Ashes for Un-masking

A homily for Ash Wednesday, February 22, 2012.  The lectionary readings are Joel 2:1-2,12-17, Psalm 103, 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10, and Matthew 6:1-6,16-21.

Yesterday we put on masks.  Today, we take them off.
 
Yesterday we mixed the Anglican tradition of Shrove Tuesday with the French Catholic tradition of Mardi gras.  We had our fill of pancakes and king cakes and we put on masks last night.  

We put on masks to play, to be silly, and to temporarily disguise ourselves.  Often, I find that there’s a comfort in putting on a mask.  No one can see my face.  No one can see the real me.  A mask can make honest what is already the case internally—that I sometimes wear a façade between the real me and you.  Much of the time, we wear masks. 

I wear a mask when I smile but don’t feel like smiling.  I wear one when I appear strong but am actually terrified.  I wear a mask when I pretend to care, but underneath, I’m really consumed with self-interest. 

Wearing a mask can be a matter of dishonesty, but not always.  Sometimes we wear masks because it’s all we’ve been taught or conditioned to do.  Sometimes we wear them for protection.  At times, a mask may save a life. 

But the mask can become too comfortable.  A few years ago when Tammy Faye Bakker was being styled for something, a makeup artist asked her to take off her false eyelashes.  She wouldn’t do it.  “Without my eyelashes,” she said, “I wouldn’t be Tammy Faye.”  It seemed that she had grown into her mask. 

Yesterday we put on masks, but today we take them off.  Or we begin to take them off.  Or at least we are invited to think about taking them off. 

The liturgy and prayers of Ash Wednesday are filled with contradictions:  We observe silence by using words. We kneel for prayer, yet God would have us jump for joy at the forgiveness he has already shown.  We talk about removing our mask and “coming clean” by putting ashes on our forehead.  But rather than the ashes becoming as new kind of mask, the kind of false piety mentioned in today’s Gospel, the ashes in the sign of the cross are meant to remind us that we are putting on Christ.  We put on Christ to allow our true self to be clearly seen, to be magnified, and to shine.

The scriptures today are filled with sounds and images meant to startle, to wake up, and to act like a splash of cold water to wash our faces clean. Through prayer and penitence, silence and service, may we begin to take off our masks, until that day when we see God face to face.

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

Transfigured for Faithfulness

A sermon for the Last Sunday after the Epiphany, February 19, 2012.  The lectionary readings are 2 Kings 2:1-12, Psalm 50:1-6, 2 Corinthians 4:3-6, and Mark 9:2-9 .

I guess there are some people who are fine with arriving at a movie theater just in time for the movie, but I like to get there early.  I like it because I want to see the trailers, the previews of other movies coming out soon.  I like to see what stories are going to be told, how they might make me think or respond, or even how one of the upcoming movies might change me.    

This Sunday, this day in which we hear of the Transfiguration of Jesus, is a kind of preview.  The scriptures and prayers provide a kind of trailer for the full feature that will be the Season of Lent and Holy Week.  Today is a preview of coming attractions. 

The preview begins with our Old Testament reading, as Elijah passes off the role of chief prophet to Elisha.  Elisha, the sort of prophet-in-training, seems to suspect something is about to happen, and so he’s hesitant to let the older prophet out of his sight.  The older one, Elijah, tries to move on ahead, but Elisha refuses to leave him.  Finally, Elijah makes it clear that it’s time for him to REALLY move ahead, to die to this world and to join God.  Elisha doesn’t like this—he’s not only going to lose his teacher and friend, but this also means that the full weight of the prophetic ministry is going to fall on Elisha.  But he keeps quiet and watches. 

After asking Elijah for courage and strength and whatever else Elijah can impart to him (characterized as “a double share of your spirit”), Elijah suggests that if Elisha is able to watch all that is about to happen, if he’s able to take it all in, if he’s about to stand firm, and absorb God’s majesty in front of him, then that double spirit of Elijah will be his.  And that’s just what happens. 

This movement of Elijah away from Elisha, the inclusion of the spirit that remains, and all of this within the work of God--- this is a preview of just what is going to happen between Jesus and his disciples.  Through the days ahead, we’ll see how Jesus keeps moving in front of his disciples, almost as though he’s trying to get away from them.  But what’s really happening is that Jesus is following the call of God, and sometimes he’s just ahead of his friends.  They have to keep catching up, until the time that Jesus has to go part of the way alone.

If this really were a movie preview in a theater, as we approach the Gospel, the music would grow more suspenseful and probably use all of the latest technology to rumble and thunder to great effect.  Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up a mountain.  There on the mountain, light settles on Jesus in such a way that he seems to be especially illumined.  The light is not so much from above, or behind, or from below, but just everywhere.  He’s brighter from within somehow.  And then, along with him appear Elijah and Moses. 

Elijah represents the great tradition of the prophets, and his presence anoints Jesus as his successor.  Moses, who received the Ten Commandments from God and helped the people of Israel understand the commandments as blessings, and write their message on their hearts—Moses represents the Law of God.  With Moses, Jesus inherits the full weight of the Law and the Commandments, but does just what Moses was trying to get the children of Israel to do—to write the law in their hearts, not just to quote the law of God, as our Prayer Book says, to “show forth [God’s] praise, not only with our lips, but in our lives.” 

