Choosing Happiness

You may not be aware that there will be a football game played later today.  It’s called the ‘Super Bowl’ and it will be broadcast live in at least 180 countries and in 25 different languages.  About 50 million homes and 110 million viewers are expected to watch here in America.  Advertisers are going to spend $4 million dollars for a 30-second spot during the telecast.  I used some math to determine that we here at St. Paul’s could convert our entire operating budget for the year into a 2-second commercial!  Regretfully, the Vestry nixed that idea.  Spending in the United States on Super Bowl-related merchandise, apparel, and snacks is expected to exceed $12 billion, or an average of $68.27 per consumer. 

The entire spectacle we will watch tonight – from the game to the halftime show to the well-crafted and often emotionally moving ads – convey very powerful messages about what it means to be an American and what it takes to be happy:

· Happy are the successful.  Winning is what life is all about.

· Happy are the powerful.  It is better to be able to impose your will on others than to have others impose their will on you.

· Happy are the gifted.  We admire the player who can run the fastest, hit the hardest, or throw the ball with the greatest accuracy.

· Happy are the rich.  Those ads are designed to entice us to want products and it takes money to buy them.   

· Happy are the famous. Make a name for yourself and translate your notoriety into more success, more power, and more wealth.

As followers of Jesus, we could not find a greater contrast if we tried than to put the message and values of the Super Bowl up against the teaching we heard moments ago:

· Happy are the poor in spirit – those who cannot afford to buy a thing and have no cause to celebrate.

· Happy are those who mourn – the losers.

· Happy are the meek – those who cannot or will not impose their will on others.

· Happy are those who hunger and thirst – not for victory or for a new Lexus – but for righteousness.

· Happy are the merciful – those who extend forgiveness rather than perpetuate violence.

· Happy are the pure in heart – not those who feel compelled to purchase this or that.

· Happy are the peacemakers – not those who persist in and benefit from conflict.

· Happy are the persecuted – not the privileged and protected.

· Happy are those about whom others speak poorly – not those on whom praise is heaped.

These sayings of Jesus are known as ‘the Beatitudes’, an Anglicized word for the Latin adjective beatitudo which means ‘happy’, ‘fortunate’, or ‘blissful’.  The Greek word translated as ‘blessed’ in the original biblical text is makarios.  It was a fairly common word in Jesus’ day, but he used it in an uncommon way.  Typically it was used to describe either the wealthy (because their standard of living made it appear as if they were above the cares of everyday life) or the Greek gods (who had the ability to gratify their every desire).  Essentially, makarios/happiness was a state of contentment and delight reserved for a privileged few.  Jesus rejects this notion in two ways.  First, he says makarios/happiness is open to all and second, what makes for makarios/happiness is not at all what we have been led to believe.  Jesus says to his followers – and to us – that we are to think of happiness in a new way.

Is that possible?  Is it possible to change your thinking about the world and to align your notion of happiness with a value system that is counter to that of the prevailing culture?

I have mentioned before that I came to the Episcopal Church after college and was offered a position working with Christian Education and youth at a parish in my home town.  I worked there for only two years before going to seminary and then was back one summer, but I count that brief time as one of the most formative experiences in my life.  The rector was a brilliant man and a caring pastor who took a liking to me.  He was always available to me for counseling and conversation. 

I cannot recall the specifics of a particular exchange, but I have never forgotten the way he challenged me.  I must have been talking about something negative that had happened in my life or ministry and how it made me feel – angry or sad or something.  The inference I made was that because X had happened I was obligated to feel Y.  That sense of obligation is what the rector challenged.  “Why would you feel that way about it”, he questioned?  “What do you mean,” I responded?  “Why wouldn’t you feel Z about it”, he said?  “Are you saying,” I questioned, “that I can choose how I feel about something?”  “Yes,” he said.  “You can choose to be hurt by this, or you can choose to be happy.  No one makes you feel anything.  No one can control you.  You are always free to choose what you think, how you feel, and how you will respond.”  Well, at that moment, you could have knocked me over with a feather.  But I look back on that conversation as being a day I took a huge step forward into maturity.

Through his teaching Jesus challenges his listeners to embrace a very different set of values from that of the world and he challenges them – and us – to think about life in a new way; to do more than simply react to it.  Keep in mind that amongst those who listened to Jesus there were people who were poor and downtrodden and powerless in the face of Roman occupation; people who could do nothing but endure the way certain Jewish political and religious leaders capitulated to it.  Meekness, for them, was not a choice.  It was a survival skill.  Persecution and false accusations were common-life experiences.  Jesus counseled that they didn’t have to change a thing about their life in order to be happy.  They had to change the way they thought about the lives they had. 

