Isaiah 25:6-10; Psalm 23; John 14:1-6
Do not let your hearts be troubled. Jesus’ words are meant for comfort, but they also confound. Our hearts are troubled, anxious, grieving, broken. How could they not be? There is a space in our lives that was not there before, a distance between us and Meck.
The disciples’ hearts were troubled that day because Jesus had just told them that he would not always be with them. At least, that’s what they thought they heard him say. They imagined the space that Jesus would leave, and as they wandered anxiously, fearfully, through that vast space in their troubled hearts, they did not hear him say that his death would forever close the distance between us and God.
Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way to the place where I am going?
Thank goodness for Thomas, who was more than once brave enough (because he was troubled enough) to tell Jesus that this kind of comfort was confounding. Lord, we do not know the way where you are going. How can we know the way? Thomas was dreaming of what we all dream of when there is an impossible distance to cross – dreaming of a way from here to there. A way to not lose what we think is being lost. A way to not be left behind. A way to believe that the journey of life is not ended in the valley of the shadow of death.
Thank goodness for Meck, who would more than once, indeed, who with his whole life would tell us that we, like Thomas and the rest of the disciples, were hearing Jesus all wrong. Jesus wasn’t going anywhere that he wasn’t going to invite his disciples, including us, to follow. And he wasn’t going to send his disciples, including us, anywhere that he wasn’t prepared to go first.
In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places, Jesus promises, and I go to prepare a place there for you. The journey of life is not ended in the valley of the shadow of death but is begun anew in the light of Jesus’ resurrection, and we will dwell, remain, abide with him in the house of the Lord forever. That where I am, you may be also, Jesus promises.
But these words, too, might be confounding and of little comfort if it were not for our broken hearts, where, in the light of his life among us, Jesus prepared a dwelling place for God, as if to say, that where you are, I may be also.
God dwells with us here and now as surely as we will dwell with God eternally. That is comforting, even in the valley of the shadow of death. We see more clearly the way, the truth, and the life, when we let the light that already dwells in us shine through the seams and cracks and broken places of our hearts. From some, like Meck, that light pours out. By his kindness, his tender love and care for his wife and family and friends, his courageous work for justice, his tireless commitment to community, his faithful leadership in Christ’s body, the church, by these things and more, Meck knew the way that Jesus was going.
Though our hearts may be anxious and grieving, let them not be troubled. Jesus dwells with us even in this valley, now shot through with resurrection light. Amen.
Friday, February 10, 2006
Sunday, January 29, 2006
4 Epiphany B
Deuteronomy 18:15-20; Psalm 111; 1 Corinthians 8:1b-13; Mark 1:21-28
“Don’t use words too big for the subject,” C.S. Lewis once warned. “Don’t say ‘infinitely’ when you mean ‘very’; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.”
Perhaps had Lewis ever taught A.P. English, it would have been something like the class I was in my senior year of high school. “Don’t use words too big or too broad or too vague for the subject,” I can hear my teacher, Mr. Pell, warning. “Don’t say ‘the poem is great’ when you really mean ‘it’s as though the poem were written just for me’.” In fact, we weren’t allowed to use the word ‘great’ in class at all. Mr. Pell challenged us to say precisely and creatively what we meant, instead of ‘how’s your day? great…’ or ‘what did you think of the poem? great…’ He actually charged us twenty-five cents every time we said the word….well, you know, and on the last day of school he emptied the jar of change and went out and bought a new thesaurus for the classroom.
Words are so very significant. It’s amazing, don’t you think, that this jumble of shapes in black and white, this stream of sounds shaped by breath and lips, these words carry meaning across the space between people, whether on paper or through the air. Words carry meaning across that space allowing us to participate in one another’s lives and in the life of the world.
It’s easy to take for granted the meaning of words in our own language, until we come across a word we don’t know, or a new meaning of a word we thought we knew, or are forced to substitute words by English teachers. How very measurable that space between us feels, though, when we are surrounded by people speaking a language we do not know. And how very startled we are to learn meanings of words in different languages that seem to convey so much more than our own words do. For example, in Hebrew the word dabar means both ‘word’ and ‘deed’, such that to say something really is to do something. It was used especially to signify the creative word of God: Let there be light, and there was light.
Words are so very significant. In the Septuagint, the Greek translation of Hebrew scriptures, the Greek word logos is used in place of dabar. Logos also means both ‘word’ and ‘event’, and in Greek philosophy it signified the principle of coherence undergirding all of creation. In the gospel of John, Jesus is called logos, the Word of God. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
This morning’s gospel reading is from Mark, and although he does not use the word logos, he does show us in this first story of Jesus’ public ministry that Jesus’ words and action speak for God because Jesus is God.
The reading begins with Jesus teaching in the synagogue, speaking with such authority that the people were astounded. But Mark doesn’t record a single word of that teaching; instead, he records the Word in action. Jesus rebukes a man with an unclean spirit, speaking with such authority that the unclean spirit leaves the man and the people were amazed. What is this? A new teaching – with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him. To say something really is to do something.
This gospel reading is not about Jesus’ ability to astonish and amaze crowds. It is not about his knowledge of or insight into holy scriptures, which is what was taught in the synagogue. It is not about exorcism. This reading is about who Jesus is, this light that has come into the world and who, in the season of Epiphany, we are taught to see more and more clearly.
Mark chooses his words carefully. The people were astounded at Jesus’ teaching, for he spoke as one having authority, and not as the scribes. Scribes in the synagogue were not mere copyists – they were biblical scholars, charged with reading and interpreting scripture. Their authority was derived from their lifelong study of God’s holy word, as read and interpreted by the generations of scribes that came before them, and the generations before them.
