Do You not Care that We are Perishing?

Let’s think for a moment about the most basic, elemental conversations we have with God; conversations that are beyond words and touch on fundamental human experiences at the core of life.  Surely, one is this:

Us: “I am filled with awe and wonder.”

God: “This is life as I intend it.”

I remember having this very conversation with God in the moments after the birth of my first daughter – that initial moment when I become a father.

Here is another:

Us: “I have screwed up.  I am an utter failure.”

God: “You are forgiven.  It is in the past.  I love you and you are precious to me.”

This can be a conversation that goes on for a long time because it is not always easy to let go of our mistakes or the message that we are a disappointment.

Another fundamental conversation:

Us: “I am not sure what to do.”

God: “Let me show you the way.”

I am not sure how many of these archetypal conversations there are between us and God.  I am confident we could identify at least a few more if we put our heads together.  There is at least one more conversation that we hear in today’s gospel reading: 

Disciples: “Don’t you care that we are perishing?”

Jesus: “Why are you afraid?  Have you still not faith?”

This particular back-a-forth is so central to our experience with God.  We are afraid and God is perplexed.  “What is going to happen to us?”  “Why don’t you understand that everything is going to be OK?”  It is easy to make the case that we don’t understand and trust God, but, based on this give-and-take, it is equally true that God does not entirely get us.  One commentator I read this week invites us to recast today’s gospel reading as taking place on an airplane where the engines have failed and the craft is in a severe dive.  “Why am I afraid, God?   Are you serious!”

For years now, Wednesday nights have been popular evenings for churches to hold functions.  First Baptist Church just down the street swells with activity on Wednesday nights.   For the past few weeks, we here at St. Paul’s have gathered for a pot-luck dinner and discussion.  While we are not setting attendance records, those of us who come enjoy the food and fellowship. 

It is sobering to realize that at the very time we came together here in our church, an unspeakable and senseless horror unfolded at a similar gathering at Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston.  The Episcopal Bishop of South Carolina called it an “unimaginable tragedy” that “calls for prayer, response, and self examination”.

Rabbi Rachel Barenblat, writing on her blogsite, posted this:

As a white woman witnessing this horror from afar, I feel called to teshuvah, to soul-searching.  What can I do to change the reality in which this kind of hate crime is possible?  I want my nation to be better than this.  I want humanity to be better than this.

My thoughts and prayers echo hers.  I also resonate with what the words of Guy Sayles, a Baptist pastor in Asheville, NC:

In many ways, American culture is harsh these days…  We’re afraid of unpredictable terrorism and of uncertain economic conditions.  We’re prone to scapegoat those people who are different from us—to blame ‘the other” for our insecurities.  Far too often, we’re willing, as in Jesus’ Parable of the Good Samaritan, to “pass by on the other side” and to leave people battered by violence, whether physical or emotional or economic, bleeding in the ditch.

I don’t know precisely what can be done, but I do know that we need for people who believe in the rightness of the dream of a beloved, just, and merciful community to speak and act in ways which counter the harshness all around us.

Our own bishop, Holly Hollerith wrote this to our diocese:

The recent killing of nine innocent members of the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina represents the tragic convergence of three very serious social issues plaguing our county today: racism, gun violence, and inadequate mental health care - particularly for our young people.

Given the fact that the AME Church is historically rooted in our own Episcopal Church, I believe this event should be a wake-up call for all of us.  I strongly encourage all parishes in the Diocese of Southern Virginia to be diligent in assuring that conversations are taking place on the local level around these serious social matters.  I likewise encourage our parishes to be part of consciousness raising efforts that lay these matters before our respective local governments for the purpose of seeking solutions.

Most importantly, I ask all Episcopalians in Southern Virginia to be diligent in praying for the victims of Emanuel AME and their families, the City of Charleston, the perpetrator, Dylann Roof, and those through out the world who suffer from acts of violence.

The disciples said to Jesus, “Do you not care that we are perishing?”  He responded by asking, “Why are you afraid?  Have you still no faith?”

I am not sure what I would have felt had I been one of the twelve disciples on that boat after Jesus calmed the storm.  Certainly I would have felt relief, felt awe, felt joy.  But I also think I would have been terrified that the world as I knew it had bent in ways unimaginable to me, albeit to my benefit. 