This Transfiguration of Jesus on the mountain will reverberate through the whole season of Lent for us.  The power of prophecy will go with Jesus as he speaks the truth to the Devil in the wilderness, as he overturns the tables of the moneychangers in the temple, as he cuts through the duplicity of Judas, his betrayer.  The love and power of the law is embodied by Jesus as he lives out the laws of God, dealing fairly with people, caring for the poor, and sacrificing his own personal needs, wants, and desires for the sake of the others, of the community, of the whole world. 

At the transfiguration, Peter’s response previews a common response of others in the days that lead up to the crucifixion in Jerusalem.  Why rush things?  Why not do some equivalent of building booths, of sitting down and staying a while.  Why not be content with things as they are?  But Jesus will not be held.  

He will not be held by Peter on the mount of Transfiguration.  He’ll not be held by sin in the attempt of the religious leaders to bind him in a mock trial and crucifixion.  Jesus won’t be held by the death of the grave.  Even after the Resurrection, Jesus will not be held down by the needs or expectations of Mary Magdalene, the early believers, or even the church in our day. 

Though many aspects of what we will encounter are already encountered in today’s readings, perhaps the most important has to do with words the disciples hear and we overhear in the Gospel.  It happens when a cloud overshadows them.  A voice comes out of the cloud, “This is my son, the Beloved, listen to him.”

Those words are powerful enough, but I almost imagine God adding to that, “no matter what.”  “This is my son, Jesus.  Listen to him, no matter what.”  Whether the disciples heard God say something like this, or whether they picked it up through faith, it seems like the disciples did hear something in God’s message that brought encouragement and strength.  And we’re invited to do the same.

Listen to Jesus, no matter what.  Listen to him on days like the Transfiguration.  When we’re overwhelmed by the presence of God, or by the presence of something larger than ourselves.  We feel the weight of our ancestors upon us, and the people closest to us don’t understand.  Listen to Jesus.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll journey with Jesus through the desert, through the towns, toward Jerusalem, the cross of Good Friday, and the rising of Easter Sunday.  Through it all, we’re encouraged to listen to Jesus.

When in the wilderness, surrounded by temptation and doubt, listen to Jesus who put the devil in his place and moved on in faithfulness to God.

When we’re feeling weighed down by crosses of our day, listen to him who carried his cross and triumphed over it.

When we’re facing dishonesty and corruption, listen to him who called out the moneychangers and overturned their tables.

When it seems like everything around us is about death and decay, listen to him who was raised from the dead and brings new life to us.

Listen to him.  Pray to him.  Follow him.

Today’s readings and prayers do work a little like a preview to a movie, except for a major difference—this movie is not only about Jesus.  It’s about you and me.  It’s about our life.  In the stories, traditions, and sacraments of this coming season, our lives can take on new meaning and purpose as we hear God say to us:  You are my beloved.  Follow, trust, and believe.

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

When it's hard to do the simple thing

Naaman washes in the Jordan

A sermon for the Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany, February 12, 2012.  The lectionary readings are 2 Kings 5:1-14 , 1 Corinthians 9:24-27 , Psalm 30 and Mark 1:40-45 .

I think I remember the exact moment that Ina Garten became my favorite chef.  For me, she moved from cookbook author and television host to good friend and trusted kitchen companion when she changed my cooking life.  It all had to do with pearl onions and beef stew. 

I had made beef stew before and the recipe I tended to use always included pearl onions.  I would buy a pack of the things and get to work. Peeling, peeling, and peeling.  It would take as long to peel those little onions as it would take to prepare all of the other ingredients.  I would use the best knife I could find.  I asked other people if there were any tricks to peeling these little onions.  I made sure I had plenty of time set aside to work on them.  That is the way I did things until a new book by Ina Garten came out, and there in one of her recipes, along with things I had assembled and things I had pulled out of the cabinet, it said very plainly “one bag of frozen small onions.” 

It had never occurred to me that there might even BE frozen onions. Who knew it could be that simple?  With tools, techniques, added know-how—I had complicated my beef stew situation beyond all proportion.  And yet the answer was unexpected and unbelievably simple. 

Though my beef stew and pearl onion example is a silly one, that sort of thing happens all the time in other aspects of my life.  I feel a certain ailment in my body, self-diagnose and convince myself that it’s a particular thing.  With the information overload of the Internet, I can quickly contract the most exotic sickness imaginable.  But then I check with the doctor, or mention my symptoms to someone, and the problem is different from what I suspected, and solved with a simple solution.  How many of the greatest illnesses have found remedies in simple things, combined in just the right way?

The main theme of today’s scripture readings is about people who are healed.  And a part of their healing comes when they are able to do the simplest thing—to let go of their own ideas, their own attempts to fix the problem, and to allow God room to work.  In the first lesson it’s Naaman who is healed.  And in the Gospel it is a leper whose name we don’t know.

In the Second Book of the Kings, word reaches Elisha the prophet about this man who is sick, and Elisha calls for him to come and visit.  Powerful Naaman gets to the opening of Elisha’s cave, Elisha sends a servant out to talk to Naaman.  The servant says, “Elisha says for you to go and wash in the River Jordan seven times.  That should do the trick.  You’ll be fine.” 