But by the time of Jesus, the teaching of the scribes had become in many places rigid, binding, highly protective of the identity of the Hebrew people as God’s chosen people. They were in the promised land, but so were the Greeks, whose government and gods ruled the day. Out of….fear? Forgetfulness? Self-preservation? A need for control? the religious establishment put their trust in the word of God to define who they were (and who was not one of them).
But that’s not what the Word of God is for. In Jesus Christ, the Word of God was revealed to be not a ‘what’, locked up in parchments and memories, but rather a ‘who’, a living and breathing Word with a face like ours but a power beyond even our imagination. Nothing about Jesus was bound by any word, any knowledge, any establishment – in this very passage he’s healing someone of an unclean spirit on the Sabbath! Jesus is not bound by any word.
In Jesus Christ, the Word of God was revealed to be more than just a tradition, an ancient story of God speaking in the lives of a chosen people. Jesus was the Living Word, moving with us through time and space and skin and bones. Jesus was the Living Word, through whom God spoke love and lived love. To say something is to do something.
Mark does not make clear whether the man with an unclean spirit was possessed by demons or by that same fear or forgetfulness or sense of self-preservation that possessed the scribes. In either case, the distance between the man and the Word of God was measurable – they weren’t speaking the same language. Jesus’ casting out of that unclean spirit is considered by many to supply the meaning behind every miracle of healing he will perform. To make the blind to see or the lame to walk is great, but to heal our rigidity, our fear….to cast out the things that bind us, that keep us from hearing the Word afresh….to make us ask again and again in wonder, What is this? A new teaching, a new life, a new creation, a new spirit….that is astounding, it is amazing.
So how do we tell the world of the meaning of this Word in our lives, the Word spoken through the prophets, the Word made flesh? We can be so like the scribes, bound tightly to the stories we’ve always been told (or have always told ourselves), rigidly defining who we are and who we aren’t, who others are and who they aren’t, desperately reaching for what little control of life we can have. We can be so like the man with the unclean spirit, possessed by fear and a multitude of other things that separate us from God and from others.
But we are also the Body of Christ, part of a new story along that ancient trajectory of the love of an almighty and everlasting and creative God. The pattern of death has been broken, the boundaries of salvation have opened wide the gates, the distance between heaven and earth has been crossed, and we are united one to another as living members of that Body, of that Word.
Another of my favorite writers, Madeleine L’Engle, tells the meaning of the Word in her life like this. She suggests that we are like our mother earth, in constant revolution, always moving or we will die. If the earth were not in revolution, there would be no days or nights, no new mornings, and we would suffocate as the very air we breathe and everything else not firmly attached to the ground would drift away. But the revolution that sustains us is not reckless – it does not fling us into unknown space – because we are also on a trajectory around the sun, a path that does not falter around a source that does not waver. Madeleine writes, “As I understand the beauty of the earth’s dance around the sun, so do I understand the constant revolution of the community of the Son.”
What is this? A new teaching – with authority! In Jesus, the Word of God is as new as a baby who is both God and human, and as ancient as the first day of creation. The authority with which he speaks is that of one who is made of flesh and blood and of almighty and everlasting, with no measurable space in between. The healing he offers is that of driving out those things in us that refuse to hear the Word of love spoken since let there be light.
In the words of our own Saint Paul, let us now give glory to God, whose power working in us can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine. Glory to God from generation to generation in the Church, and in Christ Jesus for ever. Amen.
“Don’t use words too big for the subject,” C.S. Lewis once warned. “Don’t say ‘infinitely’ when you mean ‘very’; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.”
Perhaps had Lewis ever taught A.P. English, it would have been something like the class I was in my senior year of high school. “Don’t use words too big or too broad or too vague for the subject,” I can hear my teacher, Mr. Pell, warning. “Don’t say ‘the poem is great’ when you really mean ‘it’s as though the poem were written just for me’.” In fact, we weren’t allowed to use the word ‘great’ in class at all. Mr. Pell challenged us to say precisely and creatively what we meant, instead of ‘how’s your day? great…’ or ‘what did you think of the poem? great…’ He actually charged us twenty-five cents every time we said the word….well, you know, and on the last day of school he emptied the jar of change and went out and bought a new thesaurus for the classroom.
Words are so very significant. It’s amazing, don’t you think, that this jumble of shapes in black and white, this stream of sounds shaped by breath and lips, these words carry meaning across the space between people, whether on paper or through the air. Words carry meaning across that space allowing us to participate in one another’s lives and in the life of the world.
It’s easy to take for granted the meaning of words in our own language, until we come across a word we don’t know, or a new meaning of a word we thought we knew, or are forced to substitute words by English teachers. How very measurable that space between us feels, though, when we are surrounded by people speaking a language we do not know. And how very startled we are to learn meanings of words in different languages that seem to convey so much more than our own words do. For example, in Hebrew the word dabar means both ‘word’ and ‘deed’, such that to say something really is to do something. It was used especially to signify the creative word of God: Let there be light, and there was light.
Words are so very significant. In the Septuagint, the Greek translation of Hebrew scriptures, the Greek word logos is used in place of dabar. Logos also means both ‘word’ and ‘event’, and in Greek philosophy it signified the principle of coherence undergirding all of creation. In the gospel of John, Jesus is called logos, the Word of God. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
This morning’s gospel reading is from Mark, and although he does not use the word logos, he does show us in this first story of Jesus’ public ministry that Jesus’ words and action speak for God because Jesus is God.
