Counting the Cost

Bill Bryson is one of my favorite writers because he can make anything both interesting and funny.  I am just about finished with his book At Home: A Short History of Private Life.  Loosely wrapped around the design and purchase of a ‘charming’ house in the English countryside, At Home gives Bryson a pallet on which to explore the minutia of just about any subject you can imagine related to home life: refrigeration, the light bulb, inept English architects… you name it.  His exploration of the development of indoor plumbing brought me uncomfortably close to a time when muckraking was not a journalistic enterprise, but an actual job for a person who descended into London’s sewer system to ensure that ‘stuff’ kept moving (I think I have said enough about that).

Take something as commonplace as a mattress.  Back in Shakespeare’s day, a descent bed could cost as much as half a year’s salary.  According to Bryson, Goodholme’s Cyclopedia, a popular nineteenth century publication, divided mattress types into ten levels of comfort.  The best was down, then feathers, wool, wool-flock, hair, cotton, wood-shavings, sea-moss, sawdust, and finally straw.  A feather mattress began to smell after a few months, and so families who could afford it kept a flock of geese for plucking so that several times during the year the mattress could be restuffed with fresh bedding.  Many of the other mattress materials came with their own set of problems.  They were havens for bedbugs, fleas, moths, mice, and rats.  Sharing a bed with any of these fellows would not add to the prospect of a good night’s sleep.

I read a chapter of Bryon’s book each night before going to sleep.  Time and again, I have put it down on my nightstand, turned off the light, and thanked God that I live in America in the twenty-first century.  There has never been a better time to be alive nor has there ever been a more satisfying place to make a life.  Reading Bryon’s book reminds me that life even a hundred years ago would not have suited my temperament in the slightest.  That reality goes up by factors of ten the farther back in history you go.  All things considered, we are pretty well off.

I might add to this that there is no better time or place to be a Christian.  We can debate if it was better or not to be a Christian in the 1950’s when churches were overflowing and everybody in town – and I mean every body – was expected to go to church.  That era has passed, some would say thankfully.  Now, those of us who participate in the life of church do so willingly, rather than to conform to social norms. 

We are blessed to be able to worship in this place this morning without incurring the scorn of family members, the pressure of the state, or the fear of bodily harm.  The same cannot be said of our brothers and sisters in Christ in Egypt or Syria or the Southern Sudan.  In fact, there are many places in our world today where the practice of a particular faith can cost you your job, your freedom, and even your life.  I read this morning that an Anglican Archbishop in Nigeria was kidnapped overnight and out thoughts and prayers are with him.

In this morning’s Gospel reading we heard Jesus tell a large crowd of followers that they must consider the cost of discipleship before signing on.  For some of those folks the cost included estrangement or banishment from their families.  For others it led to social ridicule.  Some had to endure imprisonment, others beatings, and a fair number faced martyrdom.  All of these were commonplace and came over and above the challenge of actually practicing what Jesus preached:

·  Turn the other cheek.

·  If you have two coats, give one to a person who has none. 

·  If your hand causes you to sin cut it off.

·  Pray for your enemies and forgive those who do you wrong.

Yes, we find it difficult to do what Jesus taught us to do, but at least we living in a society where we are free to try. 

Over seventy Coptic Christian churches have been attacked or destroyed during the most recent uprising in Egypt.  Countless others have been kept safe because moderate Muslims have formed human shields around Christian churches.  In return, many Copts have offered the same protection to Mosques deemed too liberal by radical elements in the society.  The stakes are incredibly high, but Coptic Christians and Muslims, aware of the cost, have deemed it worth the sacrifice in order to stand up and to stand together.  As a fifty-year-old Egyptian housewife told one reporter, “I know it might not be safe, yet it’s either we live together, or we die together.”  None of us here this morning has to face anything like that in order to practice our faith, or merely to live our lives. 

Still, to be a participant in this faith community comes at a cost.  Unlike a huge mega church, where you can slip in the door, take a seat in a spacious auditorium, and be feed spiritually all the while remaining anonymous, what St. Paul’s has to offer amounts to nothing more than what all of you give and how God blesses it.  Being a participant in our common life will cost you time… the time it takes to serve on the Altar Guild or to sing in the choir or to serve on the Vestry or to teach a class.  You will be asked to contribute canned goods for the Food Pantry, side dishes at a Pot-Luck, and a casserole for Loaves and Fishes.  We have tables to set up and weeds to pull out.  There are no worker fairies living in the Undercroft (I know.  I have been down there). 

As I look around this place this morning I recognize that everyone is doing at least one thing to make this place work.  In an era when they say church membership is consumer driven, when people want to know what a church has to offer and what they can get out of it, St. Paul’s swims against the current.  What we get out of being a part of this church is directly tied to what we put in.  The more we give the more we get.

There is another cost to being a participant in our common life – financial.  If you go to a mega church, when they pass the bucket around – yes, I said bucket, not basket – you can drop in a dollar or two and no one will know the difference.  Sure, there may be a great emphasis placed on giving money “to do God’s work”, but the ministry isn’t going grind to a halt if you drop in a five spot as opposed to a twenty.

Financial stewardship here at St. Paul’s looks very different.  We struggle to fund a bare-bones budget that pays for a priest and several part-time staff while also tending to such non-glamorous necessities as utilities and insurance.  The Vestry presents the budget to the congregation at each year’s annual meeting.  You know what it costs to run this place and you know that your contributions play a significant part in the financial side of things.  In addition, we make regular appeals for the Food Pantry as well as special projects like drums and Godly Play lesson sets. 

I don’t try to goad or guilt anyone into doing “God’s work”, rather I emphasize the value of leading a generous life.  The biblical measure of generosity is the tithe – giving to God 10% of what you have.  Is this 10% of total income, gross income, or disposable income?  Does it include other charitable donations and the support of other community institutions, or just the church?  These practical questions are good ones to ask.  If you ask me, the answer I will give you is that it is good to lead a generous life.  I am grateful to be a point where I can be more generous today than yesterday.  I hope that tomorrow I can be even more generous than I am today.  In the end, leading a generous life is not a cost of being a Christian, it is one of the blessings.

So here is something for which to be grateful: none of us has to go home this afternoon, gather the geese, and pluck away in order to refeather a mattress.  When we lie down to sleep we are not getting poked by random pieces of straw nor do we have to wonder if a critter has burrowed into sawdust under the covers.  All things considered, we live a pretty sweet life.  No ifs, ands, or buts about it, I wouldn’t trade my life for that of a typical person in any other place or time.

And here is something else for which to be grateful: when we gather outside after the service for a cookout celebration the single biggest threat to a good time will be flies.  Hostile militants are not threatening to burn down our building.  No one is coming after us with guns or clubs or fists.  When a faith community faces this kind of threat either it closes its doors or it becomes deeply inspired with a marked sense of vitality and resolve.  I guess it has something to do with if you are in, you have to be all in. 

I would not want what threatens our brothers and sisters in far too many places around the globe.  Still, I recognize that they don’t have to face what most threatens us – complacency.  When you have it easy it becomes easy to kick back and relax, to assume that someone else will do what needs to be done, to let your generosity slip to a pittance of what it could be.  As we begin the program year of the church I invite you to consider what is costs you to be a part of God’s work in and through this place.  I invite you to work, pray, and give so that our ministry and witness will be strong and vital.

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.