A Tabernacle of Guppies in a Fishbowl

Akron, OH is blessed with a wonderful array of metropolitan parks and as a boy I loved the opportunity to visit them and hike their rugged trails.  My favorite park, far and away, is called Hampton Hills, which encompasses land above the Cuyahoga River valley and the hillside terrain, which falls down to the river’s level.  The five-mile hiking trail forms one big loop.  The first section follows a meandering stream, which it crisscrosses several times using wooden log bridges that would make Indiana Jones squeamish.  From here, the path makes its way up a steep ravine and across a lush meadow before following a circuitous route back to the parking lot. 

On summer afternoons my mother drove me, a friend, and our Irish Setter to Hampton Hills and we never came back half as clean and dry as when we went – especially the dog!  I was fascinated by the park, and still am.  Tree trunks fallen across ravines waited like a tightrope to be walked.  Steep banks of dirt carved out by flash floods begged to be scaled.  A variety of critters scurrying about longed not to be spotted.

But it was the stream I loved the most.  It was alive.  It’s gentle current carried a small twig from here to there and as I watched I imagined myself small and piloting it as my vessel.  Water spiders darted about.  Guppies swam to and fro.  There was a turtle or tadpole or frog every few steps.   And all of it worked to make Hampton Hills a magical place for me when I was growing up.

One day I had a thought, the kind of thought only an eight-year-old boy can imagine: Why not bring a part of Hampton Hills home with me.  I begged my mother to let me capture some guppies and, after much badgering, she gave in.  Little Keith, armed with an empty coffee can and all the skill of a deep-sea fisherman, splashed and thrashed up and down the stream and managed to catch (as I recall it) four guppies! 

I remember the ride home holding on my lap a precious tin can filled with all the wonder of Hampton Hills.  When we got home I emptied its contents into a goldfish bowl and watched my tiny friends swim back and forth in their new home.  I remember realizing just how dirty stream water is.  I reasoned, as only a child with no knowledge of environmental impact studies can reason, the fish would be much happier swimming in some nice clean water from our kitchen faucet.  To this day I don’t know which got to the guppies first; either the fluoride treated water or the boring environment of the glass bowl, but my fish survived only a day or two.  Even if they had lived, I realized my guppies swimming in grungy water paled to the thrill of going to the stream itself. 

There may be nothing more human than attempting to capture something wonderful and mysterious, but it the process only creating something describable, manageable, and certain.

I think about my experience of Hampton Hills whenever I read the story of the Transfiguration.  Jesus takes three of his disciples up a mountain to pray.  At some point, he is transfigured before their eyes and the disciples observe him in his undimmed, heavenly glory.  Suddenly two figures from long, long ago stand with Jesus: Moses (the giver of the law) and Elijah (the founder of the prophetic movement).  One of Webster’s definitions of ‘mystery’ is “something incomprehensible and awe-inspiring.”  The Transfiguration is true mystery in this sense.  It is completely different from anything else in experience.  It is wonderful and glorious.  It is beyond words. 

In his classic 1917 book The Idea of the Holy, Rudolph Otto analyzes various accounts of people’s deep experience of God in order to discern some common threads.  He discovers no matter who the person and no matter what the experience, every encounter with God is marked by “tremendous and fascinating mystery.”  It is an experience of a Reality that is “wholly other”, beyond human fabrication, conceptual control, and measurability.  The experience evokes in the person utter astonishment and fear; not fear as in terror, but rather fear as compelling reverence.  Otto calls it Holy Awe.  People who experience this Reality sense how finite they are in the presence of God’s majesty.  It is not unusual for a person simultaneously to be repelled from God while at the same time being drawn close, entranced and captivated by the mystery.  This, according to Otto, is how people react to an encounter with God.

Robert Frost said all religions start with a lump in the throat – a burning bush or a descending dove, an encounter with mystery.  Frederick Buechner writes “through some moment of beauty or pain, some sudden turning of their lives, most people have caught glimmers at least of what the saints are blinded by.”  I have not had a blinding experience of God’s glory, as the saints and subjects of Otto’s research have, but I have had moments where I have caught a glimmer of it.  I imagine the same is true for most of us here this morning.   Buechner says, “we are all more mystics than we choose to let on, even to ourselves.” 

At the Transfiguration, Peter is the first to speak in the presence of mystery.  “It is good for us to be here,” he says.  “If you wish, we can make three booths to capture this momentous occasion.”  Now a booth is a kind of tabernacle or shrine and Peter suggests the wonder, the glory, and the mystery of what he perceives can be contained so it can be preserved. 

Well, nothing can contain the glory of God, but this will not stop us from trying.  How many people in organized religion hold their particular angle on the Mystery is more important than the Mystery itself?  In reality, every system of ethics, every institution, every dogma, every ritual, every scripture, and every program of social action can become little more than a fishbowl of guppies if a person tries to say it is the Mystery and treats it as such.

I knew my fishbowl was not the stream and I would never attempt to convince anyone it was.  For me, its value rested in the way it pointed back to its source.  A person who has never been to Hampton Hills could never look at my fishbowl and sense the wonder of its origin.  You have to experience the stream for yourself in order to appreciate the dim glimmer of glory in the bowl.  You cannot force tabernacles on a person and expect miracles.  Each of us has to experience God’s mystery for ourselves.

