A Human Jesus who Heals

Jesus and the Canaanite Woman by Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669)

A sermon for the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, August 14, 2011. The lectionary readings are Isaiah 56:1, 6-8, Psalm 67, Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32, and Matthew 15: (10-20), 21-28.


If you look in the back of our church, on either side of the great big stained glass window in the middle, you’ll see four narrow stained glass windows. They’re called lancet windows, because they have a little pointed arch at the top, and since about the 13th century, when they became especially popular in French Gothic churches, people have thought they resembled a lance, or an arrow in that way. Our four windows represent each of the evangelists in the Bible— John is there, closest to the entrance. Next is Luke is represented with an ox. On the other side of the baptismal font is Mark is represented with a Lion. And then on the far side is represented by a human being. Because all of these figures usually have angel wings on them, the Matthew symbol is sometimes confused with being an angel, but traditionally, it is the human being that has been thought to represent the themes of this Gospel best.

Richard Burridge, who is the dean of King’s College, London, has written a great little book about just this thing—not our windows, but the idea of four different pictures representing one Christ. (Four Gospels, One Jesus?: A Symbolic Reading, Eerdmans 2nd ed, 2005) He begins the book with an extremely helpful analogy based upon four portraits of Winston Churchill at Chartwell. One shows Churchill as a statesman, one as a warrior, one as a quiet painter at leisure, and one as a family man at tea. Burridge notes that in each of the pictures, there’s a cigar. One could look at only one picture and get the idea that these were four different people, brothers maybe. And yet, there’s that cigar that unites each of the pictures. Burridge suggests that, while there’s no cigar in the Bible, and in a similar way, the four evangelists offer us different portraits of Jesus—portraits that are different, but unified by their Christology, the fact that each shows us Christ, the Son of God, who came, and died, and rose again for our sake.

But the perspectives are different. Mark’s Gospel shows Jesus in a direct and clear way, a Jesus who sometimes roars like a lion. Luke shows a compassionate and justice-oriented Jesus, who like an ox, carries the burdens of others. And John’s gives us a Jesus who, like a high-flying eagle, sees all, and understands all, encompasses all—even from before the beginning.

Matthew underscores the humanity of Jesus. In Matthew, we see Jesus the Jewish teacher, Jesus the child who has a whole genealogy, and Jesus who (though as theology reminds us is fully God), Matthew reminds us of Jesus’ full humanity, as well.

I think we see some of Matthew’s take on Jesus in today’s Gospel. The reading is in two sections—the first, having to do with Jesus’ teaching about the words we use, the things we say, being far more important to worry about than the things we eat or the things we put into our bodies. Jesus is the teacher of Israel here, interpreting the Law, and reinterpreting the beliefs and customs of the Pharisees, a particularly religious segment of Jews. But no sooner is Jesus shown as the great teacher, the one who twice before in this gospel quotes the prophet Hosea, “I desire mercy not sacrifice,’ This merciful, good, godly Jesus refuses mercy to the Canaanite woman.

There is, as they say, “history,” here. There is history not between Jesus and this specific woman, but between Jews and Canaanites. Ever since the Exodus, when Moses led the people of Israel out of slavery in Egypt, had the Canaanites been the “other,” the feared ones, the outsiders, the enemies, and the bad guys. It was common slang to refer to them as dogs, and to call a female Canaanite the name for a “female dog” would have sounded just as nasty and mean then as it does today in the street. We might understand someone we know, after a long day, being confronted with a woman (a foreign woman) whose child is in need, and we can understand someone maybe dismissing her. Maybe you or I might have done the same thing. Certainly the disciples seem against her. They say to Jesus, “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.” And so Jesus appears to snap at the woman, suggesting that his message of hope and mercy and salvation is for the Jews only, not for just anyone, not for everyone, but for the people of Israel. Jesus seems to speak out of an understanding of Israel as the elect of God, but also understanding that election as limited and exclusionary.

But look what happens. The woman persists. She keeps on asking. She begs, she cries, she demands, she argues, she talks back…. however we might describe it, this woman has fight in her, and it’s fight enough to take on God. And God hears. And Jesus notices. “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And the woman’s little girl is healed.

A lot is going on in this story. It would have been an easier story to tell and scripture to preach, had it simply stopped before the pesky Canaanite woman comes along. Then, it would be a simple morality tale. Jesus, the great teacher, the holy one, the wise one, turns inside-out the customs and beliefs of the self-righteous religious. It’s easy to be on the side of Jesus against the Pharisees. We don’t imagine we are like the Pharisees, worried about this little thing or that little thing—no, we’re contemporary folk, no superstitions here. We take Jesus’ words to mean “it doesn’t matter what we eat or drink. Doesn’t matter how much we take (while others starve) or how much we use up (while others go without). Jesus is not about rules, but about how we talk to each other, and so let’s speak peace to one another and be kind. Thanks be to God, and Amen.

But the Gospel doesn’t end there. The reason it continues, I think, is that Matthew doesn’t want us to stay in the that smug place of looking across the way, criticizing the Pharisees, and feeling like we’re somehow free and clear to go our own way. He shows us how easy it is to forget God’s mercy. He shows us by showing us Jesus, who one minute extends God’s mercy, but the next, seems to lose his train of thought.

And so the first lesson of the Gospel still stands: it is more important what comes out of our mouths than what goes in. But both may be important, it’s just that what we say and speak and shape with words is MORE important.

The second lesson is to watch out—because it’s easy to forget the mercy of God and easy forget how to extend that mercy to others.

But there’s a third lesson, too. And that’s what we can learn from the Canaanite woman. She shows us what faithful persistence looks like. She shows us what prayer can look like. She shows us how to take our questions, our fears, our worries, our deepest hungers and deepest hopes—straight to the heart of Jesus, where there is mercy and where there is healing.

The Church gives us a tradition of understanding Jesus as fully human and fully divine. We affirm this in the Nicene Creed as we say a shorthand version of what the early councils of the Church argued and prayed over for several hundred years. Both fully God and fully human is the big picture, but in day-to-day living, I think we often experience swings in our understanding and perception of God.

Sometimes Jesus is overarching and transcendent, eternal and mysterious. But at other times, Jesus is like us—snapping at a stranger, talking back to his parents, cutting short the question of a friend, and probably hitting his thumb with a hammer all those years he was helping Joseph in the workshop.

I suppose this “full humanity” of Jesus could shake some people’s faith. But for me, rather than shake my faith in the Incarnation, this just deepens it, for me. It reminds me of the depths to which God has gone to be like us, to risk making mistakes, to risk looking foolish, to risk not being believed, not being loved.

This is the extent to which God has come for us, so that when we cry the prayer of the Canaanite woman, “Lord, help me,” God is already answering, loving, and healing. Thanks be to God for his mercy. Thanks be to God for his healing presence.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Hide and Seek with God

A sermon for the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost, August 7, 2011. The lectionary readings are 1 Kings 19:9-18, Psalm 85:8-13, Romans 10:5-15, and Matthew 14:22-33.

When I was little, I remember playing the guessing game, “I spy.” If we were playing here, I might begin, “I spy, with my own eye, something beginning with …. H!” And then, you would begin to guess what it is I’m spying that begins with an “h.” “Hat?” No, not hat. “Hymnal?” you guess. No, not hymnal. And so we would proceed as you name as many things as you can think of and see until eventually, when there’s not much else left, and so you might guess, “handbell,” and you’d be right. By process of elimination, (by saying “not this, not this, not this and not this) you get to the thing of value, the thing pointed to, the desired thing. This is a little like Jim, the character from the BBC show “Vicar of Dibley” who finally gets around to things the long way by saying “no, no, no, no, no….yes!”

It’s not only in a game that we do that. It’s also a practice for life. Sometimes a vocation or a career choice is made only after trying a number of other things and one by one, checking them off a list. Sometimes finding the right kind of relationship takes that sort of process. And for some, and I find that I’m among them as I grow older and my faith changes and deepens, we draw closer to an understanding of who God is, only by first saying who God is not. While this may sound vaguely Buddhist, it is deeply Christian, following a long line of spiritual thought and practice. A 4th century spiritual teacher (Evagrius of Pontus) taught people to pray by saying, “Strive to render your mind deaf and dumb at the time of prayer, and then you will be able to pray.”

