treacherous rocks, the shipwreck affects all who sail without exception. Diseases of the eye, attacks of fever, weakness in limbs, are all as common to Christians as to anyone else because this is the lot of all who bear human flesh in this world."

Notice how Cyprian does not try to blame the person who suffers for the suffering they experience. He goes on:

"The righteous have always displayed the capacity for endurance… Such things [as I have described] should not undermine or break the faith of Christians but reveal their courage in the struggle…"

"To summarize: the difference between us and those who do not know God is that when misfortune occurs, others complain and murmur, but we are not distracted by adversity from the true path of virtue and faith; indeed, in the midst of suffering we are made strong."

Well this is a different theology, isn’t it. When misfortune strikes all it is not a sign of God’s wrath or judgment, rather it is merely a facet of living in this world; a world often marked by hardship, struggle, and unexpected turmoil. None of this is from God, it simply is. Christians distinguish themselves not by getting a free pass through this life, but by having a source of strength that will help them to endure with faith and virtue.

In this morning’s Gospel reading we find the disciples approaching Jesus with a request: Teach us how to pray. It is perhaps the single best thing this group ever did during our Lord’s earthly ministry. They were attracted to Jesus and they were attracted to the way he was attracted to God through prayer. It is easy to understand their interest, but imagine if they had not asked. Image how much poorer we would be if we did not have The Lord’s Prayer.

Many times I have taken communion to a hospital bedside where a person was near death and to nursing home where a person suffered from deep dementia. Gone was the ability to respond, “and also with you.” Gone were the words of the Creed and the Confession. But when it came time to say The Lord’s Prayer, I have never known a person not to be able to join in.

Whatever it takes to endure in this life, whatever it takes to maintain faith and virtue in the midst of challenge, prayer is certainly right up there at the top of the list. I am not taking about the panic-prayer of desperation, but the kind of daily prayer that establishes a deep, strong, authentic relationship with God.

Percy Ainsworth, a spiritual writer who died a little over a hundred years ago, wrote that “the end of prayer is not to win concessions from Almighty God, but to have communion with Almighty Love.” If we view prayer as an attempt to get God to do something we want done – make a co-worker treat us nicer, take away grandma’s arthritis, keep all the traffic lights green because we are running late – than we misunderstand the nature of prayer itself. More often than not these kinds of prayers do not work; especially if we define “work” as getting the outcome we ask for and get it in a timely manner.

Surely Cyprian would have understood prayer very differently. I think he would agree with Ainsworth that goal of prayer is communion with God, not gaining concessions from God. This kind of prayer may not change the world around us, but it definitely will change us and how we live and move and have our being in it. There is an old saying that the goes the hammer has a way of shaping the hand that holds it. Likewise prayer has a way of shaping the person who prays. We are to be people of prayer not in order to get what we want but in order to be shaped into God’s people; people who have the capacity to live in this world touched by every grace and challenge of this world and able to engage it all from a position of holiness and strength.

You Need Help!

A driver losses control of his car and it careens off the road over a 500 foot cliff. Miraculously, he is able to jump free from the falling car and grab hold of a small sapplying growing from the side of the cliff. He holds on for dear life, not being able to climb up and way too high up to survive the fall down. He looks up to the ledge and begins to shout, “Help me! Help me! Is there anybody up there?” At that moment the clouds part and a single ray of light shines on the clinging man. A voice says, “I am here, my child.” “Is that you, God,” asks the man? “It is I,” God answers back. “How can I help you.” “Well,” the man says, “I am hanging on the side of this cliff here and I need you to save me.” “How strong is your faith, my child?” “It is getting stronger by the moment,” the man answers. “Then, my child,” God says, “You must let go of the sappling you are holding, begin to fall, and have faith that my angels will catch you before you crash onto the rocks below.” The man thinks about it for a moment and, uncomfotable with this plan, shouts, “Is there anybody else up there who can help me?”


Needing help is not a comfortable place to be. Perhaps you are deep into a home renovation project and realize either you don’t have the skills necessary to finish it or simply need an extra set of hands. Asking a friend for help may prove a little humbling, but on a scale of 1-10 – 10 being the most difficult – this is a 1 or 2 at best. Say you lost your job and have to ask a family member for a signicant amount of money. Now we are talking about a 9 or 10.