Evelyn Underhill once said that we say we believe Jesus was raised in a carpenter’s shop but act like we believe he was raised in a confectionary store.  By this she meant that we tend to take Jesus’ words as benign and sugar-sweet teachings, when in fact often there is something very muscular and demanding about them.  I hear in these beatitudes something of what I heard that rector tell me years ago: you can think of yourself as life’s victim or you can choose to see yourself as something else.  You can choose to see yourself as God’s child; loved for who you are, not for what you have or for what has happened to you.  This world is not a place for pouters.  Happiness is to be found in every instance and in every condition because God is with us and because we are together as God’s people. 

I doubt there is a single person here this morning who does not bring with him or her a burden or two or many.  It may be something you are carrying for yourself.  It may be a concern you hold for a loved one or a friend.  It may be all of this and more.  Our prayer list alone suggests that there are many whose needs are on our hearts.  Jesus is does not say life is easy.  What he says is that in and through the challenges we face we can find happiness.  We are blessed.  We can see our lives in a way different from how the world might see them, because that is how God sees us.

Through the Beatitudes Jesus says that you and I can choose – choose – to see life as God sees it, or you can choose to see it as the world sees it.  You can choose to see yourself as the world sees you, or as God sees you.  Perhaps you have every advantage the world offers, but somewhere deep inside you sense it is not enough.  Or perhaps you have little of the advantages the world offers, but know that it this does not define you.  Why?  What is it that causes restlessness within for those who should be at peace and peace for those who should be discontented?  What is at work in those who have little or nothing of society’s advantages and makes for darkness and despair for those who do?

Zebulun & Naphtali

“Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali…

         …on those who sat in the region and shadow of death
         light has dawned.”

Zebulun and Naphtali were two of Jacob’s twelve sons.  Like each of the sons, their offspring became a tribe and each tribe inhabited a marked region in Israel.  The tribe’s name, taken from the name of the original son, became the name of that region, much like we would give a name to a county or a state.  The tribe of Judah had the largest geographic region, which encompassed the entire southern half of the Promised Land.  All the other tribes’ regions were to the north of Judah and collectively are referred to as ‘Israel’ throughout the Scriptures.  The regions of Zebulun and Naphtali were located in the northernmost parts of Israel, in land the today encompasses area in Israel and in Lebanon.  It was then what it is now has always has been – a hot bed of conflict and unrest.

Zebulun and Naphtali were border regions; areas where different races and nationalities intermingled.  And because of their geographical location, they were always the first to be invaded whenever a foreign army was on the move.  Over a period of 700 years, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Phoenicians, the Greeks, and the Romans each marched through this region and either led off hostages into captivity or held it with an occupying force.  Freedom and tranquility were hardly the norm for those who lived in these lands.

Imagine what Buffalo is to weather, what Detroit is to public finance, and what Compton is to safety, roll it all together and you begin to get something of a sense of what it was like to live in Zebulun or Naphtali.  Well did the prophet Isaiah speak when he described these folks as living in darkness and a region overshadowed by death. 

His original words find their context in the Assyrian invasion of 722 BC., a particularly devastating and brutal attack.  Isaiah dreamed of a time of reversal for these two beleaguered tribal lands.  He hoped for a fulfillment of Jacob’s original blessing of Zebulun; that his region (which was landlocked) would extend to the sea.  And Isaiah expressed this hope using the beautifully poetic and theological image of light.  There will be a time, he said, when gloom and anguish will be no more; a time when those who walk in darkness will see a great light.  And while Isaiah’s hope came to fruition when the Assyrian empire crumbled, the cycle of military conquest and violence continued unabated.

Seven centuries later a man by the name of Matthew set out to write a gospel – a very specific literary genre that arranges historical facts to convey a sense of deeper meaning.  His gospel tells the story of Jesus of Nazareth with the intention of letting the world know that he is the Messiah, the Son of God.  Reflecting on the fact that Jesus grew up in the region of Zebulun and Naphtali, Matthew discerns a deeper meaning.  He discerns that Jesus is the light shining on this region foreseen so long ago by the prophet Isaiah.

Let’s think about this for a moment.  Let’s think about the context in which Jesus was nurtured and formed.  Let’s think about how that setting might have shaped his life.  What was it like to be raised in this Buffalo/Detroit/Compton region?  What would it be like to grow up in an anxious and downtrodden community?  Do you remember what Nathaniel says when he learns where the Messiah is from: “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”  It is a comment that both reeks with contempt for the people of this area, but also marvels that anyone could survive growing up in such an environment. 