To those of us who would try to erect a tabernacle to the Mystery, the cloud comes to overshadow us, as it did Peter.  God’s voice is heard, “This is my son.  Listen to him.”  And as they leave the mountain Jesus says to Peter, “Don’t tell anyone about what you have seen until after I have been raised from the dead.”  In other words, don’t try to speak of the mystery of God.  You can’t.  Live with it for a while.  Hasty words will not capture it anymore than erecting a booth.

Peter never did get to build his tabernacle.  Just as well.  After all of his ups and downs something more wonderful happens.  He himself becomes a tabernacle to God.  It comes as a result of living with Christ and following Christ.  Meister Eckhart, a medieval German mystic, describes it this way:

The bodily food we take in is changed into us, but the spiritual food we receive changes us into itself; therefore divine love is not taken into us… but divine love takes us into itself, and we are made one with it.

My prayer for each of us is that as God takes us into God’s mystery we will not attempt to make the Mystery one with us, but rather we will allow ourselves to become one with it.  I pray that your life will become a tabernacle of God’s love always pointing others back to its source.

Treasuring Things New and Old

Jesus said, “Every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the homeowner who treasures what is new and what is old.”

What is your first memory of learning something?  Obviously you learned a lot from a very young age, but what is your earliest memory of a learning?  Mrs. Griffin was our elderly neighbor.  I remember sitting in her kitchen when I was four years old as she laid out a handful of toothpicks on the table and showed me how to arrange them to spell my name.  I can still visualize the moment my name became more than a sound, it became an image.

My kindergarten “Report of Progress” card states “the fundamental purpose of kindergarten is to help the child make the adjustment from home to school and to lay the foundation for future formal education.”  As such, it chronicled how I was doing in such categories as takes part in group work, conversation and play, shows helpfulness toward others, behaves courteously, respects property rights, listens, relaxes at rest time (a skill I have mastered!), thinks, chooses and works independently, works up to ability, uses materials creatively (paint, wood, clay, etc.), follows directions, controls self, is cheerful, is self-confident, observes safety rules, and responds to and participates in musical activities (the first half of the year my mark in this area was “is improving”, which is better than “seldom”, but in the second half I am proud to say I improved to “usually” – the highest mark possible).     

I am sure you are familiar with Robert Fulghum’s “All I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.”  Reviewing my report card I see again the truth of his insight.  Those early lessons form the core of who I am.  They are the oldest part of me and I carry them forward with me to this very moment.  How I live in to them continues to evolve.  These old truths become new every day.

I grew up in an age when children went to Sunday School every Sunday.  Classrooms had a poster where each of our names was written and we got a checkmark on it for the particular week we were present.  At the end of the year students who never missed a Sunday were given a certificate for perfect attendance.  More received one than did not.  Can you imagine!  I don’t remember a single lesson from back in the day, but we had a weekly memory verse and glued cotton balls to popsicle sticks in a way that was supposed to look like sheep.  While I don’t have a particular recollection of a specific learning, these Sunday experiences also form the core of who I am.  They instilled in me old truths that I make new every day as I seek to live them in our changing world.

Jesus calls us “scribes of the kingdom of heaven.”  Scribes were teachers of the law.  They first appear after the return from exile to Babylon.  The Temple has been destroyed and the walls around Jerusalem are in ruins.  The nation needs rebuilding.  During this work someone unearths the scrolls of the bible.  Several generations have passed since they were last read or taught.  Everyone gathers to listen and soon learns the infrastructure is not the only thing needing attention.  God’s people must learn God’s law and then learn how to live it.  Scribes become the teachers and while they did not issue Reports of Progress, they were tasked with helping God’s people make the adjustment from life before knowing the law to a life of living the law. 

By Jesus’ day, some 400 years after this beginning, the role of the scribe has morphed from teaching the law to enforcing a legalistic interpretation of it.  Imagine if someone took all those kindergarten categories and wrote out in exacting, specific detail how to fulfill each one.  Well, with four centuries of accrued applications, this is what the scribes require of the people.  How awful are the results?  Well, Jesus runs afoul of the scribes when he heals a person on the Sabbath, a day on which the scribal law says you can do no work.

For Jesus, scribes of the kingdom of heaven are grounded in what is old.  God’s law reigns supreme in our lives.  But this law is not to be understood through the prism of 400 years of legal tradition.  It is to be seen through the prism of Jesus himself.  When the light of the law shines through the prism of Jesus’ words and deeds a new and glorious sight is seen: the kingdom of heaven. 

Ours is a dynamic tradition where God’s will is continually discerned by being steeped in what is old and engaging in what is new.  For whatever reason, we Episcopalians seem more willing to embrace this notion than most other Christian denominations.  We are not afraid of what is new.  In fact, we are willing to consider how what is new may in fact be a better expression of what is old than our previous understanding.

