Ashes

Detail from the Lenten Array Frontal at All Souls by Davis D'ambly

A sermon for Ash Wednesday, February 13, 2013.  The lectionary readings are Joel 2:1-2,12-17,
2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10, Matthew 6:1-6,16-21, and Psalm 103.

Last night we gathered in the meditation garden to burn our leftover palms from last year’s Palm Sunday. The Church does this by what people sometimes call “ancient custom,” which really means, “No one can remember exactly when this started, but we have fun doing it, and so we think we’ll keep on doing it for a while.” And so, last night, we burnt our palms. We burned a lot of palms and a good supply of ashes was made. But it’s not so easy to burn palms. Once the fire dies down, the charred remains of the palms then need to be ground down. A mortar and pestle do the trick, but even then, it takes some elbow grease and some patience. Odd particles need to be picked out and thrown away.

It’s difficult to burn palms, to reduce them to ashes, but I think there’s a good Lenten symbol in that for us. Things can burn up, but they don’t easily vanish. Things can be ground down to almost nothing, but it takes a lot to pulverize them. And that’s why we need God.

It takes a lot to break things down to nothing, and this is especially true when we’re thinking about intangible things. Regrets, mistakes, memories, grudges, bad things done and good things left undone—all can seem to recede from memory, but it’s difficult to dissolve their residue. Sin persists. And though we may hear the words, we may see the priest make the sign of the cross, we taste the body and blood of Christ-- it’s sometimes difficult to actually feel forgiven.

But that’s just what we’re called to live toward—forgiveness, absolution from sin, resolution from wondering whether we’ve made the cut, freedom from worry. Salvation from sin.

We burned palms last night not to make the definitive ashes that would answer all our Ash Wednesday questions for this day and all time. But we burned ashes because we could, and because, joined with our prayers, our faith tells us that God sees what we do, and God understands what we hope and what we pray.

The Gospel today gives us some very practical words: Beware of practicing your piety before others. . . whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you. ..whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites . . . And whenever you fast, do not look dismal . . . Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth . . . All of these sayings remind us that the spiritual life is one that is to be lived into slowly, over time, as God calls us, step by step. Repentance doesn’t happen all at once; forgiveness doesn’t happen all at once. But there is time, which is the gift of life, and the gift of life evermore.

Every year about this time I re-read T.S. Eliot’s poem entitled Ash Wednesday. Each time I read it I understand it less, but in a way I think Eliot captures this dilemma of living between confession and absolution. Eliot writes

This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross
Between blue rocks . . . .
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated
And let my cry come unto Thee.

A little like the Gospel, there is practical advice: sit still, to know the peace of God, pray to the Mother, the Father, our God all-loving. As we begin this season of preparation for the joy of Easter, may God grant us the vision of all our sins and regrets being burned to ashes, burned to ashes and blown away.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Foundations

A sermon for the Fourth Sunday after Epiphany, the day on which All Souls launched the public phase of the capital campaign, All Souls Forward: Living Up to Our Name.  The lectionary readings were from the Book of Common Prayer, "For the Mission of the Church," Isaiah 2:2-4, Psalm 150, Ephesians 2:13-22, and Matthew 28:16-20.

A few weeks ago, a parishioner who has been working on the capital campaign committee made a suggestion for how I might approach the sermon for today.  He suggested we sing “The Church’s One Foundation,” just before the sermon and that then, I make the point that the church’s foundation—this church’s foundation on the new addition—will depend on you (and me).  We can determine whether our foundation will be stone, or brick, or stucco, or something even cheaper.  I suppose if we had the real version of Jennifer Johnston’s fake million-dollar-bills (you’ll see them in the window decorations downstairs) then we could build a foundation of titanium with marble casing!

Foundations matter.  There’s a famous parable Jesus tells about someone who a house built on various foundations, the point being—build on something that’s strong, that’s reliable, that you can count on. 

The image of a strong foundation runs throughout our worship today.  Isaiah imagines the House of the Lord as being built on a strong foundation.  He refers to it as a mountain—mighty, high, immovable, impenetrable…. “The mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains… raised above the hills…,” the focus of many nations.  From that solid, unshakable stronghold comes teaching, instruction, and the Word of the Lord.  It’s a grand vision for any House of the Lord.

The psalm continues the spirit, praising God in his holy temple.  Again, it’s a temple that is a firmament of power, a vast and magnificent thing.