Surely this rugged upbringing was critical in formulating Jesus’ understanding of the kind of world God desires for all; a world Jesus called the “Kingdom of Heaven.”  And as we will see in coming weeks, Jesus’ own life and teachings are the light that shines the way for those of us living in darkness and gloom.  He invites us to live into his vision by means that are subversively countercultural, but not bent on insurrection.  It is a vision we have seen lived out in our own day by people like Gandhi, King, and Mandela; folks from rugged places that subverted oppression not through violence, but with an unflinching demonstration of compassion, forgiveness, and prophetic truth-telling.

If I were God and I was going to ask my child to enter this world in flesh and blood, it would make sense to me to place him in the best of all possible circumstances.  I would choose a tropical climate with a nice ocean view where sea breezes are plentiful.  He would be raised in a family of wealth, intellect, and power – a Kennedy or a Clinton or perhaps a Bush.  He would be educated at the Hassidic equivalent of an Ivy League school.  In short, he would have every advantage possible in life so as to be positioned to make a tremendous impact. 

Obviously, that is not how God works.  God’s light is lit in and dawns first on a hardened area at a difficult time (just after John the Baptist is arrested).  Those first drawn to it are not the brightest and the best, but the tried and tested: fishermen who have eked out a living amidst the same challenges Jesus has known all his life.  It is from this meager and unlikely beginning that the world will be changed and the world will be saved.

Two weeks ago I quoted Evelyn Underhill who said that our lives are spent conjugating three verbs: to want, to have, and to do – craving, clutching, and doing.  She says we miss the central fact that the most important verb in life is to be.  It is our being that matters, not what we want or have or do.  Last Sunday I said something that may seem diametrically opposed to this, that Christianity is neither a noun nor an adjective, but rather is a verb (and an action verb at that).  I reconcile the two statements by holding that our being in God leads us to doing in God’s name.

Today I want to add something to this, something about light.  A few weeks ago I downloaded the album Live in London by Leonard Cohen, a Canadian born singer and songwriter.  Every song of this concert performance is a treat, as is the way Cohen’s personality comes through throughout the show.  One of my favorite songs is titled “Anthem” and Cohen introduces it by saying the words of it is refrain:

Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack, a crack in everything

That’s how the light gets in.

I like that.  Do what you can do and don’t worry that it isn’t perfect.  Nothing is.  God shines through everything you do, but especially when you act even though you are weak and broken.

Some of us here this morning grew up in a place just like Zebulun and Naphtali.  For others, we know this region not from living in it, but rather by living with it.  It is a place in our heart or in our soul or in our mind or in our body.  I’ve said before how much I love the line by Hemmingway that the world breaks everyone, but afterward some become strong in the broken places.  The cracks let in the Light and the Light shines forth from the darkness and gloom.  I hope you know this to be true in your life.  I know I do in mine.  I know what it is like to live with Zebulun and Naphtali and I know the joy of God’s new Light dawning.

Jesus called his disciples and invited them to fish for men and women and children… in essence he invited them to be agents of his Light.  He chose them not because they were perfect or proper or well-positioned in life, but because they were from Zebulun and Naphtali.  They were cracked, but that is how the Light got in.  If Christianity is an action verb, perhaps you have sat on the bench because you know yourself to be an imperfect or broken vessel.  Well, guess what, it is precisely because you are broken and imperfect that God loves you and wants to use you.  Let the Light shine on the darkness and deep gloom of your life and then allow it to shine forth from you.

Be Ignited!

Larry Walters has always been a personal hero of mine.  Several years ago he got bored sitting in a lawn chair in the backyard of his Los Angeles area home so he went to a local army surplus store and bought forty-five used weather balloons.  He took them home, tied them to his lawn chair, and began to fill them with helium.  He strapped himself into the chair just as it began to rise off the grass.  Walters hoped he might go about a hundred feet or so into the air just to see what the neighborhood looked like from above.  Well, old ‘Lawn chair Larry’ (as he came to be known) got a little bit more than he bargained for.  Yes, the chair, with him strapped in it, ascended 100 feet into the sky, but then it kept rising… and rising… and rising!  Before Larry Walters knew what hit him, he was sitting in a floating lawn chair 11,000 feet in the air; right smack in the middle of a major air traffic pattern for the Long Beach Airport.  Just imagine the surprised look on pilots’ faces as they caught sight of this flying chair drifting in front of them.  Flights had to be diverted for over two hours. 

Now, lest you think Larry didn’t think through this undertaking before setting off, think again.  He carried with him some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (a good idea), a six-pack of beer (and doesn’t that explain a lot!), and a BB gun, which he used to shoot tiny little holes in the weather balloons so that, over time, he began a slow decent back to mother Earth.  When he landed – and, oh did I mention his balloon got tangled in a utility line and caused a major power outage? – he was both arrested on the spot and mobbed by reporters.  “Were you scared?” one reporter shouted at him.  “Yes!”  “Would you do it again?” another asked.  “No.”  “Why did you do it?”  Without flinching, Lawn chair Larry replied, “Because you can’t just sit there all the time.  Eventually you have to do something.” 