I find this way of negation, this “negative” approach to God helpful for various reasons. First, it can be helpful when our mind or our world is just too cluttered. I recently spoke with someone who, because of their upbringing in a violent family, spoke of his understanding of God as “polluted” by people who had claimed Christianity used religion as a battering ram. When one’s image or idea of God is like that, then it probably needs a process of negation. But secondly, I also find this “via negativa,” the negative way of approaching God as helpful whenever we feel cut off from God, when we feel like we’re in a desert place, or when we feel like we’re sinking. To realize that God is present in absence can be a powerful thing.

The scriptures today give us examples of God showing up where God is not.

In First Kings we hear about the prophet Elijah. Earlier in this chapter, Elijah has been preaching against Queen Jezebel and she has put out a death warrant on him. By the point of the story in today’s reading, Elijah is worn out. He’s tired, he’s afraid, and he doesn’t know what to do, so he comes to a cave, exhausted. Perhaps he’s running away. He spends the night until he’s interrupted by the Word of God—we’re not sure if this interruption is a dream or an angel or some other means of God. But Elijah answers and lets loose: He complains, “I’ve been zealous for the Lord,” he says, but “I alone am left, and they are seeking to take my life.” The Word of God then tells him to go and stand outside the cave. There, Elijah has this amazing experience of God—but not God. It’s as though God takes every image Elijah has God, every idea, every concept, and then bypasses it. God is not in great wind, splitting rocks open it’s so strong. God is not in the earthquake. God is not in the fire. Where God is, is in what some Bibles have translated a “still, small voice.” But even that term does not quite hold God. The New Revised Standard Version, from which we read in worship, translates God’s coming as “a sound of sheer silence.” This is sound that is not sound, but in this full silence, this unspoken Word, Elijah hears strength and encouragement and purpose from God. Elijah leaves the cave, changed, and empowered by the spirit of God.

God shows up strangely in our Gospel, as well. The story picks up where last week left off. After preaching and feeding the thousands, Jesus goes away to a quiet place to pray. He sends the disciples on ahead, to cross over the water in a boat. Jesus goes out over the water to meet them, the disciples are afraid, and Jesus has the interaction with Peter about faith and doubt.
I think we can look at this in at least two ways: the first is slightly cynical and suspicious of Jesus, as we notice that here he practically sets up the disciples. It’s like Jesus sends them straight into their deepest fears: to go out on the water and get scared. He knows them. He knows what will happen when they leave him and begin to doubt themselves, and doubt their experiences with him, and begin to doubt God. And yet, Jesus sends them on.

But another way to look at this is from a lighter perspective. I wonder if we don’t sometimes read scripture with far too serious an attitude. What if Jesus is basically playing a kind of hide and seek with the disciples? Of course, it’s no ordinary game of hide and seek—their lives depend on it. Their souls depend on it. But when Peter falls in the water and Jesus boosts him up and supports him, I can almost hear laughter in Jesus’ question, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” It’s as thought Jesus says, “You might have thought you were alone, but I was here. You might have thought you were lost, but I’d find you soon enough. You might have thought you were sinking, but I’ve got you, now and forever.”

Belden Lane writes about the game of hide and seek as he learned something new from his children and. He says that he used to worry about his son, because his son couldn’t get the game right. Every time they would play, as soon as his son found a good hiding place, he would yell “ready!” Belden writes that, to his mind, this missed the whole point of the game: to hide well. But eventually, he realized that from his son’s perspective, HE was missing the whole point of the game. The whole fun of hide-and-seek is in being found! Lane quotes Meister Eckhart, the 13th century Dominican who said, “God is like a person who clears his throat while hiding and so gives himself away.” [Solace of Fierce Landscapes, p. 179] God becomes hidden in order to be found.

I don’t know where you all are on this hot, August morning. It may be that you have no patience for this God of “hide-and-seek.” It may be that the way of arriving at God by saying and seeing where God is not, doesn’t work for you, or doesn’t work for you at this point in your life. That’s fine. Christian spirituality has sometimes spoken of two great ways of approaching God—neither is independent, both are complimentary, but one way uses images to think of God, to pray to God, to approach God. God is parent. God is king. God is energy. God is Jesus.
But others do sometimes feel called into this holy game of hide and seek, in which God is not, so that God can be.

It’s hard to be alive and awake in our world and not have some fear. We fear the instability of the markets. We fear for our safety. We fear for our children's future. We fear for our jobs. We fear for our health. On and on the list goes. But in the midst of these very real fears, at one level the scriptures today are about God whispering outside a cave and about God-in-Jesus walking on water. But at another level, the scriptures (as with the prayers and the whole tradition of our faith) remind us that God is closer to us than our own breath. God holds us. God sustains us. And God will never leave us.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

In memory of Erling Hansen (1948-2011)

Havre de Grace, MD

A sermon for the Mass celebrating the life of Erling Hansen (1948-2011), offered at All Souls on August 6, 2011.

I love the personal names, the proper names of the immediate Hansen clan: Knut, Erik, Katrine. Though I’ve only met several of you today, I’ve known your names for some time. The surname, comes initially from the first person called Hansen, who was the “son of Hans.” Erling, means the “heir of the clanchief,” not the Earl himself, but a little Earl of sorts, an Erling.

Names are important to most of us and we can see in scripture that names are often very important to God. Sometimes when one has an important interaction with God, one undergoes a name-change. Abram becomes Abraham. Sarai becomes Sara. Peter is renamed Cephas, meaning “rock.” We grow out of names and we grow into names. And sometimes a name becomes a part of us.

This can happen with place-names, as well.

Erling and I shared a common history with the place known as Havre de Grace, Maryland. Supposedly named by Lafayette because it made him think of Le Havre, Havre de Grace is the place where the Susquehanna River meets the Chesapeake, and Erling and Deion kept a boat there. I served a parish there, though we did not overlap until I came here to All Souls.

It’s no small thing to me that Erling felt comfortable and alive in a place named “harbor of grace.” The “harbor” part makes sense, given Erling’s love of the water. We are born in water, we are baptized in water, we are blessed with water at our burial. Erling spent a lot of time with water. “Harbor of grace” is also appropriate given the grace and the peace with which Erling lived (and died.) In this community, and I would imagine in other areas of his life, Erling brought grace, pointed to grace, encouraged others toward grace, and he embodied grace.

Tomorrow’s scripture reading at the Gospel would have in some ways been an appropriate reading for today. It’s the story in which Jesus goes away to pray alone while the disciples take the boat out. They’re far from land, in the middle of the water. But out of nowhere, Jesus approaches, as though he’s walking on the water. Peter ventures out on the water to reach Jesus but when the wind picks up, Peter becomes afraid and begins to sink. Jesus catches him (with a laugh) and says, “why did you doubt?”

We doubt for lots of reasons. But the part of Erling I knew stood in the midst of winds and storms of all kind. He remained calm. He remained loving. He remained connected to those he loved and to the God he loved. Jesus and Erling look to us now and say, “why do you doubt.” It’s all going to be fine. There is grace: sweet, still, clear, calm grace. The water has not so much as a ripple. There’s barely a breeze, because in every direction, as far as the eye can see, there is love, and there is grace, and there is God.

Thanks be to God for the life of Erling Hansen. May his soul rest in peace and rise in glory.

Miracles of multiplication

Mosaic of the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes, St. Savior in Chora, Istanbul. Photo © Dick Osseman.

A sermon for the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, July 31, 2011. The lectionary readings are Isaiah 55:1-5, Psalm 145: 8-9, 15-22, Romans 9:1-5, and Matthew 14:13-21.


