Clyde, Seymour, and Christ the King

The summer before my first daughter turned two, she and I loved to go to Sea World.  You may not know this, but back in the day there actually was a Sea World in northeast Ohio not far from where we lived.  We bought summer passes and went for an hour or two anytime the mood hit us, which it often did.  We went in the late afternoon, took in a show or two, and then got home in time for dinner.  Now, Shamu the killer whale had impressive size and the dolphins were tremendous high fliers, but far and away our favorite show featured seals named Clyde and Seymour, along with a little otter (think of a Jack Russell Terrier, but in the ocean) and a sea lion, who always looked like he had just gotten out of the Lazy Boy recliner after having too much kelp for Thanksgiving. 

This ensemble cast always put on a very funny, highly entertaining show.  The first time we saw it, Ellen and I could not stop laughing at every trick and antic they performed under the subtle direction of their handlers.  The second performance we attended was equally as funny, but I noticed one thing was not the same: the timing was off just slightly on one of the tricks, but a human handler was able to cover the gaff.  The third show had a different faux pas, but again the handlers held it all together with very clever shifts, prompts, and changes.  By the time I sat through the fourth show I realized that no two performances were the same.  These live sea creatures had a knack for getting distracted and their handlers had a talent for getting them back on track. 

The otter always made a grand entrance from behind a tiny little door.   We saw one show where the handler called his name and the door opened but the otter was nowhere to be found.  It took several do-overs before they got it right.  At another show Clyde failed miserably to catch a ball on his nose and flick it through a basketball hoop – a trick he performed so effortlessly every other time we where there.  It took three tries before he nailed it.  Then there was the time when the audience was told the sea lion would not be performing.  It made me wonder what kind of bad-hair day he was having.  At still another show, Seymour climbed up to a high ledge, but refused to jump into the pool below.  All that handlers could do was call him down and move on. 

The more shows I saw the more interested I became in watching the handlers; watching them adapt and improvise and be creative so that – as they say – the show could go on.  I started to pick up on the looks of relief they gave to one another when they got through particularly challenging parts of the script.  I noticed them holding back laughter when things went comically awry.  And I picked up on the subtle ways they interacted with the creatures that revealed this was more than a performance, it was a relationship.  It was a relationship marked by dynamic interaction, mutual expectations, openness to each other, acceptance of deviations, and love.

Today is the last Sunday in the Church Year.  It is known as Christ the King Sunday – a day when we celebrate the eventual culmination of history under the Lordship of Christ while acknowledging that even now Jesus reigns over the Church.  The appointed gospel readings we encounter on this day never give us a picture of kingship we might expect.  Take this morning’s reading as an example: what does it mean to be a king if you are under arrest and being interrogated by the person who will sentence you to be crucified?  Well, whatever the answer might be, we know if does not include exercising absolute power.  Jesus reigns in a way very different from that.  But how?  What does it look like?

Those shows at Sea World provide something of a window; an image that helps us to understand better just exactly how Jesus rules.  There is a goal to be sure; a way that the performance we call ‘life’ is intended to unfold.  Sometimes we come close to getting it right and other times we fall short: perhaps we are not where we are supposed to be when we are supposed to be there, or maybe we keep bumping into one of the other performers, or maybe we drop the ball, or maybe we refuse to jump.  Does it affect the performance?  Absolutely.  Does it ruin the show that life is?  Never. 

And why?  Because we have a Handler who is able to improvise and adapt to the changes and challenges we introduce; a Handler who knows how to interact with the cast in such a way that each of us eventually helps the show move toward its grand finale.  In Christian terms we talk about Jesus being our ‘guide’: the person who points the way for us to go as he walks with us.  A guide honors the freedom of the person being guided, accepts deviation, and deals with variables all the while maintaining movement toward the ultimate goal.  Just like a Sea World handler, Jesus as our Guide does not reign with absolute control, but rather interacts with us in a way that keeps us moving through the script of life.

I find it comforting to think of myself as being something like Clyde and Seymour.  I have a role to play in this life.  Sometimes I get it right, other times I fail miserably, and occasionally I outright refuse.  But I have a Guide who remains in relationship with me.  When my Guide does certain things, I respond and when I do certain things, my Guide responds to me.  Sometimes I play my role perfectly, sometimes my Guide has to use a little finesse, and still other times my Guide must exert outright effort to keep me on track.  Ultimately, it is my Guide’s will that is done.  One thing I know, no matter what I do, Jesus my Guide will keep directing me toward the grand finale and it is in this sense we can say that Christ the King reigns.  The same holds for this world and every person in it: Christ’s desire will be done, but from day to day and moment to moment it requires that Christ adapt to our actions and improvise ways to get us back on script.

So I equate Christ’s Kingship not with power, but rather with Guidance; with being something like the handlers I watched so long ago as they worked their way with those lovable creatures in their charge.  In his book, A Book of Uncommon Prayers, Kenneth G. Phifer gives words to the deep desire I have for this kind of divine kingship in my life:

Deep down within me, O Lord,

is the need for your guidance.

