Shining Moments

There is a wonderful folk saying that captures at least half of the meaning of the Transfiguration story we just heard:  “There is more to him/her than meets the eye.”  In a few days, on Ash Wednesday, the words of our liturgy will remind us that we are dust and to dust we shall return.  It is a message that proclaims we are creaturely, material, physical, and mortal.  But today, through the story of the Transfiguration, we are reminded that we are something else… something more than dust, something spiritual, something mysterious, something like the One who is eternal.  There is more to us than meets the eye.

Through the Incarnation, God in the person of Jesus of Nazareth became dust.  The Infinite became finite.  The Imperishable became mortal.  The Holy One who is all in all became confined to a specific place and moment in time.  During the season of Epiphany we have traced how God in Christ has been revealed to the world through the dust that we know as Jesus of Nazareth.  We have marveled at his teaching.  We have pondered his authority.  We have praised him for the ability to heal and to forgive.  We have observed how the light of Christ has been made known to the world.  All of these things give hints that there is more to the dust of Jesus than meets the eye. 

Today, at the Transfiguration, what is more than dust comes shining through.  Along with the Disciples we are given the briefest glimpse of the Divinity that somehow has been contained in the dust.  We sense the glorious nature of God that has been incarnate in the person of Jesus.  We are overcome by a sense of awe at the Holy Mystery, a reality that is beyond our comprehension.  We are reminded that Jesus of Nazareth is more than a spiritual teacher, more than a wise sage, and more than a worker of wonders.  Jesus is God in flesh and we owe to him allegiance, praise, obedience, and love.

While the Transfiguration tells us that there is more to Jesus than meets the eye, it also tells us that there is more to each one as well.  You see while we are dust, we are also something more.  In the Genesis story of creation we are told that God took dust and breathed on it to form the first humans.  We are dust, but we are also that breath – the breath of God which animates dust in ways that a rock, for example, is not.  We are spiritual, non-physical, free, and beyond mortal.  There is a Godly life-force within us that takes the dust and makes it something special and something unique.  When we affirm that there is more to each one of us than meets the eye, we are affirming that we can see something of God in every person we meet because God’s breath moves in and through each one of us.

If the phrase “more than meets the eye” captures half of the meaning of the Transfiguration story, then perhaps the other half is captured by the saying “That was his/her shining moment.”  For Jesus, it literally was a shining moment.  His very appearance became bright – radiant beyond comprehension. 

When we say of a person that it was his/her shining moment we are saying that the person allowed his/her Godly breath to show through the dust.  It may be a moment of generosity or compassion or selflessness or achievement or beauty.  The shining moment may be the briefest glimpse of Godly breath or it may be sustained over a long period of time.  Whatever the duration or intensity, these shining moments are the times when we know that there is more to us than meets the eye.  They are the times when we know exactly what we are made for and we touch the highest level of our potential.

The irony for me at least, as I struggled to write this sermon, I am immersed in doing laundry and delaying cleaning the kitchen and putting off paying the bills.  So high theology meets reality and it is a challenge to shine when you are consumed with dusty details.  I remember years ago when my daughters were young and my dog was a puppy and I was trying to write a sermon.  One daughter did not watch the puppy when she was supposed to.  The puppy did what puppies do and did it in the house.  The other daughter stepped in the puppy’s ‘business’ and proceeded to track it all over the house.  At that time, all I could see in those around me is what meets the eye.  Nothing more.  You can imagine how that Sunday’s sermon on the good news of the Gospel was more about a theory than an actual personal experience.  It was not one of my shining moments.  This thing about being dust is dirty business.

No wonder Peter wanted to stay on the mountain.  Wouldn’t it be great if all we had to deal with in life were the shining moments when we can see clearly in one another the something more!  But that isn’t life, is it.  The shining moments are the exception, not the rule.  And yet just because we don’t see the best in one another all the time does not mean it is not there.  It does not mean that all we are is down and dirty dust.  It simply means that sometimes what is supposed to shine through is hidden, like a lamp put under a basket.

Those of you who gathered here on January 6^th will remember that we began the season of Epiphany literally in darkness.  From a single flame the Light of Christ spread from one candle to another bathing this darkened worship space in a wonderful, warm, flickering glow.  One of our prayers that night was this:

Almighty God, you have poured upon us the new light of your incarnate Word: Grant that this light, enkindled in our hearts, may shine forth in our lives…

For Jesus, the shining moment of the Transfiguration is meant to prepare him for the dark and difficult road to Jerusalem and Crucifixion.  The experience on the mountain so consumes him that the more than meets the eye about him never gets snuffed out.  And now, as the prayer suggests, the Light that endured the Cross and rose victorious on Easter Day is now enkindled in our hearts.  And we pray that it may shine forth in our lives… shine when all we want to see is what meets the eye, shine when it is not particularly a shining moment, shine like a lamp put on a table so that it gives light for all to see. 