As we begin to move into August, our parish and others are thinking about September 11. Stories come to mind, memories flash. Especially as I read today’s Gospel, I think of another miracle of loaves and fishes. September 11, 2001 was a Tuesday, but by Wednesday, the Seamen’s Church Institute, an Episcopal ministry based near South Street Seaport, had begun to coordinate food for the men and women who came to New York to help recover and clean up. By Thursday, emails and faxes were going throughout the Diocese, and a simple rota was drawn up so that a church from Manhattan along with a church from the Bronx might be in charge of lunch. A few people from Yonkers might team up with another few from Brooklyn to cover dinner. On and on, it spread. Filipino Episcopal ladies would bring empanadas and pancit. Haitian Episcopalians would bring rice and beans and fish. It was a kind of United Nations of food, and for each meal, it initially looked like there wouldn’t be enough. But with each aluminum serving bowl and each plastic utensil, the food seemed to grow.

Out of a little, came a lot. Out of the hearts of those who wanted to help, came God’s love the way of God’s love is almost always to multiply and grow and expand.

With a little bit of faith, with time for God to break in, with a miracle in the presence of Jesus Christ, paralyzing problems can become holy possibilities.

In today’s Gospel, I imagine the disciples were probably at their wit’s end. It was late in the day, they must have been tired, hungry, maybe a bit cranky. We know from other scriptures that the disciples sometimes became a little jealous of Jesus’ time—and so I bet the disciples were trying to get rid of the people. But Jesus tells the disciples to feed the people.

The disciples have almost nothing—but they eventually have no choice but to bring to Jesus the little that they have. They bring the five loaves and the two fish. And somehow, and some way, all the people ate, and they were satisfied.

The disciples bring the little that they have. They bring their limitations, their faults, their shortcomings, their impatience, their pride, their anger, all of their bounty, which is really quite small and insufficient, but they give it to Jesus.

Jesus took their offering and he blessed, broke and gave. What was ordinary became holy. What was insufficient is what was able to feed all—with some left over.

What might seem like a paralyzing problem— with the touch, the blessing, and the sharing of Christ, becomes problem is changed into a holy possibility.

Maybe we have known this aspect of sanctification (of something being made holy), in our own lives. But too often, if you’re like me, it’s easy to forget its power. Probably it is the devil who convinces us that we are alone, that we are isolated, and that we need to solve every problem ourselves.

To return to some of the images of our Gospel and other scripture, we’re human-- we get hungry and thirsty. We need food and drink. But we believe that we thirst alone. We believe we’re the only ones who are hungry. But in the first lesson from Isaiah, God calls us into relationship, into community with another, into fellowship. God calls us closer-- Especially when we’re thirsty and have no water, especially when we’re hungry (no matter whether that hunger is for food, or friendship, or love, or whatever.)

But this well-known Gospel story of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes reminds us of a paradigm for holy healing. It’s a method practiced by many.

Almost any twelve step program of recovery begins the same way: First we admit that we are limited. We admit that we are powerless—over the thing, the substance, the person, the habit, the emotion, whatever. This means being honest with our own deficiencies and understanding that we are not all that we might be.

The next movement is to give our “little” over to God, to place it on his altar, as it were. Whether we are hungry for real food, or hungry for something else. Whether it is a lack of patience, a lack of compassion, a lack of love, a lack of faith—whatever is our little, we place before God with a prayer simply that God would help and heal us.

And then finally, we await God’s action in prayer and we share the process, and the presence of Christ with someone else. We share our limitations, our lack, our little. And it may just be that in the sharing of our pains, the multiplication, the blessing, the holy healing comes from an unexpected direction.

If we allow him, if we dare to follow him, Jesus takes problems that seem paralyzing and makes of them holy possibilities.

May we know the blessing of God’s abundant love, may we share this love with others, love abundant and overflowing.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Growing with the Kingdom

A Mustard Tree

A sermon for the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost, July 24, 2011. The lectionary readings are 1 Kings 3:5-12, Psalm 119:129-136, Romans 8:26-39, and Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52.


Royalty have been in the news a lot recently. There was the wedding of Will and Kate, now the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. There was the wedding of Albert, the Prince of Monaco and Charlene the Olympic swimmer from South Africa. More sadly, today in Oslo, the King and Queen of Norway are attending a memorial service for those who died in this week’s tragedies.

In this country, we tend to have conflicted feelings about royals. They are interesting from afar, but often, if we think too much about them, they do not fare so well “up close and personal.” Much of our country’s founding and a large strain in our the Episcopal Church’s history in the United States had to do with creating distance from royalty and royal things. How, then, do we hear royal language in scripture? How do we respond to royal language when we sing it in hymns, or when we pray it in our prayers?

I’ve pointed out in other sermons some of the issues many Christians have with the male pronouns having to do with God, but another word that has often been stricken from liturgical use is the word “kingdom.” “Kingdom” is that it is too patriarchal, too hierarchical. It smacks of hereditary monarchies and musty old Prayer Books. And so in some churches, one can hear other terms substituted. Instead of speaking of the kingdom of God, they will speak of the “Reign of God,” or “God’s Commonwealth” (which makes me want to sing, “O Canada”), or “God’s Holy Realm,” which sounds nice, but I’m not sure what it means.

The obvious problem is that whatever word one chooses, there will be confusion. Another problem has to do with clergy sometimes underestimating the intelligence of people who sit in pews, read scripture, and listen to sermons. People understand that words are symbols and they always point to something beyond what they describe.

The word, “kingdom” comes up in today’s scriptures. Rather than ignore the word or try to substitute a more politically correct word, I wonder if we might do better by exploring exactly what is meant by the word, and then asking God to improve our understanding. Especially given the many different images for the kingdom given in scripture, especially given Jesus’ own frequent use of the word, and given the state of the church in our day—I want more kingdom talk, not less. I want more kingdom thinking and I want more kingdom living.

Scripture offers us various images for a “Kingdom.” The Old Testament is of several minds about kings and kingdoms. Especially in 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Samuel, one can tease out a voice that is very suspicious about Israel even having a king, while at the same time hearing another voice that consistently cheers for the king.

In today’s first lesson, King Solomon re-defines kingship. God appears to Solomon in a dream and promises to give him whatever he asks for. Anything he wants. A traditional king—a patriarchal king, a hierarchical king, a king interested only in perpetuating power and the status quo—might ask for a huge army, or vast wealth, or a new weapon to obliterate the enemy.

But King Solomon prays for Wisdom, for Sophia—the wisdom unique to God that the scripture pictures in female terms, as running through the city like a woman in search of a lover. This is the sort of king Solomon is. His is a kingship that is based on wisdom. And wisdom has a tendency to undermine a conventional, traditional understanding of kingship.

In the line of King David, in the line of King Solomon, Jesus personifies this kind of wisdom. When Jesus rides into Jerusalem, in the event we commemorate with Palm Sunday, he re-defines kingship. He is praised, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!”

When Jesus talks about the kingdom of God, he talks in terms that complete re-define, completely re-orient, completely re-picture any earthly idea of Kingdom. And so, the kingdom of God is pictured as a place where children are welcome. It is a kingdom where the poor have a place of honor. It is a kingdom where the persecuted are blessed. And this new kingdom, Jesus says, is already at hand.

In today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus gives us five images for the kingdom.

The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed. A tiny, tiny mustard seed that can grow into a large bush or tree. Everything it needs to grow is contained in that little seed, invisible to the eye, but thorough known to God. And it is the seed’s nature to grow. It can’t help but grow because that is what it does.

The kingdom of God is like leaven that a woman works into the dough. It is worked in quietly, mysteriously, almost without noticing anything special. Until the dough is covered and left a lone for a while. Before you know it, it has doubled in size.

The kingdom of God is like hidden treasure in a field. One stumbles upon it. Others might be looking elsewhere for treasure, or perhaps they’re too busy doing other things. But you—you find the treasure. And so you take special care to cover it up, while doing everything you need to do to make sure that you purchase the field and make it your own.

The kingdom of God is like a pearl of extraordinary value. Like the treasure in the field, the pearl is of such value that it re-orients everything else. Finding the pearl, priorities change and shift and allow for this one, very best, most precious thing. That’s what the kingdom of God is like, Jesus says. Augustine talked about the ordering of our loves—putting what’s most important on the very top, which then puts into proper place everything else.

The kingdom of God is like great net that is cast into the ocean and gathers all kinds of fish. Some good, some bad, some a few in-between. But the time of the kingdom is to be all together in the net. At the end of time, God will sort out which is of value. For now, we live together.