You can’t just sit there all the time.  Eventually you have to do something.

To my way of reading it, there is a comical undertone to today’s gospel reading.  John baptizes Jesus and spots him walking around the next day.  They are in the wilderness along the Jordon River.  Apparently many people are there just hanging out with John.  John has many followers – disciplines, in fact.  When he sees Jesus on that second day he launches into a lengthy sermon about how Jesus is the one they all should follow, but nothing much seems to happen. 

The day after that, when John sees Jesus walking by, he says to two of his disciples, “Look, here is the Lamb of God.”  Well, that seems to work and the two start to trail behind Jesus.  Eventually he turns and confronts them, “What are you looking for?”  These are the first words Jesus speaks in John’s gospel and they are simple and straight-forward, but have a deceptive depth about them.  The answer given by the disciples could not be more superficial, “Where are you staying?”  Jesus takes them to where he is camping and they sit together there for the rest of the day. 

Whatever Jesus says to them is enough to convince them that he is the real deal.  Before nightfall, one disciple, Andrew, heads off to find his brother Simon.  “We have found the Messiah,” he tells him.  So Simon goes with his brother to find Jesus and when they meet Jesus gives him a new name – Peter.

For me at least, I see a little bit of old Larry Walters in all of this.  John, his followers, and even Jesus are just hanging out in the wilderness.  Everyone is expecting something to happen, but no one knows what.  John, God bless him, does all he can to get people to pay attention to Jesus, but no one does.  Finally two do follow and when Jesus asks them what they are seeking they might as well have said, “We can’t just sit here anymore.  Eventually we want to do something!”  And with that they are off and running.

Christianity, it seems to me, is neither a noun nor an adjective.  It is a verb and an action verb at that.  Christianity is about acting out your faith.  It is about doing something with the relationship God has initiated with you.  I like to say that the mission of St. Paul’s Church is as simple as “Building Faith, Making Friends, and Meeting Needs in Downtown Suffolk.”  It is a statement about action.  It is about doing something with what God has started in us.

Sometimes that doing starts off rather innocuously, but eventually looks like a lawn chair soaring at 11,000 feet.  Do you know how St. Paul’s Food Pantry began?  About ten years ago or so, before I was called to be your rector, the parish secretary wanted to have some food to give to people who came to the office door looking for help.  A bag here and a bag there became something more regular and at some point Nancy Bangley began giving out a bag of food items every Monday morning from 10:30 to noon.  25-35 people stopped by on any given Monday and by the time I came here in the fall of 2007, Nancy knew most of the clients by name.  I remember she and I went over to Pine Street to check up on someone she hadn’t seen for a few weeks.  I believe Nancy also organized the Christmas baskets distribution.  As I recall, the first year I was here she gave away 40-45 complete meals.  It was a big effort and some folks took off the morning to help. 

Three years ago we made the decision to move the Food Pantry from the office area to its current location in the Christian Education Building.  We also changed the opening time to Monday evenings because we wanted to get more volunteers involved.  Nancy Meakin, Bev Judkins, Jim & Elizabeth Gordon, and George & Elizabeth Jenkins have put their heart and soul into this ministry along with Nancy Bangley.  Many of you have dropped in from time to time and contributed in your own way.  In 2013 the Food Pantry handed out 3,052 bags of groceries – all filled with items clients picked out for themselves.  At Christmas we had 122 turkeys and complete dinners available for our regular clients and others in the community.  Every single meal was given out.  Larry Walters would be proud of our efforts!

Christianity it a verb.  It is about doing something because after a while sitting around just does not cut it anymore.

It was the first day of basketball practice at Brooklyn high school.  The coach handed a ball to each player and said, “Boys, I want you to practice shooting from the spots you might expect to be in during the game.”  One of the boys immediately went to the bench, sat down, and held on to the ball he had been given.  You see, he was the twelfth player on the team and the person least likely to get into a game.  He was content to let the team’s star players do all the work.  He figured his efforts were not needed.

In the Letter of James it is written that faith without works is dead.  That is another way of saying Christianity is a verb.  One person famously noted that faith without works is about as useless as a screen door on a submarine.  That basketball player didn’t understand that his role, while diminished, never-the-less was still important.  He needed to fill his role to the best of his abilities.  Gene Wilkes, in his book Jesus on Leadership, writes, “Confusion arises when you equate higher ‘positions’ with leadership…  As long as ‘position’ is honored above discipleship -- being a follower -- church leaders will honor the ambitious over the obedient.”  In other words, don’t look at me or at the bishop or at some particular saint and think, well I could never do that so I guess there is nothing I can do.  You can’t just sit on the bench or in the lawn chair all of your life.  Eventually you have to do something with your faith.