 

The Wisdom of the Centuries in a Deserted Place

Three ministers were eating lunch at a local diner and arguing about the best position for prayer.  The Episcopal priest insisted kneeling was definitely best.  The pastor of a Charismatic church countered that the best results come from praying while you stand with your arms outstretched to heaven.  An Orthodox rabbi argued that the only proper way is lying prostrate with your face to the floor.  On and on and on the discussion went until an AT&T repairman, sitting at a table next to them, chimed in, “the best praying I ever did was hanging upside down from a telephone pole.”

Imagine you are with Peter, Andrew, James, and John, walking with them as they meet and begin to follow Jesus.  Here is what you know so far about the man from Nazareth: He teaches with authority and he has authority over unclean spirits.  Now you learn that he also has power over physical ailments.  After healing Peter’s mother-in-law Jesus ministers to all the sick people brought to him over the course of an evening. 

But then, in the morning, you go to look for Jesus and cannot find him.  Where is he?  Where has he gone?  Has he left town?  Did something upset him?  Did something happen to him?  A search party fans out and eventually Jesus is found in what the text calls a “deserted” place.  He is praying.  Different translations of the bible call it a “solitary” place or even a “lonely” place. 

Millions upon millions of people are drawn to Jesus the teacher.  Is there a single person who knows his name that has not reached out to Jesus the healer in a time of need?  Many people respond to Jesus the prophet and his criticism of society and power.  But far too few have a sense of Jesus the person at prayer.  And a careful reading of the gospels reveals that Jesus the teacher and Jesus the healer and Jesus the prophet would not be possible if not for Jesus the person at prayer.

If you think it was difficult for Jesus to find a time and place to be alone in 1^st century Palestine, imagine what that challenge is like today.  We live in a world where everyone is driven to be connected.  There is no place you can go that you cannot take your favorite TV show with you.  It is now possible to be in electronic communion with dozens of people on different continents all at the same time.  What we lack is the time, space, and capacity to be alone in order to be at the kind of prayer Ralph Waldo Emerson once described as “allowing the wisdom of centuries to speak to the hours.”  Our existence is inundated with content from the present, with the hours. 

In some respect our lives are not very different from the scene outside of Peter’s house were Jesus does nothing but engage one sick person after another after another.  What does it say that Jesus withdrew from the content of his life for a time?  Doesn’t it tell us that he needed time in prayer so that he could master the content of his life rather than have it master him?

The poet Robert Frost returned home after a particularly awful day, one that definitely had gotten the better of him.  Everything had gone wrong, nothing had gone right, and he was ready to burst out in anger.  But before he stepped into his house he decided to walk through his garden.  It was a cold day, but in that lonely place Frost experienced something that he describes in a short poem called Dust of Snow:

   The way of a crow
   shook down on me
   a dust of snow
   from a hemlock tree

   has given my heart
   a change of mood
   and saved one part
   of a day I had rued.

Where is the quiet place you go that allows grace like this to bathe over you?

St. Paul famously instructed the Christians in Thessalonica to pray without ceasing.  That seems darn near impossible if by prayer you mean the act of kneeling, standing with outstretched arms, or lying prostrate.  I think what Paul advocated was something similar to the Buddhist notion of mindfulness.  This is an active, open attention to the present where you observe your thoughts and feelings from a distance, without judgment.  To this practice Christians add communion with God’s Holy Spirit in prayerful conversation around all that is.

I do my best to cultivate an on-going, inner conversation with God’s Spirit.  My prayers are not for things, not like the little boy’s who, kneeling beside his bed with his mother nearby, prayed, “God bless mommy and daddy and grandpa and grandma.”  And then the boy shouted as loud as he could, “And God, please bring me a new bike for my birthday!  Amen.”  His mother said, “Son, you don’t have to shout.  God isn’t hard of hearing.”  “No,” said the boy, “but grandma is!”

My prayers are not for specific outcomes but for understanding, for awareness, and for perspective.  I seek to understand how I am to be in all that is going on around me.  I look for ways to align my life with what I understand God desires for me and from me.  Sometimes my prayer takes on a more structured pattern I was taught years ago.  It is called ACTS prayer.  A stands for adoration – praising and adoring God as One holy other.  C stands for confession.  T is for thanksgiving – a remembrance of the blessings of the day.  S is for supplication – my prayers for myself and for others.  Some times my prayers are an exercise in openness and invitation.  I may place myself as a character in a particular biblical story and imagine Jesus approaching me.  What will he say or what will he do?  These are fascinating prayers.

The worst punishment we can administer short of torture and execution is solitary confinement – extensive, forced exile from contact with other humans.  But equally as damaging is confinement from solitary – being constantly immersed in everything without let up.

When I was a child I had a terrifying dream that an invisible tornado was roaring across the landscape pulling up people into the sky causing them to disappear.  In spite of my best efforts to avoid it, the tornado found me and took me away.  I was carried into outer space and the stars went flying past me as it took me deeper and deeper into the darkness.  Eventually a tiny planet appeared and it became clear that this was my intended destination.  I was deposited just below the brink of a grassy hill.  I crawled to top to see what was on the other side only to find myself looking down at all the other people who had been taken way.  They were trapped and I was the only one with the freedom to move about.  I knew that I needed to do something, but what?  What was I supposed to do?  And then I awaken, terrified to the core on my childhood being.