And so we have various images for what a kingdom looks like and how a kingdom begins and grows and continues. I wonder how we are called to participate in God’s kingdom. What is the pearl of great price for us? Are we the leaven, or do we participate in the leaven in some way? Or is the kingdom of God to be updated in some new way—like a hypertext of love, perhaps? Is the kingdom of God like a tweet that causes a flashmob, or a revolution? Or maybe the kingdom of God begins with one person’s asking for a summer Bible study and then after three weeks, nineteen people are gathered in the All Souls undercroft at 10 am studying the Gospel of the Day. (And yes, that is a shameless promotion for our summer study.)

The kingdom of God can be found in every direction, but some of its characteristics can be found in the mustard seed, and the leaven and the pearl of great price. One aspect of the kingdom is that it unfolds on its own time table. It cannot be fully planned, strategized or outlined. We have some good mustard seeds. We have some good, sneaky, faithful leaven in our midst. And we have those who have stumbled upon All Souls and have recognized it not as the one and only place to hear God’s love, but as a treasure, a real treasure in the field. And so priorities shift. Loves are ordered anew.

We’ve got some good seeds, but they need to be watered. And so I want to challenge us all to do three things that might help us live into the kingdom of God.

We need more kingdom thinking. Prayer is our lifeblood. The first thing is to ask for your prayers. One of you mentioned some time ago, “we talk about growth and wanting to grow” but are we praying for it? I am, I told her. But I want all of us to be praying for the growth of God’s kingdom everywhere, but especially at All Souls.

We need more kingdom talking. The second thing is this. Fall is coming and we are celebrating 100 years of worshipping in Woodley Park. Especially for our Centennial Week, October 9 and October 16, invite someone to come to All Souls with you. Father Van Dooren will be preaching on the 9th and Bishop Chane will be preaching on the 16th. If you’re away, that means you need to invite two people, because you need to have someone here in your place. There is no reason why we don’t have 400 people both Sundays.

And finally, we need more kingdom living. What is your role at All Souls? What is your place? Do you simply keep a spot on the pews from being dusty, or do you do more? Do you pray for the church? Do you volunteer for the church? Do you teach Sunday school, or will you? Do you get your workplace or company to help in some way? Do you fold flyers? Do you simply straighten up the pews or pick up trash? What do you do to contribute to the growth of the kingdom of God from All Souls?

During this summer of deep growth and blooming outside, may God bless us with deep growth on the inside as well, as we grow more faithfully into the Kingdom of God on earth and in heaven.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Wheat and Weeds

A sermon for the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost, July 17, 2011. The lectionary readings are Isaiah 44:6-8, Psalm 86:11-17, Romans 8:12-25, and Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43.


Did you know that we have Lagerstroemia in our church? Did you know that we have Hydrangea quercifolia and Magnolia grandiflora as well? If you were to walk through our church garden, you’d see these strange-sounding things and you’d recognize them as crepe myrtle, oak leaf hydrangea, and Southern magnolia.

But also in our garden, and in our church, we have “corpus permixtum,” growing. Right here. In and among us.

Corpus permixtum is the Latin phrase that St. Augustine used to describe God’s garden—not some special, exotic garden, but the garden of God’s green thumb known as the church.

Augustine said the church is a “corpus permixtum,” a great phrase that points to a mixed body, the good and the bad, the saved and the unsaved, the wicked and the holy.

In a commentary on a psalm, Augustine observed that in his day (and still, sometimes in our own), Christians have a good reputation. ‘They all love each other; each and every one of them does all they can for one another. They pray, fast, sing hymns; they do this around the whole world. God is praised in peace, in unanimity.’ A person may hear this, [Augustine writes] and nothing gets said about the wicked who are mixed in.” And so, this person hears about the church and visits. “He comes, drawn by this high praise. He then runs into these scoundrels mixed up with the others, ones he hadn’t been told about before he came. He gets offended by all these false Christians and flees true Christians.” Augustine points out that on one side there are those who are “hate-filled people, slanderers—they rush in to condemn: ‘What sort of people are Christians? Who are Christians? Money-grubbers, loan-sharks. Aren’t the very people who pack the theaters or the amphitheaters for the games or for the other big-time entertainments the same people who pack the churches on festival days? They’re drunks, gluttons, they’re jealous of each others, they tear each other down.’” But, as Augustine points out, not all Christians are like that. He notes that “The slanderer in his blindness says nothing about the good [Christians, but]; the praiser in his exaggeration says nothing of the bad. (Commentary on Psalm 99:12, Augustine in His Own Words, William Harmless, p. 90)

A mixed body then, and a mixed body now.

Jesus tells a parable and explains that the kingdom of God is like a man who sows seed in his garden. After a little while wheat begins to grow, but weeds also begin to grow, weeds sown by the devil. The servants are upset about the weeds. They want to know where the weeds came from and they’re ready to go out and gather them up. But the landowner says, “No.” If you try to get rid of the weeds now, you’ll also do damage to the wheat. Just wait until the harvest and then things can be sorted out.

The disciples who hear Jesus tell this story, ask him to explain. Jesus explains that this parable is really about the kingdom of God. God has sown good seed. The devil has also thrown in the seed that will become weeds. But both are allowed to grow, good people with bad people, until the day when God calls home his own children. “Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of the Father.”

It’s a simple message from Jesus, really. It has implications for the sowing of seeds. It has implications for the mixed body that is the church, and it has implications for the mixed body that is within each one of us.

Whether it’s God who sows seeds, Jesus who sows, the church, or each one of us, acting as an everyday Christian, notice that the cultivation of the soil is not the first thing that happens. Contrary to those who do mission studies and look closely at demographics in order to target the Church’s mission, this parable suggests that the seeds of faith are best sown in every direction. God will take care of where they take root and where they grow.

We never know when the seed of faith may sprout. Sometimes a member of All Souls who has moved away will visit. Almost every time, the person will see someone else at church and remark to me, “I can’t believe so-and-so is back at church. I thought they drifted away years ago. It’s good to seem them back.” We do our part in encouraging faith, in building up the body that is this church family, but sometimes people’s lives get complicated. Their schedules become unmanageable. Their commute is too hard, their kids too busy. Or maybe they get mad—at the priest, the choir director, the volunteers in the kitchen… you name it. But one day, something shifts, and they feel ready to return. As people charged with taking care of the garden that is All Souls, we welcome them. No questions. No judgments. We’re just glad they’re here. We have no control over who will hear and respond to the Good News of Jesus Christ, nor what the timing of their response might be. “The righteous will shine like the sun,” in God’s own good time.

This parable speaks to the mixed body that is the congregation of the faithful who are in the church (whether we think of this globally or locally). Our Anglican cousins around the world would sometimes rather treat the Episcopal Church as a weed, a week to be trained, pruned, or perhaps even cut off altogether. I would simply point out today’s parable. Let’s grow together. Let’s do our best to produce faithful and holy results and let God do the sorting out in the end. It’s the same in this congregation. We are educated and less educated. We are gently and cranky. We are sweet-speaking, and we are sarcastic. Old and young, pious and worldly, sophisticated and rough around the edges—we are diverse. But God gives us holy patience with each other.

Though St. Augustine defended this idea of the church as a mixed body, he also knew that it was sometimes necessary to discipline church officials, leaders in the church, and other members of the community. Sometimes behavior crossed a boundary, and people were called to account for themselves and sometimes even excommunicated. In our community, there are some behaviors that are unacceptable, and we will call people on it. This is the gift of community. We don’t act alone in policing, but we come together in prayer, in discernment, guided by the Holy Spirit. We seek to speak the truth in love. But wherever and whenever possible, we pray for patience, tolerance, and forbearance.

Finally, the truth of this parable has implications for us as individuals. Augustine’s idea of a mixed body, or perhaps even a mixed-up body is evident in each one of us, as we wrestle with the fact that we are each part-wheat and part-weed. No one is all good or all bad. As faithful as we may be, as much as we may try to follow the way of Jesus Christ, as holy as some may become, this side of heaven, there will always be a few weeds. Some can be plucked out. Some can be contained. But others sometimes need to simply be ignored, not fertilized, not encouraged. Eventually, they’ll die, but to pay too much attention to them might be to neglect the good that’s trying to grow within us. And so the tending of our own soul takes care.