Earlier this week I came across a poem by Mary Oliver titled, “What I Have Learned So Far”:

Meditation is old and honorable, so why should I not sit, every morning of my life, on the hillside, looking into the shining world?  Because, properly attended to, delight, as well as havoc, is suggestion.  Can one be passionate about the just, the ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet commit to no labor in its cause?  I don’t think so.

All summations have a beginning, all effect has a story, all kindness begins with the sown seed.  Thought buds toward radiance. The gospel of light is the crossroads of — indolence, or action.

Be ignited, or be gone

In today’s gospel reading we find a handful of followers who are ready to be ignited by Jesus Christ.  They are tired of sitting.  They have to do something.  They will get more than they bargained for, to be sure.  Once ignited, their lives will be changed forever.  Their lives will not be nouns or adjectives.  They will become a verb.

Christianity is a verb.  What is ready to ignite in you?

The Mystery of Grace

The town drunk wondered down to the river where he stumbled upon a church gathering.  The pastor was in the water baptizing people by immersion.  On seeing the drunk man, the pastor called out to him, “Do you want to find Jesus?  If so, then come in the river with me.”  The drunk man waded in where the pastor took hold of him and put him under the water saying, “I baptize you in the Name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”  The pastor lifted up the drunk man and said, “Have you found Jesus?”  “Not yet,” the drunk replied.  So under the water he went a second time.  Again the pastor asked him, “Have you found Jesus?”  “No,” said the drunk.  Another time down and then the same question, “Have you found Jesus yet?”  “No” said the drunk man, “Are you sure this is where he went under?  Perhaps we should search another part of the river.”

In this morning’s Gospel reading we hear again the story of Jesus’ baptism.  It is a transformational moment for him.  Up to this point he has lived a remarkably quiet and unremarkable life.  For one proclaimed at birth to be born King of the Jews, Jesus has done nothing to demonstrate he merits the accolades lavished on him as an infant.  But on this day – at an age approaching his thirties… middle age, at least in that era – Jesus emerges from the Jordon River a changed person.  For him the transformation is not about moving from sinfulness to clean living.  It is about moving from aimlessness to purpose; from a clouded self-perception to a sure and certain identity.  “You are my Son,” he hears a heavenly voice proclaim.  “Beloved.”  “With you I am well pleased.”  This is the moment and this is the experience that launches his public ministry.  Jesus is never the same again.

And while Jesus’ call to be the Messiah is unique, his experience of God is not.  Any and every authentic religious experience is initiated like this one… by God.  Sure, we can help by making ourselves available, by paying attention, by walking into the water and being submerged, but it is always God who reaches out to us first.  It is God who initiates contact and relationship.   And when God reaches out to us, be it through a moment that explodes like fireworks or stills us to a place of profound quiet and peace, life is never the same.

Have you read any of Anne Lamott’s books?  Travelling Mercies, Grace (Eventually), Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essentials of Prayer are just a few of her works.  Her books, which are honest and largely autobiographical, reveal what an interesting life she has led.  She was raised in what can only be described as a dysfunctional family.  By the time she was in her teens Anne was an alcoholic and drug abuser.  Some of her writing chronicles the depths to which her life sank and how she recovered.  She also writes openly about life as a single mother and about how faith weaves in and out through it all.  Reflecting on her experience Lamott writes, “I do not at all understand the mystery of grace – only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.”

Perhaps you can relate to that.  Perhaps it is hard for you to articulate exactly just how God reached out to you, but you do know that you are not the person you were before.  I am sure Jesus could say, “The mystery of grace met me in waters of baptism, but it did not leave me there.” 

Where did God’s grace meet you?  Where has God’s grace taken you? 

I suspect that the average person, if asked, would say that being religious is about doing certain things: reading the bible, trying to go to church on Sundays, being a ‘good’ person, helping others… that kind of thing.  They might say that not being religious means you don’t go to church, you don’t pray, you don’t read the bible, you may drink and swear too much, and so on. 

But let’s think about Jesus prior to being baptized.  He grew up reading the Scriptures.  He attended worship in his hometown synagogue.  I think we can assume he lived a fairly good life (he was not a murderer or a thief as best we can tell).  It may surprise you to hear me say prior to his experience at baptism I would not say he was religious; if by religious you mean deeply, authentically spiritually connected to God.  I would say he was devout.  He was doing all the right things as best he could.  The authentic religious experience that grips him at baptism comes from beyond.  He does not initiate it.  God does.  And his life is changed forever.  Yes, Jesus remains devout, but from this point forward his religion is animated by God’s continual presence through the Holy Spirit.  It transforms his prayer, his worship, and his approach to ethics and other people.  And eventually it transforms the world.