In Lief Enger’s book Peace Like a River, Reuben Land, the narrator, tells the story of an apparent miracle that saved his father’s life at birth.  Reuben then ruminates on how we tend to elevate all manner of lesser events to the level of miraculous, thereby domesticating those events that are truly beyond us.  Listen to how Rueben makes his case:

Real miracles bother people, like strange sudden pains unknown in medical literature.  It’s true: They rebut every rule all we good citizens take comfort in.  Lazarus obeying orders and climbing up out of the grave — now there’s a miracle, and you can bet it upset a lot of folks who were standing around at the time.

Rueben then goes on to make this insightful and disturbing observation: “People fear miracles because they fear being changed.” 

So much of the conversation around gun violence in our country boils down to this simple truth: we are willing to live with horrific events like what happened in Charleston because we are unwilling to step into a new and unknown alternative.  We are afraid of being changed.

I think it is worth noting that today’s gospel reading takes place not just on the Sea of Galilee, but at a point of transition.  Jesus and the disciples have left the known confines of Jewish communities and set sail for the land of gentiles – a new and unknown world.  Isn’t it predictable that the worst storms and the greatest challenges come at these moments of potential change!  Reuben Land has a challenge for those of us who tend shrink back at such moments:  “People fear miracles because they fear being changed,” he said, but then he adds, “though ignoring them will change you also.”

After the 2007 killings at Virginia Tech I thought things would change.  When Virginia Senator Creigh Deeds was stabbed by his mentally troubled son (who subsequently took his life), I thought things would change.  I am confident that when Senator Deeds applied himself to the problem with all he could muster, he thought things would change.  But in our commonwealth, as in our country, the beat goes on without any change.  And even here, in our own community, gunfire is a regular feature of nightly gatherings in our neighborhoods.

Nancy Rockwell, another blogger, reflecting on today’s gospel reading, writes this:

Faith… is the antidote to fear.  It doesn’t prevent the conditions in which fear arises from occurring.  Faith did not provide them and their boat with a safe journey over the sea.  Faith is a way of walking through fear, without succumbing to its grip.  Fear draws us into rage, helplessness, desperation or despair.  Faith draws us to rise to the occasion in which we find ourselves, as steadfast voices for Peace, as creators of calm.

Well, I began this sermon by thinking about some of the basic conversations that take place between us and God.  Let me end by holding up the possibility highlighted at the end of reading.  “Who is this,” the disciples asked one another, “that even the wind and the waves obey him?”  Somewhere beyond the disconnect between us and God and beyond the fear of change there is the possibility of amazement; amazement at what God can do.  And while the disciples where overcome with this feeling of awe while doing nothing to engender it other than waking Jesus from his sleep, I suspect that as our nation grapples with gun violence, racial tension, and mental illness, we will have to move toward change – sometimes dramatic change – in order for a new, more peaceful order to emerge. 

We Christians talk about the kingdom of God.  We pray for it.  What are we willing to do to see it become a reality?  Why are we afraid?  Why do we still not have faith?

We are a Slow Church

It began in 1989 as a response to the ‘McDonaldization’ of food and restaurants - food that is served quickly and no matter where you are it is always the same.  We have a name for it.  We call it ‘fast food.’  A counter movement emerged in Rome where, after it was announced that a McDonalds was going to open near the Spanish Steps, protesters chanted, “We don’t want fast food.  We want slow food.”  And with that a movement was born that today has over 1,300 local chapters in fifty-three countries. 

The Slow Food movement is not just about food.  It is a critique of what Carl Honoré, a Canadian journalist, labels the “cult of speed,” which is rampant in our society.  Fast, he says, is busy, controlling, aggressive, hurried, analytical, stressed, superficial, impatient, active, quantity-over-quality.  Slow, on the other hand, is calm, careful, receptive, still, intuitive, unhurried, patient, reflective, quality-over-quantity.  Slow is about “making real and meaningful connections – with people, culture, work, food, everything.”

On nice afternoons when I was in school in Boston, I drove to Gloucester to sit on a bench overlooking the bay to do my reading.  I liked the feel on my face of the sun and the breeze off the water.  The sounds of the bay – gulls and bells – were calming.  I watched trawlers making their way out and home.  I could go on for some time about those wonderful afternoons, but suffice it to say it was a fabulous environment to soak in theology or church history or whatever.  Gloucester’s best known landmark, the Fisherman’s Memorial Statue (a mariner at a ship’s wheel looking out to the sea), was located not far from the bench where I did my reading.  Passengers from dozens and dozens of tour and school buses flocked around the statue, took pictures, and departed on ten minute intervals.  What is the difference between fast and slow?  They had a picture, but I had an experience of the bay.