This is another reason why we are best off going slow before we judge others, because if we sit still with ourselves long enough, we are likely to find within ourselves that very trait or characteristic that is making us so angry at our neighbor.

This parable of the wheat and the weeds speaks of a day when judgment comes. The Church has often pictured God as an angry judge who decides which of us makes the cut and which doesn’t. But if we think about it, if we perhaps even look into the mirror, we’ll realize that most of the decision about God is ours. We decide whether to turn to God, whether to have the light and love God would give us. We decide whether to try to be loving toward others. We decide whether God’s vision for the world is worth our trouble. And so, at the end of our days, there are no surprises, because we will have lived our lives either deciding for God, or not.

Do I appoint myself God’s special weed-killer and try to create a spiritually perfect garden, or do I accept that there will always be a few weeds? Do I allow for the fact that sometimes maybe the weeds are not even weeds after all? Do I worry about clearing out the less-than-perfect around me, or do I try to encourage a little growth when I see it? And what about my own garden of a soul-- Do I encourage the wheat within me, or do I let the weeds take over?

St. Paul says “the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us….Creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God.” We wait with hope. We wait with patience. We wait with love for God who loves us more than we can ask or imagine.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Promoting Growth

A sermon for the Fourth Sunday after Pentecost, July 10, 2011. The lectionary readings are Isaiah 55:10-13, Psalm 65: (1-8), 9-14, Romans 8:1-11, and Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23.

Deep underground, in an island in Norway, about 800 miles from the North Pole, is the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. You may have read about it or heard about it in the news. To insure biodiversity and to protect against any kind of widespread disaster or global crisis, the vault serves as a seed bank where duplicate copies of seeds from all around the world can be kept safely. More than 10,000 seeds are kept there, stored in four-ply sealed envelopes, then placed into plastic tote containers on metal shelving racks. The storage rooms are kept at 0 °F, which delays the seeds from aging. It must be quiet there in that cold, underground space-aged cavern.

While I understand the reasoning behind keeping the duplicate seeds safe, and I get the importance of the whole venture, it does seem a little strange that such extravagant lengths are gone to in order to keep seeds from doing what they’re created to do: to grow.

The Gospel today is about seeds and the various things that can stifle growth.

The Parable of the Sower is a straightforward story. Jesus tells the parable and goes on to explain it. The seed is the Word of God that comes our way. It comes through the hearing of Scripture. It comes through our individual reading, or through Sunday school, or confirmation classes or other times of Christian Formation and Education. The Word of God is thrown at us sometimes through non-biblical literature, sometimes through the words or actions of people who influence us, sometimes through a movie or a game. Some of us grew up in families in which the seeds (the word and teachings of God) were sown in our lives carefully, with prayer and attention and care. Others of us grew up catching an occasional seed here or there, or perhaps nurturing the Word of God in our lives through independent or self-study. But however it’s come to us, the important thing, says Jesus, is whether that seed is able to take root in us. The important thing is whether the seed eventually grows, flowers, and produces.

In some, the seed barely takes hold and then there’s some kind of trial or challenge. Through church history and in other parts of the world today there is still religious persecution, and this can stifle the seed. Sometimes in our culture the challenge comes through almost overwhelming pressures, through loneliness or depression or addiction. And so, the seed withers, and dies— or almost dies.

Jesus says there are others who hear the Word of God, they receive the seed, but then they get distracted, they get caught up in what Jesus calls the “cares of the world,” or the “lure of wealth.” That seed, too, dwindles or dies.

But then, there are those for whom the seed takes off and grows. It is like, as Isaiah puts it, “the earth brings forth and sprouts seed for the sower and bread for the eater”…We “go out in joy, and [are] led back in peace; the mountains and the hills before [us] … burst into song, and all the trees of the field … clap their hands.”

But I wonder if we don’t sometimes do the equivalent of building a seed vault like they’ve done in Norway. God has planted within us seeds—yes, the Word of God, but often that Word is not full-grown, and it exists deep within us as idea, a gift, a skill, or a desire. Maybe we didn’t really recognize it when we first received it. Maybe it has been in the dark too long and hasn’t been allowed to flourish and grow. Maybe it’s too cold where this seed is. Maybe we have been too scared to let it grow, or it was unsafe for it to flourish, and so we decided that it needed protection and safeguarding.

How might Jesus be inviting us into a larger garden? How might God be, even now, promoting new growth within us and around us?

Yesterday we celebrated the life of Nancye Suggs, and a part of yesterday’s sermon continues today. Nancye was incredible at seeing things in each of us (seeds of possibility) that with the right encouragement, some care, some watering, could blossom into new abilities, and gifts, and achievements. We would honor her best by allowing those things she touched to grow, and by continuing that practice with each other.

When we look at each other, what lies dormant or hidden away? When I meet a new person, or perhaps look closely at someone I’ve known for years, what might I see that God is asking me to encourage, promote, water? Are there ways that we can work as good trellises, propping up each other to that the storms of life don’t topple us over?

In the First Letter to the Corinthians, Saints Paul talks about something our garden guild knows very well—it takes a crowd to help a garden grow. It takes a handful to grow a church. Paul taught and encouraged the church at Corinth. Another disciple known as Apollos also taught and encouraged. Other teachers and leaders came and went. But the Corinthians began to get bogged down in following only their favorite teacher. They divided into factions, with some wanting only one kind of encouragement, and others wanting only another. But Paul reminds them that no matter who helps tend the garden, (Paul planted and Apollos watered) “God gives the growth.” Paul says, “The one who plants and the one who waters have a common purpose … For we are God’s servants, working together” (1 Corinthians 3:7-9).

Yesterday, I quoted a short line from Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself,” but today there are words from that same poem that speak of all those who have planted, watered, and tended, who have gone before us. Whitman writes,

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.
You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.
Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.

In other words, we give thanks for those who have planted whatever good there is in us. Others will come, even as we are sent, to water, to weed and support, but God gives the growth, and God will continue giving the growth.

Thanks be to Jesus Christ who sows love in us, who sows mercy and forgiveness, and who sows seeds of eternal life, that we may grow for ever.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Celebrating the Life of Nancye Jane Turner Suggs (1943-2011)

Nancye and Larry Suggs with Bishop John B. Chane on May 2, 2011

A sermon for the Mass celebrating the life of Nancye Suggs, former senior warden of All Souls Church. The scripture readings are Isaiah 61:1-3, Psalm 23 (sung), 1 John 3:1-2, and Luke 14:16-23.

Raconteur is a great word. A raconteur is defined as “a person who tells stories, a person who relates anecdotes in an interesting manner.” It comes from an old French word, meaning “to account” for something, or “to give one’s account” of something. The theologian Harvey Cox, has said famously, “There has never been a better raconteur than Jesus of Nazareth.” But I don’t think Professor Cox met Nancye Suggs. Nancye could tell the Devil a story and make him smile. Nancye told lots of stories—some of them historical, some about people she knew or had heard about, and many of these stories were true. (Truth, after all, is often conveyed more by the spirit of a thing than in the details.) Right now, I imagine Nancye and Jesus out-story-telling each other, while countless disciples, saints, martyrs, angels, and archangels, wonder when they’ll even stop talking and dessert can be had!

Nancye gave me a little book for Christmas, knowing (in the way that she always did) that I would delight in it. The book is by Russell Lynes (whose father was an Episcopal priest) and the book is called Guests: or, How to Survive Hospitality: The Classic Guidebook). In the chapter on boring people, he says that in his family there were always five forbidden topics: domiciles, domestics, dress, diseases, and descendants.” He goes on to agree that “It is a good rule-of-thumb list, though I believe that there is no topic of conversation that is boring per se. It takes a bore to make it boring, and being a bore is usually the mere calamity of miscalculating one’s audience, a thing for which some people have a more marked talent than others.” (p. 32).