I don’t know why I have remembered that dream over all these years.  Feel free to do some pew-side psycho-analysis if you like.  The dream is no longer emotive for me.  It does not put me back into that cold, trembling sweat.  What it does now is serve as a reminder of my need to a person of prayer in a deserted, solitary, lonely place.  Each of us needs a view of life looking down undetected from the brink of a prayer-filled hillside.  It is only by going to a place like this to disconnect from everything around us in order to connect God’s Spirit – with the wisdom of the centuries – that we will learn what to do down in the valley when we reconnect with those we love and serve and encounter.  This time away not only gives us direction, but it also has the power to transform us by filling every fiber of our being with God’s love.

Today we meet Jesus doing amazing things, but we must never forget that he could never do any of it without the regular experience of being in a deserted place.

An Unclean Spirit

  

 

Allow me to tantalize or torment you with the first half of a poem by my fellow Ohioan, Mary Oliver:

Those who disappointed, betrayed, scarified!  Those who would still put their hands upon me!  Those who belong to the past!

How many of us have weighted the years with groaning and weeping?  How many years have I done it how many nights spent panting hating grieving, oh, merciless, pitiless remembrances!

I suspect that everyone here knows something of the experience Oliver is describing.  I don’t believe it is possible to go through life without being tormented by something, perhaps by many things.  There is something in the human spirit that is susceptible to having the events and happenings and incidents in our life change our spirit into something we are not, and definitely would rather not be.

That dark transformation may be kept internally where it saps our lives of health and vitality.  It may be acted out only in the form of a sleepless night.  Or, it may be something we inflict on others from time to time, or perhaps all of the time.  Do you know someone so beaten up and beaten down that they make life miserable for everyone around them?

“There was in the synagogue a man with an ‘unclean spirit’ and he cried out…” 

When I listen to this morning’s gospel there is a part of me that experiences it as completely foreign – demon possession and all of that.  But there is another part that sees it as completely consistent with what I know about life and about myself.  And it is certainly consistent with the universal experience Mary Oliver describes in her poem.

Mary Harris Todd, a Presbyterian pastor, offers this reflection on what the bible means by the description “unclean spirit”:

The word “unclean” basically meant disordered, mixed up, out of place in some way…  An unclean spirit is a disruptive spirit, a negative force or power that resists the will and way of God and oppresses people.  Unclean spirits hold people captive, hold them down, preventing them from being healthy and whole as God intends. 

Many of us can think of people we would describe as “sick” in some way even though they technically might not be classified as mentally ill.  These are people who drain the people around them, or thrive on negativity, or bring a disruptive atmosphere with them when they come into a room.  An unclean spirit of some sort has hold of them, sowing the seeds of trouble and turmoil.

And, those of us who have the courage to be honest with ourselves, recognize that this person can, from time to time, be us.

Snickers has a series of commercials that depict various people saying and doing things completely out of character until a friend gives them a candy bar to eat.  One bite and the person is restored to his or her true self.  If you have seen one of these commercials, do you recall the tag line at the end?  “You’re not you when you’re hungry.”  We might say that the point of today’s reading is “You’re not you when you have an unclean spirit.” 

For some it is a temporary condition: “All the stress of planning this wedding has me in a state.”  “I don’t handle being sick very well.”  “I always get this way around the anniversary of my husband’s death.”  For others, it is so central to a person’s a state of being that he or she would be hard to recognize if he or she was not “sowing the seeds of trouble and turmoil.”

Mary Oliver’s unclean spirit revolved around what she called “merciless, pitiless remembrances.”  How they affected her outer world we cannot say, but clearly it took its toll internally.  Her poem, which she titled Grass, continues:

I walk over the green hillsides, I lie down on the harsh, sun-flavored blades and bundles of grass; the grass cares nothing about me, it doesn’t want anything from me, it rises to its own purpose, and sweetly, following the single holy dictum: to be itself, to let the sky be the sky, to let a young girl be a young girl freely – to let a middle-aged woman be, comfortably, a middle-aged woman.

Those bloody sharps and flats – those endless calamities of the personal past.  Bah!  I disown them from the rest of my life, in which I mean to rest. 

Oliver has an epiphany while she is lying down on a grassy hillside.  She learns from those blades how simply to be who she was created to be.  And this insight gives her the power to let go of the remembrances that haunted her – life’s “sharps and flats.”

Today’s gospel reading is not just about a troubled person causing a disruption.  It is also about Jesus, his authority, and healing.  More than the other three gospels, Mark’s writing emphasizes Jesus’ healing ministry.  In this reading, Jesus uses his “authority” to bring the man with an unclean spirit to a place where he can say “Bah!” to all that troubles him, to disown it, and to rest. 

Healing like this, whether it comes from lying on a grassy hill or a psychiatrist’s couch, whether it comes from hours on the knees praying or from the final release of a sweat-drenched, sleepless night, is a gift from above manifesting God’s intention for all people – wholeness and peace. 