I will face situations this week

when I will not know what to do.

I will be in circumstances

where I will not know what to say.

I will read of events in the world around me

and I will not know what to think.

Keep me from hasty action,

the careless word,

the unthought-out reaction.

Steady me that I may know

your Spirit has not been withdrawn from my world,

and your presence is still with me.

“Be thou my Guide.”  Amen.

Let me finish the last sermon of the Church year with these brief thoughts; lessons learned all those years ago while watching seals perform:

·  You are a wonderful creature, full of life and love.

·  You have much to offer in this world.  You have a role to play in life, so play it to the best of your abilities.

·  Things don’t always go as planned and you don’t always do what you are supposed to do.

·  God is always with you.  Keep looking toward God and listening to God and God will guide you back on track.

·  In the sense that life is like a show, this is your time on the stage.  Have fun with it and bring as much joy to others as you can. 

Has Anyone Seen the Church?

The bishop entered the nave and made his way down the side aisle.  He was dressed in rotchet and chimere, crosier in hand.  The front pews were full of children and their parents gathered for the start of Sunday School to meet this day’s special guest.  As he approached the young congregation, the bishop said loudly, “I am looking for the church.  Has anyone seen the church?”  At first the children did not know what to make of this strangely attired person or his odd inquiry.  Again the bishop said, “I am looking for the church.  Has anyone seen the church?”  With this second prompting, a brave young soul spoke up, “You are in the church.”  “No,” the bishop said, who was now standing in front of the children and holding his hand to his brow as if to shield the sun from his eyes as he scanned to and fro, “I’m in a building, but I’m looking for the church.  Has anyone seen it?”  By now the children were whipped up into a perplexed frenzy.  “You are standing in the church,” they screamed over and over.  That is when the bishop said to the children very clearly, “The church is not a building.  The church is a group of people.  You are the church and I am looking for you.” 

He was right, of course.  The church is not a building, it is the people.  If some one asks you “Where is your church?” the appropriate answer might be to say, “Well, a little bit of it is right here with me, but my whole church gathers at St. Paul’s every Sunday morning and at various times throughout the week.”  Think about it: you can worship in an edifice that is derelict and drab, but still be part of a vital, dynamic church.  Conversely, people can congregate in a magnificent cathedral adorned with inspirational treasures of art and yet the church can be on its last gasp.  Church as people and church as building are linked, to be sure, but they are not one in the same thing.

In today’s Gospel reading we hear of a time when Jesus is walking out of the Jerusalem temple with his disciples.  Far and away it was the most impressive structure they would see in their life time.  It was enormous.  It was elaborate.  It was inspiring.  Taking it all in, one disciple must have imagined that the temple would exist forever and said so: “Look at the size of these stones.”  Jesus’ response is quick and cutting: “Not one stone will be left upon another.  All will be thrown down.”

The gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke were written in and around the time when the Roman army destroyed the Jerusalem temple in 70 A.D. after nationalists had occupied the city for four years.  Titus, who would eventually become the emperor, led an military siege of the holy city and when it succeed his forces saw to the complete demolition of the temple.   The Jewish people where trying to make sense of what religion would look like in a post-temple era.  Christians, who at the time were a small subset within the Hebrew tradition, were especially keen to remember Jesus’ teachings that might help them make sense of this new world. 

For weeks now our New Testament readings have been taken from the Letter to the Hebrews.  Throughout the document the author has dealt with various temple functions – important aspects of the religious tradition that could not happen after the temple was in ruins – and describes how Jesus fulfills those functions once and for all.  In today’s reading, for example, the author describes how the temple’s work as a place for offering sacrifices to achieve the forgiveness of sins – something that was on-going each and every day – has been completed once and for all through Jesus’ offering of himself. 

The author then points the readers of the time to what religion in a post-temple era should look like:

·  Have confidence that in Christ you are acceptable to God.

·  Hold on to this hope without wavering.

·  Encourage each other to demonstrate love and to do good deeds.

·  Meet together on a regular basis.

Not one stone was left on top of another, but, because the church is not a building, the church continued.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  I am not anti-building.  The space where the church gathers forms and shapes the people in important ways.  The building we call St. Paul’s Church is a legacy from our ancestors and the place where we gather together to encounter God.  It is from here that minister to one another and to the community.  We hold this building as our shared responsibility to preserve for the future.  But while the building and the church exist in relationship to one another, they are not one in the same… as the bishop reminded those children.  The building exists to serve various functions.  The church as people exists because Jesus Christ calls it into being.

This point was sharply driven home to me years ago not long after I graduated from Virginia Seminary.  Now, I love VTS and my time there was powerful and formative.  Once ordained and back in the Diocese of Ohio I worked to create an alumni reunion event to be attended by the seminary’s development officer.  A couple dozen people attended the lunch and (as they say) a good time was had by all.  The development officer gave a short speech to bring everyone up to date on school happenings.  I will never forget what he said:

“Right now God is seeing fit to use the Virginia Theological Seminary in certain ways.  There will come a time however when God will not need to use the seminary and it will exist no longer; certainly by the second coming, if not well before.”