I take great comfort in knowing that Nancye gave me that book, but the section I just read, at least, was not highlighted. I read that section out loud to her one day, and we laughed, and agreed, that God must have put boring people in the world to teach us patience. One thing is for sure: While perhaps entertaining a few boring people over the years, and while she certainly put up with her share of boring priests—as for Nancye, there was not a boring bone in her body.

A relatively new member of All Souls emailed me to say that she did not really know Nancye very well, but that she had been at a dinner in which half the gathering ended up in the living room, surrounding Nancye, as she held forth about the history of All Souls, the history of Washington, D.C., her opinion on city government, the school system, and last, but certainly not least, her opinion on desserts. It was only in the last year or so that she would come close to approving of fruit as a dessert. A well remember her looking at me one day in complete bafflement: “Father, those people tried to serve fruit for dessert! Can you imagine? I’m sorry, but that is simply NOT dessert!”

Nancye was opinionated about her funeral, which was only complicated in that she left instructions written in 1994 and some from last year, and they don’t always agree. Nancye personified the Walt Whitman line, “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes.” (Song of Myself).

She left us a list of hymns to sing and specified that we read from the King James Version of the Bible. But she left me some room with the Gospel. I could have used one of the classic Gospels for an occasion such as this: the Good Shepherd passage, or the one about many mansions. And while I know that Nancye has been called by name by the Good Shepherd and that she is surely holding forth right now in a magnificent mansion, the reading we heard, the parable of the Great Banquet, seems to fit her just about right.

Jesus tells a story about a man who gives a great feast, tries to get his guest list together, but people are busy, or distracted, or have other plans. Thanks much, they say, maybe another time? Maybe we could meet for coffee instead? (You know, the kids are at summer camp, and then we’re at the beach for a week, and then school starts, you know, and Christmas is here before you know it….. we’ve all heard this.)

Jesus names a situation we’ve all known. We’ve got this big, good thing to celebrate. We invite people, but either people are busy, or no one responds, or people forget. And so the person giving the feast tells the servants—“ok, then, if all of these people are too busy, open the doors wide, let everybody in, compel (that is, convince, cajole, kidnap) people to come in.

Jesus is talking about inviting people to a larger feast, the feast of life itself, the feast of life lived in God’s company, the feast we celebrate and enjoy in the Sacrament of Holy Communion.

I love the context for this story Jesus tells. He’s sitting at a fancy dinner party! There he in, in the middle of this rich man’s home, enjoying his food and drink, and Jesus tells this story that ends up hitting his host between the eyes with truth and choice.

Either Jesus is very Nancye-like here, or Nancye was very Jesus-like in this respect, I’m not sure which, and I’m not sure it matters. But what I’m talking about is the way that Jesus (and Nancye) could look at a person with love—look through the person with love and then speak Truth, with a capital “T.” This is a rare thing. It is an exceptional thing. I know that I will keep hearing her say to me, “Father, you know. Maybe I’m out of line in saying this, because you know, I take seriously that I’m the ‘rector’s warden,’ but have you thought of…” and then she would gently, smartly, judge me in a direction in which (five minutes before) I had no intention of going.

When Nancye and Laurence showed up at All Souls in the mid-70s, a few All Souls eyebrows were lifted. A very few even said some nasty things about them. But not only did Nancye know she was living out the welcome of Jesus, she also had a sense that she was simply carrying forward the vision of Dr. Sterrett, who founded this church. He said, famously, that it be “neither a broad church nor a narrow church, neither a high church nor a low church, but a church of All Souls.” Nancye welcomed and reminded. She encouraged and uplifted. She entertained and she offered criticism that always enlarged one’s own vision of oneself. She talked, and talked, and talked.
She remembered (just about everything she had ever heard about a person, a place, a building), she remembered and conveyed her memories so that others would be captivated by a love of history and story, as well.

We miss her at the table. When someone with such a powerful presence dies, sometimes we respond to their death in strange ways. We might rush into the space that is opened up. We might quickly try to do a thing “our way.” But I think our way of honoring her place is to give thanks, to pray about all that she did and all that she was for us, and to ask God, “What part of her life might I be called to embody, or enact? Might I encourage? Remind? Cajole or nag? Might I check on people? Might I offer healing? Might I cook, laugh, or simply be the face of God’s forgiveness and joy? If there’s something Nancye taught us that we can continue with, then that would really be a nice chapter to her story that keeps on being told.

Thanks be to God for Nancye Suggs, raconteur extraordinaire and for us a mother, a grandmother, an aunt, a sister. Thanks be to God for Nancye’s resurrection to eternal feasting. Thanks be to God for Nancye: storyteller and saint.

Getting Rest

A sermon for the Third Sunday after Pentecost, July 3, 2011. The lectionary readings are Zechariah 9:9-12, Psalm 145: 8 - 15, Romans 7:15-25a, and Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30.

Wendell Berry has a poem that fits this day.

Six days of work are spent
To make a Sunday quiet
That Sabbath may return.
It comes in unconcern;
We cannot earn or buy it.

(“Six days of work are spent," Sabbaths, San Francisco: North Point, 1987).

He goes on to imagine a Sabbath, a day of rest, which perhaps does not come gently or predictably. Maybe it’s cloudy. Maybe there are storms. Maybe one wakes up angry, or angry at one’s self. And yet, with the power of Sabbath-time, with the power of God’s Sabbath, all noise and wonder, all worry and planning, all expectation, all regret—stop. They are given a chance to breath. They find their voice again. They pause for God’s re-creation.

I grew up in North Carolina when the Sabbath was still culturally acknowledged. Only a few restaurants were open on Sunday. Very few stores were open, and one prominent department store had special curtains it would close in front of its windows so that no would could even window-shop. Sunday was a day for church (or presumably, if you were Jewish, you were expected to extend the Sabbath to coincide with the majority culture). It was a day for spending time with one’s family. It was a day for slowing down, recharging, eating big midday meals, and napping. Such Sundays could sometimes seem endless, and so I couldn’t wait for the next day of work, or school, or whatever the normal routine would bring. But even in the boredom, there was a certain giftedness to Sabbath.

In Genesis we find God resting on the seventh day. In Exodus, God commands the people of Israel to take a break, “remember the Sabbath day,” “observe the Sabbath.” This is echoed in the Ten Commandments, and this is the tradition Jesus would have grown up in. Jesus keeps the Sabbath, though, like in some other cases, Jesus gets into trouble with the religious authorities for his interpretation of the Sabbath. The Resurrection takes place on the Sabbath, or, depending on the way you count the day and keep time according to the sun, it takes place on what poets and theologians have called, “the 8th day”—a sort of Sabbath of Sabbaths, so special, so individual, that it happens totally outside the normal configuration of time.

For something to be “Sabbath,” it becomes holy, set apart. Different. Not like everything else. And rest, for most of us would be that—it would be set apart. It would be unusual. It could even be holy.

In the Gospel today we have some famous words,

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Jesus offers rest, but I don’t think it’s simply the kind “plopping in a sofa” rest at the end of a long day. Instead, I think he’s talking about the kind of rest that comes at the end of a struggle. It’s a kind of rest that happens when we realize that the world does not really depend upon me after all. It’s the kind of rest that comes by putting our trust, our faith, our hope, our decision, our joys our pains, our very life, in the hands of Jesus.

Teresa of Avila, was a 16th century Spanish saint and mystic who was a very busy lady. What I most like about Teresa is her common sense. She struggled with the force of her own personality, her own abilities and talents, the voices of the world that tried to tell her what to do. And yet she put absolute faith in Jesus and followed him. It was this faith that empowered her to found or reform 17 convents all over Spain. She traveled in a donkey-pulled wagon with a dislocated shoulder, with arthritis, with all kinds of physical maladies, and yet she did what she perceived to be God’s will. At one point, Teresa reflected on “obedience.” She says

Obedience is like when there’s some difficult matter to be sorted out. The two sides cannot agree on a solution, and so they take their problem to a trusted third party, to have it resolved. Teresa says that in obedience, we take to God the things within ourselves that are at war with each other. We lift them up to God as though these things are our sacrifice upon the altar, and we trust God to decide for us. This is obedience. This is surrender. This is joyful rest.