The sociologist George Ritzer coined the phrase “McDonaldization” to describe “the process by which the principles of fast-food restaurants are coming to dominate more and more sectors of American society.”  This trend, he says, has four dimensions: efficiency, predictability, calculability (quantifiable results), and control.  These values, which drove the Industrial Revolution, have led to an industrialization of almost every aspect of our lives.  How well do you handle the opposite: messy, unpredicatable, immeasureable, and not under your control?

Chris Smith and John Pattison grew up in different mega-churches, but now, as adults, have chosen to worship in churches that look a lot like us here at St. Paul’s.  They write about their experiences in a book titled Slow Church: Cultivating Community in the Patient Way of Jesus.  To their way of thinking, congregations steeped in the church growth model “come dangerously close to reducing Christianity to a commodity that can be packaged, marketed, and sold.” 

There are books and seminars to teach you how to build a church that will number in the thousands.  It involves, among others things, location, parking lots that can be emptied in fifteen minutes or less, high-quality coffee, contemporary music, and lots of technology.  But by emphasizing efficiency, predictability, calculability, and control, these churches sacrifice something essential in order to be large. 

Smith and Pattison write of their experience growing up:

Instead of cultivating a deep, holistic discipleship that touches every aspect of our lives, [our churches] confined the life of faith to Sunday mornings, where it [could] be kept safe and predicable, or to a “personal relationship with Jesus Christ,” which [could] be managed from the privacy of our own home.  Following Jesus [was] diminished to a privatized faith rather than a lifelong apprenticeship undertaken in the context of Christian community.

There is nothing fast about apprenticeship, is there!  

Smith and Pattison are part of a sizable movement of folks raised in the church growth model who are leaving it in favor of something different.  The slow church movement, they say, “is a call for intentionality, an awareness of our mutual interdependence with all people and all creation, and an attentiveness to the world around us and the work God is doing in our very own neighborhoods.”  It is not private nor is it quite what we think of when we say public, in that it does not involve standing on a soapbox and preaching at passing crowds.  This faith is communal.  It is lived out in and with others – members of our church and the people of our neighborhoods.  By its very nature, it is neither efficient nor predictable nor measureable nor under our control.  It is, to go back to Trinity Sunday, improvisation.  It always takes on a life of its own which we do not dictate, but participate in.

This morning we hear Jesus tell two parables about seeds.  In the first he describes the miraculous way seeds sprout and grow without any help from us.  In the second he reflects on how a small seed, over time, will grow to become a large tree.  Each parable tells us something about the kingdom of God.  There is nothing spectacular about a seed and certainly there is nothing fast.  Once a seed is put in soil it takes time for it to germinate, to sprout, and to grow.  There is very little we can do to speed up the process.  Our role is to water and to weed and to wait. 

How does it make you feel to know that God works on a timetable and at a pace different from what you might like?  You can say and do all the right things – come to church regularly, say your prayers daily, tithe you wealth happily, tend to the downtrodden compassionately – but, as they often say in commercials, actual results may vary.  God works in God’s own time and we cannot and should not hurry the process along.

These two parables assure us that God is at work in and through our lives.  That certainly is reassuring.  But they also call on us to be patient and to trust, and that is not always easy.  If you are computer proficient, think of it as trying to teach someone who has never held a mouse and right-clicked.  How natural is it to jump in and take over for that struggling person; to short-circuit the slow process of growth?  After all, we want to be efficient, predictable, productive, and in control. 

But life – thank God – does not always work that way.  Just like a slow cooker brings out flavors you will not taste in food that has been microwaved, the life of faith creates deep and sustaining roots over time; time spent in incalculable, seemingly meaningless interactions with God, with yourself, and with others.  It is only over time and taking in the long view that you recognize God has done something enduring in you and with you and through you.

This morning, as we say thank you to Amy Austin for her service as our parish administrator and hello to Cindy Cowan as she steps into that role, we have a wonderful example of what it looks like to be in a place, to allow it to touch us, and to open ourselves to connecting with others.  Amy has not been a person with a job title and a function to perform.  Slowly, over time, she has become one of us and very central to what we think of when we say “St. Paul’s.”  She cultivated something in this place and something very special emerged from it and we are grateful for it.  We are also grateful for the early sense that Cindy is going to “fit right in.”