Forty-three years ago yesterday, 11 women stood before an Episcopal bishop at a church in Philadelphia and took the vows for ordination to the priesthood.  They became known as the “Philadelphia 11” whose ordination was tagged as being “irregular.”  It would take another three years before the church decided women could be ordained “regularly” and while the ecclesiastical process was messy, it illustrates one way our church lives into Jesus’ image of being a scribe of things new and things old.

The theologian Karl Barth famously told preachers to hold the bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other.  One of the most popular classes at my seminary was called “The Bible and The New York Times.”  The assignment was simple.  Every day each student was required to read the assigned bible passages from the Daily Office and every day each student was required to read The New York Times.  Class time consisted of a lively discussion of where the two intersected and/or clashed.  It is another wonderful image of what it means to treasure things old and things new.

David Gushee is a columnist for the Religious News Service.  In an article titled “My visit to the land of teenagers”, he writes about his recent experience taking a group of young people on a week long retreat.  The last time he had “attempted” youth ministry like this was 1986 when Ronald Reagan was in office.  Much has changed since then. 

He noted most of the participants were born after 9/11 and have no memory of it.  Rather than having a consciousness shaped by historical events, Gushee observed how these teens are shaped by “an encyclopedic knowledge of contemporary music and online reality.”  Even though these teenagers grew up in a church (and in the south), they have very little familiarity with the bible.  Gushee realized quickly that “bible” is no longer a language spoken at home or in the world of our children.  He had to start with the very basics: how the bible is organized and how the system of book, chapter, and verse works.  To their credit, Gushee notes the young people are eager to master what he is teaching them.

Also hopeful is how today’s youth are asking the very questions asked in the bible: why is there suffering in the world, what makes life meaningful, what does social justice look like, is there a right and healthy way for me to embrace my sexuality, do I matter?  We are scribes of things old and things new in this critical conversation.

Take a look at the world around us and if you don’t like the way it looks, then you realize we have not yet achieved fully what God’s dream looks like when understood through Jesus.  Our world needs “improving.”  More than ever it needs scribes who can master what is old and apply it to what is new – not in a reactive way stating what we need to do is return to the values of old (and here, what is meant, is the way the values of old were manifested), but in a way which engages the new with the old. 

God’s dream for the world as expressed through the life of Jesus continues to emerge.  We had not grasped it fully prior to 1974 when women were not permitted to be ordained in the Episcopal Church.  We are so much richer now.  But we are not there yet.  “Is improving” is not the same thing as “Usually.”  We scribes of the new and the old have our work cut out for us.  Thanks be to God for the promise God’s Spirit will always be with us to guide us.

The Grace of Doing Nothing

The Japanese army invaded Manchuria in September 1931, an event exposing the weakness of the League of Nations, giving license to Hitler’s European ambitions.  Richard Niebuhr, a professor at Yale Divinity School and one of the 20^th Century’s leading theologians and ethicists, addressed the crisis in an article published in 1933.  Titled “The Grace of Doing Nothing”, Niebuhr based his argument on the biblical reading we heard just moments ago.  He held to a stance that doing nothing is not the same as not doing anything.  Patient faith, he said, is required when the unintended consequences of doing something (or doing anything) in the face of evil can destroy the very thing one is trying to protect.

Not so, responded Richard’s older brother Reinhold Niebuhr, a professor at Union Theological Seminary who was also a leading theologian and ethicist at the time.  He responded to his brother in a published article titled “Must We Do Nothing?”  While applauding much of his brother’s thinking, Reinhold argues against an ethic guided only by Jesus’ teaching “let the person who has not sinned cast the first stone.”  If this is all that instructs us, Reinhold held, no one would ever be able to respond to an evil act.

If today’s parable of the Wheat and the Weeds was the only teaching in the bible on how to respond to evil, we would have a real problem on our hands.  Standing alone, let the weeds grow with the wheat and Jesus will take care of it at the harvest time translates to such things as you should never correct your child’s inappropriate behavior, never act against gender-based violence at home or abroad, and let the president bully whoever he wants however he wants whenever he wants.  Thank God it is not the only teaching in the bible on how to respond to evil.

But thank God as well it is a teaching in the bible.  Otherwise every church would be a place where every sin in every person is sniffed out and brought to light.  Otherwise our nation would be locked into a reactive relationship with every country in the world – if you do evil X, we must always retaliate with response Y.  Otherwise we would live a tortured existence trying to purge our own soul of even the tiniest manifestation of sin.  There is a time to be patient.  There is a time when there is grace in doing nothing.

The humorist Dave Barry writes “Crabgrass can grow on bowling balls in airless rooms, and there is no known way to kill it that does not involve nuclear weapons.”  Jesus chose well when he associated evil with the image of the weed.  Like weeds, evil is not going away any time soon.  But I like what a character named Dietrich says in Eifelheim, Michael Flynn’s awarding winning science fiction novel:  

Jesus said the weeds would grow with the wheat until the Judgment so one finds both good people and bad in the Church.  By our fruits we will be known, not by what name we have called ourselves.  I have come to believe that there is more grace in becoming wheat than there is in pulling weeds. 