As I said, it was for Jesus not a conversion of morality but of identity.  In that moment, when he heard that voice, he came to know and believe that he was God’s Son.  Think about a time when you had what I am calling an authentic, animating religious experience; a time when you were taken hold of by the mystery of grace.  Did that moment call into question how you were living your life or did it challenge you to see yourself in a new way?  Was it about morality or was it about identity?    

The writer Evelyn Underhill observed that we humans spend most of our lives conjugating three verbs: to Want, to Have, and to Do.  Our existence, she says, is caught up in craving, clutching, and fussing about things material, political, social, emotional, intellectual and even spiritual.  We are kept, she says, in a state perpetual unrest.  Underhill writes, “None of these verbs have any ultimate significance, except so far as they are transcended by and included in, the fundamental verb, to Be: and that being, not wanting, having, and doing, is the essence of the spiritual life.”

Underhill is on to something deceptively simple but greatly profound about our identity in God’s eyes: It is not what we want, what we have, or what we do that defines us.  It is who we are and who we are is defined first, foremost, and always by God.  We are God’s children, beloved, and pleasing.  Hearing this, accepting this, and learning this – what Underhill calls “being” – is at the heart of the spiritual life and is the inner, transformational fruit of any authentic religious experience. 

Here is something that happens to us all the time: We meet somebody new and have to introduce ourselves.  What do you say to the question ‘who are you?’  Obviously, the first thing we say is our name… I am Keith.  But who are you really?  I am a man, a priest, an American, a father.  But who are you?  I know it is not social custom, but the first answer we should give – and, ultimately, the only answer that really matters – is “I am a child of God, beloved, and pleasing.”  That is the core of who you are.  It is the core of who I am.  It is the only thing about us that cannot be changed or altered. 

What does change and alter is our own awareness of this truth.  Evelyn Underhill writes, “Whatever our small practice, belief, or experience may be, nothing can alter the plain fact that God, the Spirit of spirits, the Life-giving Life, has made or rather is making each person… for Himself; and that our lives will not achieve stability until they are ruled by this truth.”  The mystery of grace meets us where we are but does not leave us where it finds us!

If you have never been encountered by the mystery of grace let me encourage you to continue to be devout.  Come to church.  Read the bible.  Say your prayers.  Do what is right.  I can’t say why God has not reached out to you, but I believe that God will.  God desires to know you deeply and to be known by you.  And whether you know it or not, and even if cannot name it, God is at work in your life, making you, molding you into something to fill a holy purpose.  Perhaps someday God will show you what that is, but never doubt that through devotion you are living into it and moving toward it even now. 

Three Models of Manhood

Alright ladies, let’s start off the new year with a couple of jokes about men:

·      What do you call a man with half a brain?  Gifted.

·      What is the difference between a man and a catfish?  One is a bottom-feeding scum-sucker, and the other is a fish.

·      Why are blonde jokes so short?  So men can remember them.

·      One day a husband decided to wash his sweatshirt.   Seconds after he stepped into the laundry room, he shouted to his wife, “What setting do I use on the washing machine?”  “It depends,” she replied.  “What does it say on your shirt?”   He yelled back, “University of Virginia.”

And finally this little gem: 

·      What does a woman’s perfect breakfast look like?  She is sitting at the kitchen table drinking gourmet coffee.  Her son is on the cover of the Wheaties box, her daughter is on the cover of Business Week, her boyfriend is on the cover of GQ, and her ex-husband is on the back of the milk carton.

What does it mean to be a man in 2014?  If you asked a hundred different people you wouldn’t get a hundred different answers, but it might be close.  Clearly defined gender roles once held that to be a man you needed to be a simple, stoic, breadwinner – nothing more, nothing less.  But once our society began to question its assumptions about the role of women that neat and tidy definition of manhood began to erode.  Today, two-thirds of all men say they that if they could afford to they would make their work schedule more flexible or even stay home full-time in order to be with family.  In fact, a market researcher learned that most men rate providing emotional supportive for the family every bit as important as providing financial support. 

Last year Esquire Magazine put out a photo gallery called the “Life of Men” with interviews and answers to a questionnaire for each subject.   Its goal was to create a “living portrait of the American Man right now.”  Most of the subjects are very accomplished athletes, entertainers, business professionals, or politicians.  It is telling that these alpha males consistently identify their children as being their greatest achievement and the best day of their life as being the day they met their wife.