I would like to think that St. Paul’s is a slow church, in the best sense of that term.  We cultivate our faith and our relationships with one another.  We don’t leave here what we experience on Sunday mornings.  We take it with us out the doors and carry it with us throughout the week.  And most important, we tend to what we see and sense God is doing in and around us.  St. Paul’s is not our church.  It is God’s.  When we are open to what God is doing in and through this place we will be like the surprised person in Jesus’ first parable who does not know how the harvest came to be, but rejoices that it is there.  We too rejoice when we see what God is doing in our lives, in our church, and in our community.  It starts off small, growing slowly, but eventually becomes something like a tree that sustains so much around it.  We are a slow church.

A New Label

Here is a little known fact: the reading we just heard is the first time Jesus’ family is mentioned in the Gospel of Mark.  Matthew and Luke both have stories of Jesus’ birth and give us an initial picture of Mary pondering the praise of earthly and angelic messengers.  John’s gospel tells the story of the wedding at Cana where, in her first appearance, Jesus’ mother supports his effort to turn water into wine.  But here, in Mark, the first time we meet Jesus’ family they show up to confront him. 

Let’s set the scene.  This is early in Jesus’ ministry.  He has been teaching in small towns around the Sea of Galilee.  He has been healing and casting out demons.  He has gathered a small group of disciples.  And now he returns to the place where he grew up – to Nazareth.  These are the people who have known him since he was a little boy.  They mob Jesus and his followers to the point where they cannot even eat. 

What happens next is scandalous and has been handled by various bible translations in very different ways.  The New Revised Standard Version, which we read in public worship, says this:  “When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, ‘He has gone out of his mind.’”  The clear sense is the family arrives because of what other people are saying about Jesus.  The King James Version says: “And when his friends heard of it, they went out to lay hold on him: for they said, ‘He is beside himself.’”  Here, the family is not involved at all and what people are saying has been softened from “out of his mind” to “beside himself.  The J.B. Phillips bible says, “People were saying, ‘He must be mad!’” 

Each of these variations highlights how translators have been uncomfortable with this passage.  And they are in good company.  The gospels of Matthew and Luke were written after Mark and both drew on it as a source for their work.  When they tell this story they omit altogether any reference to any person or group thinking Jesus was out of his mind.

The Contemporary English Version of the bible comes closest to translating accurately what the Greek text actually says: “When Jesus’ family heard what he was doing, they thought he was crazy and went to get him under control.”  This is not a picture we often get of Jesus; that at one point early on he was an embarrassment to his mother and his brothers and his sisters.  He was bringing shame on the family and they felt obligated to put a halt to his actions and behavior.

To put the question simplistically, how do you think this made Jesus feel?  Only a few months earlier he rose up from the Jordon River and heard God call him “beloved”.  Now his family is calling him “crazy”.  His own family!  To make matters worse, the religious mafia come down from Jerusalem to sully his reputation.  They call him “demon-possessed.”  All of us as children were taught that sticks and stones may break your bones, but names will never hurt us.  But somewhere along the path of life we learned first hand that long after broken bones have healed a heart injured by a hurtful words retains its pain.  How do you think this made Jesus feel?

In a commentary that looks at the Gospel of Mark through the discipline of Social Science, writers Bruce Malinda and Richard Rohrhaugh examine what a group does to validate itself when an individual goes against grain or moves in a new direction.  One of the tools at the group’s ready is what the authors call “deviance labeling.”  They demonstrate how accusations and negative labeling – if made to stick – seriously undermine a person’s place and role in the community.  Think about what happened to a person in the 1950’s who was labeled a “pinko.”  Today we marginalize individuals, groups, and movements by calling them “extremists.”  Think about all the labels our society can put on a person that will damage a career or one’s place in our society.

The culture of Jesus’ day was no different.  To be labeled “sinner” or “unclean” or “barren” was devastating.  The most serious accusation of all was “sorcery”, of being in league with the devil.  Jesus’ accusers acknowledge that he has cast out demons but challenge the source and motivation of his acts.  Their means of attack is a calculated attempt to shame him publically in order to ostracize him from the community.  It has the potential of doing irreparable damage not only to Jesus’ young ministry, but also to him as a human being.