Out of curioisty I conducted a google search of the phrase “I need help” thinking I might get information on local handymen. To my surprise websites came up that offer fast and easy loans or that reach out to alcoholics, those suffering from depression, and people affected with a bipolor disorder. There is a ‘heaviness’ to needing help. Often times it is no small matter. And there is a risk involved too. When we ask for help we become vulnerable to the person who helps us. I did a quote seach for the word “help” and my favorite by far was a quip by Ronald Reagan who loved to say that the two scariest sentences a person can pair together are (1) “I am from the government” and (2) “I am here to help.”

Over the past few weeks our Old Testament lessons have told us the story of the prophet Elijah. Much of his minstry took place during the reign of Ahab, who the bible regards as one of the worst kings ever to sit on the throne in Israel. He married a Canaanite named Jezebeel and she had a strong, forceful personality. The marriage did at least two things: it made for peace between the Israelites and the Canaanites and it introduced Canaanite culture into Israel’s society. For centuries the people of Israel maintained strick distinctions between themselves and the people around them. Nowhere was this more true than religious practices. Israel held that God is one and that God is a jealous God. They were to worship God and God alone. Jezebeel introduced elements and symbols of Canaanite worship into ever sacred place in the land. Baal worship was all the rage. It was what you did to fit in during this new administration.

Elijah challenged all of this by setting up a contest between himself and the prophets of Baal to see whose God could bring down fire from above on a sacrafical altar. After Baal’s prophets failed, Elijah had gallons and gallons of water pour over the altar to make his task even more diffcult. Then he prayed and God sent down fire that consumed not only the sacrifice but also all of the Baal prophets.

We also heard how Elijah confronted Ahab and Jezebeel for the murder of Naboth. The king wanted to purchase Naboth’s ancestral land but was rebuffed. Jezebeel then came up with a scheme to have Naboth falsly accused and then stoned to death. Only Elijah had the courage to speak out against this injustice. Well, its funny how the corupt and powerful don’t like people who criticize them. Elijah has to flee into the wilderness to save his own life. He endures hunger and thirst, hot days and cold nights, and the thought that danger could always be just around the corner either in the form of the king’s henchmen or in a confrontation with a wild beast.

He finally makes his way to Mt. Horeb, which is where Moses first encountered God in the burning bush. Here God speaks to Elijah and Elijah speaks to God. Well, it would be more accurate to say Elijah complains to God. He complains that all he has done has made no difference at all. He complains that God’s work has forced him to run for his life. He complains about the hardships he has been forced to endure. Most of all, he complains that he is completely alone – the only person in all of Israel who has not been corupted by Canaanite worship and culture.

God listens patiently and then God says to Elijah, “You need help.” “Go back to Israel,” God says, “and annoint Hazael as king over Aram and Jehu as king of Israel. Then go to Abel-meholah and annoint Elisha as a prophet. Do this and you will have the help you need.” The biblical author of the First Book of Kings does not record if Elijah asked if there was anyone else up there he could talk to.

God recognizes something that Elijah does not. God recognizes that Elijah can not do alone the reforming work God has called him to do. The task is too big, too demanding, too taxing to be born by just one person. Elijah needs help; help that is spiritual and help that is secular; help that is as personal as a companion and as powerful as a ruling authority.

Maybe it was in Elijah’s personality to gut it out and go it alone. Maybe he was afraid to ask for help or perhaps the thought never occurred to him. At this place where I feel a deep connection with the prophet. Several times over the course of my marriage my ex-wife said she wanted us to go to counselling. Each time I resisted, believing that I could change on my own and make things better in our relationship. I also believed that going to counseling for help was a sign of weakness, failure, and shame. I look back on that now and believe my unwillingness to get help was the single biggest thing I did that contributed to the end of my marriage. By the time we went to counseling it was too late.

How about you? Do you find it difficult to ask for help? Have you resisted in the past or even now? If so, why? What is it that holds you back? If you wanted help, to whom would you go? I’ve known people who believe the only help a person should need comes from within. One’s own strengh and fortitude ought to be ennough. I’ve known people who believe faith in God is the only help a person should need. Pray enough and God will show you the way. These folks hold that going to a counsellor, for example, indicates weakness of faith. And I’ve known people who hold that there is no such thing as spiritual help. Going to church, praying, taking communion, and the like have no value for them whatsoever.