A time when the seminary won’t exist?  What kind of heresy is this, I thought.  But as I considered the matter a little more, I realized I was the playing the role of the disciple admiring the large stones and he playing the role of Jesus reminding me that institutions don’t remain standing forever.  It is the church as God’s people that endures for all time and beyond.

Many are suggesting that the church now exists in a time similar to when the temple was under siege.  Change is in the air and it is hard to know what religious life will look like in the coming years.  This much is clear: the fastest growing religious group in America is ‘none’ – people who identify themselves as having no church or religious affiliation.  All Christian denominations across the board are experiencing declining membership and attendance; thus our institutions are charged with anxiety about the future and grief around our diminishing standing in today’s society. 

Jesus’ word to us this morning is shocking before it is comforting: the church is not the stones of the building nor is it the structure of an institution.  The church is the people and thus the church will endure.  The reason the church will endure is because God wants to be in relationship with us.  Thus, there will always be those who are gathered around Jesus Christ, who is the head of the Church.  That gathering may look very similar to how we are gathered this morning, or it may look very different, but those gathered, in whatever form or fashion it takes, will be the church.

If our time is similar to the period when the temple was destroyed then the counsel of the author of the Letter to the Hebrews takes on even more significance:

·  Have confidence that in Christ you are acceptable to God.

·  Hold on to this hope without wavering.

·  Encourage each other to demonstrate love and to do good deeds

·  Meet together on a regular basis.

“I am looking for the church,” the bishop cried out.  “Has anyone seen the church?”  In our day and age, fewer and fewer people are looking for a building in which to worship nor are they interested in signing on with a religious institution.  But I do believe people are looking for the church.  They are looking for a people of faith because ultimately they are looking for God.  God responded to human searching long ago by becoming incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ.  It is this Jesus who now becomes incarnate in and through the life of the Church.  Therefore it is God’s ultimate dream that those who search for God will find God in our common life as the Church.

Partnership with God

A pastor went to visit a new parishioner who had moved into the area and bought a long abandoned house.  After many years of neglect, the property and yard had fallen into disrepair.  When the pastor pulled up he found the owner hard at work in the front yard.  He had transformed what had been an eye-sore into a beautiful, well-maintained lawn and beddings.  The house, from the outside, was immaculate.  “My, my, my,” the pastor said.  “Isn’t it wonderful to see what you and God have been able to do with this place!”  The owner paused, wiped some sweat from his brow, and said, “Well thank you, but you should have seen it when God had it all to himself.”

There is a wonderful saying attributed to St. Augustine that goes without God we cannot, but without us God will not.  It draws on a truth that God operates this world as a joint venture with us.  Christian stewardship is properly understood as everything we do to be in partnership with God.  It is the time we invest in doing God’s work.  It is the way we use our gifts, talents, and abilities to contribute to God’s work.  And it is the money we give to fund God’s work.  Thus, Christian stewardship revolves around how we offer our time, our talent, and our treasure to God.

“To God.”  Notice I did not say “to the church.”  Christian stewardship is not about funding the operation of a parish nor is it about staffing multiple church committees.  It is about being in partnership with God so that this world moves closer to God’s dream for it.  But, in that the church sets out to do the work of God, it is one place where our stewardship is both effective and necessary.  The stewardship of your time, your talent, and your treasure does not begin with St. Paul’s and it certainly does not end with St. Paul’s, still, because St. Paul’s is a place where we come together to work with God, it is an important place for each of us to make investments.

“Our time.”  How many hours do you think goes into planning, preparing, and putting on a Sunday morning at here?  Think about the choir, the altar guild, the bulletins, the cleaning, the Sunday School, the breakfast, the sermon, the music.  I estimate it takes about of 125 hours of work – some of it is paid, but most is volunteered.  Add to this mid-week ministries, maintenance and upkeep, and leadership tasks such as the Vestry and financial oversight.  It takes a lot of people giving a lot of time so that St. Paul’s can be in partnership with God.  Think about all the other ways you use your time in Christian stewardship: listening to a friend, sending a note or e-mail to someone who is sick, praying for others, being a part of any service-oriented organization designed to make someone’s life better, the possibilities are limitless.

“Our talents.”  The stewardship of our talent seems to go hand-in-hand with the use of our time.  We give our time to do things we are capable of doing.  Our choir members use their musical talent in concert with God.  Many of our members use their physical strength to set up and take down tables and chairs.  Those who can bake make meals for people who are recovering from illness.  Thriving churches are places where people step forward to offer talents and abilities in service to God and others.  Beyond this, faithful stewards offer their talents in the world.  It may be as a coach or a caregiver, in a civic organization or with a community of neighbors.  Christians use their gifts, talents, and abilities to be in partnership with God.