Later this morning, we will sing “The Church’s One Foundation.” The choir will sing “Upon this Rock,” and on and on these strong, solid images go.  Foundation upon strong foundation.

But guess what—even though our church building stands pretty strong—the oldest part from 1913, the larger worship space since 1925, and the education wing since the 1950s, and we’ve withstood earthquakes, ice-storms, floods, and hurricanes--- we’re actually NOT on a very solid foundation. 

We’re on landfill.

The geophysical survey confirms that there’s a lot of strange stuff underneath us.  Landfill is stuff thrown away.  In some places it’s absolute junk—old cars and waste that is compacted… all kinds of things.  Under us there’s probably a lot of rock taken from elsewhere, some concrete, and metal, and some stone, … and who knows what else there might be.

All of this means that our lovely building—this building into which we bring our hopes, and worries, and loves and losses, where we say our prayers, where we Commune with the Body and Blood of Christ…. is on top of junk, trash, and rubble.

But that’s ok.  It’s actually ideal for a  church, because this is what churches are—places for us to bring all the junk, the detritus, the mistakes, the failures, the stuff we’d love to throw in a hole so deep that no one can ever see it—the church is a place for all of this to be brought before God.

And no other place in the world gives us that opportunity.

The Letter to the Ephesians talks about the Church, the faithful community, being built upon a foundation of the apostles and the prophets.  “Who we are” is built upon the saints.  But think about those people for a minute.  None of them was perfect in this life, but they were made perfect in their willingness to offer themselves to God—warts, worries, and all. 

The prophets “mis-hear” God more often than they get a direct word from God.  Much of the accounts we have of prophets has to do with God’s trying to straighten them out, God’s making something out of the mess the prophet has often made. 

The disciples seldom understand what Jesus is saying, and many of the stories we have about them are stories that allow us to imagine that perhaps we might have acted differently, had we been right there with Jesus. 

Most of the saints are the same way—they struggle with their faith, they don’t always get it right, but they bear their wounds and Christ the wounded healer blesses them and makes them well, and whole, and renewed. 

Last week I was able to sit in on a class at Virginia Seminary.  The class was looking at T.S. Eliot’s poem Four Quartets as prayer.  In one section of the “Dry Salvages,” Eliot plays with the idea of water washing over our lives, and with it all of the stuff we’ve done or thought or said—the stuff we hoped we’d thrown away, or hidden, or buried, or burned.  The water uncovers all of this and washes up. “It tosses up our losses,” Eliot says, and he wonders when it ever ends, with wave after wave turning up.  “Where is the end of it, the soundless wailing…. Where is there an end to the drifting wreakage…?”  

Eliot answers his own question as the movements of the Four Quartets flow along, and it has to do with the Incarnation.  It has to do with Jesus, who redeems everything.  Jesus is like those children in other countries and our own who pick over what we throw away.  They pick over the trash heaps, looking for what’s salvageable.  Except for Jesus everything is precious—all our mistakes, all our failures, all our sins are redeemed in Christ.  Each one is turned into something beautiful and useful. Junk is turned into jewels. It’s just like a beautiful building built on a dump, like a landfill becoming a place for All Souls.

We are redeemed, and that’s why we baptize the way today’s Gospel urges us. We are saved from having to sort through all the trash of our past, all the scraps of our striving, all the sin that would try to take us down with it.  Christ raises us up to new life.  And that’s what we have to share. That’s why we do mission. That’s why we welcome everybody to the table.  That’s why we’re moving ahead on accessibility and hospitality—to extend Christ’s love onward and onward. 

We don’t worship our building. We are not defined by our building.  But it is a home base for us as we move through the world.  It’s a place to return to, to come home to, to see old friends and meet new ones, to renew and sustain ourselves at the familiar, common, but most uncommon Table. 

T. S. Eliot drew inspiration from his own life, from water and wind, and fire and earth, but he also built upon other poets, one among them, George Herbert.  As many of you know, Herbert was an English parish priest in the 1600’s and the bulk of his poetry is organized around the image of a temple or church. The poems describe the inner reality of things that might at first seem mundane.  And in one poem, Herbert writes about the foundation.   

MARK you the floore ?  that square and speckled stone,

                    Which looks so firm and strong,

                                             Is Patience :

And th’ other black and grave, wherewith each one

                    Is checker’d all along,

                                             Humilitie :

The gentle rising, which on either hand

                    Leads to the Quire above,

                                             Is Confidence :

But the sweet cement, which in one sure band

                    Ties the whole frame, is Love

                                             And Charitie.