The help that God gave to Elijah affirms the value of sacred and secular. When we face a health crisis we need a doctor and we need our faith. When we have a legal problem we need a lawyer and we need our faith. When we have a rodent problem we need an exterminator and we need our faith.

In the Old Testament Elijiah is second only to Moses in working great signs and wonders. God helps Elijah in some fanstastic ways; a quick fire here, raising a child from the dead over there. His prophetic words have immediate impact sending the king and queen into a rage. But there is something different about the help that God offers this time. It is not a quick fix or a short-term solution. Yes, we read today that Elisha takes up the prophetic call, but it will be Elisha, not Elijah, who will annoint Hazael and Jehu as kings, and that will not happen for some time. Help will not look like something immediate and spectular, rather it will unfold over the course of time through ordinary events. The change will be solid and substantive.

When we call a plumber for help hopefully we will get a quick fix and a reasonable bill. Other times we need help that will be with us for the long haul – addressing a problem in the family perhaps, or battling a major health crisis. God knows that we need help from above and God knows that we need help from those around us. God is willing and able to provide both. Perhaps the question is are we willing to accept it, or, for that matter, even to ask for it? Elijah didn’t ask for help. He complained and complained and complained after he had reached the end of his rope. God offers help and to his credit Elijah accepts it. God listens to your prayers too. Never doubt this. Might God’s response to your prayers be “You need help”?

Clothed with Christ

This morning I want to preach on a text we heard read moments ago from Paul’s letter to the Christians in Galatia: “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.”


But first I have to tell you about the priest who was invited to a parishioner’s home for dinner. Because it was work related he elected to wear his clergy collar. The family welcomed him graciously, but their six-year-old little boy kept starring at him. Finally it occurred to the priest that the boy was transfixed on his collar. “Do you know what this is,” he asked the boy? The boy shook his head no. The priest explained, “It is a clergy collar. It tells people that I am a priest and that I do God’s work.” This seemed to help a little. Reaching around to undo the fastener, the priest said, “Let me show you how I take it off and put it on.” Taking off the collar, he asked if the boy would like to hold it. The boy nodded yes. Handing it over, the priest asked if he could read what the writing on the inside of the collar said. For the first time the entire evening the boy spoke up (and with confidence). “Oh, I think I know what it says.” “And what is that,” the priest inquired? The boy replied, “Kills fleas and ticks for up to three months.”

Beyond the obvious functions of covering our body and keeping us warm, clothes serve two important social functions. They tell us something about ourselves and they tell others a great deal about us.

What we wear tells us who we are and how we fit in to a given social setting. I am sure each one of us has an experience either of being overdressed or underdressed at one time or another. Those moments are unnerving because they suggest to us that we don’t belong, that there is something not right with us. It is an experience that burrows deep into our psyche. I read of a priest who accepted a call to a new parish in an affluent community. He himself did not come from money and worried that his is upbringing would hinder his ministry. His anxiety found expression in his dream life where he often found himself invited to a formal party. The men were dressed in tuxedos but he showed up always in jeans and a t-shirt.

And while what we wear says something to us, it can speak volumes to others. I read an interesting blog the other day written by a young female priest who asked the question must she wear her clergy collar when she shops at Target. She wondered if she should go into the store as a priest or as a person. Believe me, her shopping experience will be radically different based on what she decides. Clergy are not the only people whose clothing says something about them. I wonder if nurses doing grocery shopping after coming off a shift are ever asked for medical advice. I image uniformed military personnel get a much different response in public today than in the years after the Vietnam war.

All of this is to say that the notion of clothing is a rich image with many broad and diverse facets. Did you catch the reference to clothing in the gospel reading? The crazed man Jesus encounters lives in a cemetary, is covered in filth, out of his mind, and completely naked. After his encounter with Jesus, the villagers – who condemned him to this lifestyle – find him sitting (as opposed to running around), carrying on a conversation with Jesus (as opposed to screaming at everyone), and clothed. The clothing has a sacramental function in the story: it is an outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible grace.