There is more grace in becoming wheat than there is in pulling weeds.  This, I believe, is the simple genius of today’s parable.  Every farmer’s field in Suffolk has weeds in it, but do you know what, the crops outgrow them.  What is good is stronger than what is not.  Focus on the good and it will thrive.

Focus on the evil and something dark is likely to occur.  Richard Darré was an influential ideologist in the Nazi party and eventually became Minister of Agriculture.  He argued Germany should envision itself as being a garden as opposed to a wild forest.  The gardening image suggested the nation needed tending.  If left on its own a garden will be overrun with weeds, changing the very nature of the plants intended to grow there.  A gardener, he said, must “ruthlessly eliminate” all weeds so they will not deprive the better plants of nutrition, air, light, and water.  The image fit perfectly with Darré’s belief of ethnic purity and it gave rise to Germany’s efforts in eugenics as well as its campaign to euthanize undesirables. 

I liked much about George W. Bush’s presidency, but I became deeply concerned after 9/11 when he stated our country’s intention was to “rid the world of evil.”  That, I thought, was an ambitious goal, given not even God’s own Son could do it.  I can make the case from Scripture we were justified in going after Osama Ben Laden and those responsible for killing thousands of innocent people by attacking our country.  But what if, after accomplishing this, we had allowed today’s parable to set our policy?  What if, rather than focusing on the weeds, we had looked more to the wheat by nurturing our relationships in the Arab world and creating deeper bonds with Islam?  Hindsight and $4.95 will get you a cup of coffee at Starbucks, but if we had taken this course I think it very possible our world would be in a better place than it is right now.

The Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds gives us a valuable tool to carry in our spiritual toolbox.  The grace in doing nothing should always be considered an option, but it is not always the right tool.  Here is a true story about another church in another denomination in a different town.  It has been led for the past year and a half by an interim minister who, because the previous pastor had been there for some time, is tasked with asking a lot of questions, challenging the way things are being done, and (in general) shaking up things that need to be shaken up.  As you can imagine, this does not sit well with some.  Well, a few Sunday’s ago the interim minister stood before the congregation and announced he would be leaving to accept a new call.  One of his detractors responded with mock applause.  Now this is a situation where there is no grace in doing nothing.  This is a weed that needs to be pulled because silence means approval.  Someone needed to turn to the person and say, “Bill, that is not appropriate.”

I have too many beds in my yard.  The weeding is endless.  But as time goes on what I have planted continues to grow and expand.  As it grows it gives less and less space for weeds to flourish.  If I do nothing the weeds will take over, but with each year that passes, I have less weeding to do.   There is more grace in becoming wheat than there is in pulling weeds.  What is true in the garden is true in the spiritual life as well.  Through today’s parable Jesus invites us to see and accept the humanity in every person we know and in every person we meet.  Each of us has our faults, but, as I said a few weeks ago, each person is beautiful as well.  What is beautiful about each person outshines by far what is not.  Focus on the beauty and watch it begin to thrive and flourish and blossom.

You Can't Plant Seeds with a Closed Fist

There is an old saying that holds you can’t plant seeds with a closed fist.  Think about it.  If you want to plant a seed you have to open your hand and be willing to let it go.

This morning we hear again one of Jesus’ best-known stories – the Parable of the Sower and the Seed.  The focus of the story is neither the sower nor the seed, but rather the ground on which the seed falls.  For centuries farmers in England, when scattering seed, have subscribed to an ancient proverb:

One for the rock, one for the crow,
One to die, and one to grow.

Jesus tells his story to explain why his teachings don’t always take root in a person’s life.  Some people are shallow.  Some are consumed with worldly concerns.  Some are attacked by the evil one.  And some people are like rich, fertile soil.  The seeds Jesus sows landing on these folks become a bountiful harvest in their lives.  Some sermons (including ones I have preached) encourage us to examine our own life to discern where each of the four conditions exists within us.  As Jesus tells the story the focus is on the ground and we are the ground.

This morning I want to help us enter the story from a different perspective.  I want us to think about the person who opened his or her fist to plant a seed.  Why do sowers sow? 

Why did Jesus sow?  Because he wanted to share the Good News of God’s love for all people and the coming of God’s kingdom here and now.  He sowed this seed through the words he spoke and he sowed them through the deeds he did – healing the sick, lifting up the broken hearted, reaching out to the outcast, forgiving the sinner, challenging the proud and mighty, giving his life in service to others – even to death on the Cross.  The seeds he sowed changed the world.

And they continue to change the world as new sowers cast Jesus’ seeds about through their own words and through how they live their lives.  While we are the ground in Jesus’ parable, at some point we also become the sower.  So let’s spend some time reflecting on what it means to be a sower.

The first thing to consider is what kind of seeds you are sowing in life.  Oscar Wilde wrote about agitators who sowed the seeds of discontent.  Racism does not simply develop out of thin air.  It is a seed that must be sown.  The same is true for issues involving gender relations and concerns about orientation.  Our response to each comes from seeds sown in us over a long period of time.  Indifference is a seed.  We Christians dream of a field where the seeds of kindness, forgiveness, generosity, compassion, respect, and equality are sown.  Are you aware of the kinds of seeds you are sowing?