        Hither sometimes Sinne steals, and stains

        The marbles neat and curious veins :

But all is cleansed when the marble weeps.

        Sometimes Death, puffing at the doore,

        Blows all the dust about the floore :

But while he thinks to spoil the room, he sweeps.

        Blest be the Architect, whose art

        Could build so strong in a weak heart.  (“The Church-Floore,” from The Temple)

We will do the best we can trying to keep a firm foundation on landfill, but may Christ our Redeemer remind us that however shaky our spiritual, physical, psychological, or moral foundation—if we bring it to him, he will sort through and strengthen.  He makes junk into jewels.  This is the good news we live and the good news into which we invite all the world.

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

Looking for God's Glory

A sermon for the Second Sunday after Epiphany, January 20, 2013.  The lectionary readings are Isaiah 62:1-5, Psalm 36:5-10, 1 Corinthians 12:1-11, and John 2:1-11.

In Martin Luther King, Jr.’s famous last speech, he ended it by saying he wasn’t worried.  He was happy, he wasn’t afraid of anybody.  “Mine eyes have seen the glory,” he said.  “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!”

He was quoting a hymn, of course, the hymn some of us know as “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”  Both he was doing more than simply quoting a hymn, since its tune and its words had strong, powerful associations with them.  The tune was a folk tune, from an old spiritual especially loved and sung by African American soldiers in the Union Army during the Civil War.  There were a number of different words to the song, and the soldiers would change them, depending on the context and the audience.  Whichever words were used, no matter the context, when other African Americans and people yearning for freedom heard the tune, they recognized it as a freedom song, and heard notes for a new day. 

That tradition continued, but in 1861, Julia Ward Howe visited Washington and met Abraham Lincoln.  Based on that trip and on her own passion for peace, abolition, and women’s suffrage, Howe wrote new words to the tune, making the hymn that is familiar to many today.  Whether it was the songs sung by soldiers, or Howe’s words, or words used since, the refrain is the same:  “Glory, glory, hallelujah.“

Glory becomes a prayer.  There’s an urgency to it, like a fight song for a victory you can almost taste, for wanting it so bad.  But in that same cry for glory there’s also a sense of already having tasted a bit of what is to come.  As Dr. King said, he’d been to the mountaintop and looked over.  His faith told him what was possible.  His faith helped him see what was inevitable, and the idea of “glory” helped get him there. 

If we notice, a the of glory goes right through our worship, like a great chorus singing underneath everything else we do or say. We join that chorus when we echo the Christmas angels in our opening song of praise, “Glory be to God on high.” Later in the Eucharist sing along with Isaiah and the whole heavenly host, again singing, “Heaven and earth are full of your glory.”  

But what is the “glory” of God?  What do we mean?  What are we singing about?

Today’s Gospel gives us a hint.  There, in the midst of a crowd, in the midst of a huge party, a wedding with lots of in-laws, and probably a few out-laws and wedding-crashers, there is Jesus.  Jesus is there and also his mother, Mary.  A crisis occurs when it appears there’s no more wine. So Mary urges Jesus to do something.  Though he seems almost to talk back to her (the interchange sounds more abrupt in English than intended) Jesus does it.  He acts.  He goes through with what John the Evangelist describes as the first of his “signs.”  And then John puts all of this into context. 

Repurposing the jars that were set aside for Jewish purification rites, turning water into wine, putting marriage in the context of a communal relation--- all of this works together as a sign “that reveals his glory.” It reveals not only Christ’s glory, but the glory of God.   

The glory of God shimmers at the edges of perception. At first glance, looking dead-on at a situation, things seem to be one way.  In the Gospel, the problem is clear: there’s no more wine.  But the Virgin Mary can see that just at the edge of things, a little to the side, something is ready to break in, and that something is not of this world—it’s beyond the ordinary, beyond our hoping, beyond our imagining.  It’s something that comes from a place of faith in “what can be.”  What ought to be.  What might be.

In our first reading from Isaiah, the prophet tells the people of Judah about God’s work of restoration and renewal.  They’re going to be called by a new name, a name already known by God.  No longer forsaken, but beautiful.  No longer desolate, but delightful.  And yet, the people of Judah just aren’t there yet.  They can’t hear Isaiah.  They can’t see the possibilities because they’re stuck in fear and funk.  They’re stuck in their own sadness and the daily grind of their situation. They only see clouds, while the whole time, Isaiah knows the sun is about to break through.