If you have ever been the recipient of a deviance label then you know just how hurtful it can be.  You know what it feels like and you know how that label binds others together through the common connection of being against you.

So these two attacks – one from family and the other from the religious establishment – are very serious challenges to Jesus.  He rather easily dismisses the charge made by the religious leaders – “How can a kingdom stand if it is divided against itself”.  It is the kind of bettering we will see from him time and again as those who pose theological objections find themselves answered and outwitted. 

But what will he do with his family?  How will he defend himself against the deviance label that he has gone mad?  For Jesus, he uses what must have touched him very deeply as a teaching moment.  He turns it around and puts a new label on every person who is willing to listen to him and to follow him.  He labels them as “family”.  Family, for Jesus, is not just flesh and blood.  It is a gathering of all people who respond to God’s call in thought, word, and deed. 

It is something we experience here at St. Paul’s.  It doesn’t matter who you are, where you are from, or how long you have been here, all of us who are seeking God in and through this place are kindred souls.  When you respond to the invitation…

“Come, 

because is it is the Risen Christ who invites you.

It is the Risen Christ who seeks to meet you here.”

…you become family with every other person who responds with you.

“If you do the will of God you are my mother, my brothers, my sisters, my family.”  What an incredibly powerful, incredibly gracious, incredibly healing label.  In the face of ugliness and attack, Jesus issues an invitation to new life. 

I wonder how deeply we understand what this means.  The poet Wendell Berry has written several novels loosely based on the people of his small home town in Kentucky.  Burley Coulter is one of his recurring characters and in the book What are People for? he makes this statement:

“The way we are, we are members of each other.  All of us.  Everything.  The difference ain’t who is a member and who is not, but who knows it and who don’t.”

Through the rather curious episode early in Jesus’ ministry that we learn about today, we hear Jesus inviting us to make a transformation from attack to embrace; from being threatened to being accepting; from making distinctions based on differences to being kindred souls knit together in a new family of belonging.  This transformation is a sure and certain sign that God’s kingdom is present in our midst.  It is not about who is in and who is not.  It is about who knows it and who don’t.

Tina Fey & The Holy Trinity

Chances are good the prayer book in your pew has never – and I mean EVER – been opened to page #864.  If you pick it up right now, open to that page, and listen very closely you will hear the sound of the binding breaking in a brand new place.  What you will find on the page – printed in very small type – is an ancient 6^th century document known as the Athanasian Creed.  Written to combat one heresy or another, it is the first Christian creed to state explicitly the equality of the Three Persons of the Trinity.  Here is some of what it says:

The catholic faith is this: That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity;

Neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance.

For there is one person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Spirit. 

But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit is all one, the glory equal, the majesty coeternal. 

Such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy Spirit. 

The Father uncreated, the Son uncreated, and the Holy Spirit uncreated. 

The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the Holy Spirit incomprehensible. 

The Father eternal, the Son eternal, and the Holy Spirit eternal. 

And yet they are not three eternals but one eternal. 

As also there are not three uncreated nor three incomprehensible, but one uncreated and one incomprehensible. 

Perhaps you will find yourself in agreement with the English writer Dorothy Sayers who said of this creed, “The whole darn thing is incomprehensible.” 

Today is Trinity Sunday – the one day during the church year when the preacher is charged with the task of confounding the congregation with an esoteric presentation of a doctrine beyond comprehension.  Or not!  Today I choose not to describe who God is, but to ponder how God works; how God interacts with all that God has made, especially with us curious and (at times) contemptuous human beings.

I grew up in a tradition that held to one degree or another God predestines all things.  That word is used in the bible several times and Scripture is clear that the end God chooses will come to pass.  How else can this be true, some reason, if God does not control – or preordain – all that happens?  For some time now I have rejected such thinking in favor of free will – the notion that we can and do make free choices all of the time.  But how can God’s end be assured if there is no guarantee you or I will play our parts? 

For years I have resolved this dilemma with the analogy of a chess match.  If you sit me down opposite a grand master and give me the first move, clearly I am free to move whichever piece I choose.  The grand master will respond.  I am free to make whatever second move I want.  We don’t know exactly how the game will play out, but one thing is sure… the grand master is going to win. 

God, in relating to us, is like the grand chess master.  We are free to move as we will, but God will counter and in the end the outcome is certain.  I am now beginning to ponder if this is the right analogy.  It still seems a little too mechanical; too cold and calculated; a pointless exercise.  It lacks playfulness and finesse.  It doesn’t mirror how I experience life. 