“Our treasure.”  Some people complain that the church is only interested in money.  Well, not true.  It is the world that wants your money.  Advertisers bombard you with demands and requests for what is in your pocketbook.  Often these appeals come with outrageous promises of joy, youth, vitality, and a sense of accomplishment and self-importance.  A doctor requires a co-pay before you get into the examination room.  A lawyer asks for a retainer prior to working for you.  The only way to get a politician’s ear is to make a contribution.  When it comes to money, churches are something all-together unique in our society.  You can attend without contributing.  You can benefit without supporting.  You can make an appointment or request a visit without ever writing a check.  There is absolutely no connection between what you receive from the church and what you contribute to it financially.

That being said, churches do talk about money because the bible talks about money.  Fully one-sixth of Jesus’ teachings deals with money.  His insights are diverse and challenging.  This morning we heard him say that a poor widow who put one penny into the temple treasury gave more than anyone else, even those who gave thousands of dollars, because her meager offering was everything she had.  It was not going to keep the temple up and running, but her offering was heroic none-the-less. 

The bible is clear about what it means financially to be in partnership with God.  It says consistently that we are to give 10% of our income to God’s work.  It calls this amount the tithe and it has many purposes:  It helps us to acknowledge that all we have is from God; It delivers us from living for self alone; It provides a way to care for those in need or want; and it funds and furthers God’s dream for this world. 

Tithing in this day and age is a real challenge.  Most of us are so obligated to mortgages, payments, and expenses that we simply can’t afford to give away 10% of our income.  Tithing raises practical questions: is it based on what you earn before taxes or after, and should all of your tithe go to the church?  Concrete answers to these questions run the risk of legalism – do this and you are OK, don’t do it and you are not measuring up.  I think each of us has to pray through and wrestle with our own individual response.  I have found that the gentle witness of others has always helped my own discernment, so let me share with you my history and practice.

When I was a child my parents always gave me a quarter to put in the Sunday School offering basket.  Sometimes I followed through, other times I pocketed it for myself… a shaky beginning to be sure.  When I was a teenager the church encouraged young people to make a pledge.  I was a paperboy by then and making my own money, so I pledged $1 a week.  In return, the church gave me envelopes with each week marked at the top.  I did well at first, but after a few months started to fall behind.   By the end of the summer there was no way I was going to catch up and being behind felt like a terrible, crushing weight.

After I graduated from seminary and was gainfully employed I made a pledge to the church where I was serving.  I think it was around 2% of my salary.  In addition, I made commitments to my college and seminary, and gave $25 dollars a month to the charity of my choice.  All told, I gave away close to 4% of my income that first year.  The second year I had a better idea of my living expenses so I made a percentage increase in giving to the church while maintaining my other contributions.  Each year I crept closer and closer to the tithe.  But I was on pretty shaky financial ground when my marriage ended in 2002.  I drastically reduced my giving so that I could make ends meet.  With each year that has gone by I have increased my contribution to the church where I have served and have been able to find new ways of being charitable.

I am at a point in life where the expenses of beginning a home and raising children are behind me.  I am able to save more than ever before and I am able to give away more than ever before while still being comfortable.  In 2013 I have committed to give $4,800 to St. Paul’s Church.  That is 6% of my salary.  Other commitments and opportunities will push me very close to the 10% tithe.  I find now that I am not as fixated on the percentage or the amount, but on the joy I receive from living generously because it is a way of acknowledging that I am incredibly blessed.

Without God we cannot, without us God will not.  I suspect that each of us here this morning would like to know God active and at work in our lives.  One way we can make this happen is to partner with God in Christian stewardship.  I want to thank you for all the ways you already do this in and through St. Paul’s.  I am keenly aware that without what you are doing and giving I would not be here.  So let me say thank you. 

And let me close by offering you three challenges.  The first is this: consider making a tithe of your time to be in partnership with God.  What do I mean by this?  Well, assuming that you sleep 8 hours a day, you have 16 waking hours.  Can you give 10% of this time to God?  Some of you may be pretty close already.  Factor in prayer, worship, studying the bible, devotional time and reading, time given to the church, helping others, and so forth.  Start to track a tithe of your time and see where you are. 

Second: Dig up a buried talent and use it in partnership with God.  I don’t know what that talent might be, but if you come to me and tell me what it is I will help you to find a way to use it!  Remember, we are a community that even values the ability to flip a pancake!

And finally, take a step toward the tithe.  If you don’t contribute to St. Paul’s, start – even if it is a dollar a week.  If you haven’t turned in a pledge card, fill one out.  Start with something that feels doable and increase it when you are ready to take on more of a challenge.  If you are comfortable with your giving to St. Paul’s, find another charitable organization or cause to support; perhaps a place where you are already contributing your time and your talent. 

Think back to that dilapidated house and overgrown yard that the new owner worked so hard to set right.  We all want to live in a better world.  We all want to be supportive of those around us, especially those in need.  We all want to pass on something better to the next generation.  We all want to sense God present and real in our lives.  Let’s commit ourselves in full, complete Christian stewardship so that someone might come up to us and say, “Isn’t it amazing what God and you have been able to do with this world!”

Famous First Lines

See if you can spot these famous first lines:

·  “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy.

·  “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”  George Orwell’s 1984. 