The demonic man is a vivid image of Paul’s teaching: “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.” Baptism does two things: it reforms our core identity and it tells the world something important about us. The other day I saw a photograph of man wearing a bright orange jumpsuit. I did not need to see the word “Inmate” on the back in order to make certain assumptions about him. He was a person who had been convicted of a crime and was now in prison. Being baptized into Christ is like taking off an orange jumpsuit and putting on regular clothes. The change suggests that something important about you has changed. You have been restored to your intended, natural status.

Early Christians literally acted this out in their baptismal liturgy. Candidates gathered near a lake or river where they took off everything they were wearing before entering the water. This was intended to symbolize leaving behind everything from their old life. The candidate was held under water three times, first in the Name of the Father, then of the Son, and then of the Holy Spirit. It was intended to be a near death experience – a symbolic drowning if you will – in order to act out dying with Christ in the waters of baptism. Coming out of the water the newly baptized person was clothed in a white rob as a way to demonstrate new life clothed in Christ. As you may suspect, the modern day chrism dress has its roots in this ancient ritual.

This putting on Christ has never been understood as an end, but rather has always been seen as a beginning. It is the start of a new life, or perhaps it might better be expressed as a restart. In the book of Genesis we learn of God’s intention when creating humanity: “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness… So God created them, male and female.” Early church theologians thought much about these two terms, image and likeness. Image, they concluded, has to do with our potential for communion with God whereas likeness is the communion we actually have. Think of it this way: most experts agree that right now LeBron James is the best basketball player in the world. That is his image. The likeness is how he actually played in seventh and deciding game of the finals.

From a theological perspective human sin affects both image and likeness. Obviously when we sin we are not living as we ought. Our likeness is not like that of a holy, loving, generous God. But sin also separates us from God; breaking communion, leaving us estranged and alienated from the One in whose image we are created. A popular Eastern Orthodox icon for Easter depicts Jesus descending to the dead on Holy Saturday, taking Adam by the hand, lifting him up, and restoring the image of God in him. The icon speaks of Christ’s work to restore our potential for full communion with God. What we do with that potential is up to us. It is up to us what we will do with the likeness. Through baptism each one of us is made a champion. The question is will you play like a champion today? Tomorrow? For the rest of your life?

As far as we know the Christians in Galatia did not wear special “Jesus” clothes in public. There didn’t have “Property of the King of kings” t-shirts or even cross-shaped necklaces. Nothing about their appearance made them stand out as people of faith. Being clothed in Christ had a symbolic meaning. What set apart those early believers from everyone else in their godless community was their behavior: how they lived, how they demonstrated compassion, how they forgave, their sense hospitality, their commitment to one another. Likeness was not something they wore, it was something they did.

This morning we baptize three people and in so doing we will restore image and encourage likeness. Their journey through the baptismal water reminds all of us to give thanks for the potential communion we have with God that comes to us through the merit and work of Jesus Christ. It also encourages us to ponder what we are doing with this gift? Is our likeness anything like the image? It encourages us to recommit ourselves to live as people clothed in Christ.

On Politics, Religion, and Being a Like a Harp

When creation was finished God gathered together all the hosts of heaven. God was particularly pleased with the planet earth; boasting that it was a place of great balance. “Balance?” asked the archangel Michael. “Yes,” said God. “Look, here is a continent that is very hot while that one over there is very cold. This region gets lots of rain while this other one is a desert. Everything is in balance.” Pointing to one specific area of land, Michael asked, “What do you call this place?” With great pride God answered, “Oh, that is Virginia. It is the most glorious place on earth. There are beautiful mountains, rivers and streams, lakes, forests, hills, and plains. The people from Virginia are going to be handsome, modest, intelligent, and humorous, and they are going to travel the world. They will be extremely sociable, hardworking, high achieving, carriers of peace, and producers of good things.” Michael was very impressed, but also confused. “What about the balance?” God smiled and said, “Well, right next to Virginia is Washington, D.C. Wait till you see the idiots I put there.”


Today’s readings invite us to talk about something even those of us raised in the north know is not appropriate conversation in most settings: politics and faith.