Well!  This great military commander Naaman is insulted.  Did he travel all the way to Israel only to be told by a servant go and wash in the river?  Does he not even get to see this supposedly great prophet? 

Naaman gets angry and criticizes Elisha.  He makes fun of Israel and its rivers, and on and on he goes, in an absolute rage.  Had he continued to mouth off, had he continued to try to fit things into his own way of seeing, he would have completely missed the opportunity before him.  He would have missed the presence of God, and the healing of God.  Just before they leave Israel altogether, one of Naaman’s servants pulls him aside and begins to talk a little sense into him. Naaman eventually goes down to the water, he bathes seven times, and he is healed.  Not only is he healed of the leprosy, but it also sounds like he might have been healed from a little of his arrogance and pride.

Our Gospel also tells us about another person who find healing.  This one is a leper.  This man sees Jesus coming, has faith, and begs for his attention.  Jesus responds and heals him, but then asks him to keep quiet about it.  Jesus says, “See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and make the customary offering.”  Hold your tongue, Jesus says.  Don’t try to explain this.  Don’t try so hard to understand it or control it.  Simply accept it, say your prayers, make an offering, and check in with the Temple priest. 

But the healed man can’t be quiet.  He begins to tell everyone what has happened, and this causes such a ruckus that Jesus is unable to help or heal anyone else in the area.  Jesus moves away and goes out into the country.

Whenever I read this story, I wonder why Jesus tells the man to be quiet.  Traditional reasons are that Jesus didn’t want to raise the attention of the religious leaders or mislead the people into making him their political leader.  I would think Jesus would want the power of God to spread throughout the area.  In our day, I would think Jesus might want the very best press agent, the most interactive web site, the slickest advertising possible.  But instead, Jesus asks for silence.  For quiet.  For reflection. 

But I wonder… It could be that Jesus wants the healed man to reflect on his healing, that while the leprosy may be gone, the healing God gives is really much deeper and much more involved.  I think Jesus wanted the man to be still, to try to absorb this contact with the Divine, to adjust to the life of Christ now alive in him, and to begin to live in a new way.

I think Jesus knew our tendency to label ourselves with one thing or another and to get stuck with that label.  Naaman had a strong sense of himself, and saw himself with a particular disease that (surely) needed a particular kind of cure. 

He KNEW what he needed.  In the New Testament, Jesus understood that for the leper to be healed and get used to his new health, it would take a while.  And in that time, the healed man is being invited to let go of his own self-understanding and to live in the present, to live in the moment. 

The Church often differentiates between healing that involves a cure, and healing that involves wellbeing, shalom, wholeness, acceptance, peace, and serenity.  The kind of healing that brings all those quieter things is the one that Jesus is leading the healed leper to discover. 

Sit with your new-found healing, Jesus seems to say.  Savor it.  It is here now.  It wasn’t yesterday. It might not be tomorrow.  So for now, show yourself to the priest, (do the smart, sensible thing, in that culture), but don’t cling too tightly even to your healing.  Cling to God. 

When Naaman reached the cave of Elisha and received instructions, he would have done well to be silent, take in the information, and listen for God.  In our Gospel, after the leper is healed, he would have done well to have listened to Christ and remained quiet.  Sometimes, if we don’t hold our tongue, we stand the chance of missing God’s presence. 

Sometimes it is through silence, by not speaking, by not saying everything that’s on our minds, in not over-explaining or over-defending sacred things, there is freedom.  There is freedom to hear God and to know God. 

The real gift of God is the presence of Christ.  He is with us.  He is in us.  And he never leaves us alone.  He meets us in the sacraments.  He meets us in prayer.  He meets us in one another.  He calls us by name.  He shows us the way to God. He leads us through death and into life again. 

With hesitation and awe, but with open hearts, may we be led through all mysteries and questions, into the very heart of God. And may we know the fullness of God’s healing in Christ.

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

Healing with Prayer, Touch & Love

St. Blase, 13th c. stained glass, Louvre

A sermon for the Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany, February 5, 2012.  The lectionary readings are Isaiah 40:21-31, Psalm 147:1-12, 21c, 1 Corinthians 9:16-23 , and Mark 1:29-39.

On Friday, we added our prayers to the prayers of the ages by commemorating St. Blase, a fourth century bishop and physician in Sebastea, a part of present day Turkey.  As a doctor, Blase was known to have a particular gift of healing when it came to objects stuck in the throat, such as a chicken bone fish bone.  It’s for this reason that on February 3, throats are sometimes blessed (though for me, for some reason I always seem to have a scratchy throat around February 3—maybe St. Blase is urging me to offer the blessing of throats here, on his special day.)  

When we think about healing, we approach complicated territory.  So many things come together when one feels healing—medicine, general condition of the body, the state of the soul, the community, the general condition of one’s surroundings, one’s emotional condition (whether one is worried, or anxious, or free of such burdens).  And then there is God—God stepping into our world in some way, making a miracle, and doing the unexpected, unearned, unmerited, unpredictable thing. 