·  “In the great green room, there was a telephone and a red balloon.”  I didn’t grow up reading Margaret Wise Brown’s Goodnight Moon, but my girls sure did.

·  “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”  A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.

·  Do you remember how Dante’s Inferno begins?  “Midway in our life’s journey, I went astray from the straight road and woke to find myself alone in a dark wood.”

·  And finally, here is a line I heard my sisters read aloud often: “In an old house in Paris that was covered with vines lived twelve little girls in two straight lines.”  Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans

In a sense All Saints’ Sunday is all about famous first lines – not the kind we read in novels and children’s books, but the kind we write with our own lives.  There are famous saints we remember today whose life was a first line that shaped the entire Christian story.  There are other saints known only to us – dear saints – whose first line helped to shape our Christian story.  And it is a day when we gather to welcome through baptism a new saint into the Christian faith and life and promise to help her as she sets out to write the first line of her young life. 

Why do I keep talking about life as if it is the process of writing a first line in a novel?  Well, because in many ways that is exactly what life is all about.  It is about setting a direction and a tone that will carry on long after the first line is complete; a line that somehow sets the stage for a long and glorious novel.  You see, on All Saints’ Day we affirm that this life is just the beginning; an important beginning to be sure, but a beginning.  It shapes who we are and what we are to be like.  And just like the first line of a novel launches the reader into the rest of the story, our earthly lives launch us into a new and more glorious reality where we are somehow consistent with how we begin but open to becoming so much more. 

On this day we celebrate life and reaffirm that in this life we set a course for a journey that will take us well beyond our earthly days.  Our readings from Scripture acknowledge the reality of death and the terrible emotional pain we experience every time we lose someone dear to us while holding up the hope and the promise that a time is coming when death will be no more.  They point to the belief that the ‘.’ at the end of the opening line is nothing more than the completion of the first sentence.  Much more that follows after that that first sentence ends.  And similar to Ernest Vincent Wright’s novel Gadsby, which is a book of some 50,000 words none of which contains the letter ‘e’, the Christian faith holds that the ‘.’ at the end of our first sentence, the ‘.’ marking our death, will never appear again in our story.

So pain and promise, lose and hope are present every time we gather for the burial office.  For me, it becomes even more poignant when a burial takes place during the season of Lent – that time we so rigorously avoid saying the word ‘Alleluia.’  But every burial is a Easter liturgy, so deep in the throes of Lent we change the hangings from Lenten purple to Easter white and as I stand before the body for the commendation, I look up to our triptych depiction of Christ rising from the grave and I say, “All we go down to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.”  These words always put in my mind that the Christian faith faces death with a hopeful defiance.  Saying them in Lent drives home that every burial becomes an Easter moment leading to the celebration of new life.  It marks the acceptance of the one and only ‘.’ in a Christian soul will experience first hand.

Wendell Berry has captured this sense of hopeful defiance in her poem Testament.  Berry is a writer, an educator, and a fifth-generation farmer in central Kentucky.  Her poems have an earthy quality to them; a feel that he has been turning over some soil while he composed them in his mind.  Berry is a Christian who comes at the faith from the inside out.  Typically her writing is free of churchy terms and ideas, which only helps to make her writing insightful and fresh.  Listen to Berry’s four-part poem and ponder what it says to us on this All Saints’ Sunday: 

   1.

Dear relatives and friends, when my last breath
grows large and free in air, don’t call it death --
a word to enrich the undertaker and inspire
his surly art of imitating life; conspire
against him.  Say that my body cannot now
be improved upon; it has no fault to show
to the sly cosmetician.  Say that my flesh
has a perfect compliance with the grass
truer than any it could have striven for.
You will recognize the earth in me, as before
I wished to know it in myself: my earth
that has been my care and faithful charge from birth,
and toward which all my sorrows were surely bound,
and all my hopes.  Say that I have found
a good solution, and am on my way
to the roots.  And say I have left my native clay
at last, to be a traveler; that too will be so.
Traveler to where?  Say you don’t know.

   2.
   But do not let your ignorance

of my spirit’s whereabouts dismay
you, or overwhelm your thoughts.
Be careful not to say

anything too final.  Whatever
is unsure is possible, and life is bigger
than flesh.  Beyond reach of thought
let imagination figure

your hope.  That will be generous
to me and to yourselves.  Why settle
for some know-it-all’s despair
when the dead may dance to the fiddle

hereafter, for all anybody knows?
And remember that the Heavenly soil
need not be too rich to please
one who was happy in Port Royal.

I may be already heading back,
a new and better man, toward
that town.  The thought’s unreasonable,
but so is life, thank the Lord!

   3.
   So treat me, even dead,

as a man who has a place
to go, and something to do.
Don’t muck up my face

with wax and powder and rouge
as one would prettify
an unalterable fact
to give bitterness the lie.

Admit the native earth
my body is and will be,
admit its freedom and
its changeability.

Dress me in the clothes
I wore in the day’s round.
Lay me in a wooden box.
Put the box in the ground.

   4.
   Beneath this stone a Berry is planted

in his home land, as he wanted.