Here is another thing to consider.  Sowers of Jesus’ seed are people of deep faith.  Geoff Hamilton, once the host of the BBC show Gardener’s World, says “seedsmen reckon that their stock in trade is not seeds at all... it’s optimism.”  Seeds take a long time to germinate.  You will not see the results of your sowing for some time.  You have to believe what you do now will make a difference down the road.  This faith is essential for parenting and grand parenting.  It is an absolute necessity for teachers and Sunday school teachers.  It takes the faith of a sower to hand out a bulletin, to read a lesson, to give a sermon, to offer a prayer, to pass the peace with a stranger, to put something in the offering plate, or to come to the altar rail expecting to encounter the Living Christ through partaking of a wafer and sip of wine.  You won’t always see the result right away.  You must have faith.

Trust is also important.  You must trust in the power of a seed.  Thoreau said, “I have great faith in a seed.  Convince me that you have a seed… and I am prepared to expect wonders.”  Captain Jim, the character of the lighthouse keeper in Lucy Maude Montgomery’s novel Anne’s House of Dreams, says this:

It always amazes me to look at the little, wrinkled brown seeds and think of the rainbows in ‘em…  When I ponder on them seeds I don’t find it nowise hard to believe that we’ve got souls that’ll live in other worlds.  You couldn’t hardly believe there was life in them tiny things, some no bigger than grains of dust, let alone color and scent, if you hadn’t seen the miracle, could you?

If you are a sower you have to trust in the power of the seed to do something well beyond anything you could pull off on your own.  Every time and every way you live out the Gospel’s goodness, you are sowing a seed of incredible potential. 

As a seminarian I was assigned to apprentice at Trinity Church in Manassas.  I remember vividly the first time I received communion there.  Ed Campbell, the rector of the parish, came to me as I knelt at the rail.  He placed the wafer in my hand, touched my wrist as I touch yours, looked me in straight in the eyes, and with warmth on his face said, “Keith, the Body of Christ which is given for you.”  Until that moment, communion had been for me primarily a penitential experience.  It was a time for me to list the litany of sins I had committed over the course of the week and to promise really, really, really to be better in the week to come.  The next Sunday I came back to church with largely the same list of sins as the week before, feeling as guilty as ever. 

That morning in Manassas, Ed planted a seed in me that transformed my experience of communion.  It is now a place where I find God’s unconditional love and sense this love as we manifest it to and for one another in our faith community.  Ed passed away several years ago, but if he was here today I am confident he would have no recollection of that particular Sunday.  Like every other Sunday, Ed simply was being Ed.  He sowed seeds.  You never know where the seeds you sow will land, but you must trust that some will land in fertile ground where the power within them will be unleashed in the life of another.

Here is one final thought about sowers.  You will only have seeds to sow if you do not consume every seed you have.  Folks in our society today tend to spend more than they have and commit to more than they have time to accomplish.  The more overextended you are the less seeds you will have to scatter. 

Adolphus Eley owned a hardware store on West Washington Street where the wine shop currently is located.  He was a long time, faithful member of St. Paul’s who generously supported the work of the parish.  When he died in 1906 he gave the building to the church.  We rented it out for several decades before finally selling it in the 1950s. 

Mr. Eley also left a financial gift to the church, which today is overseen by a small group of our members known as The Trustees of the Funds.  Each year it generates about $5,000 of income and the Trustees are tasked with approving how this resource will be used.  Typically, the Vestry and I ask the Trustees to fund a project or pay for an expense not easily handled by the yearly contributions you all make to our operating budget. 

Do you want to know who paid for all of our expenses related to the celebration of our 375^th Anniversary – the buses for the pilgrimage, the printing of bulletins, mailings, invitations, the Saturday evening gala celebration, the Sunday service and reception?  Adolphus Eley.  The fund he set up 111 years ago covered the entire cost of over $6,800.  What an incredible testimony to the value of saving so you have seeds to sow!

Allow me to close by reading a poem from Walter de la Mare’s collection in Peacock Pie.  While it focuses solely on a woman and her actual garden, it is easy to hear in it the kind of richness we find in life as we give our lives to sowing Gospel seeds.

A poor old Widow in her weeds
Sowed her garden with wild-flower seeds;
Not too shallow, and not too deep,
And down came April -- drip -- drip -- drip.
Up shone May, like gold, and soon
Green as an arbor grew leafy June.
And now all summer she sits and sews
Where willow herb, comfrey, bugloss blows,
Teasle and pansy, meadowsweet,
Campion, toadflax, and rough hawksbit;
Brown bee orchis, and Peals of Bells;
Clover, burnet, and thyme she smells;
Like Oberon’s meadows her garden is
Drowsy from dawn to dusk with bees.
Weeps she never, but sometimes sighs,
And peeps at her garden with bright brown eyes;
And all she has is all she needs --
A poor Old Widow in her weeds.

The old widow illustrates the truth of the gospel paradox that the more you let go, the richer your world becomes.  You can’t plant seeds with a closed fist. 