The Gospel we have just heard comes at a good time, as this is a first Sunday of the month, a day when we offer prayers for healing, with the laying on of hands, and anointing with Holy Oil.  When we offer such prayers for healing-- whether it is a lay minister or someone who is ordained, whether we anoint with oil, or offer the simplest prayers possible-- what are doing is BEING the church at its most basic, most fundamental, and most essential. 

What we do does not replace a medical doctor.  It doesn’t make up for eating a balanced diet, getting some exercise and generally trying to live a good life.  We do not deal in superstition and we don’t offer magic.  What we offer is sacramental—a blessed combination of prayer and touch and love.  This is what the church of Jesus Christ offers when it offers healing:  it offers prayer, touch and love.

In today’s Gospel, Simon Peter’s mother-in-law is healed by Jesus.  He takes her by the hand, lifts her up and the fever leaves her.  Later that same day, people bring to Jesus those who are sick and those who have demons. The sick and the possessed were not allowed in the synagogue or the temple.   These were people who had run out of options.  They didn’t have anywhere else to turn, and so they turned to Jesus.  And he healed them.  Jesus then continues to heal throughout Galilee, in the towns and in the synagogues.  Praying, touching and loving.

Jesus healed people from sickness and from demons.  But he also healed them from and with their surroundings.  He healed public reaction to those who were feared because they were sick, feared because they were different, feared because society had labeled them “unclean.”  I wonder if we ever need that kind of healing, when we encounter another who is sick?  How do we respond to the sick?  What do we say to someone who is newly diagnosed?  What do we say when someone’s treatments are not going well?

 What do we say to the friend diagnosed with breast cancer or whose results at a clinic come back positive?  So often, if we’re not careful, unconsciously we can begin to pull back, and to move away ever so slightly.  We might justify our distance by saying that we don’t want to say anything stupid, or we think our friend might just need a little space. 

But the way of healing (for Jesus and for us) is to move forward.  Jesus always moves toward people—into their neighborhoods, into their homes, into their lives with prayer, touch and love.

Prayer is the first part, and it may seem like the easy part, but it’s the foundation, and we’ll lose our nerve to go any further if we are grounded in prayer.  When I pray for someone to get better or to be healed, I try really hard to be honest with God.  I know that part about “praying that God’s will would be done above all,” but I’m honest when I pray for someone and I ask God to make the person better, to take away the sickness, to make the person strong again.  One way I pray for another’s healing is simply to picture the person in the fullness of health—vibrant, happy, at ease.  That image of the person becomes my prayer as I hold that image in my mind for a minute or two and then imagine the person being that healthy and happy person in the presence of God. 

We offer prayer as a part of healing, but we also offer touch.  The touch part of healing has to do with proximity.  Mindful that we live in a complicated age, I’m not for a moment suggesting that we smother one another in hugs and holds.  Touch can be as exclusive as it can be inclusive.  But there are many, many ways of showing physical presence while allowing for personal space.  Closeness has as much to do with an open posture, with eye contact, with fewer words and with more deeply hearing ears. 

We pray, we touch, and with the two, if we’re about healing, then we offer love.  Love can be accepting and warm and soothing.  And sometimes it just needs to be present in calm, quiet ways.  But sometimes love is louder and tougher and more direct.  Soft love for an addict is called enabling.   Love always, always, always has to do with the truth. 

Especially as it includes truth-telling, healing not only happens with individuals, but it also happens with institutions.  If telling the truth is an important aspect of personal healing, it’s even more important when it comes to corporate healing.  Volkswagen is one example. 

Some years ago, Volkswagen had reached a plateau—financially, but even more perplexing, it was stuck creatively.  Historians and archivists were consulted to look at the company’s history.  It was Hitler’s order in 1933 to build a people’s car, and the bug was to be that car.  In 1991, Volkswagen installed a memorial in one of its factories to the workers who had suffered through the 1940s.  In 1992, the Volkswagen CEO commissioned a book to be written that would try to come to terms with VW’s Nazi past.  Along with other management improvements, VW began to open up to a new spirit.  In some ways the company experienced healing and new life. 

In 2009, Virginia Seminary published a book of essays calledNo Turning Back: the Black Presence at Virginia Theological Seminary which also seeks to tell the truth in love, especially concerning the seminary’s cooperation from slavery and its role in racial segregation.  And healing has begun.

Healing happens in institutions and in families, and this should be no surprise.  Jesus did not only heal individuals.  He also cast out demons from the synagogues and the towns.  Almost every conversation he had with the Pharisees and Sadducees—the religious professionals of his day—he spoke a painful and judging truth to them.  With institutions as well as individuals, we can be a part of God’s healing, by praying, by remaining connected, and by speaking the truth in love. 

But healing almost always leaves us with questions.  A few years ago, there was a wonderful movie called “Leap of Faith” that beautifully presents some of the questions around healing.  It starred Steve Martin as a traveling faith healer named Jonas Nightingale.  Jonas and his crew roll from town to town, almost like a travelling circus.  With cameras that watch the crowed, with recording devices and old tricks, they manufacture and manipulate situations that appear to be acts of spontaneous healing, and then they count the money while it rolls in. 

For the most part, the act gives people a good show.  Jonas and his crew are careful to keep the real sick people at the back of the room, so that only the ones they’ve planted will appear to be healed and things won’t get messy. 