He has come to the gathering of his kin,
among whom some were worthy men,

Farmers mostly, who lived by hand,
but one was a cobbler from Ireland,

another played the eternal fool
by riding on a circus mule

to be remembered in grateful laughter
longer than the rest.  After

doing that they had to do
they are at ease here.  Let all of you

who yet for pain find force and voice
look on their peace, and rejoice.

And there you have the first line of All Saints Day:  life lived well here, an acceptance of its end, even an embrace of its finality, and a defiant hopefulness in what might follow!  This day let us celebrate life and as we remember the first lines of those lives that touched ours and let us continue to hone the opening sentence of our eternal story.

A Dweller on the Threshold

Bartimaeus said to Jesus, “My teacher, let me see again.”  Job said to God, “I have heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you.”

If you could listen to the music of only one artist or group, who would it be?  The choice for me would be easy – Van Morrison.  Known to fans like me as “Van the Man,” the Irish-born Morrison has been performing and recording music since the late fifties.  His songs range across a wide spectrum of styles: Celtic, jazz, blues, country, rock, pop, and even hymns.  His lyrics are even more eclectic; often drawn from life-experiences, yet deeply spiritual. 

As I pondered today’s readings a line from one of Morrison’s songs kept playing over and over in my head:

I have seen without perceiving

I have been another man

Let me pierce the realm of glamour

So I know just what I am.

This first verse from the 1982 song Dweller on the Threshold certainly describes something with which most of can identify – having in inkling that there is more to life, but we simply cannot grasp what it is.  If life could be equated to a modern painting, it would be like listening to an art major speak for well over an hour about its nuances and subtleties and all you or I can say about it is “nice colors.” 

Bartimaeus cannot physically see what everyone else sees, but still perceives something about Jesus that the rest have missed.  Job has been through a terrible ordeal.  He, and his ‘comforters’, talk a great deal about God, but it is only near the end that Job perceives God with clarity.  The readings play with our notions of sight and seeing, of experiencing and understanding.  It is as if our life’s work is all about gaining sight and insight of something that is always there, but we struggle to perceive it for what it is.

Morrison’s song is wrapped around this idea and it echoes the pain and frustration we humans experience when we sense we are seeing without perceiving.  The lyrics were inspired by a quirky astrology book by Alice Bailey titled Glamour – A World Problem.   According to Bailey we all have subconscious stirrings, ideas, notions, experiences, and biases, which she calls ‘glamours’, that enshroud us like fog and prevent us from seeing the world as it truly is.  Our spiritual search for answers leaves us feeling like little more than dwellers on the threshold of being able to see.  She holds that illumination comes when the Angel of the Presence shines a light on us.  Listen to how Morrison develops all of this in his lyrics:

I’m a dweller on the threshold
And I’m waiting at the door
And I’m standing in the darkness
I don’t want to wait no more

I have seen without perceiving
I have been another man
Let me pierce the realm of glamour
So I know just what I am

Feel the Angel of the Presence
In the mighty crystal fire
Lift me up consume my darkness
Let me travel even higher

I’m a dweller on the threshold
As I cross the burning ground
Let me go down to the water
Watch the great illusion drown

I will walk out of the darkness
And I'll walk into the light
And I'll sing the song of ages
And the dawn will end the night

Now, I am not advocating Bailey’s astrological leanings, but I do want you to notice how Morrison’s song mirrors Job’s struggle for understanding; a struggle that ends not because of anything he has done, but rather because God pierces through his darkness with the light of God’s presence.  And it mirrors Bartimaeus’ struggle for the sight that will enable him to be with Jesus on the way.

A moment like this happened for me last weekend when I was in Ohio to attend a family wedding.  On Sunday morning we worshiped at a church where I once served as an Assistant to the Rector for four years.  That was twenty years ago.  At the time, the parish was raising money to build a new sanctuary, which has long since been finished.  As I sat in this space I recognized many of the people I knew so long ago.  By the way, no one recognizes me until I introduce myself. 

I thought about all that has happened in my life over the past twenty years.  Yes, I have less hair and more inches on my waist, but the most dramatic changes are on the inside.  How can you communicate that to people you haven’t seen in two decades?  How can you possibly hope to describe all the vivid joys, the painful losses, the satisfying accomplishments, the deep insights, the incredible experiences?  And what about them as individuals and as a faith community?  How do they communicate to me all that has happened in their lives: the weddings, the funerals, the baptisms, the mission trips, the answered prayers, the congregational split, the prayers answered only by silence, and on and on and on?  It can’t be done.

As I worshipped I thought about this strange and wonderful journey we call life and how it had brought me back ever so briefly to a place I had been before to be with people I had once served.  I realized that if, twenty years ago, I could have seen everything that was going to happen in my future I could not have faced it – not the joys, not that pains, not any of it.  And I suspect that if the congregation could have been shown its future the response would be the same.  And yet there I was and there they were.  We had made it from that time and place so long ago to this moment.  And we had made it through the grace of God.  As I worshipped I was caught up with the feeling that this day – like every day – truly is a miracle. 