The story of Naboth’s vineyard reads like breaking news on the latest scandal to rock our government. The wimpy Ahab and the scheming Jezebel seem like caricatures of contemporary political figures. The entire episode reminds us how difficult it is for public figures entrusted with political power to refrain from using that power for personal gain. We expect those we elect to office to serve the public, not to be self-serving. The framers of our constitution would have heard this story as a cautionary tale on the scope of government. Power given to the central state is power that can be brought to bear against the people, or in Naboth’s case, against a specific individual.

I had the most amazing experience this week listening to talk radio. I have XM in my car so I follow political talk on a station called “Patriot” and on one called “Left.” Guess which perspective each expounds. Well, on Monday, for the first time ever, the commentators from both stations agreed on an issue. All saw the government’s action to collect and store the data of private citizens as being a dangerous over-reach and an abuse of power. Coming on the heels of the IRS scandal, it raises sobering questions as to how personal information could be used or misused today as well as down the road.

We Americans highly value both our privacy and our security, but there are times when these two values are in conflict. Since September 11th we have been willing to sacrifice certain aspects of privacy in order to gain a greater sense of security. Perhaps the time is right for us to have a thoughtful, informed public conversation regarding how to balance these two cherished values. What concerns me most is how people in the shadows are making decisions with sweeping consequences without public knowledge or public consent.

If the first reading leads us to politics, then the Gospel reading leads us to faith. Jesus is eating a meal at the home of a religious leader, a Pharisee. His name is Simon and he seems to be genuinely interested in Jesus and in what he has to say. At one point in the conversation he even addresses Jesus with the honored title of “teacher.” A woman from the city identified as a “sinner,” which means she was a prostitute, slips into the house with a jar of ointment and tearfully begins to caress Jesus’ feet. In our culture something like this would be shocking, to say the least, but it was much more common in Jesus’ day. Notice that Simon objects not to the act, but to person. He protests that Jesus should know what kind of woman she is; that she is a sinner.

When religion is at its best it builds on what is strong and good and healthy in each one of us rather than harping on what is wrong. When religion is an authentic expression of God’s love it draws a wide circle that is inclusive of all people, not a narrow one that excludes some, let alone most. Yes, we want religion to remind us that certain behaviors and attitudes are destructive, but each time we proclaim this it must be accompanied by the assurance of forgiveness and promise of new life. And every time we detect a speck in the eye of another, the religion Jesus promoted helps us to see the log in our own.

Ultimately, the thing that links Jezebel, Ahab, and Simon is that none can see past their own needs, desires, or prejudices. For each it is as if others do not exist. That is a dangerous perspective in a person holding political power and it is a dehumanizing perspective when wielded by a person honored with religious authority.

One of Mary Oliver’s new poems speaks to this, but gets at it from a different direction. Listen to carefully to The Moth. The Mountains. The Rivers:

Who can guess the luna’s sadness who lives so
Briefly? Who can guess the impatience of stone
longing to be ground down, to be part again of
something livelier? Who can imagine in what
heaviness the rivers remember their original clarity?

Strange questions, yet I have spent worthwhile
time with them. And I suggest them to you also,
that your spirit grow in curiosity, that your life
be richer than it is, that you bow to the earth as
you feel how it actually is, that we – so clever, and
ambitious, and selfish, and unrestrained – are only
one design of the moving, the vivacious many.

Perhaps even more than goodness, what Jezebel, Ahab, and Simon lacked was curiosity. Neither the king or queen were at all curious about Naboth; about who he was or why his ancestral land was so important to him. Simon was not at all curious about what led the sinful woman down the road she took and he certainly was not curious about what was in her heart. None of the three understood themselves to be a part of the “vivacious many.” For each it was only me, what I want, what I know, what I believe, what I decide.

I never have been one for preaching much about politics, although if you know me you know I definitely have political views. I don’t preach about them for two reasons. First, I don’t believe in using the bully pulpit and second, I don’t believe if I did it would make much difference. I could preach about healthcare or tax reform or various scandals from now until sunset and it would not change a thing. I can’t change the world from this pulpit, so rarely do I try. There will always be self-serving politicians and there will always be short-sighted religious leaders. But I can change me, and I can encourage you to change too.