Teresa wrote,

Let nothing trouble you, let nothing scare you,
All is fleeting, God alone is unchanging,
Patience
Everything obtains.
The one who possesses God lacks nothing at all.
God alone suffices. (Teresa’s “Book mark” poem, 1582)

This is Sabbath. It is time out, time put aside, down-time, quiet-time, whatever you might want to call it. Sabbath time is hallowed time, time made holy, and it doesn’t matter much how we spend it, as long as there is some bit of time where we stop striving to be perfect, when we stop caring whether we pray correctly or not, when we try less to please God than simply to get to know him.

Jesus offers us rest. He offers us rest in prayer and meditation. Eastern religious traditions have often been better at teaching meditation, and many a Christian has found Sabbath in yoga, in meditation, in simply sitting. If you meet the risen Christ coming down the road, receive his rest.

Jesus offers us rest through our worship. In worship we rest in the prayers of those who have gone before us. They have battled over which words to use, which images to explore, which days to hallow, and so we can rest in some of their decisions and simply let the tradition wash over us. Not every word will speak to me. Some will offend. Some will startle. Some will soothe. But taken together, worship is a time when we don’t have to work so hard, but can be at rest with God.

Finally, but perhaps even more frequently, Jesus offers us rest in one another. This involves allowing others close. It involves allowing others to be a part of our lives. It might mean asking others to pray for us, asking other to run an errand, allowing others to help us in some way. In this parish, sometimes it means telling someone else what’s going on in your life, and understanding that few of us are very good at reading minds. The rest of Christ sometimes comes to us in the form of resting in the arms of another person or community.

Our Prayer Book captures this Rest of Christ in the Collect for Quiet Confidence, when it leads us to pray,

O God of peace, who has taught us that in returning and rest we shall be saved, in quietness and confidence shall be our strength: By the might of your Spirit, lift us, we pray, to your presence, where we may be still and know that you are God, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (Book of Common Prayer, p. 832)

This is a holiday weekend. In what remains of it, and throughout the summer, I pray that we might come to know the rest that Christ offers us—rest in the one who calls us to put all our faith, all our life in him.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Communion of Saints by Ira Thomas

A sermon for Corpus Christi Sunday, June 26, 2011. The readings for a Mass "of the Holy Eucharist" are Deuteronomy 8:2-3, Psalm 116:10-17, Revelation 19:1-2a, 4-9, and John 6:47-58.

Today we celebrate Corpus Christi Sunday. Corpus Christi is the Latin term for Body of Christ, and it is a day that takes place in many churches on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday or on the Sunday following. I love this Sunday because it’s a celebration of food! It’s a celebration of food that is blessed by God. And it’s a celebration of food that comes from God.

The Old Testament Lesson recalls the time when the Israelites had been wandering in the wilderness, they became tired and irritable, and God fed them with manna. In the words of the psalmist, “[God] rained down manna upon them to eat and gave them grain from heaven.” “So,” the psalmist says, “mortals ate the bread of angels; he provided for them food enough.” (Psalm 78:24-25).

But there was a problem. The manna was only for that day, a one-day-only special. It was daily manna and needed to be consumed or it would spoil. If they left it out it became wormy. If it remained in the sun, it melted. This is because the manna was food, but it was more than food. Manna was meant to be consumed with faith. It took faith to rely upon the Lord to lead through the wilderness. It took faith to go to sleep each night trusting that there would be manna for the morrow. Perhaps it’s from that old, ancient story that the prayer began to be formed that would pray for daily manna, or daily bread.

Biblical scholars sometimes point out that the Lord’s Prayer actually conveys this sense of praying for the bread for tomorrow.

Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, has a meditation on the Lord’s Prayer in which he explains that the word we translate as “daily” is a strange word in the Greek that hardly appears elsewhere in the Bible. He says, “It probably means daily, it probably means the stuff we need to survive, but at least some people in the early church understood it to mean the bread we want for tomorrow or even the bread of tomorrow; ‘give us today tomorrow’s bread’.” He goes on to suggest that this means, “give us now a taste of the bread we shall eat in the Kingdom of God. Give us a foretaste of that great banquet and celebration where the universe is drawn together by Christ in the presence of God the Father.” Williams connects this with Holy Communion. “Communion is, at one level, bread for today, [but] it’s [also] very much our daily bread, it's the food we need to keep going; but it's also a foretaste of the bread of heaven, a foretaste of enjoying the presence of Jesus in heaven at his table at his banquet …” (Rowan Williams, in an article that appears on the BBC Christianity web site , accessed June 26, 2011.)

Jesus says in today’s Gospel, “The one who believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that [one] may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any one eats of this bread, they will live for ever.”

By taking into ourselves the Body of Christ, we become one with Jesus and the Father through the Holy Spirit. Communion happens to us. Communion overtakes us. Communion is God moving toward us and inviting us closer. Communion is our reaching out toward one another and even reaching beyond the church into the world.

Bread for today is a gift. Bread for tomorrow is our prayer. We are called to live with hope and with faith for whatever is ahead. And that’s not always easy.

There are many in this room who are grieving. A friend of this parish, Joy LaChelle Bailie, died on June 11 at the age of 38. She had given birth to a beautiful little girl, Alora Ann, on June 1. There are no words …

On Thursday night, Nancye Suggs died. Nancye was a longtime parishioner, a great mother and friend to pretty much everyone she met, much of the heart and soul of this place, has died. Again, we don’t have words to say, and in many ways, we’re just not sure what to do.

Nancye and Joy LaChelle didn’t know each other in this life, but my vision of heaven has tells me that they’ve met, by now. They must be amused that so many people they cared about are in the same room. They’re laughing. If they weren’t in heaven they’d still be worrying about us and how we’re getting along, but where they are, they can see the long run and they know we’ll be ok, partly because they taught us a few things, and they’re cheering us on. They know God’s got us covered. They’re talking about us. They’re talking about the people they knew and loved, the places they lived and visited. And by now, I’m sure they’ve had at least one discussion about where to get the best cheesecake.

And so, what do we do? We do what people have done since the beginning of time when someone died. We share bread. We share a cup. We share the precious gift of life.

But at church, we share special bread and a special cup. Because it is bread for tomorrow as well as bread for today. God invites us to have the faith to believe that when tomorrow comes, we will have what we need. God will give us the resources we need—the strength, the patience, the tenacity, the love, the imagination, the creativity, the breath… to get through the day.

We have problems that seem unsolvable, worries that seem debilitating, but with tomorrow’s bread, God can give us new answers, creative solutions, and deeper insight. God gives us one another. God gives us God’s very Self.

On this Corpus Christi, Jesus reminds us of the Communion that matters more than any other—the union with him, through his Body and Blood. “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.”

The old hymn says, “Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine!
O what a foretaste of glory divine!
Heir of salvation, purchase of God,
born of his Spirit, washed in his blood.

That hymn was written by Fanny Crosby in 1873. Though she was blind, she could see heaven, and she could see God’s love for her and for all of creation. The refrain of that great hymn sings

This is my story, this is my song,
praising my Savior all the day long;

This is our story. This is our song. This is indeed blessed assurance.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Trinity as Laughter

A sermon for Trinity Sunday, June 19, 2011. The lectionary readings are Genesis 1:1-2:4a , Psalm 8 , 2 Corinthians 13:11-13 , and Matthew 28:16-20 .

On Trinity Sunday, preachers everywhere struggle with images that might help us all understand what it means when we say we believe in God as a kind of “holy triple threat.” We say that we believe in God in three persons, but still, mysteriously One God.

In the past, I’ve talked about the bumbling priest in the movie, “Four Weddings and a Funeral,” and his confusion of God as “father, son, and holy spigot.” I’ve explored, on several occasions, the early church’s concept of God’s “perichoresis,” of God’s “dancing around,” as the Holy Trinity, God’s great movement as God’s own “great dance.” But today I want to borrow an image from Meister Eckhart, the 13th century monk and mystic, who talked about the laughter of God. He asked,

Do you want to know what goes on in the core of the Trinity?
I will tell you. In the core of the Trinity the Father laughs and gives birth to the Son. The Son laughs back at the Father and gives birth to the Spirit. The whole Trinity laughs and gives birth to us. (Matthew Fox, Meditations with Meister Eckhart, 1983).