What does it mean to be a man in 2014?  Well, one direction the answer may take points toward a person who is in relationship with others, values those relationships, and contributes to those relationships in a myriad of meaningful ways. 

Another possible answer is more sobering.  A marketing analyst surveyed ads in magazines aimed at teenager boys and young men, publications such as Maxim, Game Informer and Wired.  The analyst found that these magazines promote what is known as hyper-masculinity, a gender-based ideology of exaggerated beliefs about what it is to be a man.  These exaggerated beliefs focus on four inter-related values:

  Toughness is portrayed as emotional self-control.

  Violence is manly.

  Danger is exciting.

  Calloused attitudes toward women and sex is normal.

On average, 56% of ads featured at least one aspect of hyper-masculinity, but for one particular magazine it was 90%.  Advertisers don’t use these images because they are trying to shape our culture’s understanding of masculinity.  They use them because it sells.  But, in the process, they are influencing our society in tangible ways.  For instance, the way they portray manhood is a contributing factor in the rise of violence against women.

With the “Life of Men” project at one end of a spectrum and hyper-masculine advertising at another, we begin to see why a hundred different people could come up with a great variety of answers to the question what does it mean to be a man in 2014.

Here is another question: is there a biblical model of manhood and masculinity?  The answer, I think, is not really.  There is no single coherent passage that provides a timeless ideal for all cultures and generations.  In fact, a careful study will reveal how cultural ideals and norms related to masculinity changed throughout the bible.  This should not surprise us, what with it spanning about 2000 years of history and multiple cultural settings.

What the bible does give us is stories about various men who in their day and setting embodied specific ideas about manhood that we can see, understand, and evaluate.  Through this morning’s gospel reading we encounter three different models of manhood.  Each is based on specific values and assumptions and thus each gives us something to ponder.  How could men incorporate or reject these models in our own day and time?

The first model of manhood is presented by the wise men.  They are educated, inquisitive, and open to mystery.  They recognize something is at work in the world that is bigger than us; something spiritual, something profound.  They make a significant commitment to pursue this dimension of life.  I like that they visited King Herod.  It suggests that they expect to encounter goodness in every person they meet.  I like too that they went home another way.  They know who can be trusted and who cannot and they act accordingly.  I like that they visited the king, but worshiped a baby.  Greatness, for them, was not about title or wealth or power.  The gifts they present to Jesus indicate that they are generous and understand the power of symbols. 

What do you take away from their example that you would like to lift up for men in our day?  For me, I value their spiritual awareness; the way they are connected to the things that lie beyond the material world. 

The second model of manhood is presented by King Herod.  In many ways he is the embodiment of hyper-masculinity, isn’t he.  And yet, the first detail we learn about him from the text is this: he was afraid.  That was his reaction to the news that a king had been born to the Jews.  I suspect that anyone who builds their life and their status and their wealth through ruthlessness and treachery will always view everything as a threat to their ill-gotten gain.  They will always view everything through the singular, egocentric prism of how it affects me.  For Herod, no lie and no act of violence is beyond the pale of what is acceptable to defend and to maintain his own place in the world.  What does it tell you that Herod had to inquire of others with regard to where scripture foretold the Messiah’s birth would be?  It tells me that he was not well-educated, or at least he was not intellectually curious.  He reminds us that there is a connection between ignorance, arrogance, and a narrow perspective. 

Ultimately, power and position and authority are neutral values.  They are tools that can be used one way or another.  A businessman or a banker or a politician can use his/her resources to bring to fruition a vision of a better world.  Bill Gates didn’t become the richest person on the planet by ripping off everyone.  He amassed his wealth by creating something that made everyone more productive.  But still there are those Herods out there who have no vision for the world and whose only concern is what is in it for me.  Did you notice that of all the people in today’s reading Herod is the only one who does not receive a message from God?  I don’t think it is because he unworthy.  I think it is because he is too wrapped up in himself to listen to anyone else, especially God.

What do you take away from Herod’s example?  For me, it is a cautionary tale.  Whether you rule a country or a business or a family or just yourself, you have power and authority.  How will you use it to advance yourself?  How will you use it in the service of others?  How can you recognize when you have become abusive?  How do you repent and amend your ways?

The final model of manhood we encounter is found in Joseph.  He foregoes his prerogative to have his fiancé disgraced once he learns that she is pregnant.  He is a man of mercy.  He sets aside his home, his family, and his career in order to get Mary and her son to a safe place in Egypt.  Joseph is selfless.  He uses what power and authority he has to protect the weak and vulnerable.  He embraces the difficult and challenging word he receives from God.  We see these traits lived out through Jesus in his adult life.  What might he have been like without Joseph’s witness?    