Recently I came across another analogy that has opened up new possibilities.  It is put forward by the comedian Tina Fey who, in her book Bossypants, articulates four basic rules of improvisational acting – the art form where two or more actors play out a scene with no predetermined script or plot.

According to Fey the first rule of improv is “Agree.  Always agree and say yes.”  You are required to agree with whatever your partner is saying.  For example, if your partner says, “Freeze, I have a gun,” do not respond, “That is not a gun.  You are pointing your finger at me.”  A better response, she says, would be, “The gun I brought you for Christmas!  How dare you!”  Rule #1: Agree.  Respect what your partner has created.  Be open-minded.  Say yes and see where it will take you.  

Fey’s second rule is “don’t only say yes, but yes, and.”  Don’t just agree, contribute.  If your partner starts a scene by saying “I can’t believe how hot it is here,” and you respond by saying, “Yeah” there is nowhere to go.  But if you say, “What did you expect?  After all, we are in hell!” the scene is off and running.  Yes, and requires the actor or actress not to be afraid to add something to the discussion.  It requires them to believe their initiatives are valuable.

The third rule is “make statements”.  If you continually ask questions – Who are you?  Why are we here?  What is in the box? – you put all the pressure on your partner to come up with answers.  Fey suggests instead of asking “Where are we?”, you make a statement like, “Here we are in Spain, Dracula.”

Which may not sound all that great, but it leads to Fey’s fourth rule of improv: “there are no mistakes”, only opportunities.  Fey says that if she starts out a scene trying to be a police officer riding a bicycle, but her partner thinks she is a hamster in a hamster wheel, she becomes a hamster in a hamster wheel.  In improv, she says, there are no mistakes, only beautifully happy accidents.

Is it possible that God relates to us in a way similar to how improv actors engage one another: “yes”, “yes and”,  “statement”,  and “there are no mistakes, only opportunities”?

Think about the story of Jonah.  Doesn’t it read like an improv scene?  God starts the scene by telling Jonah to go to Nineveh and proclaim God’s judgment on the city.  Jonah’s “yes”, and is actually a move to get on a boat and sail away in the opposite direction.  God brings about a storm and the vessel is in peril.  The ship’s crew and passengers enter the scene.  What will they do?  They toss Jonah overboard.  This might seem like a mistake, but God uses it as an opportunity.  God sends a whale to swallow Jonah.  Now that is a statement!  Three days later the whale vomits Jonah on to shore and he proceeds to Ninevah.  Once there, Jonah makes the statement God told him to make: repent or be destroyed.  The people of the corrupt city provide a surprising “yes, and”, and actually repent.  The story ends in a fascinating place with Jonah sulking because the city is not destroyed and God defending God’s right to forgive. 

It is a story that feels wide open.  It could go in any number of different directions.  God, far from controlling everything in a predetermined fashion, participates in a dynamic give-and-take with each of the partners in the scene.  It is as if God is truly curious to see where all of it will go.

Let’s look at today’s first reading from the Old Testament book of Isaiah.  The scene is set very quickly.  The text tells us it takes place “in the year that King Uzziah died”, creating a milieu similar to how we might react to the opening “In the months following 9/11…”  Isaiah makes his opening statement: “I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty.”  God makes the opening “yes” by appearing to Isaiah in radiance and splendor.  Heavenly beings add the “yes, and” with their worship and words of praise.  Isaiah’s first statement in the scene is a good one: “Woe is me!  I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts.”

How will God respond?  If God says, “What was I thinking?  Of course you are completely unworthy of me,” the scene will come to a screeching halt. 

There are plenty of other rules to improvisation Tina Fey doesn’t touch on.  One of them is this: if you see your partner in trouble, rescue him.  Don’t let him suffer.  Come to his aid.  A seraph comes to Isaiah’s aid.  It flies over to the altar and picks up a hot coal using a pair of tongs.  This is an interesting act in and of itself, but what happens next is improvisational genius.  The seraph touches the coal to Isaiah’s mouth and makes a statement.  Consider the possibilities: “Keep your mouth shut in the presence of the Lord God,” or “Burn for your unclean words,” or “Human words pale in comparison to the ‘Holy, Holy, Holy’ of heavenly creatures.”  Again, every one of these derails the scene.  What the seraph says is a classic “yes, and”: “Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.”