Criticism

J.R.R. Tolkien told a story about a man who bought a field littered with old stones once part of a great hall.  He used some of the stones to build a house in which he now lived.  The man used the rest of the stones to build a tower.  The neighbors and townsfolk saw the tower and thought the stones should have been carefully inspected for hidden carvings and inscriptions.  A few held there might be a deposit of coal under the soil and complained the tower inhibited their ability to find it.  The man’s own descendants thought the stones should have been used to enlarge the house, which they one day expected to inherit.  All the critics had two things in common.  First, they spoke openly about what they disliked and second, not a single one of them ever climbed the stairs to the top of the tower.  What none of them knew, according to Tolkien, is that from its high vantage point the man could look out upon the sea.

John Osborne, the British actor and playwright, once said, “Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamp-post what it feels about dogs.”  Yes, there are some who can comment to us about something we need to hear and consider.  Their insight and feedback is invaluable, especially when it is offered in love.  Someone once observed “criticism, like rain, should be gentle enough to nourish a person’s growth without destroying his or her roots.”  But there are some who want to clip our wings only because they themselves can’t fly.  Like the people gathered around the tower, they criticize what they don’t or can’t understand. 

In today’s reading from the Gospel of Matthew we learn Jesus is roundly criticized by many of his “generation” – a term hinting at a large and diverse segment of the population, not just an elite ruling class of politicians and religious leaders.  This group complained about John, saying his lifestyle was too austere.  Now they say Jesus eats and drinks too much.  They say he is a glutton and a drunkard.  They also complain about the company he keeps.  His friends are sinners and tax-collectors.

Do you have critics?  Most of us do.  For clergy it is an occupational hazard.  Years ago I interviewed with a church and I forget how it came up, but the folks I was meeting with told me (as if it was some kind of selling point) there were only 2 or 3 people who would pull me aside during the final hymn and recessional to tell me what I did wrong during the service.  “While we are singing,” I asked?  “Yes, only two or three people.”  I don’t who the parish eventually hired, but I say a prayer for that priest every Sunday during our closing hymn.  To be fair, I also know some clergy who are nothing but critical of the churches in which they have served; always spewing forth a litany of the things the congregation does wrong. 

Again, do you have critics?  How do you deal with them?  Do you hold their corrosive words too close to your heart?  Do you deflect every arrow critics shoot, but in the process remain shielded against feedback that might be helpful and necessary?  Do you become reactive and lash back at those who attack you?  Do you shut down and vow never again to expose yourself by acting or caring?  Do you attempt the impossible by trying to please everyone?  Aristotle advised his followers “to avoid criticism say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.”  Short of this, criticism is something each of us must face.  How do you respond to it?

In today’s reading, Jesus does three distinct things in the face of criticism.  First, he sets an objective standard by which he evaluates himself.  “Wisdom,” he says, “is vindicated by her deeds.”  Elsewhere he says, “You will know a tree by the fruit it bears.  Good trees bear good fruit, bad trees do not.  Bad trees cannot bear good fruit.”  So it is, Jesus says, with people.  Good people doing good things in a good way can stand apart from whatever criticism comes their way.  So set you own standard and set it high.  Learn to live with yourself and let go of things said that are unfair or unwarranted.

In his prayer to his Father, Jesus points to a second way he responds to criticism.  He prays, “Father, I thank you that some things are hidden from the wise and intelligent and revealed only to infants.”  Jesus understands not everyone gets it.  Not everyone knows who he is or what he is about.  Not everyone understands who you are and what you are about.  And, not everyone who doesn’t get it is a critic.  Many of us learn how to keep our mouths shut and our minds open.  Critical people are just the opposite.  Their minds are closed, but not their mouths.  Jesus understands there is little he can do to change them.

The third thing Jesus does is to explain who he is and what he is all about to those willing to listen.  He speaks to the sinners and tax-collectors who don’t measure up to society’s standards.  “Come to me,” Jesus says, “all who weary from carrying the burden of heavy expectations placed upon you by others.  Take off their yoke and learn from me.  My yoke,” he says, “is easy and my burden is light.”  Jesus is not the only person of his generation who bears the weight and burden of criticism.  He invites people to join him in a life lived for God by having respect for the dignity of others. 

Teddy Roosevelt famously said this:

It is not the critic who counts; not the person who points out how the strong one stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.   The credit belongs to the person who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly.  So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

I think Jesus would embrace this as part of his yoke.  I think he encourages us to do all we can with our God-given abilities and passions.  There will always be those who don’t understand who we are and what we are all about.  Nothing is stopping us from inviting them to climb our tower so they too can look out over the sea.  If they decline, well, it is there loss.

Nurturing Families

The late Les Dawson, a British comedian with a deadpan style and curmudgeonly persona, once observed wryly, “Families are like fudge.  They are mostly sweet with a few nuts.”  Knowing a little bit about each of your families and knowing a lot about my own family, I think Dawson’s statement is pretty accurate. 

Not only do families have nuts, they also have “incidents”; moments and events that shape memories for generations.  These stories tend to move in one of two directions.  Either they are hero stories or they are cautionary tales.  The first kind inspires the best in the descendants.  The second explains a family’s bitterness and brokenness that might never be healed.