The reading begins with Jesus teaching in the synagogue, speaking with such authority that the people were astounded. But Mark doesn’t record a single word of that teaching; instead, he records the Word in action. Jesus rebukes a man with an unclean spirit, speaking with such authority that the unclean spirit leaves the man and the people were amazed. What is this? A new teaching – with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him. To say something really is to do something.
This gospel reading is not about Jesus’ ability to astonish and amaze crowds. It is not about his knowledge of or insight into holy scriptures, which is what was taught in the synagogue. It is not about exorcism. This reading is about who Jesus is, this light that has come into the world and who, in the season of Epiphany, we are taught to see more and more clearly.
Mark chooses his words carefully. The people were astounded at Jesus’ teaching, for he spoke as one having authority, and not as the scribes. Scribes in the synagogue were not mere copyists – they were biblical scholars, charged with reading and interpreting scripture. Their authority was derived from their lifelong study of God’s holy word, as read and interpreted by the generations of scribes that came before them, and the generations before them.
But by the time of Jesus, the teaching of the scribes had become in many places rigid, binding, highly protective of the identity of the Hebrew people as God’s chosen people. They were in the promised land, but so were the Greeks, whose government and gods ruled the day. Out of….fear? Forgetfulness? Self-preservation? A need for control? the religious establishment put their trust in the word of God to define who they were (and who was not one of them).
But that’s not what the Word of God is for. In Jesus Christ, the Word of God was revealed to be not a ‘what’, locked up in parchments and memories, but rather a ‘who’, a living and breathing Word with a face like ours but a power beyond even our imagination. Nothing about Jesus was bound by any word, any knowledge, any establishment – in this very passage he’s healing someone of an unclean spirit on the Sabbath! Jesus is not bound by any word.
In Jesus Christ, the Word of God was revealed to be more than just a tradition, an ancient story of God speaking in the lives of a chosen people. Jesus was the Living Word, moving with us through time and space and skin and bones. Jesus was the Living Word, through whom God spoke love and lived love. To say something is to do something.
Mark does not make clear whether the man with an unclean spirit was possessed by demons or by that same fear or forgetfulness or sense of self-preservation that possessed the scribes. In either case, the distance between the man and the Word of God was measurable – they weren’t speaking the same language. Jesus’ casting out of that unclean spirit is considered by many to supply the meaning behind every miracle of healing he will perform. To make the blind to see or the lame to walk is great, but to heal our rigidity, our fear….to cast out the things that bind us, that keep us from hearing the Word afresh….to make us ask again and again in wonder, What is this? A new teaching, a new life, a new creation, a new spirit….that is astounding, it is amazing.
So how do we tell the world of the meaning of this Word in our lives, the Word spoken through the prophets, the Word made flesh? We can be so like the scribes, bound tightly to the stories we’ve always been told (or have always told ourselves), rigidly defining who we are and who we aren’t, who others are and who they aren’t, desperately reaching for what little control of life we can have. We can be so like the man with the unclean spirit, possessed by fear and a multitude of other things that separate us from God and from others.
But we are also the Body of Christ, part of a new story along that ancient trajectory of the love of an almighty and everlasting and creative God. The pattern of death has been broken, the boundaries of salvation have opened wide the gates, the distance between heaven and earth has been crossed, and we are united one to another as living members of that Body, of that Word.
Another of my favorite writers, Madeleine L’Engle, tells the meaning of the Word in her life like this. She suggests that we are like our mother earth, in constant revolution, always moving or we will die. If the earth were not in revolution, there would be no days or nights, no new mornings, and we would suffocate as the very air we breathe and everything else not firmly attached to the ground would drift away. But the revolution that sustains us is not reckless – it does not fling us into unknown space – because we are also on a trajectory around the sun, a path that does not falter around a source that does not waver. Madeleine writes, “As I understand the beauty of the earth’s dance around the sun, so do I understand the constant revolution of the community of the Son.”
What is this? A new teaching – with authority! In Jesus, the Word of God is as new as a baby who is both God and human, and as ancient as the first day of creation. The authority with which he speaks is that of one who is made of flesh and blood and of almighty and everlasting, with no measurable space in between. The healing he offers is that of driving out those things in us that refuse to hear the Word of love spoken since let there be light.
In the words of our own Saint Paul, let us now give glory to God, whose power working in us can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine. Glory to God from generation to generation in the Church, and in Christ Jesus for ever. Amen.
Monday, January 23, 2006
3 Epiphany B
Actually, this was my report at the Annual Meeting on 3 Epiphany B
Mark 1:14-20
When I asked Greg what I should talk about that wasn’t already covered in my written report, he suggested I reflect on what it has been like to be the Curate at St. Paul’s this past year. Now, most non-Episcopalians and more than a few Episcopalians smile politely but curiously when I tell them that I am a curate. It’s one of those funny old church words that actually no longer appears in our prayerbook or in the Constitutions and Canons of the Episcopal church, but many bishops still place their newly ordained priests as assistants in congregations much like this one, and they call us curates.
The word ‘curate’ is drawn from the Latin curatus, which means “entrusted with the care of something.” Originally, the curate was the priest in charge of a geographical area, called a ‘cure’, and he was entrusted with the care of the souls living within that cure. In fact, the word ‘cure’ is related in derivation to the word ‘care’. Over time, the priest in charge became known as the rector or vicar, and the name curate was given to assisting priests.