Gregory of Nyssa, the 4th century bishop, gave this instruction to converts preparing for baptism:

God made human beings to share in his goodness. To that end he endowed our nature with great potential so that it could attain an excellence in all manners, and thus grow towards the origin of all perfection…

Just as sight is an activity of nature and blindness is a privation of this activity, so virtue stands in the same kind of antithesis to evil. The origin of evil can only be understood as the absence of good. If you remove light, darkness ensues; if light is present, darkness does not exist. In the same way, as long as good is present in nature, evil as such is non-existent; withdraw goodness, and you have the beginning of its opposite.

Gregory taught his converts that we are endowed with God’s virtue and goodness and that whenever and wherever we choose to exhibit God’s goodness evil does not exist, just as darkness disappears in the presence of light. It is up each one of us to choose what we will do with God’s gift.

You and I have very little control over what “those idiots in Washington do.” We have only marginal influence over events in our national church and diocese. But we have complete control over ourselves. We can choose to do right by the Naboths of our lives. We can respect the dignity of every human being, even (and especially) the sinners. We can cultivate curiosity in order to understand that we are just one of many, but we can also know that our single light casts off an element of darkness for those around us.

This being Father’s Day I want to encourage us dads to be mindful of the light we cast in our families. I read recently of an interesting property shared by harps. If there are two harps in a room and they are tuned to the same frequency, when a chord is struck on the bigger harp it fills and infuses the smaller one with the grandeur and beauty of its resonance, thus bringing the smaller harp into its tuneful harmony. The smaller harp is then able to sound out its tune in its own voice. Dad’s, and mom’s, if you live into God’s goodness it is not likely you will change something in Washington, but it is very likely you will set a tone for your children and your family and your neighbors and your coworkers and your fellow parishioners. Your tone will bring a light, it will banish a certain amount of darkness, and it will help others to live out the goodness God has infused in them. This is within your power. It is up to you to decide what your witness will be.

Heidegger's Hammer & a Grieving Woman

The church roof was leaking so on Sunday morning the priest made an announcement asking for help to fix it. A dedicated member known for foul language approached the minister after the service and said, “I’m not much of a carpenter, but I’ll give you a hand.” The next Saturday the two went up on the roof with a stack of shingles and got to work. Just a few minutes into the project the parishioner hit his thumb with his hammer and, in a moment of pain, shouted out, “Damn it! I missed!” The priest looked at him and said, “You know one of these days God will strike you down for cursing.” The parishioner apologized and went back to work. A few minutes later, he hit his thumb again, “Damn it! I missed!” The priest looked at him and said, “One of these days God is going to strike you down for cursing.” Again the parishioner apologized and started hammering. Sure enough, a couple of swings later he hit his thumb again and yelled out “Damn it! I missed”! But before the priest could say anything, a bolt of lightning came out of the sky and struck the reverend square between the eyes. The confused parishioner looked up to the heavens from whence he heard a deep, booming voice exclaim, “Damn it! I missed!”


Martin Heidegger, one of the most influential philosophers of the last century, would have enjoyed that joke because in his 1962 book Being and Time he used a hammer to illustrate one of his most important concepts. Heidegger believed that we don’t exist independently from this world, but rather are a part of it. As such, he wrote that there is no way for us to step back and observe what is happening in a detached manner because we are a part of what is happening. And what is happening all around us, he said, is happening so fast that we don’t really have time to think about it. Most of what we do is reaction based on instinct.

Think about your drive to church this morning. How many conscious decisions did you make? Were you aware of turning the wheel slightly in order to negotiate a curve in the road? Do you recall touching the brakes or pushing down on the accelerator? You drove here by instinct and reacted subconsciously to most of what was going on around you. Think back for a moment to the time when you were learning to drive. Do you remember how every aspect of operating a motor vehicle required intense, thoughtful action? Can you imagine if every moment and every task in life required that kind of awareness? You’d be a basket case in a matter of hours (as would everyone around you).