The act goes well enough until the group is traveling between towns and gets stuck in Rustwater, Kansas.  The town is aptly named because it’s undergoing a draught.  Crops are failing. People are on hard times.  And so the people are eager for miracles and attend the revival offered by Jonas.

But then, just as the faith-healer’s assistant is beginning to question her own involvement in the operation, a teenager who was hurt in a car accident and can’t walk without crutches and braces comes forward in the revival and asks to be healed.  Jonas ignores him and ends the show.  But the crowd is chanting, “one more, one more.”  Reluctantly, and fearfully, Jonas goes back out and tries his theatrical best to invoke some kind of power around the teenager named Boyd.  Boyd struggles to make his way toward a crucifix that is hanging, and as the movie music builds and the congregation gasps and Jonas himself isn’t sure what will happen next, Boyd’s one crutch falls away and he’s still standing.  Eventually, the other falls away and he’s able to walk a bit.  Jonas doesn’t know what to do with this.  His character doesn’t immediately believe, but he knows that his own bluff has been called.  Later, as he gets a ride out of town, a thunderstorm hits, with rain falling and blessing and answering the prayers of all the faithful. 

While the story is fictitious and is embellished with all that Hollywood can throw in, it raises some good questions.  How are healing and prayer connected?  Does one’s moral character affect healing in any way?  Does the faith of the individual matter as much as the faith of the community? 

These are questions we live out as we continue to pray, to touch and accept holy touch, to love and to be loved.  Jesus cast out demons and healed people with prayer and touch and love. 

With the help of St. Blase and all the saints, may we be healed through Jesus the Great Physician, and may we offer this healing to the world.

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

Before the party, silence.

Icon of the Holy Silence

A sermon preached for the Ordination to the Priesthood of Seth Walley, St. Peter's Church, Oxford, MS, January 22, 2012.  The lectionary readings are Isaiah 6:1-8, Psalm 43, Philippians 4:4-9, and John 6:35-38.

I think we’re almost ready. We’re almost ready for a party of biblical proportion. The flowers are done. The music is practiced. There’s a bishop, family and friends. We’ve gotten cleaned up and dressed. We are ready for a party.

The scriptures do their part to “pump up the volume.” Isaiah brings in the seraphim whooshing and whirring about, wings fluttering and flying. They’ve got their own soundtrack, too, singing “Holy, holy, holy.” Their music rocks the house, and then comes the smoke-- holy smoke that makes for holy sending forth.

Saint Paul lends his voice (as if there were ever a party he didn’t crash or comment on). And Paul’s word is a simple one: Rejoice. Rejoice in the Lord. Rejoice in the Lord always. And again, Rejoice! Know God’s peace. Know God’s truth. Know God’s excellence. Rejoice, rejoice, rejoice.

And as if all of that weren’t enough—what, with the music and the wings and the smoke, there’s food. The Gospel brings food a-plenty. “I am the bread of life,” says Jesus. Whoever, wherever, however you come to me, you’ll find enough. You’ll eat and drink and be full. And you’ll be filled with so MUCH good stuff that you just can’t help but share and feed others.

Yes, we’re almost ready for a party. We’re ready for Seth to be ontologically changed. We’re ready to reaffirm our faith and assent to our own sending. We’re ready to rejoice-- but before we go on, before we go too far, we need to make sure we’ve extended one important invitation. We need to make sure we invite the Holy Spirit.

Of course, in some ways, that invitation is a standing one. The Spirit is already here, has been here, and will be here forever after. It’s not something we do or bring, but there is a special sense in which we still invite—not so much to summon the Spirit as to notice the Spirit’s presence: here, around us, within us.

In just a bit, we will sing old, old words, “Come, Holy Spirit.” “Come, Holy Ghost.” “Inspire. Anoint. Impart. Enable. Protect. Comfort. Fire up! Teach. Give peace.” All these things are prayers, but they’re also descriptions of what the Holy Spirit does, and will always do.

And then, after we sing this hymn, before our spoken prayers continue, there comes a moment-- a crucial, beautiful, powerful, frightening moment. In that moment we stop.

We do what Christians have done since at least the early Third Century. We keep silence and we pray for the Holy Spirit. Hippolytus, the Bishop of Rome, described it in the year 215: “Everyone will keep silent,” he wrote, “praying in their hearts for the descent of the Spirit.” [The Apostolic Tradition, c. 215].

And so we keep silence. We stop, and wait, and be still. It is a still point.

It’s the kind of still point T.S. Eliot reflects upon in Burnt Norton. [T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets, “Burnt Norton,” II.] He writes,

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.

It’s not a party until there’s dancing. But with God there’s always dancing. “Perichoresis” is the fancy Greek term for God’s inwelling, interpenetration, God’s movement in-and-around, God’s holy dance that sweeps us off our feet and into the eternal dance of God’s love. But the dance begins at the still point. The love of God begins and rekindles at a still point.

In the silent moment of this service, we recognize that even though we have just about everything we need here today—we need more. We need more than the Church. We need more than the Scriptures. We need more than ourselves. We need more than we can produce. We need more than we can attain. We need the Holy Spirit.