I rejoice that some of the things that troubled me at different points in my life are long gone; dissected and done away with never to return again.  Others are not so easy to dismiss.  Unlike Oliver’s insistence that her painful remembrances were gone for good, I know that there are things that do not have a hold of me right now, but are sure to come back to grab me again: certain sadnesses, griefs, guilty memories, humiliations, mistakes I made that brought awful, horrible, pain to others.  Am I the only one or do we all have those things in our past for which confession brings healing, but only for a time?  Am I the only one who prays for and finds release, only down the road of life to be caught again in the grips of what torments me?  I don’t think so.

I wonder, if you ponder it long enough, will you find, like me, that the condition of the man with the unclean spirit resonates with your own?  But here is another thing I wonder: I wonder if his encounter with Jesus resonates with your experience of engaging the Holy One.  We find Jesus in this reading making his first public appearance after his baptism, a moment that filled him with the power of God’s Spirit.  Now he is in the synagogue teaching with authority; authority unlike anything the people have ever experienced.  It is authentic.  It rings true.  It brings order and understanding to everything the listeners have known and experienced.

But it does more.  It brings a holy authority to their lives, or at least to the life of one person with an unclean spirit.  Jesus’ “authority” commands compassion, forgiveness, acceptance, and release.  It overpowers something which overpowered this particular person.  He is not the only person to have known this.  I have known it too.  I know it now.  And I trust that down life’s path, with its twisted turns and dark valleys, I will know it again.  And as I look out at all of you I know that I am not alone.   Each of us here this morning comes before the authority of our Savior longing to hear the command telling our unclean spirits to be gone; telling us that God loves us for who we are no matter what we have done and no matter what has been done to us.

May we hear these words today.  May we learn to listen with compassion to our fellow suffers.  May we learn how to stand with them in the presence of the One who has authority.  May we walk together through life, healed and whole.  May we support one another when a challenge in life makes this too difficult for one or more of us.  May we marvel and give thanks that God has “authority” over the brokenness of our lives.

 

 

Opportunity Costs

There once was a frugal accountant whose business had been in the family for generations and generations and during all that time they ran the firm out of the same office building.  It came to pass that the marble step at the front entrance wore down from years of wear and tear and it now posed a danger to clients.  The accountant reluctantly decided to have it replaced less someone fall on it and sue him.  He called a stonemason to give him a quote for a new step.  “That’s a big job,” the mason told him.  “I can get you a new marble step for $10,000.”  Well, there was no way the accountant was going to lay out that much cash for a step.  They he had an idea.  He asked the mason what it would cost to dig up the stone and turn it over so that the worn side would be on the bottom and new flat surface would be on the top.  “I can do that for $500,” the mason told him.  The accountant agreed and then got back to books.  An hour later the mason called the accountant to inspect the work.  To the accountant’s dismay, the new surface was even more wore down than the old one, but how could that be.  The mason, who himself came from several generations of stone workers said, “Over a hundred years ago your cheap great-great grandfather had my great-great-grandfather do the same thing.” 

For much of history business was family business where knowledge, skills, and tools were passed on from one generation to the next and the next.  People even took on family names that described their work: Miller, Smith, Baker, Tanner, Carpenter, and Farmer are just a few examples.  In this morning’s gospel reading we are introduced to four men who come from a long line of Galilean fishermen.

Scholars indicate that in biblical times somewhere between eighteen and twenty-four different species of indigenous fish lived in the Sea of Galilee.  There were several different ways to catch fish at the time. 

The text tells us that Jesus saw Simon (also known as Peter) and his brother Andrew “casting a net into the sea.”  This technique involved a circular net fifteen to twenty feet in diameter.   The outside perimeter of the net was lined with a rope that had weights attached to it so that the net would sink quickly.  The net was cast or thrown by a single person either from shallow water or from a boat.  As it is thrown, it spreads out and lands on the water like a parachute.  It descends quickly, trapping any fish that are underneath it.  To retrieve the catch, a fisherman would go underwater and one by one grab the fish and place them in a pouch.  Another method involved pulling the outer rope together, and dragging the haul either to shore or onto a boat.  

The two brothers easily mastered this relatively simple method of fishing.  Jesus invites them to follow him in order to fish for people.  The two immediately put down their nets and go with him.

In a short period of time the trio encounters two more brothers – James and John – who are also fishermen.  They are in their boats “mending their nets.”  Jesus invites them to follow him as well and they leave their father and hired hands to do so.

James and John are a part of a much larger and more complicated fishing operation that involves boats and employees.  Most likely they used a type of dragnet approach.  The nets could be several hundred feet long and up to twenty feet wide from top and bottom.  A rope along the top length had cork attached to it keep the net afloat.  A rope on the bottom length had weights so that it would sink.  A group of men on the shore would hold one end of the net while a boat took the other end out into the water, setting it out as it went.  Eventually the boat would circle back further down the shore where another group of men took hold of the opposite end of the net.  The entire net may cover the perimeter as large as our church property.  Once the dragnet was in place, both groups pulled the net into shore, trapping every fish that was inside.  The same process could also be applied in deeper water by utilizing more boats.