You know how funny old church words go – we don’t like to give them up, so that newcomers find themselves having to learn a new language when they join the Episcopal church. Where else does the curate wearing a chasuble remove the burse and veil from the chalice and paten before receiving the ciborium from the acolyte?! Last weekend, I attended a conference at Gray Center for priests who are newly ordained, as well as priests who have recently moved to a new parish. The conference leader wrote the words ‘cure’ and ‘curate’ up on the board, noting how they were related, and how those of us at the conference were thus related, all of us taking up new responsibilities, new challenges, new relationships, new journeys.
The next morning, another word had been added to the board, in a different handwriting – ‘c-u-r-i-o-s’. ‘Curios’. It was added anonymously, but I think in good humor and with some insight. Every now and then, when I have to explain my funny old church word job title, when I’m walking up the 23rd Avenue sidewalk before church wearing layers of vestments, when I tell yet another person that no, I’m not a nun, I feel like I belong in curio cabinet, odd and on display.
We all get that feeling sometimes, though, right? When our lives as people of faith, and particularly as Episcopalians, take us in a different direction from the lives of people around us? What a lovely collection of curios we are!
On the last morning of the conference, another anonymous contributor completed the list on the board: cure, curate, curios, curiouser and curioser.
These of course are the words Alice says, deep inside the rabbit hole filled with things labeled “Drink Me” and “Eat Me”. Alice marvels, “This is getting curiouser and curiouser!” as she samples the fare and finds herself growing and shrinking and growing again. Just as she thinks she has gotten the hang of things in Wonderland, a new surprise awaits around a corner or up a tree or at a tea party table.
It’s kind of like being a curate….this Wonderland is filled with people and with things and experiences that call out, “Read Me”, “Study Me”, “Pray Me”, “Pray with Me”, “Visit Me”, “Knit Me”, “Teach Me”, “Hear Me”, “Help Me”, “Preach Me”. Some days I try these things and I get the results I hoped for; some days I don’t. Some days I grow; some days it seems like I shrink. But every day I learn, and every day I discover something new. Just when I think I’ve got the hang of things, a new surprise awaits around a corner or up at the altar or at a bedside or at a vestry meeting.
I looked up the word ‘curious’, and found that it, too, is derived from the Latin word for ‘care’. ‘Curious’ today means ‘eager to learn,’ and it can mean ‘odd or strange,’ but an archaic meaning of the word is ‘extremely careful’. Eager to learn, a little odd (maybe!), extremely careful….curiouser and curiouser is a good description of the life of a curate!
But not just a curate. We are all in this wonderland together, a collection of curios, just trying to get the hang of things before we round the next corner. In a little while we will hear the story of Simon and Andrew, James and John, just getting the hang of a fisherman’s life when around the corner comes Jesus calling out “Follow Me”….and like Alice, they were just curious enough to try. Some days it was everything they hoped for; some days it wasn’t. Some days it seemed everything was going to be okay; some days it didn’t. Some days it was easy to be a disciple; some days it was very, very hard. So it is with us, with Jesus’ disciples in this time and place. “Follow Me,” he offers, and we’ve been just curious enough to try.
I may be the funny old church word ‘curate’ around here, but as much as this is my cure, so have I found myself to be yours. Indeed, we are all in the care of one another, and as disciples of Jesus Christ, all the world is our cure. In this curious, odd, strange year filled with construction dust and growing pains, waves and wind and driving rain, life together has not always been easy. Sometimes it has been very, very hard. But always at the center of our life together is Jesus again, calling “Eat Me,” “Drink Me,” and we kneel side by side to receive what we already are – the Body of Christ.
As the curate, I plan to keep learning this year. Sometimes I will feel fulfilled, and sometimes I will feel frustrated. But at every St. Martha’s Guild and every Senior High Bible Study, at every Prayer Shawl meeting and every budget meeting, at every Healing Service and every Morning Prayer, at every hospital visit and every home visit, I will learn about caring for the soul of another, and I know I will learn how my soul is cared for as well. St. Paul’s has curates because St. Paul’s is full of curates.
The call to discipleship is a call to holy curiousity, the gift of joy and wonder in all God’s works. In this year may we be curiouser and curiouser together, turning new corners, eager to learn, and full of care. Amen.
Mark 1:14-20
When I asked Greg what I should talk about that wasn’t already covered in my written report, he suggested I reflect on what it has been like to be the Curate at St. Paul’s this past year. Now, most non-Episcopalians and more than a few Episcopalians smile politely but curiously when I tell them that I am a curate. It’s one of those funny old church words that actually no longer appears in our prayerbook or in the Constitutions and Canons of the Episcopal church, but many bishops still place their newly ordained priests as assistants in congregations much like this one, and they call us curates.
The word ‘curate’ is drawn from the Latin curatus, which means “entrusted with the care of something.” Originally, the curate was the priest in charge of a geographical area, called a ‘cure’, and he was entrusted with the care of the souls living within that cure. In fact, the word ‘cure’ is related in derivation to the word ‘care’. Over time, the priest in charge became known as the rector or vicar, and the name curate was given to assisting priests.
You know how funny old church words go – we don’t like to give them up, so that newcomers find themselves having to learn a new language when they join the Episcopal church. Where else does the curate wearing a chasuble remove the burse and veil from the chalice and paten before receiving the ciborium from the acolyte?! Last weekend, I attended a conference at Gray Center for priests who are newly ordained, as well as priests who have recently moved to a new parish. The conference leader wrote the words ‘cure’ and ‘curate’ up on the board, noting how they were related, and how those of us at the conference were thus related, all of us taking up new responsibilities, new challenges, new relationships, new journeys.