God pushes the scene forward by asking, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?”  A likely answer would have been a seraph.  They are impressive and know how to get the job done.  But the scene draws to a close with a surprising twist.  Isaiah has the final “yes, and”: “Here I am; send me!”

This is much how I experience God in my own life and particularly in and through the ministry of this church.  God engages us more and more as we are willing to engage God.  Every development leads to new possibilities.  The church feels alive when we view every new thing as an opportunity even as we treasure all that has stood the test of time.  We are not cogs in some mechanistic game preset and determined by God.  Rather, we are active participants whose contributions either further the cause or end the discussion.  We either advance the work of the kingdom in our own interesting ways or we put it on hold by disengaging from the improvisation God has started. 

On this day that we celebrate the incomprehensible Trinity let me put forward a simple question: What will you add to the scene?

Come, Holy Spirit, Come!

Perhaps you saw the recent headlines about religion in America emanating from a new Pew Research Center survey.  Following up on a 2007 study, the center surveyed more than 35,000 people.  They discovered that in seven years the percentage of folks who describe themselves as Christian fell from 78% to 70%.  Those who identified as religiously unaffiliated grew from 16% to 23%.  Non-Christian faiths also grew from 4.7% to 5.9%.  While Christianity is still the dominant religion in the United States, its appeal is in decline. 

I attend conferences, read books, and follow posts that try to explain what is going on.  At one end of the spectrum is the thought that America is in the midst of a sweeping sociological change.  More and more, people identify less and less with institutions of all kinds – including churches.  At the other end of the spectrum are those who point to how the church has lost touch with people.  Its programs and presentation do not connect with how and where people live their lives.  Between these two poles – blame it on society and blame it on the church – lies a whole host of other explanations.

Still, there are places where Christianity is finding fresh expression.  One such occurance is in Durham, NC where Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove and his wife Leah have founded Rutba House.  Named after an Iraqi town where members of their Christian peacemaker team were given medical care in a hospital three days after it had been bombed by U.S. forces, Rutba House is a community of people who live out monastic traditions in a contemporary setting.  They welcome homeless people to eat, pray, and share life together.  They work with neighborhood children and reach out to those in prison.

Jonathan is an author and sought after speaker.  He is often interviewed about his work and questioned about religious movements in our country that are transforming the face of Christianity.  Listen to his account of one such interview:

Not long ago I was talking with a journalist about religious movements and my hope for the future of faith in North America.  “You know,” I said, “the movement that grabs my attention is really pretty small – a dozen or so folks at its core, most of them not spectacular.  Only one of them is published.  A few of them used to have good reason to kill one another.  But somehow they’ve stayed together.  And this new life they’ve found with one another is so important to them that they are, to a person, willing to die for it.

A good reporter, ever eager for a good lead, this fellow asked where he could learn more about this movement.  “Oh, it’s well known,” I said.  “The best-selling book of all times has four accounts of its origins – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.”

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove points to something we should never forget and on this Day of Pentecost should celebrate – the amazing transformation that came about in the lives of Jesus’ early followers.  The four gospels, and especially the Gospel of Mark which we are reading throughout this year of the Lectionary cycle, portray the disciples as clueless while Jesus is with them.  There are times he gets so exasperated with them that you can feel his frustration wafting off the pages of the bible.  Then, in his hour of greatest need, they abandon him, deny him, and flee in terror from his side.  The gospels give not even a hint of what we find in the Book of Acts and there is absolutely no reason to believe the disciples will ever become a force that will change the world.

In the fifty days following the Resurrection, there seems to be three distinct movements of God’s Holy Spirit in the lives of the disciples.  The first occurs the evening of the Resurrection when Jesus’ followers are gathered in a room with the doors locked for fear the authorities are looking for them.  The Risen Christ appears in their midst and says, “Peace be with you.”  Then he breathes on them and says, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”  With this imparting, the Spirit brings calm and tranquility – even joy – to a group of people who were out of sorts.  The Spirit’s work establishes a sense that all is well when moments before it felt as if life was spinning out of control.

We read about the second movement last Sunday.  After Jesus ascends into heaven, the disciples realize they need to identify someone to take the place of Judas.  The Spirit quietly leads the group to identify two candidates.  They pray and cast lots.  Matthias is chosen.  The Spirit enables the disciples to behave like, well, Episcopalians – solving problems and approaching opportunities decently and in good order.