This morning we read one of the most dramatic and puzzling stories in all of scripture.  It is an account of the darkest day in the life of a particular family, who had more than their share of bad days.  The story begins with three words: “God tested Abraham.”  And with this the puzzle begins.  Why would God test Abraham in such an awful way?  Does God test us?  If so, how? 

One thing becomes apparent after the conclusion of the story: Abraham’s wife, Sarah, and his son, Isaac, do not believe God is behind the testing.  They lay responsibility for the near human sacrifice squarely on Abraham’s shoulders.  Sarah will have nothing to do with her husband from this moment forward.  Never again will Isaac speak to his father.  Families, it seems to me, are incredibly resilient.  They can endure many hurts and hardships and remain intact, but Abraham’s family never overcomes this moment.

Rick Riordan, the best-selling writer of teen fiction, notes “Families are messy.  Immortal families are eternally messy.  Sometimes the best we can do is to remind each other that we’re related for better or for worse… and try to keep the maiming and killing to a minimum.”  Well, Abraham, Isaac, and Sarah manage not to hurt each other physically, but they deeply wound one another in other ways.

How many nights did Abraham lie down to sleep under the stars pondering God’s promise his descendants would be more numerous than the lights of the nighttime sky?  For years and years he yearns for an heir – someone to inherit his possessions and to carry on his name.  Does he ever long for anything more than an heir?  Does the loss of his family even matter to him?  It is possible it does not, but it would matter to each one of us.

Frederick Buechner, the Presbyterian minister and author, observes, “You can kiss your family… good-bye and put miles between you, but at the same time you carry them with you in your heart, your mind, your stomach, because you do not just live in a world but a world lives in you.”  Many things may change over the course of our lives, but for most of us we begin life with family and we end life with family. 

Someone once noted there are nine words essential to the life of every family:

   I love you. 

   You are beautiful. 
   Please forgive me.

Families instill in us a feeling of belonging, a sense of worth, and a belief our mistakes do not define us.  I love you.  You are beautiful.  Please forgive me.  I wonder if these words were ever spoken by Abraham, Sarah, or Isaac.

As you may know, I returned to Suffolk earlier this week after spending 10 days with family in Ohio, four of those days on the road in New York state with my sisters to meet distant relatives we had never met before.  While we enjoyed our time with each of our relatives individually, what we found were broken families, people who haven’t seen each other in decades, and folks who live and work within a few blocks of one another having no idea they are related.  My sisters and I talked about our own family and recognized our grandchildren will not know each other either if we do not put energy into bringing us all together for an annual gathering.  Families are worth the effort it takes to nurture them.

We who gather for worship in this place recognize in addition to our family related through blood, we are also a part of a family related through water – the water of baptism.  In this family we also say,

I love you. 

  You are beautiful. 
  Please forgive me.

Like blood families, our parish family is strong and resilient.  We celebrate with one another, support each other, hold close those who grieve or are in pain, and sacrifice much for the life of all.  And yes, we are like fudge, mostly sweet with a few nuts (and you know who you are!).  It is here we recognize the truth of Jesus’ words, “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.”

On this morning when we read about Abraham’s family and ponder how things ever went so wrong, I want to invite us to turn to the bottom of page 828 in the prayer book, and pray together the collect for Families:

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, who settest the solitary in families: We commend to thy continual care the homes in which thy people dwell.  Put far from them, we beseech thee, every root of bitterness, the desire of vainglory, and the pride of life.  Fill them with faith, virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, godliness.  Knit together in constant affection those who, in holy wedlock, have been made one flesh.  Turn the hearts of the parents to the children, and the hearts of the children to the parents; and so enkindle fervent charity among us all, that we may evermore be kindly affectioned one to another; through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

He Laughs

In his masterful work One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, Dr. Seuss, one of the great seers of our time, states, “From there to here, from here to there, funny things are everywhere.”  From George Carlin’s observation about ‘Jumbo Shrimp’ to a typical shopping experience at Wal-Mart, I think he is right.  There are funny things everywhere.  Some things are funny because, well, they are funny.  If you enjoy a good laugh every now and then you might consider following the Facebook page of St. Paul’s own Jerry Bangley.  He posts several humorous items a week, often with the warning “Bad Joke Alert”: 

What did Cinderella say when her photos didn’t show up?  “Someday my prints will come.”

Why did Mozart kill all his chickens?  Because they went around going Bach Bach Bach.

Have you heard about the new restaurant on the moon?  The food is great but there’s no atmosphere.

Other things are funny because they boggle the imagination.  An old woman overhears three strangers tell her even older husband their childlessness will come to an end within a year and she laughs.  It is not a laugh of joy, but rather disdain.  It is a response to the incredulous.  The thought of her deepest pain being healed and her sharpest heartache being soothed at such an old age rightfully elicits a scoffing laugh. 

But these strangers are no strangers at all.  They are a manifestation of the Godhead and God’s promises are anything but laughable.  Abraham and Sarah conceive and she gives birth to a son.  They give him the name Isaac, which in Hebrew means “he laughs.”  Sarah then offers one of the best personal testimonies ever uttered:

“God has brought laughter for me;

     everyone who hears will laugh with me.
  Who would ever have said to Abraham
     that Sarah would nurse children?
     yet I have born him a son in his old age.”