The next morning, another word had been added to the board, in a different handwriting – ‘c-u-r-i-o-s’. ‘Curios’. It was added anonymously, but I think in good humor and with some insight. Every now and then, when I have to explain my funny old church word job title, when I’m walking up the 23rd Avenue sidewalk before church wearing layers of vestments, when I tell yet another person that no, I’m not a nun, I feel like I belong in curio cabinet, odd and on display.
We all get that feeling sometimes, though, right? When our lives as people of faith, and particularly as Episcopalians, take us in a different direction from the lives of people around us? What a lovely collection of curios we are!
On the last morning of the conference, another anonymous contributor completed the list on the board: cure, curate, curios, curiouser and curioser.
These of course are the words Alice says, deep inside the rabbit hole filled with things labeled “Drink Me” and “Eat Me”. Alice marvels, “This is getting curiouser and curiouser!” as she samples the fare and finds herself growing and shrinking and growing again. Just as she thinks she has gotten the hang of things in Wonderland, a new surprise awaits around a corner or up a tree or at a tea party table.
It’s kind of like being a curate….this Wonderland is filled with people and with things and experiences that call out, “Read Me”, “Study Me”, “Pray Me”, “Pray with Me”, “Visit Me”, “Knit Me”, “Teach Me”, “Hear Me”, “Help Me”, “Preach Me”. Some days I try these things and I get the results I hoped for; some days I don’t. Some days I grow; some days it seems like I shrink. But every day I learn, and every day I discover something new. Just when I think I’ve got the hang of things, a new surprise awaits around a corner or up at the altar or at a bedside or at a vestry meeting.
I looked up the word ‘curious’, and found that it, too, is derived from the Latin word for ‘care’. ‘Curious’ today means ‘eager to learn,’ and it can mean ‘odd or strange,’ but an archaic meaning of the word is ‘extremely careful’. Eager to learn, a little odd (maybe!), extremely careful….curiouser and curiouser is a good description of the life of a curate!
But not just a curate. We are all in this wonderland together, a collection of curios, just trying to get the hang of things before we round the next corner. In a little while we will hear the story of Simon and Andrew, James and John, just getting the hang of a fisherman’s life when around the corner comes Jesus calling out “Follow Me”….and like Alice, they were just curious enough to try. Some days it was everything they hoped for; some days it wasn’t. Some days it seemed everything was going to be okay; some days it didn’t. Some days it was easy to be a disciple; some days it was very, very hard. So it is with us, with Jesus’ disciples in this time and place. “Follow Me,” he offers, and we’ve been just curious enough to try.
I may be the funny old church word ‘curate’ around here, but as much as this is my cure, so have I found myself to be yours. Indeed, we are all in the care of one another, and as disciples of Jesus Christ, all the world is our cure. In this curious, odd, strange year filled with construction dust and growing pains, waves and wind and driving rain, life together has not always been easy. Sometimes it has been very, very hard. But always at the center of our life together is Jesus again, calling “Eat Me,” “Drink Me,” and we kneel side by side to receive what we already are – the Body of Christ.
As the curate, I plan to keep learning this year. Sometimes I will feel fulfilled, and sometimes I will feel frustrated. But at every St. Martha’s Guild and every Senior High Bible Study, at every Prayer Shawl meeting and every budget meeting, at every Healing Service and every Morning Prayer, at every hospital visit and every home visit, I will learn about caring for the soul of another, and I know I will learn how my soul is cared for as well. St. Paul’s has curates because St. Paul’s is full of curates.
The call to discipleship is a call to holy curiousity, the gift of joy and wonder in all God’s works. In this year may we be curiouser and curiouser together, turning new corners, eager to learn, and full of care. Amen.
Saturday, December 24, 2005
Christmas Eve (Midnight)
Isaiah 9:2-4, 6-7; Psalm 96:1-4, 11-12; Titus 2:11-14; Luke 2:1-20
It is both humbling and heartening to be reminded every so often that the best sermon material comes not from a three-year seminary education but, rather, from life with a five-year-old little boy.
We were sitting at the dinner table a few nights ago, talking about Christmas, when Little Charlie said, “You know what I like best about Jesus’ birthday?” Now, my husband and I have really tried to give Jesus and Santa Claus at least equal time when it comes to Christmas. But in fact, most of Little Charlie’s Christmas books tell the gospel story we just heard a moment ago. There are a couple of books about Santa Claus, and Charlie loves his toy reindeer, but he also has a toy nativity set, so we thought we were getting the message across.
“You know what I like best about Jesus’ birthday?” I prepared myself for prime sermon material, a theological gem of the sort only children can produce. “You know what I like best about Jesus’ birthday?” he said. “We get all the presents.”
Oh well. To you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah! God-with-us is with us, earth is shot through with heaven, and Charlie gets a Spiderman bike out of the deal. Not a bad deal, I guess, for him. But it was certainly not that gem I was hoping for.
Of course he’s just five, when it’s hard to look past the presents under the tree. Baby Jesus has to compete with cookies and stockings and jingle bells for his attention. Christmas means so many different things in his life – it does in all our lives, right? I'm afraid Baby Jesus still has to compete with cookies and stockings and jingle bells and a thousand other things for my attention. The trick to balancing them seems as delicate as the balance between divinity and DNA wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.
And then it hit me. I know that Little Charlie meant exactly what he said, and why not – there are presents in our house with his name on them, and he knows it’s not his birthday. It’s Jesus’ birthday, and here’s where he might be on to something after all, the little inadvertent theologian. It’s Jesus’ birthday, and we get all the presents.
It’s Jesus’ birthday, and we get the extraordinary gift of God coming to live among us as one of us, in all our ordinariness, so that we can one day come to live with God. It’s not a bad deal at all.