What do you take away from Joseph’s example?  For me, I value his relational awareness; the way he is connected to the people around him.  He is a man of character, discipline, integrity, and godliness.  He is also nobody’s fool.  He knows how to read the tea leaves and is decisive in doing what is necessary.

Today’s reading gives us three different models of manhood to ponder.  Throughout the year, as we continue to read from Matthew’s Gospel, we will encounter even more.  Through what Jesus says and what Jesus does we will see what it means to be a Christian man.  Here is a hint – it does not look much like hyper-masculinity.  What it will require is great.  What it will offer is satisfaction, dignity, and peace.

let Me Go There with God's Fierce Love

I continue to read and be challenged by the poetry of the Welsh Anglican priest, R.S. Thomas.  Listen carefully to this piece titled The Coming:

And God held in his hand

A small globe.  Look he said.

The son looked.  Far off,

As through water, he saw

A scorched land of fierce

Colour.  The light burned

There; crusted buildings

Cast their shadows: a bright

Serpent, a river

Uncoiled itself, radiant

With slime.

On a bare

Hill a bare tree saddened

The sky.  Many People

Held out their thin arms

To it, as though waiting

For a vanished April

To return to its crossed

Boughs.  The son watched

Them.  Let me go there, he said.

Through his poem Thomas challenges us to engage with God’s fierce love for this world; a world with slimy rivers, bare trees, and starving people.  This is not a poem for a Hallmark card or Norman Rockwell painting.  It is too grim and gritty for that.  What it is is a reflection of our cultural and societal turmoil of the last century or so; a century of world wars, genocide, disease, and environmental destruction.  The bare tree with the crossed boughs to which all hurting people look is of course the cross.  It is precisely to this location that the Son desires to go. 

In the season of Christmas we encounter a baby wrapped in swaddling cloth and lying in a manger.  It is an image that radiates warmth and brims with sentimentality.  But the baby is here for reasons far beyond this.  This baby is here to bring God’s holy love to a hurting and broken world.  And we who gather this day are invited to let this love dwell in the deepest and darkest parts of our lives because Jesus says (to use Thomas’ words), “Let me go there.”  Then, as God’s love finds a home in us and begins to grow – daily transforming us into something more holy than we could ever be on our own – we are invited to share the love we have found with others.

Steve Garnaas-Holmes, the Methodist pastor whose blogsite Unfolding Light I mentioned in my sermon last Sunday, recently was involved in a ministry to distribute gift bags to inmates at a state prison.  He and eight other people greeted each inmate, shock their hands, and then gave them a bag.  He reports that there were 1380 inmates in the prison.  Garnass-Holmes described the experience this way:

To encounter such a wave of humanity, eye to eye, hand to hand, hit me deeply.  They were in all states of age, race, health, stature and personality.  Some were meek, some imposing; some fit and some in shambles, some appreciative and some aloof.  But they are all neglected, condemned, and treated as less than human.  One guy said, “This is the only touch of normalcy all year.”

For each particular inmate the greeting lasted only a few seconds.  For those doing the greeting the experience took a couple of hours.  It was for Garnass-Holmes a deeply spiritual experience:

I prayed that somehow they might… unconsciously behold some grace, experience some love.  It was like serving communion: one after another of God’s beloved people coming by, each with their own story, needs, wounds, sins and gifts, each getting a little symbolic gift in a brief holy moment, a gift of pure love no matter their past.  You hope they get it.

He goes on to write that just as God asked Joseph to trust that Mary’s child was of God, so too are we asked to trust that God is present and at work in everyone we meet.  Sometimes that easier to do than others, isn’t it.  In the silence before the worship service begins it is easy to sense that God is present and at work as we observe someone light a candle and say a prayer.  It is not as easy when we encounter a person who is rude and disrespectful.  Some of the men in that prison had done horrible things, but Garnass-Holmes holds to the belief that something holy is at work inside each one of them.  He admits that some of them are “pretty rough mangers”, but still Jesus says, “Let me go there.” 

The great challenge of Christmas is twofold.  First, can I accept that God loves me just as I am; that the dark and broken recesses of my heart and my mind and my soul are the exact places where Jesus wants to dwell; the rough manger where he will lay?  And second, can I see that in every person I meet and in every person I try to avoid and in every person I want to ignore and in every person I try to forget and in every person who I abhor that there is something holy at work in them as well?  This is God’s fierce love that cannot be quenched, but it can be disregarded.  It is this love made know through the birth of a baby that we celebrate this season.  It is the reason the Word became flesh and dwelt among.  It is the reason why the Word abides in us even now through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit we receive at baptism.