Obviously, fishermen needed to be physically strong.  But they also needed to know how to deal with people.  The diverse folks who showed up to buy their fish spoke Greek, Hebrew, or Aramaic.  They had to know how to weigh the fish in order to ascertain its value and they had to understand the complexities of market pricing.  Income from each catch was divided into shares.  Forty percent went to the owner of the boats and the nets.  The remainder was divided among the crew with some getting a little more based on skills and tenure.  Those who mastered fishing made a better wage then the typical laborer or tradesman.  The bible hints that Peter’s home in Capernaum was more substantial than those around it.  In addition all four men were free to stop working when they wanted and return again when it suited them.  While not the wealthiest or most educated people in society, these men were not without means and ability.

Peter, Andrew, James, and John appear early on in Mark’s gospel from out of nowhere.  If you knew nothing of the story of Jesus and were reading this work for the first time all you would know of the four is that they were fishermen who dropped their work to follow Jesus.  You would also suspect that they are going to figure prominently in the story as it unfolds.

Scholars believe that Mark was the first person to write a gospel and that his work was done about thirty years after Jesus’ resurrection.  By the time it began to circulate throughout the early church most of its members had never met Jesus in person.  Either they were not born until after his life or they lived in another country at the time.  And while most had not met Jesus, many had met Peter, Andrew, James, or John.  They had achieved legendary apostolic status by the time Mark wrote and his readers would have known all about them and their lives.  They modeled what it meant to follow Jesus and their example was emulated throughout the early church.

Last Sunday our readings invited us to ponder who we emulate and how faithfully we are living out their examples.  It also invited us to reflect on the invitations we extend and the invitations we accept.  To what do you say yes?  Many of the same themes are present in today’s reading, but it adds a new dimension for consideration.  What are you willing to sacrifice in order to be faithful?  Christianity is more than confessing a creed.  It is more than being a good person.  It is about following Jesus, about being a disciple.

An economist might look at today’s gospel and use it to teach about “opportunity cost.”  When you do one thing, you are choosing not to do another.  You can’t spend a dollar and save it at the same time.  You can’t mow the grass and take a walk on the beach at the same time.  And unless you are John Rector, you can’t go to church and take a nap as the same time.  When the four fishermen follow Jesus they respond to an opportunity that has a cost.  They will loose income by not fishing.  They will loose time with their families.  They might get passed over the business’ pecking order.  Their lives will become more complicated, not more simple.  They will be exposed to hardship, ridicule, and danger.  These are some of the costs, but each decided to respond to the opportunity.

When I was in college it was popular to go to Florida for spring break in order to lie out on the beach and soak up the sun.  It was a wonderful week to relax and cavort.  I image not much has changed.  But there were some students at my school who choose a different path.  They signed up for a weeklong Habitat for Humanity build in Mississippi.  That opportunity cost them something.  They had to pay their way.  They couldn’t lounge around all day or party all night.  It made them tired and sore.  But even with all that, it gave them something even better. 

What did following Jesus cost Peter, Andrew, James, and John?  Initially it cost them some time at work and making money.  That is no small sacrifice.  Eventually it cost each of them their lives, but this had not yet happened when Mark wrote his gospel.  Mark’s readers would have looked at the examples set by their heroes and challenged themselves to do the same.

So here is a question to ask yourself: What does it cost you to be a Christian?  What does it cost you to be a member of St. Paul’s Church?  What does it cost you to follow Jesus?  If the answer is not much, you might want to ponder if you are truly following or not.

Role Models & Invitations

The season of Epiphany is loaded with set themes that we explore week by week in order to discover who Jesus really is.  It begins on January 6^th with the visit of the Magi.  They interpret the appearance of a star to be an indication that a new king has been born to the Jews.  On the Sunday after the Epiphany we meet Jesus at the Jordon River where he is baptized by John and proclaimed by a heavenly voice to be God’s Son.  This, the second Sunday after the Epiphany, is an evangelical moment where each year in the three-year lectionary cycle, we hear a story about Jesus calling someone to follow him.  In today’s reading, in two short sentences with a total of just eighteen words, we are told that Jesus goes to Galilee, meets Philip, and says to him, “Follow me.”   

How many movies have you watched where people are trapped in a burning building, stuck on a sinking ship, or surrounded by a hoard of zombies when, out of nowhere, a person bursts on to the scene and shouts out, “Follow me!”?  That person claims special knowledge of how to navigate through a mysterious and dangerous world.  Sometimes the person is the story’s hero, other times he/she is an anti-hero whose credibility and motives are in question, but either way the group must decide to trust that the person can lead them to safety.  Philip is in something of this position.  While his life is not in danger, still he wants to be led somewhere and is willing to allow Jesus to be his guide.

When we are younger we crave role models, people whose lives we can emulate.  We see in them the way that we want to live.  Most often they do not issue an invitation to us to follow them, rather we make a conscious or unconscious decision that they will be our role models.  Eventually we reach a point in life where the quest to find a role model ends.  Like an old dog, it is not likely anyone will teach us a new life trick.  And if someone said, “Follow me”, most likely those of us who are older would reply that we are fine where I are.  We have been a follower for a long time and now our lives, for the most part, are set.  Following is a task for the young.  For many of us the task now is living out faithfully what we learned when we followed others. 

For those of you who are young, you might ask yourself who will you follow and why will you follow them.  For those of us who are older, we might want to ask what have we learned, how are we living it, and what are we doing to pass it on?