Something clicked for me during the Eucharistic prayer when the priest said the Memorial Acclamation: “Christ has died.  Christ is risen.  Christ will come again.”  Christ has died is the past, I thought.  It is where we have been.  It is no more, yet the experience of it somehow becomes a part of us.  Christ will come again is in the future.  We are not there yet and knowing what will transpire as we move toward it is not in our best interest.   All we need to know is that in the future the awaiting Christ will be with us.  Christ is risen is where we are right now.  We live in an eternal present of resurrection life and joy.  This day, this moment, this now is redeemed by God and infused with grace.  This moment, like every moment, is an abiding miracle.  As I went to the altar rail to receive communion I was caught up in an overwhelming sense of peace about all that was and all that is to come because God had brought me to that day.  It is a feeling that is with me even this morning.

Alice Bailey might say one of my ‘glamours’ was taken away.  Job might say, “I too once heard with my ears, but now see with my eyes.”  Bartimaeus, no longer blind, might encourage me to follow on the way.  Van Morrison might say, “I’ll sing the song of ages and dawn will end the night.” 

To be a spiritual person is to be a dweller on the threshold.  It is to want to know, to want to see, to want to perceive.  And it is to wait for the door to open, for the light to shine, for the dawn to come.  When we meet Job and Bartimaeus today we meet them on a day when the door is opened from the other side; a day when the thing they have long awaited is granted to them.  But for each there were many, many days of dwelling at the threshold facing only a closed door.  That may not seem very satisfying, but recognize this, when the door opened, they were there waiting. 

That is the spiritual life in a nutshell, isn’t it.  That is what the search for God and truth and insight and understanding is like.  Searching does not lead directly to finding.  Rather it puts us in the right place to receive when God’s light shines forth.  Better to be Bartimaeus sitting on the road side day after day after day so that the one day when Jesus walks by you are there, then to have resigned yourself to darkness.  Better to be Job contending with his comforters so that when God speaks you are ready to listen then to have given in and given up long ago.  Better to be Van Morrison dwelling at the threshold and waiting at the door than to have walked away in defeat.

Focusing My Flickering

Toni Reynolds e-mailed this joke to me:  A little girl, dressed in her Sunday best, was running as fast as she could trying not to be late for Sunday School.  As she ran she prayed, “Dear Lord, please don’t let me be late!  Dear Lord, please don’t let me be late!”  While she was running and praying, she tripped on a curb and fell, getting her clothes dirty and tearing her dress.  She got up, brushed herself off, and started running again!  And as she went she prayed, “Dear Lord, please don’t let me be late, but also, please don’t shove me any more!”

Today’s readings are interesting, to say the least – especially when paired with our annual Commitment Sunday.  Listening to the words of Job who, try as he might, cannot find the hiding God in front, behind, on the left or on the right, followed by the psalmist’s cry of being forsaken by God makes the little girl’s predicament of getting shoved seem tame.  Then we hear from Hebrews that absolutely nothing about us is hidden from God; that before God all our interior intentions are laid bare.  Finally, we hear Jesus saying that if you are wealthy – and by the standards of his day pretty much all of us here today are wealthy – you can forget about being a part of the kingdom of God.  So, sign me up, you must be thinking.  I am ready to make a commitment to the God who can’t be found when needed but still never misses a single wrong we do, and then demands we own little or nothing if we want to be a part of his crew.  These, folks, are not the basic ingredients of a successful altar call.

Let me ask a fundamental question: why should we care about God at all?  In ancient times, people believed in a god or gods who occupied some Olympian fortress meddling in human affairs at their whim and fancy.  Why care about God?  Their answer was so that the gods don’t punish you; hardly a satisfying answer to the modern mind because we now know the natural causes behind what people back then believed to be divine judgment. 

Another answer to why care about God holds that life is test to see who will get into heaven and who will be consigned to Hell; an underworld of flames and suffering.  If you pass the test by meeting some combination of being good enough and having had a required religious experience (baptism and ‘giving your life to Jesus’ being the two most prominent in the Christian tradition) then you merit an eternal reward.  Ultimately, this is not a satisfying answer either.  Do we really believe that the God who called forth this glorious creation is little more than a punitive judge-like figure keeping score of who has been naughty and who has been nice?  And do we really believe that the naughty descend to a place in the center of the earth to suffer for all eternity for the things they did wrong during their few short years of this life?

So why do we care about God?  Well, my answer is because we do.  There is something inside every human being that is seeking awe and responds to it.  There is something inside us that senses the reality of something greater than us.  We want to know this Other and to understand it, in part, so we can better know ourselves.  Why are we here?  What is our purpose?  How should we live?  If there is a Being who called forth creation than these questions can only be answered by searching for that Being.  Those of us who have searched have come to find that this Being exists and makes its essence known to us.  As we come to know God we find ourselves responding to this relationship through reverence, worship, and conformity (a word I like better than ‘obedience’ because it invites new searching as opposed to forced compliance).