I love that our Ordinal preserves this holy moment of silence. I love it for Seth’s sake, because there are going to be days for him when he will need that to remember that moment, that pause, again and again. No matter how many books, how many conversations, or how many prayers, he will come those places where all that he brings (and it’s a lot) is just not enough. And so, he’ll need to stop. And pray. And listen. And invite the Holy Spirit.

I love this moment of silence for our sake, too. Because in our work there are, and will continue to be times when we don’t know what to do, or we’ve done all we can do, but we’re stuck. In our daily lives, there are those places where we get stuck: Our child is moving and growing in directions we are not prepared for. Older family are aging and becoming people we don’t recognize and yet we love them, and we’re responsible for them, and we don’t know what to do. Or the job ends. Or, the money runs out. Or, the love disappears. On and on, our list might go—the list of things bring us to the still point in our families, our relationships, our own hopes and dreams and plans, were we have done all we can. But we’re stuck, and we’re brought to our knees, and we need help.

The life Christ shows us that there is one more thing we can do. We can stop. We can ask for help. We can pray, “Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire.” We can pray, “Come ON, Holy Spirit.” We can pray “Come, Lord Jesus.” We can pray simply, “Come.” Or more realistically, we might just pray “Jesus,” as half-curse, and half-prayer. Or maybe we just let the silence pray. But our words don’t matter. It’s the silence that counts.

And God hears. And God moves. And God will show up in surprising and startling and humbling and helping ways. But show up, God does. And then the party (or the occasion, or the task, or the LIFE) really begins.

Seth, don’t forget to stop and ask for help—from God, from Our Lady, from your colleagues, friends, parishioners, and family. And from the Holy Spirit, who works through them all.

And may we, all of us, remember the gift of silence that offers rest, that invites the Holy Spirit, and that prepares us for eternal life with Christ and Creator.  Before the party, during the party, and after the party: let there be silence.

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

When God comes, do we notice?

A sermon for the Second Sunday after the Epiphany, January 15, 2012.  The lectionary readings are 1 Samuel 3:1-10(11-20) , Psalm 139:1-5, 12-17 , 1 Corinthians 6:12-20 , and John 1:43-51 .

Whenever someone is coming to All Souls to meet with me, I try to figure out how they’re arriving.  I want to know their approach to the building so that I can be ready.  If the person needs to roll something inside, then we meet them at the main doors.  If they are coming to the undercroft, then the kitchen door is probably best.  If they’re meeting the choir director or heading for the nursery, then there’s another door.  If the boiler room, yet another door.  And if the person is aiming for me or the offices, then the Woodley Place door, the one with a doorbell on it, is the best one. 

As long as I know how someone is coming, I can be ready for them.  I can recognize them.  I can receive them.

If God were coming to All Souls for a special visit, it would be the same.

I would probably inquire which entrance would be most convenient.  I would want to be ready.  I would want to be prepared, and I would especially want to recognize – to see, hear, and apprehend God—upon God’s arrival.  But, as Downton Abbey’s Dowager Countess Violet puts it, quoting the old hymn, “God moves in a mysterious way, his wonders to perform.” (Season Two, Episode 1, quoting William Cowper’s hymn.)

God moves in a mysterious way.  God approaches in a mysterious way. God appears in mysterious ways, and today’s scriptures show us several.

In our first reading, the boy Samuel is sleeping in the hallway of the temple. He’s an apprentice there, so he must have been familiar with the sounds of the place at night.  And so when he hears a voice, he assumes it’s the voice of Eli, the old priest whose service he is in.  Samuel is probably 11 or 12 years old and, as an apprentice at the temple knows about God, even if scripture says “he did not yet know the Lord.”  He must have known all the great stories of the faith, something of the prophets and priests and characters.  But he did not yet know God well enough to recognize God’s voice when he heard it.  Or, even at a young age, Samuel might not have seen or heard God coming.  Samuel might have expected God to come from a different direction, with a different voice, in some different guise.  He would have had certain impressions and ideas about who God might be, and how God might work—he doesn’t seem to have been ready for God to rouse people out of bed in the middle of the night. Samuel’s expectations, at first, don’t allow him to hear God.  But old Eli helps Samuel to realize God in the vision.  He helps Samuel realize God in the nighttime, in a vision, in prayer, and in the silence.   

Before we look at our second reading, Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, I think we need first to admit that Paul, himself, had problems recognizing God.  Before his vision of Christ on the road to Damascus, Paul persecuted Christians.  He did his best to wipe them out.  Even after his conversion, even within his preaching and writing, Paul struggles with inner and outer demons that do their best to obscure his vision, to cloud his understanding and limit his perception of all God would do.  Paul understands God through reason and rhetoric.  And like a lot of us, his own thinking sometimes gets him into trouble.  But Paul is wired that way.  He has to think things out and talk them out.  Paul embodies those words of Walt Whitman:  “Do I contradict myself?  Very well then, I contradict myself.”  (Song of Myself)  Paul is large.  Paul contains multitudes. 