I think that part of what makes it so hard to balance Christmas is that we make the Christmas story into something like a fairy tale, befitting, we imagine, the birth of a Prince of Peace. The holy child lies in a bed of sweet hay as his parents bend over him serenely. Angels populate the skies and burst into song without warning. Shepherds appear in bathrobes, carrying softly bleating lambs in their arms. A silent night in the little town of Bethlehem.
By this time on Christmas Eve – how long is the list of things you’ve accomplished so far this week, and how much is left to do tonight – by this time we need the fairy tale birth, the warm glow of starlight filling the stable, the little Lord Jesus asleep in the hay.
The truth is, of course, the real story was as far from a fairy tale as our own lives are. The occupying government was imposing heavy taxes to pay its army to keep the peace. A baby was born to travel-weary first-time parents, a hundred miles from home. The only available shelter was a stable for pack animals, and the only available crib was their feeding trough. I doubt the smell in that stable could have been described as sweet. Just as the pain and fear of childbirth was subsiding, a group of strangers arrived demanding to see the baby. They weren’t royalty or wise men or even helpful neighbors, but shepherds, bleary-eyed from keeping watch at night, picking bits of grass and leaves from their hair. Shepherds weren’t known for their dependability or their manners, but there they were, claiming that angels had told them, of all people, that this baby was the Savior of all people. This is the real story into which the Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace was born.
For some people, all of Christmas takes on a sort of fairy tale glow. They have happy memories of family and friends, deeply significant traditions, special meals, and favorite gifts. For others, the experience of Christmas is set more in shadow. There are sad or angry or grief-filled memories of the season, strained relationships, and long stretches of loneliness.
The truth is, we all arrive at the manger with burdens, doubts, anxieties, and disappointments. We are all tired when we get there. We all arrive short one tradition or one friend or one family member. Life simply is not a fairy tale. This is the real story into which the Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace is born.
Jesus, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, is born in a noisy, smelly stable. The good news of great joy for all people is announced to a shifty band of shepherds. What an intersection of stories is held in that manger filled with dusty, scratchy hay, filled with the extraordinary Love of God for this ordinary world.
British actor Rowan Atkinson paints a charming picture of that intersection of stories through his on screen character, Mr. Bean. Mr. Bean is the quintessential thirty-five-year-old five-year-old, for whom life is simple, centered on himself, and full of possibilities. In the Christmas episode, Mr. Bean stumbles upon a nativity set in a store window, and he can’t resist bringing it to life. Sounds like a five-year-old five-year-old I know!
The camera narrows in on the nativity set, and we hear Mr. Bean’s delight as we see his hands playing with the figures in the set. It starts out like the fairy tale version. Mary and Joseph lean over Jesus and sing to him. The cow moos, which fetches a gentle “shhh” from Joseph. A shepherd arrives with at first just a few sheep behind him, but Mr. Bean must have found the basket marked “twenty for the price of one”, because suddenly, there are sheep flying in from all directions. He backs a truck up to load the sheep, and as it drives off, a toy dinosaur peers over from behind the stable and Joseph gives a fierce “shhh”. A robot rolls over to see the baby, who is promptly airlifted out of the mayhem by an angel with a magnet attached. This is at least something like the real, ordinary, wild story into which the Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace is born. All of that, all those wildly diverse characters, all those stories intersecting with the story of Emmanuel, the story of God-with-us.
The good news of great joy is for all people – moms, dads, shepherds, kings, five-year-olds, thirty-five-year-olds, ninety-five-year-olds. We all belong in that nativity scene – in this nativity scene right here – so many real, ordinary, wildly diverse characters, so many wishing-it-were-but-knowing-it’s-not-a-fairy-tale lives intersecting with one another and with God, intersecting because of the gift of Jesus Christ, a baby in whom was both all of who God is and all of who we are.
I don’t know if it says something about Mr. Bean or about Little Charlie that they play with nativity sets the same way. Charlie’s toy nativity came with all the proper figures to tell the sweet fairy tale version of the story. But it wasn’t long before his procession to the manger included, just behind the wise men and their camel, a pair of matchbox cars, a whole herd of plastic dinosaurs, the pilot from a toy airplane, and a little stuffed caterpillar with rainbow stripes and a bell in its tale. Best of all, keeping a silent, respectful, towering watch over the entire scene, was Batman. It’s something like the real story….
….Everything important to Charlie was there – all the things that he loves. That’s what Christmas is about for God. Everything important to God is caught up in a single story – all the things and all the people God loves, all of our stories meet in the person of Jesus Christ. Ours are the real stories into which the Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace is born. Ours are the stories Jesus walks into, with all our hopes and dreams and anxieties and fears and disappointments, with all our ordinariness. Ours are the stories to which he offers an extraordinary new life. We get all the presents.
I suppose the Baby Jesus might have liked a Spiderman bike if someone had given one to him on his birthday. Can you imagine him peddling around his driveway, like so many of us did when we were five? That’s part of what makes this present we receive on Christmas so special – through Jesus Christ, God knows deeply and personally what it’s like to be us. We’ll keep telling Charlie that that’s the real story of Christmas, it’s not just a fairy tale. And one day we hope he’ll discover that Jesus is indeed present in his ordinary, everyday life. In hugs and kisses at bedtime, in learning his letters at school, in playing with friends on the playground, in riding his new bike tomorrow morning. Because God met us in the manger, these are the sorts of ordinary places we can all meet God each and every ordinary day of our lives.
So I defer to a five-year-old once again. What does God like best about Jesus’ birthday? I think God likes that we get the very best present of all. Amen.