But how to revere?  How to worship?  And how to align ourselves?  Every religious tradition has strands of insight derived from looking at the world around us and determining that certain attitudes, behaviors, and actions are better than others.  Most religious traditions go deeper than this to include understanding received through mystical experiences (revelations, if you will) that form the core of their teaching.  Beyond all of this, we in the Christian tradition confess that God’s very self became incarnate… a human being through whose words and actions we can see fullness of God’s desire and intent for all creation.  We human beings who seek awe and respond to it have seen in human flesh the Holy Awe at the heart of all reality.  It is in and through Jesus that we find satisfying answers to who we are, why we are here, and what we are to do.

So returning to our readings, let us embrace the truth of Job’s words… the truth that God at times is elusive; the truth that there are times when circumstances hinder our ability to detect God’s presence.  Isn’t it comforting to know that our sacred texts contain the angry, bitter words of people shaking their fists at God when their search for God comes up empty and their need for God goes unmet.  Isn’t it comforting to know that disillusionment at times is a natural and appropriate aspect of the human search for God.  In my experience, these times, while real and difficult, are never the final word.  Jesus said, “Seek and you will find.  Knock and the door will be opened.”  Sometimes we have to knock louder and longer than we would like, but the One we seek behind the door eventually opens to us.

While the letter to the Hebrews reminds us that everything about us – our exterior actions and interior motives – is known to God, it wants to shift our focus from human frailty to human potential.  The author points us to Jesus who, because he was human like us, was tempted in every way as we are.  Still, he lived into God’s design and intent not because he was divine, but through his humanity.  Now we are invited into Christ’s presence so that we might be empowered through his example and the indwelling of his Spirit to live aligned with the fullness of God’s intent.

In the Gospel we learn of one person’s search for God.  “What must I do,” he asks Jesus.  The response is to be a good and moral person – live as God intends for you to live.  The man says he has done this since he was young so Jesus, sensing he wants to go even deeper, invites this person to divest himself of all that holds him back in order to live in the Kingdom of God here and now.  This person, attached to his possessions, could not follow.  He was distracted.

I can’t say why God at times is elusive, but I do know that much more often my search for God is inhibited by factors attributable only to me.  Denise Levertov captures one of these factors in her poem Flickering Mind:

Lord, not you,

it is I who am absent.

At first

belief was a joy I kept in secret,

stealing alone

into sacred places;

a quick glance, and away – and back,

circling.

I have long since uttered your name

but now

I elude your presence.

I stop to think about you, and my mind

at once

like a minnow darts away,

darts

into the shadows, into gleams that fret

unceasing over

the river’s pulling and passing.

Not for one second

will my self hold still, but wanders

anywhere,

everywhere it can turn.  Not you,

it is I who am absent.

You are the stream, the fish, the light,

the pulsing shadow,

you the unchanging presence, in whom all

moves and changes.

How can I focus my flickering, perceive

at the fountain’s heart

the sapphire I know is there?

How can I focus my flickering?  What will aid me in my search for God (a drive which is as real inside me as my heartbeat and every bit as important)?  Jesus, in responding to Peter, hints at the answer.  Peter states that he and the other disciples have left everything to follow Jesus.  Now, we know in fact that this does not mean the disciples had liquidated all their assets because after the Resurrection, Peter and the others returned to their boats and took up again the living of fishermen.

Here is what Jesus says to Peter: “Those who have left house or family or fields for my sake [and in this I hear the allusion to searching for God and responding to God with reverence, worship, and conformity] will receive a hundredfold now in this age – houses, families, and fields… and the promise of life in the age to come.”  Now, from our history, we know that none of the disciples came to own a hundred homes and a hundred fields.  Jesus was not speaking of economic gain, but of the blessed relationships that come from being joined with others who are searching for God and living in accordance with God’s ways as they come to understand it.  Today we call these blessed relationships a congregation, a community of faithful people like us here at St. Paul’s.  How do can I focus my flickering pursuit of God?  By being a part of a people who are trying to focus their flickering.  Somehow, in and through this place, our individual pursuit of God is strengthened through our collective pursuit of God. 

A Russian poet named Yelena Rubisova wrote “I am a camel, hulking, clumsy.  Go through!  Go through!” in reference to Jesus’ famous teaching about the eye of a needle.  But, obviously, for a camel this is impossible.  So Rubisova describes what needs to change:

Let me become like thread, and put anxiety aside,

so the doorkeeper’s hand will lead

me through the triumphal gates

of the eye of the needle.

I like this image.  If the search for God can be compared with passing through the eye of a needle and if we are like camels trying to do so, then two things need to happen.  First, there must be a transformation.  We must morph from camel into thread.  And second, thread still doesn’t get through the needle’s eye unless someone guides it.  Somehow, someway, God is at work in our lives; guiding us in our search and transforming us as we make our way.  And a tool God uses in this process is our collective life here at St. Paul’s.  As I recognize this in my life I find myself committing joyfully to the work and mission of this parish.  I invite you to recognize and celebrate how God uses this place in your search and I invite you to commit yourself to St. Paul’s because of how God is using it in your life and in the lives of so many others.