And so, Paul is probably the perfect person to preach to the church in Corinth—a worldly, sophisticated congregation.  The Corinthians liked to enjoy life, and didn’t always know where to draw the line, and so they were constantly getting distracted by things that would take the place of God for them.  But Paul encourages them to look no further than their own two feet. Start with your own body, Paul says.   Give thanks for the body—even as it ages, get creaky and worn, stops working correctly and often misbehaves.  He says, Stop looking elsewhere for joy or gratification or affirmation—give thanks for the miracle that is each one of us.  God has raised and blessed and hallowed the Body.  Therefore respect it, give thanks for it, take care of it. Look at your hand in front of your eyes and realize God even in the body.

In our Gospel, it’s Nathanael who almost misses God because he’s expecting God to come from a different direction—to look and sound different from this country boy, Jesus.  But here, right in front of him, is the One.  Christ doesn’t come from Rome, or any of the other great cities.  He hasn’t traveled the world.  He doesn’t come from some far away, exotic, rich and wonderful place.  Instead he’s from Nazareth.  If you go to Nazareth today, it’s not a whole lot different from when Jesus was there, except there’s probably a lot more plastic. We can almost feel and join in Nathanael’s disappointment. 

But Jesus senses this.  Slowly, in that Christly charming way he has, Jesus begins to talk to him. Jesus talks through him, almost.  Jesus lets himself be known by Nathanael.  And Nathanael sees something in Jesus, and wants to follow.  “Rabbi!” is his simple statement of faith and trust.  “You are the Son of the God, the King of Israel.”  To which Jesus simply smiles and says, “you haven’t seen anything yet.”

The scriptures ask us today, “Do we see God when God comes?  Do we notice?

Or are we busy preparing in the wrong place.  Is it like when we’re expecting a delivery at church, and so we’ve unlocked doors, moved things around, turned on lights, and are ready--- only to realize that the person making the delivery is standing patiently on the other side of the building, in a place that is better for them to enter?   Do we ever do this kind of thing spiritually?

God might meet us in church or in a vision or in silent prayer, like it was for Samuel.  Or God might occur to us in our thinking and or in our conversation, like with Paul.  God might even come through a friend who point us in the way, who says “Come and see,” and so we go and see, and we meet the Risen Christ. 

But God also might come in a hospital waiting room, in a fast food restaurant, in a board meeting or an AA meeting, in a family gathering or on a first date.  God enters our world not so much when and where we think we’re most ready.  But rather, God comes where God wills.  “God moves in a mysterious way, his wonders to perform.”

This weekend offers a number of opportunities to remember the work and words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  He had his own version of “come and see,” as he brought people together to work for Civil Rights.  God came to him in through suffering and heartache, through human frailty and his own human nature, but God eventually came in a dream that could be named and offered to others—the dream that

“ . . . little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” A dream that, with Isaiah, “one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.” [“I have a dream,” delivered August 28, 1963]

And so, in concrete, particular, everyday ways, God has come and keeps coming as we live into the dream for civil rights, for human rights, and for all of God’s dreams to be realized.

The Good News of our scriptures today and the Good News of the faith that is in us is that God comes.  God visits.  God surprises.  God startles.  God sweeps us off our feet.  God picks us up and draws us close.  God comes—not always when we’re most prepared, but God comes always when we are most in need. 

Thanks be to God for the power of his visitation, the power to knock down doors and fill our lives with love and with hope.  May we realize God’s presence and share God’s power.

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

Changed, challenged and compelled

A sermon for the Baptism of Our Lord Jesus Christ, January 8, 2012.  The lectionary readings are Genesis 1:1-5, Psalm 29, Acts 19:1-7, and Mark 1:4-11.

Before coming to Washington, I would try to exercise a few times a week at a YMCA.  The old McBurney Y had been almost entirely vertical—8 or 9 small floors stacked on top so that if you wanted one kind of machine, you might need to go to one floor.  If you wanted room to stretch, you’d go to another floor. Much of the workout was simply in navigating the building, up and down, without getting hit by an opening door in a stairwell.

But just before I moved away, a new Y was built.  It sprawled more than it climbed, but there was still a kind of stacking to the space.  But this time, there were openings between levels, so if you were on the indoor track, you could run around the machines and pool.  You’d run over the basketball courts.  I liked the elliptical machine—the easier version of a stair-climber—and I tried to get to the gym early so that I could get a particular elliptical machine, in a particular spot.  From “my” machine, not only could you watch the runners on the track (and feel self-righteous about saving your knees from that abuse), but I could also see the swimming pool.  And on certain days, early in the morning, there in the pool, the babies were learning to swim. 

Watching those tiny little kids, who really looked like jerky little tadpoles, always made me laugh.  As painful or scary as it might have been for the child, for the onlooker, it was a joyful thing.  The whole scene was filled with hope and promise, with tenacity and persistence.  It was a great drama, there in the shallow end of the pool.  Whenever I watched them, I was reminded of baptism. 

The water, the tears, the babies, the parents trying to be helpful but coming to terms with the limits to their care and protection—all of that being played out over and around water.  And today, as I think about baptism—the baptism of Jesus and the baptism of us all—I think of some similarities between those swimming classes for babies and the Sacrament of Holy Baptism. 

Often on days such as these, the church encourages us to “remember your baptism.”  But what, exactly does that mean?  Especially for those who were baptized when they were infants, what does it mean “to remember”?  I think it’s a little like those swimming classes.  Few, if any, of those children will remember the actual class in which they learned to swim.  But the fact will remain:  they learned to swim.  They can swim.  Come high water, they will know what to do. 