Well, Philip does two things.  He decides to follow Jesus, but first he fetches a friend, Nathanael.  He says to him, “We have found him about whom Moses and the prophets wrote.”  Apparently, both are seekers searching for something and Philip believes he has found it.  “It is Jesus from Nazareth,” he says to his friend, to which Nathanael famously quips, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”  “Come and see,” Philip replies. 

“Come and see” is such a beautiful response.  Philip doesn’t argue, he doesn’t coerce, and he doesn’t defend.  All he does is invite his friend to be a part of something he believes to be worthwhile.  “Come and see” is both an invitation offered and invitation accepted.  Each act is deeply spiritual and I, for one, struggle to do both.

I have never been good at social planning and while I would like to have people over to my house for dinner, I rarely do so because I can’t plan that far ahead.  When I do make invitations I enjoy the experience, but I simply do not do it enough.  Many of you are better at this than I am.  Last year St. Paul’s was blessed to have Al Reese’s Virginia Handbell Consort perform twice at our church.  After each concert those of us in attendance said “This was wonderful.  The next time I am going to invite someone to join me.” 

Ask yourself this: “What do I find extraordinary in life?” and then ponder what you are doing to invite other people to be a part of it.  I like that our young people enjoy helping with the Food Pantry on Monday evenings and I especially like that they invite their friends to join them.  They have a great sense of the value of “come and see”.

The other side of “come and see” is accepting the invitation.  It involves saying “yes” to something.  One day when my daughters were younger I had an epiphany about how little I said “yes” to them.  They would ask me to take them somewhere and I would say “no” because I was too busy.  They would ask me to do something with them and I would say “no” because I was too tired.  They wanted me to get something for them and I would say “no” because it cost too much money.  One day it dawned on me how much I said “no”, and almost always because it felt like too much trouble to say “yes.”  I realized that was not who I wanted to be, but it was who I had become. I made a decision to answer “yes” unless there was a very good reason to say “no.”

When was the last time you said “yes” to something that was important; to something that cost you time or money or effort or emotion?  When was the last time you said “yes” to something to which it would have been easier to say “no”, but while costing you something offered the promise of enriching your life and the world around you?

This morning we have had the opportunity to witness something many of us never seen.  We have been able to watch members of the Altar Guild perform their ministry as a part of our public service of worship.  Usually their work is done behind the scenes, but today it is out in the open because they are saying “come and see” what our ministry is all about.  They are inviting you to be a part of what they do.  I hope some of you will say “yes” to them.  I also hope that every one of us will consider how you might like to be a part of our Sunday worship life.  Would you like to usher or to read or to sing or to acolyte or to ring the bell or to present the elements?  Would you like to help fold bulletins or to clean or to serve on the Altar Guild?  Are there other ministries you might want to support: cooking a Sunday morning breakfast once a month or teaching a class or hosting a Coffee Hour or volunteering with the Food Pantry or tending to the building and grounds?  To what at St. Paul’s will you say “yes”?  To what in life will you say “yes”?

I think about how easy it would have been for Nathanael to say “no” to Philip and for Philip to say “no” to Jesus.  Each of us could come up with a long list of our stock excuses: I am too busy, I am already over-committed, I wouldn’t be any good at it, not now, but maybe after the big event coming up in the near future.  Like I said, there are some times when “no” is absolutely the right response, but if your response to “follow me” and to “come and see” is always “no” then that is a spiritual problem.  Nothing new and nothing wonderful and nothing exciting and nothing challenging and nothing invigorating and nothing transformative every comes from saying “no.”  And, based on what we see in Jesus today, our God is a God who always has an invitation for us.

 

 

Three Words when the Heavens Open

I want to begin this morning’s sermon by giving you a few seconds to ponder a question: 

Think about the roles you play in life.  Who are you?  Or maybe better, who are you trying to be?  What are three different words you would use to describe who you are?  I am not asking you to identify qualities like “loyal”, “happy,” or “caring.”  I am asking you to think about roles you play in life; roles you embrace.  Something like “caregiver” or “patriot” or “professional bowler.”  Take a moment to formulate an answer.  You may want to scribble down some words on a blank part of the bulletin.

I put out this question on Facebook earlier in the week and here are some of the responses people posted:

A clergy colleague wrote: collaborator, proclaimer, bridge builder.

Another colleague wrote: companion, advocate, teacher.

A parent wrote: nurturer, peacemaker, calm.

Holly McNeal wrote: survivor, maternal, leader. 

Brian McNeal wrote: awesome, adaptable, amazing.

Melissa Dudney wrote: wife, daughter, sister.

Beverly Judkins wrote: mother, aging, traveler.

Candy LeDoyen wrote: mother, teacher, singer.

And finally, another colleague wrote: partner, traveler, friend.

I have you pondering this question because today, the day we celebrate the Baptism of Jesus, is a day that is all about identity.  For Jesus, it is a day to take on a new identity, “You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.”  It is a day when he receives a new power – the power of the Holy Spirit – to live into role of “Son” and “Beloved.” 