St. Paul talks about glory too, in his Letter to the Corinthians. Paul sees God’s glory in what first appears to be those mundane, ordinary, petty differences between people—those same differences that make us individuals, but also sometimes annoy and bother. But Paul sees these as opportunities for God’s glory to go to work—in the grace of God, with the eyes of faith, the particular characteristics of each one of us are taken up by God’s glory and transformed into spiritual gifts.  God’s glory takes babble and makes it eloquence.  God’s glory takes miserliness and makes it good stewardship.  God’s glory takes water and turns it into wine.

In the Gospel, it’s Mary who first point to glory.  She sees it in Jesus, but it’s that same glimmer she must have seen when Gabriel first hovered overhead.  She saw it in the humble love of Joseph, who believed not only the angel, but also believed Mary.  She saw glory shine in the faces of Anna and Simeon as they held the Christ.   Mary saw glory at Cana, and she would see it again on Calvary: the glory of God to become more than we might otherwise.  The glory of God that enables us to become more loving, more giving, more believing. 

Isaiah, John the Evangelist, Mary the Mother of God, and Martin Luther King, Jr. are all saying a similar thing:  They’re saying, “don’t get stuck looking down.  Don’t get stuck looking at yourself.  Don’t get stuck counting the cards you’ve been dealt.  There’s more…. Look for the glory and live into it.”

Mary shows us how to spot it.  She says to the servants, the waiters, the stewards…  She says, “Do whatever he tells you.”  Look to Jesus and follow him, wherever that takes you.   

Gerard Manley Hopkins saw God’s glory in “dappled things,” in the multitude of God’s making:  in trout and fire-coals, in farmlands and trades.  He sees God’s glory in

All things counter, original, spare, strange; 
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)   
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:  Praise him.

God’s glory comes to us so that it might reverberate, spread out, and return to God in an ongoing energy of praise and love. 

But sometimes, in our lives, we can’t see God’s glory in the dappled things or in much of anything.   And yet, it’s there, in potential and possibility.

For the scientist, it might come at that point of refusing to settle for the same old way of doing things, for the given answer and the obvious solution—and so you say a prayer and look for God’s glory to help. 

For the businessperson it might come with risk—not the kind of risk to make more simply for the sake of more, but a risk on an entrepreneur, a start-up, an investment that stands a chance of overflowing into social good—so you make your move, say a prayer, and allow God’s glory to do its work. 

Wherever you may be stuck—whether in a relationship, a habit, an outlook ,… whether you’re looking for a job or stuck in the one you have, we can all of us follow the Virgin Mary’s lead—look to Christ and follow him.  Do what he tells us.  Do the next right thing in faith, and let God’s glory move and make, love and live. 

Martin Luther King, Jr. said his eyes had seen the glory of the Lord.  But it was more than that—he saw, and pointed to, and lived into God’s glory with his whole being.  On this weekend of celebrations and beginnings, may we allow God to use everything we’ve got-- our eyes, our mouths, our hearts and hands—everything we are, have been, and may be—to perceive and point to God’s ever-unfolding glory, glory that moves us over the mountaintop, that frees, and that saves into eternal life.

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

The Inauguration of Faith

A sermon for the First Sunday after Epiphany: The Baptism of Our Lord Jesus Christ, January 13, 2013.  The lectionary readings are Isaiah 43:1-7,  Psalm 29, Acts 8:14-17, and  Luke 3:15-17, 21-22.

Right now, downtown, bands are playing, oaths are being said, and over-caffeinated members of the Presidential Inaugural Committee are desperately trying to manage one another as they rehearse next week’s Inauguration.  The official inauguration stores are open, and red, white and blue bunting is appearing all over.  

An inauguration, of any kind, even if it’s the second, is the official beginning.  Certain people are present. Formalities are followed. Tradition carries the day even as there is some newer, contemporary aspect included.

The idea of “inauguration” is rooted in the classical world, especially in ancient Rome whenever there were official state functions and augurs were present.  The augurs were priests, or soothsayers, or official diviners who read the future or the signs of the times, often by watching the flight of the birds.  They could, in that way, tell what “augured” well for the future.  Any official beginning in the Roman state included the augurs in attendance.  An inauguration, then as now, meant a mixture of tradition and pageantry, stateliness and hope, hope that the birds were telling the truth and hope that the gods were on the side of the new leader. 

The spirit of the inauguration outdoors coincides with a spirit of inauguration indoors (at church) as we celebrate the Baptism of Our Lord Jesus Christ.  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 the baptism of Jesus and our own baptism.  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.  And we recall our own baptism, our own inauguration as Christians. 