It’s a similar thing with a Christian.  The memory may have faded.  The details may be fuzzy.  But the fact of baptism remains.  We were taught to swim, spiritually, and nothing can change that, come hell or high water. 

There is another similarity.  The babies at the Y did not decide to learn to swim.  Their parents did not encourage them to grow up, read and research whether one might best navigate water with paddle or motor or the physical means of swimming.  Instead, parents made the decision that this would be good for the child.  Later, as the child grew, she might learn other strokes, other styles, and develop her own unique way of swimming.  But she had been given the basics, given a great gift that would serve her well in the future. 

Baptism is not a magic spell cast over a newborn to protect him from an evil eye.  Instead, baptism is a beginning.  It’s a free gift.  It is a sacrament.

The Catechism in the back of our Prayer Books reminds us that a sacrament is an “outward and visible sign of inward and spiritual grace, given by Christ as sure and certain means by which we receive that grace.”  Going further, the Catechism says: “Holy Baptism is the sacrament by which God adopts us as his children and makes us members of Christ’s Body, the Church, and inheritors of the kingdom of God.”  Notice who’s doing the action here.  Not the child or person being baptized.  Not the parent or the grandparent, the aunt or the uncle.  But God.  Baptism is God’s initiative, God’s decision, and God’s action.  It’s the sacrament by which GOD adopts us as children and GOD makes us members of Christ’s Body.

At Christmas we celebrated the birth of a baby, the child of God who is God-in-the-flesh, Emmanuel, God-among-us and God with-us.  On Epiphany we proclaimed that this God of life is not only God-for-us, but God-for-all.  And today, we remember how Jesus was baptized by John, not so much because Jesus needed to be made holy through baptism, but because, through baptism, Jesus is able to make us holy.  He makes us holy through water, water that is animated by the Holy Spirit. 

Our first reading from Genesis reminds us that the Spirit of God was there at the very beginning.  Even before the earth was made, there was darkness and chaos, but over all there was a wind from God, the breath of God breathed out over the chaos, and rippled over the face of the waters.  Water and spirit mingled together and out of them came shape and form and purpose and new life.

In the Epistle reading, Paul is preaching about just this connection of water and Spirit.   People say honestly, they didn’t know there was a Holy Spirit.  And so Paul preaches, and tells them about the Spirit, and who knows what else he does.  He baptizes them and lays hands on them, and they begin to get it.  Evidence of the living spirit of Jesus Christ fills their hearts and begins to change their lives.

In our Gospel this energy of water and spirit combines in new form as Jesus is baptized.  It inaugurates his public ministry:  it marks the beginning,  it energizes him, it gets him going, and it pushing him out. Baptism (and the reaffirmation of baptism) does those things for us, as well.

In baptism we are changed.  We are challenged.  And we are compelled. 

Baptism changes us.  From dry to wet, we are moved forward, leaving an old life behind.  This is a symbol that we can return to as long as we live. At his baptism, God says, “You are my child, my Beloved, with you I am well pleased.”  God says the same thing to each one of us at our baptism.  It’s our inauguration, our commissioning, our call to action on behalf of Christ.

Baptism claims us as one of God’s own, for us to continue “getting wet” with one another, to get involved, and to allow the power of God to have its effect upon us. Saint Paul understands baptism as dying and rising again. He says, “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” (Romans 6).  As we are continually brought through death to life, through death-dealing circumstances and problems, to new life with its hope and promise, we are changed again and again.  And this change has its beginning in baptism.

We are also challenged in baptism.  The cold of the water, the strangeness of it.  People looking on, the odd priest scooping us out of our parents’ arms—all of it is a challenge.  But just as a stone that’s thrown into water disturbs the water and makes a ripple effect, the effect of our baptism will continue to disturb our lives and the lives of those around us as it ripples through time.  If others get close to us, they’ll get wet, as well.  Our baptism will naturally spill over.

Being baptized challenges us in the way we make decisions, in the way we spend money, in the way we treat other people.

And finally, our baptism compels us to share the gift.  Offer water to others.  Teach another to swim.  We offer baptismal hope when we bring someone to church, when we volunteer in the spirit of Christ, when we extend a hand, or when we share a kind word with someone who needs it.  We do this physically through ministries and mission, but we also do it spiritually, as simply as when we help others hear that there is a source of water, there is a God of love, and there is a God who will never let us sink.

Tilden Edwards is an Episcopal priest who helped found the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation often speaks of “leaning back” into the presence of God. If you ever see Tilden in a room, you can see him doing this physically, as he actually does lean back, or settle in as a part of his prayer, as a part of being open to God, as a part of “remembering his baptism.”  It’s a little like resting in the water, trusting the water to buoy us and hold us. Trusting our baptism that we have learned how to stay afloat and that there is a multitude of saints standing guard around us and ready to extend a hand, should we need it.

On this feast we give thank for the baptism of Our Lord Jesus Christ, for his becoming like us that we might become more like him. And we give thanks for our own baptism, especially as the memory of our baptism continues to claim us, to challenge us, and to compel us outwards.

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