There is an old Jewish proverb that holds as soap is to the body, so laughter is to the soul.  Anne Lamont says laughter is carbonated holiness.  The great theologian Reinhold Niebuhr said “humor is a prelude to faith and laughter is the beginning of prayer.”  Dostoyevsky offers this insight:

If you wish to glimpse inside a person’s soul and get to know the person, don’t bother analyzing his ways of being silent, of talking, of weeping, or seeing how much he is moved by noble ideas; you’ll get better results if you just watch him laugh.  If he laughs well, he’s a good person…  All I claim to know is that laughter is the most reliable gauge of human nature.

Laughter, it seems to me, is intricately connected to joy.  I might amend One Fish, Two Fish to read, “From there to here, from here to there, joyous things are everywhere.”  It seems to me three things help us find joy. 

The first is getting older.  Aging has a way of freeing us from the expectations we impose on life, thereby helping us to accept life on its own terms.  Some people know how to do this from an early age.  If you do, you are truly blessed.  But my story is one of finding joy as I learn to let go of my own terms and conditions in order to embrace what is already at hand.  I think it is significant Sarah learns to laugh in her old age.  Remember how she offers her servant Hagar to her husband so he can have offspring through her.  Prior to Isaac’s birth she is so busy trying to manage her future she cannot enjoy her present.

The second key to finding joy is simplicity.  The more complicated you make your life, the more driven you are, and the harder it will be to catch a whiff of the scent of the roses as you pass by them.  The more cares you have, the less free you are to find joy.  Now, some cares are imposed on us.  We simply cannot walk away from the responsibility of raising children, caring for elderly parents, or keeping vigil with a friend in crisis.  But many, many of our cares are born of choices we make (and can unmake).  We make life so much harder than it has to be, and when life is hard it is difficult to find joy, and when it is difficult to find joy, laughing can be a struggle.

The third thing necessary for finding joy in life is faith – faith in a God who infuses goodness and beauty all around us.  In the quest to find joy it helps to have faith there is joy to be found.  The author of the wonderful 42^nd Psalm says,

Why are you so full of heaviness, O my soul?

     and why are you so disquieted within me?
  Put your trust in God;
     For I will yet give thanks to him,
     who is the help of my countenance, and my God.

What is the relationship between your faith and your countenance?

Much of our 375^th Anniversary weekend is a blur in my mind.  It all went by so fast.  But I have three distinct memories.  The first is from Saturday morning when I came over the church to get something and encountered the crew Kacky Gallotta assembled to set up and decorate the Parish Hall.  It was a huge task and could have been marked by anxiety and pressure, but everyone was having such a good time helping our church to put our best foot forward.  The Parish Hall was a place of joy and laughter. 

My second memory is seeing our children dancing in the balcony during Mountaintide’s performance.  Again, joy and laughter.  And my third distinct memory is passing the peace at the 10:30 service.  I will never forget the look on the bishop’s face after I gave the instructions.  I think he thought I was out of my mind (well, he knows I am, but this was just more hard evidence).  But once the balloons started flying, he got it.  And he got in the spirit of it by fetching his crosier and using it to bat balloons high in the air.  Joy and laugher, laughter and joy, there and here and everywhere.

Your parish Vestry met last Monday night while some of our Food Pantry volunteers finished up some of their work in another part of the building.  The next morning one of them remarked to me, “There sure was a lot of laughter at the Vestry meeting last night.”  And indeed there was, but not that much more than usual.  Your parish leaders lead with laughter.  They work hard, give tirelessly of themselves, make good decisions, and all the time are deeply in touch with the joy permeating our parish family and life. 

I have a vivid memory of a Lenten program I put together many years ago.  Its theme was drawn from a phrase in the proper preface for Lent that says, “prepare with joy for the Pascal Feast.  Now this was well before the internet or powerpoint or any of the other forms of technology we use today.  So I set out for an entire year to read every day every comic strip in the Richmond Times-Dispatch.   I clipped out every comic touching on some aspect of faith, God, the church, prayer, etc.  I then grouped them thematically, through a process I can no longer recall transferred them to overhead projector sheets, added in some bible verses and wisdom from the saints and, voilà – a Lenten program.  One elderly man who attended without fail was dying of cancer and yet there he was with an oxygen tank by his side laughing and laughing and laughing at the comic strips.  His wife approached me with tears in her eyes to thank me for helping him to find so much joy at the end of his life.  As I remember it, he died some time in the Easter season of that year, but I can still hear and see him laughing and I am proud to hold it as one of the 10 best things to come out of my ordained ministry.

Someone once observed “a smile starts on the lips, a grin spreads to the eyes, a chuckle comes from the belly; but a good laugh bursts forth from the soul, overflows, and bubbles all around.”  If this is true, and I think it is, every good laugh is a deeply soulful, spiritual moment.  I would like to think at the heart of the perfect relational harmony that is the Holy Trinity there is a lot of laugher.  And I believe every time we laugh we approach (perhaps unknowingly) a central characteristic of the God we worship and adore this morning.