I think we can hear echoes of God’s laughter throughout scripture. Genesis says that whenever God spoke, something was created. “God said…” and it happened. To the extent that I can put human features to God, I can imagine God being absolutely delighted with everything that is made—with each new thing (creeping, crawling, climbing, growing), God sits back and smiles and chuckles a little bit. “Well, I’ll be… Look what I’ve done NOW.”

St. Paul, in his parting words to the church in Corinth, is effusive with emotion. “Greet one another with a holy kiss,” even as all the saints in heaven and on earth greet you. The kingdom of God is upon you, you proclaim it as you live it out, as you laugh it out, as you fall more deeply in love with God and come to know God’s deep love for you and the world.

And then, in the Gospel, it doesn’t say the disciples laughed in the face of Jesus (such a thing would then, as now, seem inappropriate to write down in scripture—even though we all do it). But I bet they did laugh, perhaps out of nervousness, perhaps out of disbelief, because Jesus is sending them out with this great and grand commission. He’s putting them to work baptizing and spreading the Gospel, and it must have seemed completely undoable, impossible, like the worst kind of joke. As a punch line not to be forgotten, Jesus adds, “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

I can imagine the disciples wanting to believe it, but at some level imagining, “Yeah, right. You’re going to leave us in just a minute or two, just like you’ve done before. And then we’ll be alone, and we’ll have to work things out by ourselves.” And so the disciples might have gone on, like we sometimes go on, forgetting that Jesus has given them and us his spirit—his Holy Spirit, that comes down and fills the disciples on Pentecost, that inflames us with the love of God at our baptism, and that is present and among us whenever we pray, whenever we attend to the Spirit, whenever we ask.

God laughs. Some of you may be familiar with the Yiddish proverb, “We plan, God laughs.” Sherre Hirsch wrote a book with that title and though it often feels just like that, she wonders if perhaps God doesn’t sometimes plan, and we laugh at God. She points out how God gave Adam and Eve just one rule, and they laughed at it and disobeyed. Cain laughed at the idea of true brotherhood, and killed Abel.

Moses and God were busy creating a future for the people of Israel, but the people of Israel were busy laughing (and partying and generally acting out). Like kids playing, the children of Israel’s laughter got out of hand, and the Ten Commandments got broken. And then there’s Sarah and Abraham. Sarah laughs at God’s news that she might have a child even in her old age. Isaac (whose name means laughter) is born, and so, we see, as Hirsch writes

God has a sense of humor. With the birth of Isaac, God claimed the true meaning of laughter. Laughter was possibility, not mockery. Laughter came to represent joy, creation, love, faith, and passion. The tradition teaches that on the day Isaac was born there was so much of this new laughter in the world that women who had previously been barren gave birth.

People who had been sick were healed. On that day, the day of Isaac’s birth, the world was filled with true joy. It was filled with laughter. (We Plan, God Laughs by Sherre Hirsch Copyright, Doubleday, 2008).

Laughter can sound harsh sometimes, when we’re not in on the joke. Laughter can be confusing, when we misunderstand its intent. But laughter can be freeing, and healing, and transforming—especially when it comes from God. One of the best things about laughter is the way it is infectious—it spreads, and enlivens, and enlarges, because, I think, it connects us to God again.

Again, Meister Eckhart says,

In the core of the Trinity the Father laughs and gives birth to the Son.
The Son laughs back at the Father and gives birth to the Spirit.
The whole Trinity laughs and gives birth to us.

May the love of God, in all of its confusing, yet embracing Threeness, help us to be faithful, keep us strong, and make us laugh. Amen.

Being Pentecostal

A sermon for the Day of Pentecost, June 12, 2011. The lectionary readings are Acts 2:1-21 , 1 Corinthians 12:3b-13 , Psalm 104:25-35, 37, and John 20:19-23.

When I was in high school, there were two girls in our classes who always wore long skirts. Their hair was very long—it seemed like they never cut it, but either wore it tied back, or fastened in a bun of some kind. They never wore makeup, and everyone knew (or my friends, at least knew) that Lisa and Lori were from a Pentecostal family. For a while, I thought that these two girls and their families were what Pentecostal looked like. Until I became friends with Rachel.

Rachel’s father was a Pentecostal minister, but Rachel wore makeup, was a cheerleader at high school, and her whole family seemed like most other people, except that their church was a called a Church of God, and their belief was that one is baptized by water, but one is also baptized by the Holy Spirit, and that second baptism causes one to speak in tongues. Others are given the gift of interpreting tongues. And so, knowing Rachel and her family, who were very modern but also spoke in tongues—I thought they were what Pentecostals looked like.

That word, Pentecostal, has to do with the Day of Pentecost, the day we celebrate today. The “pente” of Pentecost is just like the “pente” of Pentagon. It means five. And Pentecost is the day that is fifty days after Easter. Originally, this coincided with the Jewish feast of weeks, or Shavuot. As we heard in the reading from the Acts of the Apostles, that fiftieth day after Easter was when the Holy Spirit appeared to the disciples in a strange and dramatic way. They were overcome by something, and they were changed.

The Acts passage says that the apostles received a gift of tongues, that each one could hear others speaking in a language that made sense to each. And while that is no small thing, there are other places in scripture that talk about the gifts of the spirit. The spiritual gifts go far beyond the ability to speak in tongues or understand another’s tongue. Pentecostalism is the religious movement that highlights the gifts of the Spirit, but especially the gift of tongues, and arose especially in the late 19th century, as a movement of evangelical revival in Great Britain and in the United States. Pentecostals are the people who participate in this movement, like my friends I mentioned in the beginning of this sermon.

But there are other spiritual gifts. In his First letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul describes a fuller picture. There are varieties of gifts [ Paul says] but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of working, but it is the same God who inspires them all in every one. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are inspired by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills.

As I’ve grown in my own faith, and especially as I’ve grown in my own experience of the Church and Christians who populate the Church, I’ve changed my mind about what a Pentecostal looks like.

As I reflect on MY experience of the Holy Spirit in the Church, I see what Paul is talking about. There are those with gifts of tongues, but I have been witness to that gift being manifest through languages that others don’t understand. Instead, I think of the teacher I know who is able to put complex thought into simple language, so that it can be understood. I think of the person who always has just the right word of grace to speak—which brings peace, brings healing, and brings hope. I think of the person who can speak the truth in the midst of cloudy gibberish, like the Word of God we hear about in scripture “Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12).

When I hear Paul’s description of spiritual gifts, I think of those who work for the “common good,” as Paul puts it. And there are those who participate in miracles—not just miracles of healing (and they do happen-- sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly). Yesterday as I watched the huge group in the Pride Parade known as PFLAG march down streets in Washington, I saw miracles. PFLAG stands for Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays—and of course, they have grown beyond their acronym to include the families and friends of transgender persons, bisexuals, and any one else who dares to come out as being different from the norm. These people represent families that have come through surprise, sometimes alarm, sometimes disappointment that their child is different from what they first imagined—these families have continued to be based on love, and encouragement, and strength. That’s what “being Pentecostal” looks like to me.

Being Pentecostal is why All Souls marches in the Pride Parade and why we have a booth at the Pride Festival today—it’s to witness to these gifts of the Holy Spirit that come not to the perfect, not to the holy, not to the elect, not to the professionally religious (the clergy), not to the poor, not to the rich, not to the straight, and not to the gay, but TO ALL GOD’S CHILDREN.

Being Pentecostal is why this church is named All Souls. It’s why we welcome and encourage everyone. It’s why refuse to give easy answers about the big questions of the day, why we live by simple faith in the midst of baffling complexity. It’s why we look into the face of death and proclaim LIFE.

On this day, we celebrate the coming of God’s Holy Spirit in surprising and startling ways. The spirit stirs and sings. The spirit crashes and calms. The spirit tears down what is old, or broken, or dead in order to make room for new life:for energy, hope, and resurrection. Let us be open to God’s Holy Spirit and let us be faithful Pentecostals.