It is both humbling and heartening to be reminded every so often that the best sermon material comes not from a three-year seminary education but, rather, from life with a five-year-old little boy.
We were sitting at the dinner table a few nights ago, talking about Christmas, when Little Charlie said, “You know what I like best about Jesus’ birthday?” Now, my husband and I have really tried to give Jesus and Santa Claus at least equal time when it comes to Christmas. But in fact, most of Little Charlie’s Christmas books tell the gospel story we just heard a moment ago. There are a couple of books about Santa Claus, and Charlie loves his toy reindeer, but he also has a toy nativity set, so we thought we were getting the message across.
“You know what I like best about Jesus’ birthday?” I prepared myself for prime sermon material, a theological gem of the sort only children can produce. “You know what I like best about Jesus’ birthday?” he said. “We get all the presents.”
Oh well. To you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah! God-with-us is with us, earth is shot through with heaven, and Charlie gets a Spiderman bike out of the deal. Not a bad deal, I guess, for him. But it was certainly not that gem I was hoping for.
Of course he’s just five, when it’s hard to look past the presents under the tree. Baby Jesus has to compete with cookies and stockings and jingle bells for his attention. Christmas means so many different things in his life – it does in all our lives, right? I'm afraid Baby Jesus still has to compete with cookies and stockings and jingle bells and a thousand other things for my attention. The trick to balancing them seems as delicate as the balance between divinity and DNA wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.
And then it hit me. I know that Little Charlie meant exactly what he said, and why not – there are presents in our house with his name on them, and he knows it’s not his birthday. It’s Jesus’ birthday, and here’s where he might be on to something after all, the little inadvertent theologian. It’s Jesus’ birthday, and we get all the presents.
It’s Jesus’ birthday, and we get the extraordinary gift of God coming to live among us as one of us, in all our ordinariness, so that we can one day come to live with God. It’s not a bad deal at all.
I think that part of what makes it so hard to balance Christmas is that we make the Christmas story into something like a fairy tale, befitting, we imagine, the birth of a Prince of Peace. The holy child lies in a bed of sweet hay as his parents bend over him serenely. Angels populate the skies and burst into song without warning. Shepherds appear in bathrobes, carrying softly bleating lambs in their arms. A silent night in the little town of Bethlehem.
By this time on Christmas Eve – how long is the list of things you’ve accomplished so far this week, and how much is left to do tonight – by this time we need the fairy tale birth, the warm glow of starlight filling the stable, the little Lord Jesus asleep in the hay.
The truth is, of course, the real story was as far from a fairy tale as our own lives are. The occupying government was imposing heavy taxes to pay its army to keep the peace. A baby was born to travel-weary first-time parents, a hundred miles from home. The only available shelter was a stable for pack animals, and the only available crib was their feeding trough. I doubt the smell in that stable could have been described as sweet. Just as the pain and fear of childbirth was subsiding, a group of strangers arrived demanding to see the baby. They weren’t royalty or wise men or even helpful neighbors, but shepherds, bleary-eyed from keeping watch at night, picking bits of grass and leaves from their hair. Shepherds weren’t known for their dependability or their manners, but there they were, claiming that angels had told them, of all people, that this baby was the Savior of all people. This is the real story into which the Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace was born.
For some people, all of Christmas takes on a sort of fairy tale glow. They have happy memories of family and friends, deeply significant traditions, special meals, and favorite gifts. For others, the experience of Christmas is set more in shadow. There are sad or angry or grief-filled memories of the season, strained relationships, and long stretches of loneliness.
The truth is, we all arrive at the manger with burdens, doubts, anxieties, and disappointments. We are all tired when we get there. We all arrive short one tradition or one friend or one family member. Life simply is not a fairy tale. This is the real story into which the Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace is born.
Jesus, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, is born in a noisy, smelly stable. The good news of great joy for all people is announced to a shifty band of shepherds. What an intersection of stories is held in that manger filled with dusty, scratchy hay, filled with the extraordinary Love of God for this ordinary world.
British actor Rowan Atkinson paints a charming picture of that intersection of stories through his on screen character, Mr. Bean. Mr. Bean is the quintessential thirty-five-year-old five-year-old, for whom life is simple, centered on himself, and full of possibilities. In the Christmas episode, Mr. Bean stumbles upon a nativity set in a store window, and he can’t resist bringing it to life. Sounds like a five-year-old five-year-old I know!
The camera narrows in on the nativity set, and we hear Mr. Bean’s delight as we see his hands playing with the figures in the set. It starts out like the fairy tale version. Mary and Joseph lean over Jesus and sing to him. The cow moos, which fetches a gentle “shhh” from Joseph. A shepherd arrives with at first just a few sheep behind him, but Mr. Bean must have found the basket marked “twenty for the price of one”, because suddenly, there are sheep flying in from all directions. He backs a truck up to load the sheep, and as it drives off, a toy dinosaur peers over from behind the stable and Joseph gives a fierce “shhh”. A robot rolls over to see the baby, who is promptly airlifted out of the mayhem by an angel with a magnet attached. This is at least something like the real, ordinary, wild story into which the Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace is born. All of that, all those wildly diverse characters, all those stories intersecting with the story of Emmanuel, the story of God-with-us.
The good news of great joy is for all people – moms, dads, shepherds, kings, five-year-olds, thirty-five-year-olds, ninety-five-year-olds. We all belong in that nativity scene – in this nativity scene right here – so many real, ordinary, wildly diverse characters, so many wishing-it-were-but-knowing-it’s-not-a-fairy-tale lives intersecting with one another and with God, intersecting because of the gift of Jesus Christ, a baby in whom was both all of who God is and all of who we are.