Today we read about the third movement of the Holy Spirit.  This time, there is nothing about it that is decent or orderly.  The text says there was a “sound like a violent rush of wind.”  It was not a gentile, summer breeze.  Whatever it was, it was so violent and so loud a large crowd congregates around the house where the disciples are gathered. 

Peter addresses the diverse group and becomes the first person in history to tell the story of the Good News of God in Jesus Christ.  His words are powerful and provocative.  They are insightful and insight.  They expose what the authorities did to Jesus and explain what God did to transform their act into salvation for all.  In this moment a dozen or so folks, most of them not spectacular, a few with good reason to kill one another, find a new life in the Spirit so important to them that, to a person, they are willing to die for it.

You and I, we are now a part of the fourth and on-going movement of the Holy Spirit.  Just what does that look like?

A few years ago I was rummaging around the Guild Room and came across an interesting book titled Meditations and Devotions by François de Fénelon.  Inside the cover it has a plate that tells me it came from the library of James H. Newsom, Jr.  The book’s jacket says Fénelon lived in France from 1651-1715, during the “glittering” and “disastrous” reign of Louis XIV.  Of Fénelon, it says,

His life was wholly devoted to God even while he lived at the notoriously frivolous and licentious Court; and when given the choice of worldly power and popularity or disgrace and banishment, he chose the latter rather than betray his loyalty to God.

Listen to what Fénelon writes about this day, known to him as Whitsunday:

Lord, Thou didst begin to perfect Thine apostles by taking away what seemed essential to them – the actual presence of Thy Son, Jesus Christ.  Thou doest destroy all to establish all.  Everything is taken away that all may be returned a hundredfold.  This is Thy method.  Thou are pleased to overturn human logic.

Has that ever been your experience; that the moments of greatest personal growth come from the times of greatest personal challenge?  Is it the times when you feel most alone that you become acutely aware of how your own personal resources and reserves are absolutely inadequate?  What happens then?  Fénelon continues:

Then, having withdrawn the presence of Christ, Thou didst send Thy Holy Ghost.  It is possible for privation to operate more powerfully than possession.

Learning that our limits are insufficient for what we face has a way of opening the door to what God freely gives us.

Fénelon then describes a second very common experience:

Ah, Lord, where is this spirit that ought to be in my life?  It should be the soul of my soul, but where is it?  I do not feel it.  I cannot discover it.  I am conscious only of physical inertia and spiritual dullness. [And can there be a better description of our age than “physical inertia and spiritual dullness”?]  My weak will is divided between Thee and a thousand pointless pleasures.  Where is Thy Spirit?

He concludes with a prayer and plea: “Come, Holy Ghost, Thou canst find nothing more barren and stricken than my heart.  Come and bring it peace.”  Have you ever prayed a prayer like this?

Fénelon goes on to describe two things that happen to us when God’s Spirit moves in us:

The Holy Spirit fills the soul with light.  Those truths taught be Christ while He was on earth are implanted in the depths of our being…  We are made one with Truth; no longer is it something outside ourselves.

These words resonate with my own experience.  I sense God’s Truth deep within my soul, not that I always heed it, but I know it is there.  I experience God’s will for me as a light, rather than darkness, as clarity rather than confusion.  Do you sense this for yourself?

The second thing the Spirit does in us is this:

The Spirit of Love teaches the soul without words; without sound or sign everything is illuminated.  Nothing is demanded, and yet the soul is trained in silence for any sacrifice.  After experiencing Holy Love we are dissatisfied with any other and we learn to distrust and forget ourselves.  What utter joy is ours then without ever having sought it!  Love becomes the fountain of life flowing through our hearts.

If you were to ask me if I feel the presence of God’s Spirit in my life, I would nod and say yes.  If you were to ask me to tell you about it, I would struggle.  It is a Light which happens most often without words to accompany it.  But it changes me.  It changes what I desire and what I seek.  And it creates in me a fountain of joy and love for which I cannot account.

It is the same dynamic that transformed the disciples.  It is the same dynamic being expressed, albeit in very different, distinctive, and dynamic ways at Rutba House.  It is the same dynamic I see and sense at work in so many of you.  And while the Pew Center’s findings are certainly sobering and somewhat discouraging, our prayer is this: “Come, Holy Spirit, come.”