It is also a day for us to ponder our own identity because through our baptism we too have taken on a new life.  In Jesus’ day, when a convert to the Jewish faith was baptized, the priest traced on his/her forehead the letter Taw (the last letter in the Hebrew alphabet), which is shaped very much like a capital ‘T’).  Accompanying this act was the proclamation that the newly baptized person was branded as God’s “sheep, slave, and soldier.”  Think about those three roles for a moment.

Sheep: a creature that is cared for and guided through life by a shepherd.

Slave: a person who is owned by another and instructed to do certain things and to behave in a certain way.

Soldier: a person who has taken up a cause and whose life is dedicated to protecting and advancing that cause.

I am curious if in describing yourself any of you came up with sheep, slave, or soldier.  Probably not. 

I have mentioned before that in his autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung comments that the world will always ask you who you are, and if you do not have an answer the world will give you one.  I think it is fair to say that Western culture is a battleground where individual identity is a prize for which many different entities vie.  Who are you?  The world encourages you to answer this question by asking you the following:

Where are you from?

What do you do?

Who are you with?

What do you own?

For us Christians, the foundation of our identity is this: “I am sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.”  It is the one thing we here this morning have in common and it is the most important thing we can say about ourselves.  It informs and directs all the other roles we play in life: parent, partner, traveler, singer, etc.

I’ve had a week to reflect on how I would answer the question I put to you this morning, so my response better be good, or at least thoughtful.  Here are my three words:

Child of God – for me this picks up something of the notion of sheep in Jewish baptism.  It suggests that am a part of a family and that someone is watching over me and caring for me.

Disciple – a better word than slave I think.  It suggests that I have signed on to follow, to learn from, and to emulate another.

Priest – Here I am thinking of something much more elemental than my vocation.  At my ordination I took a vow to be both a priest and a pastor.  I have come to see the priestly function as taking the things people bring to me and offering them to God: bread and wine, water for baptism, vows and promises made at weddings, prayers at a time of need, our spirit and earthly remains at the time of death.  I understand my role as a pastor to be the reverse: taking what God gives (love, forgiveness, reconciliation, healing, guidance, instruction) and offering it to God’s people. 

Everything I have in life and everything I do is (or should be) informed by these three words: child of God, disciple, and priest.

So take another moment and revisit my initial question.  What are three words that describe who you are in life?

In his book Mark for Everyone, N.T. Wright reflects on what it means that after Jesus was baptized he saw the Heavens open.  He writes:

It does not mean that Jesus saw a little door ajar miles up in the sky.  Heaven in the Bible often means God’s dimension behind ordinary reality.  It’s more as though an invisible curtain, right in front of us, was suddenly pulled back, so that instead of the trees and flowers and buildings, or in Jesus’ case the river, the sandy desert and the crowds, we are standing in the presence of a different reality altogether.  A good deal of Christian faith is a matter of learning to live by this different reality even when we can’t see it.

I am inviting you to ponder who you are when the Heavens open, to declare your identity that comes from God, and to live each and every day from this point of self-understanding so that when the world asks you who you are, you will have an answer.

Welcome Home!

972 Hereford Dr. 

I did not know it at the time, but Christmas 1986 turned out to be one of the most important transitional points in my life.  I was at home on break before the beginning of my final semester of seminary.  It was six years after my father passed away and my mother was newly remarried.  That Christmas, she and her husband were preparing to sell the house where I had grown up.  I graduated in May, was ordained, accepted a job offer, and found a place to rent.  There was one problem.  It was the 15^th of May and I could not move in until the beginning of June.  My boyhood home had been sold and my mother had moved out of the area.  I realized at that moment that I was “homeless”, not in the sense that I had to live on the street, but in the sense that I had nowhere to be.  There was no longer a home to which I could return.  I spent the next two weeks sleeping on a buddy’s couch.

Home is concept loaded with deep emotional meaning.  It is a place that is close to the heart and for most of us serves as the backdrop to our childhood memories.  It is where our artwork was displayed on the refrigerator and where pencil lines with accompanying dates charted our height as we grew taller and taller.  My friend with the couch, his parents also sold his childhood home.  Years later it came on the market and my friend took a tour.  While much had changed, much had not.  He was taken aback by a pattern of squeaking as he walked up the stairs to the second floor.  It was a sound he neither had heard nor thought about in years, but then there it was as if nothing had changed.  Susan Clayton, a psychologist, says that for many the childhood home maintains an iconic status. 

Pliny the Elder, a Roman author who lived in the time of Jesus, famously observed that home is where the heart is.  A stanza in John Howard Payne’s poem is almost universally accepted as true:

Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,
Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.

We all know what George Washington meant when he stated he would rather be on his farm than be emperor of the world.

The theme of home weaves itself through today’s scripture readings.  We hear Jeremiah, the prophet of the Exile, proclaim the good news that God will lead home the Jews displaced to Babylon.  After two generations in exile, these people had made a living in a foreign land.  They had found new ways to celebrate their identity and to perpetuate their culture.  For some, Babylon was the only home they had known, but for none of them was Babylon home.  They longed for Jerusalem, the place where they belonged.