But to remember our baptism is not just to play-act, or dig out old pictures, if we have them.  It’s not even just to light a baptismal candle, if we still have ours, it is to touch base with our baptism and allow that through our baptism, God saved us.  God saves us still, and God will always save us. 

The water that runs through us is water of redemption, water that has saved us.  Isaiah reminds people that it was the water made holy that saved them in crossing over from Egypt. And so, the water that saves us at baptism is connected to the water that saved the people of Israel.  It’s connected because God is in the middle of it all. 

The psalm reminds us of water’s power in creation—the power to create and refresh, but also the power to destroy and wash away.  “The voice of the Lord is upon the waters, the God of glory thunders.”  It breaks cedar trees.  It splits the flames of fire.  It strips the forest bare.  But it also gives strength to God’s people.  The voice of the Lord that moves upon the water gives us a blessing of peace.

It’s that blessing of peace and strength that the apostles are so eager to share in the reading from Acts.  As soon as Peter and John hear that people in Samaria are interested in the word of God, they go to visit.  They go to lay hands on them, to pray over them, and to share the Holy Spirit with them.  They go, in a sense, to play in the water with these new friends—to join in their new-found faith, and to teach their new friends how to swim in the deep water, to be baptized not only in the name of Jesus, but also with the power of the Holy Spirit—the Spirit that moves in community, that flies when spirit meets spirit, that grows whenever faith is shared.

If we were to think of baptism as jumping into the water, then we should view it NOT as one of those amazing divers who jumps from a high place, soars through the air downward, and cuts through the water in silence, without even so much as a ripple.  Instead, baptism is like going in “cannonball style.”  It’s about making a splash, about God’s displacing and disrupting the matter of the universe.  It’s about jumping in, making a difference, and sharing the water. 

In baptism we do jump in. Baptism is a change, it is a moving forward, a leaving behind. At the baptism of Jesus, 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.  We don’t need the augurs to read the flight of the birds.  We have the symbolic wings of the dove of the Holy Spirit to show us the way forward.  We’re called to get wet, 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). We will not go from life to death and to new life without some effect, and at the very least, we will be getting wet.

In baptism we also make a difference. Like a stone that’s thrown into water and makes a ripple effect, the effect of our baptism will ripple throughout our lives and into the lives of others. It will naturally spill over. If you ever watch a group of kids at a swimming pool, you’ll notice that as soon as an adult looks away, the action becomes about who can make the biggest splash, the most dramatic jump into the water. Who can displace the most water? It’s all about being seen, about making one’s mark, about standing out. As Christians, we could use a little more of this childish instinct. Being baptized marks us as belonging to Christ—it makes us different, different in the way we make decisions, in the way we spend money, in the way we treat other people. As the children in the swimming pool know, there’s a big difference between splashing water in someone else’s face and in simply making a big splash oneself. We also know that difference and as Christians are called to be respectful to those of other faith or no faith, but it still make a splash with our own faith.

We get wet, we make a splash, and finally, our baptism carries with it the command as well as the courtesy of sharing water to others.  Every week there are some from this parish who participate in volunteer ministries around the city.  Some literally share water, and tea, and food.  Others sit on boards, help with fundraising, or haul food from one place to another.  In just a few weeks, our Endowment Board will meet to review applications for mission grants, grants that have enabled us to further the prayers we say and make them more tangible for people in need—for victims of the storm in New York and New Jersey, for tornado victims in the south, and for people in Honduras, South Africa, the Middle East, and elsewhere.   In the streets of this city, in the farthest corners of the globe, many of you share your spirit and the spirit of Christ in you, as you work and travel and do research and offer guidance-- you give of yourselves for the bettering of God’s creation.  In sharing the OUR spirit, having been baptized with water and the spirit, we water to others.

The folks downtown are probably about finished with their rehearsal and next week will be the real thing.  As our country gets ready to celebrate the inauguration of a new presidential term, there are hopes and there are worries.  But as we watch the inauguration of one person and a new leadership, we also have the chance to re-commit ourselves to our individual and collective callings as people living in this particular country.  In a similar way, on this day the church calls the Baptism of Our Lord Jesus Christ, though we (ourselves) are not baptized again, we reaffirm our own baptismal covenant.  We re-commit ourselves. May the Spirit refresh us, commission us to do faithful ministry in the new year, and fill us with the very power of God. 

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