Heidegger states that when it comes to negotiating life we simply act. We only analyze an action after we have performed it and most often, according to Heidegger, we do this only if the action did not go as we expected. Here is where the hammer comes in. When we are hammering a nail we don’t focus on the hammer. We simply pick it up, hold it in our hand, and use it. Heidegger famously observed that we only become aware of the hammer when it is broken. That is when we stop to reflect and analyze what went wrong. Only when we have it figured out can we get back to the process on acting and reacting to life.

Heidegger’s broken hammer helps us to understand something important about today’s gospel reading where we meet a grieving woman from the town of Nain. It is about a day’s walk from Capernaum and sits on a hillside over-looking a plain. There is a spring in the heart of town which provides water for olive and fig trees. The word nain means “pleasant” and we can imagine that most of the time it was a pleasant place to live, but not on the day Jesus arrives. The town is mourning as they process toward the cemetery to bury the only son of a grieving widow.

Any time someone close to us dies it is a ‘broken hammer moment’ – a time when our unconscious acting in life and reacting to the blinding pace of everything comes to a screeching halt. We are suddenly aware of everything going on all around us. Even our experience of time itself changes. Life seems out of control in a way it didn’t the day before. It is an experience of reality that is overwhelming and often forces a grieving person to shut down in some form or fashion. We talk about life getting back to normal, but what we are really saying is that we have found a way to get back to auto-pilot; to be able to hold the hammer in our hand and use it without having to think through every detail of hammering; a time when we regain confidence in acting without thinking.

The grieving woman from the pleasant town is a long way away from that. She has been down this road before. She has buried her father. She has buried her mother. She has buried her husband. She has figured out how to pick up the hammer each time, but this time may be different. She is burying her only son. In the patriarchic society of her day, she no longer has a status. When she was born it fell to her father to protect her. That responsibility shifted to her husband when she married. When he died she became the responsibility of her son. Her identity, her status, her legal standing, her property, everything about her was tied up in him. Losing a child is never easy, but for this woman in this society it is even more devastating than we might imagine. She is now no one, alone and hopeless.

The way Luke recounts this story is somewhat puzzling. Bringing a person back to life is a big deal, don’t you think, and yet Luke presents the episode in a nonchalant manner. There is a sort of ‘ho-hum’ tone to the whole event, especially when we contrast it to how John tells the story of Lazarus being raised from the dead. Luke doesn’t record any specific teachings Jesus wrapped around this miracle; no “I am the resurrection and the life.” Pretty much what he tells us is that Jesus had compassion for the women, told her not to weep, and then directed the young man to rise. The people of Nain instantly associate Jesus with the great prophets Elijah and Elisha who each brought a person back to life. From Luke’s prospective, the event serves to elevate Jesus in the eyes of the people, but little more.

But you can be sure it meant a lot more to the woman. Her grief gives way to surprise and joy. Her identity and place and role in life are restored. Once again she can pick up the hammer – whatever that looks like for her – and do the work God has given her to do.

From my reading, the most interesting detail in Luke’s narrative is found in these six words, “Jesus gave him to his mother.” Think about what Jesus could have done. He could have invited the young man to follow him in discipleship. The young man would have come in pretty handy as Jesus and his band moved from town to town. His testimony would have been gripping, to be sure. Think of the converts he could have won. But Jesus knows that the young man is needed at home. He knows that the young man’s mother needs him both as a provider, but also to perform the function that society designated for the eldest male in the family.

Jesus demonstrates a sensitivity to and respect for the place each of us has in family life. His action communicates that our daily acting has a sacred sense to it. You do not need to renounce everything and enter a monastery to be holy. You simply need to be faithful in the place where you are. You do not need to be ordained in order to carry out a special purpose for God. How you function in your family and contribute to your community is as spiritual as anything I do while wearing the clergy collar.

If we were to blend Heidegger’s thinking with Christian spirituality we would say that the goal of life is to pick up the hammer and be conscious about how we use it to the glory of God. We would develop an awareness of how all of life is lived in the presence of God. We would be attune to how our every task has a purpose in God. Nice words, I know, but not so easy to do. For most of us most of our time is spent on spiritual autopilot. Being aware of who we are in God’s eyes and how our work is done in God’s sight is not an easy discipline to master, but it is a rewarding one. It helps us to find the holy, sacred dignity to the day, the very dignity Jesus affirmed when he gave the young man back to his mother.