In the Gospel we hear the story of the Magi who are exemplars of something George Bernard Shaw once said: “Home life is no more natural to us than a cage is natural to a cockatoo!”  There was a time when I lived out this sentiment; a time when I wanted to be free, to explore, to follow a shining star.  I know the impulse to see new things, to do new things, to learn new things; all of which are things you cannot do unless you leave home. 

There is in us something of the baby bird perched on the edge of its mother’s nest gazing out at a vast unknown world.  The urge to fly and fear of failure beat in its chest as it begins to beat its wings for the first time.  We are born to leave home and there is no better model of this than the exotic stargazers who appear in the holy land.  And yet even after all their adventures, even after being entertained by royalty, even after meeting the child promised by the sages of old, what do they most desire?  They desire to return to their own country, to go home.   They found out to be true something that John Ed Pearce once said: “Home is a place you grow up wanting to leave, and grow old wanting to get back to.”

And did you notice a little detail from Matthew’s Gospel regarding where the Magi found Jesus?  He was not an infant wrapped in swaddling cloth, he was not lying in a manger, and he was not surrounded by shepherds and angelic hosts.  These are all details from Luke’s Gospel.  The Magi find Jesus and his mother in a house and Jesus himself is described as being a child.  Some time has passed since his birth, maybe as much as two years.  Perhaps Matthew calls it a house because it did not belong to Mary and Joseph, but I’d like to think it reflects a deeper truth that Jesus’ home is in heaven.  It is like what St. Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from our ultimate home with the Lord.  And yet we do live here, don’t we. 

A couple of years ago, archeologists uncovered a circular structure in North Yorkshire that dates back to 8,500 BC.  It is the oldest known house in Europe.  It had a platform made of hewn and split timbers, which are the earliest evidence of this type of carpentry in that part of the world.  Prior to this, human beings were nomads who moved with the seasons and the herds.  Eons of evolutionary history have hard-wired human beings with any number of traits, some of which don’t quite seem to fit in contemporary society, but one thing is sure: in a relatively short period of time, human beings have adapted to having a place to live and to the notion of home.

Someone once said that it takes hands to build a house, but only hearts can build a home.  The great poet Maya Angelou says, “the ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.”  According to Vernon Baker, “Home is where the heart can laugh without shyness.  Home is where the heart’s tears can dry at their own pace.”  We all need a place like this, don’t we. 

Most of us will move multiple times over the course of our lives.  It may be from one house to another and then another within the confines of the same community, or it may involve moving great distances from one state to another or even to a different country.  More and more, the old saying that you can never go home holds true because there is no home to which you can return.  Like the Jewish exiles, home may be a place for which we long, but unlike them it is a place that no longer exists, at least as a physical location.  We must make home where we are.

Susan Clayton, who I mentioned earlier, also points out that our homes become a part of our self-definition.  They tell us who we are and shape how we think about ourselves.  They become an extension of our public face by letting others know what matters to us. 

In my house I display my grandfather’s tools and a workbench he built.  As a child I used them to construct and deconstruct all manner of things.  My parents’ wedding china graces my dining room.  My childhood dressers, beautiful pieces of wood furniture that belonged to my father, are in my bedroom.  One of my most prized possessions is a family bible handed down through five generations.  I sense and see in the environment in which I live cherished artifacts of home.  They are for me what Oliver Wendell Holmes said: “Where we love is home – home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.”

The 84^th Psalm, from which we read this morning, is one of my favorites.  A pilgrim has made the journey to Jerusalem and has entered the temple.  It is the place where he or she longs to be.  The Psalmist notices how various birds have made their nests within the confines of its walls and wishes to be able to do the same:

How dear to me is your dwelling, O Lord of hosts!

    My soul has a desire and longing for the courts of the Lord;
         my heart and flesh rejoice in the living God.

The Psalmist has come into the temple and feels at home.

I think most of us here this morning would describe St. Paul’s Church as being our spiritual home.  For some it is the only church we have ever known.  For a few it is the first church we have joined.  For others, this is one of many churches we have attended over the different shifts and changes of our lives.  Other faith communities may still hold a warm spot in our hearts, but we are here week in and week out because we feel like we belong.  Right now, it is here that we feel at home. 

More and more I think this is one of the most important roles a church plays in life.  In our mobile society, many of us live, work, and even raise a family in a community where, perhaps like the Hebrews in Babylon, we feel like we are in exile from the home we knew as a child.  Many of us, like the wise men, do extraordinary things with our lives.  We may have jobs that thrill us and coworkers whose companionship is a joy.  But when it is all said and done, what we need most is to return to our own country, a desire we find best fulfilled when we come to church.

The readings during this season of Christmas emphasize that Jesus came to earth so that we might receive power to become children of God.  Think about that image: children of God.  From this theological perspective, church becomes for us that iconic emotional home.  It is the place of baptisms, weddings, and burials.  It is the place where we watch our children mature.  It is a place where special relationships deepen over the years as we grow into being bound to one another.  And through it all, it is a place where we are keenly aware how none of this happens apart from God’s comforting presence.  No matter who you are, no matter where you are from, no matter how far you have travelled, no matter what you have done, in this place we hear the Holy One’s voice say to us, “Welcome home!”