I don’t know if it says something about Mr. Bean or about Little Charlie that they play with nativity sets the same way. Charlie’s toy nativity came with all the proper figures to tell the sweet fairy tale version of the story. But it wasn’t long before his procession to the manger included, just behind the wise men and their camel, a pair of matchbox cars, a whole herd of plastic dinosaurs, the pilot from a toy airplane, and a little stuffed caterpillar with rainbow stripes and a bell in its tale. Best of all, keeping a silent, respectful, towering watch over the entire scene, was Batman. It’s something like the real story….
….Everything important to Charlie was there – all the things that he loves. That’s what Christmas is about for God. Everything important to God is caught up in a single story – all the things and all the people God loves, all of our stories meet in the person of Jesus Christ. Ours are the real stories into which the Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace is born. Ours are the stories Jesus walks into, with all our hopes and dreams and anxieties and fears and disappointments, with all our ordinariness. Ours are the stories to which he offers an extraordinary new life. We get all the presents.
I suppose the Baby Jesus might have liked a Spiderman bike if someone had given one to him on his birthday. Can you imagine him peddling around his driveway, like so many of us did when we were five? That’s part of what makes this present we receive on Christmas so special – through Jesus Christ, God knows deeply and personally what it’s like to be us. We’ll keep telling Charlie that that’s the real story of Christmas, it’s not just a fairy tale. And one day we hope he’ll discover that Jesus is indeed present in his ordinary, everyday life. In hugs and kisses at bedtime, in learning his letters at school, in playing with friends on the playground, in riding his new bike tomorrow morning. Because God met us in the manger, these are the sorts of ordinary places we can all meet God each and every ordinary day of our lives.
So I defer to a five-year-old once again. What does God like best about Jesus’ birthday? I think God likes that we get the very best present of all. Amen.
Sunday, September 25, 2005
Proper 21A
Ezekiel 18:1-4, 25-32; Psalm 25:3-9; Philippians 2:1-13; Matthew 21:28-32
My husband and I have spent our free time over the past couple of months making a few small changes to our kitchen. It’s amazing to me how much work small changes can take, and also what a big difference small changes can make. A fresh coat of exactly the same color paint on our kitchen cabinets, and a new set of hinges and handles….and presto!, our kitchen looks entirely different.
We’ve been inspired, of course, by all those do-it-yourself home makeover shows, which I love to watch. I actually like any sort of makeover show, whether it is a room or a garden or a person being transformed. From the nervous excitement when the design is unveiled by the professional you trust to see possibilities you cannot see, through each anxious decision to try something new, to the breathless anticipation of the big “reveal” at the end of the show when the host asks inevitable question, “Well, what do you think?”.... Truthfully, the disaster stories (when a designer nailed all the furniture to the ceiling, or a hairstylist insists that purple is really your color) can be just as entertaining as the success stories. But the best transformations, I think, are the ones in which the response to “what do you think” is “I never realized this room, this garden, this me, could look so beautiful.”
We could go straight to TLC or HGTV with our readings this morning. Through Ezekiel, God urges the people of Israel to get a new heart and a new spirit. Paul urges Christians in Philippi to adopt the same mind that was in Christ Jesus. These are no small changes!
Then Jesus, our host, begins his parable, What do you think? The chief priests and scribes to whom he is speaking don’t know it – they never really get it – but Jesus is about to reveal to them a transformation beyond their imagining. What do you think? A man had two sons….
By this point in Matthew’s gospel, the chief priests and scribes have had enough of Jesus, who they insist has made far too many unauthorized changes to God’s law. He surrounds himself with sinners, works on the Sabbath, and deals out grace as generously to the riff-raff as to the righteous. He had just the day before literally turned the furniture upside-down in the temple when he insisted that money-changers didn’t belong there, and in fact he had claimed to be able to tear the temple down and rebuild it in three days. They can’t even do that on Trading Spaces!
The preferred arrangement of things was this: if you obey the law, saying yes to God, you are to be commended. If you disobey the law, saying no to God, you are to be reprimanded and excluded from the company of the righteous. It was an arrangement as old as the stars on which Abraham had counted his descendants….and as contemporary as the standards by which we still measure our sisters and brothers today. Good rewarded, bad punished – it’s a simple, straightforward arrangement that lets us know exactly where we, and everyone else, stands.
Then Jesus goes and turns that arrangement squarely on its head. It’s bad enough that last week, in the parable of the vineyard, he suggested that the kingdom be offered to those who hadn’t worked nearly as hard as the rest of us to earn it. In this week’s parable, he offers the kingdom to those who, under the old arrangement of the law, have downright forfeited it by their disobedience, by their defiance of the law - tax collectors and prostitutes and who knows what other sinners. What do you think? A man had two sons; he went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’ He answered, ‘I will not.’
What do you think? The son who first defies his father is the one who will change his mind and go to work after all. He is the son the chief priests and scribes will correctly identify as the one who does his father’s will over against the son who says he will work in the vineyard, but then does not go. What do you think?
Here comes the big reveal. Truly I tell you, Jesus says, the tax collectors and the prostitutes, who have defied the law, are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John the Baptist came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him; and even after you saw how their lives were transformed, you did not change your minds and believe, you would not go into the vineyard with them.
The new arrangement, it seems, is this. Everyone who believes (as opposed to everyone who behaves) is in.
Robert Farrar Capon writes, “No matter how much we give lip service to the notion of free grace and dying love, we do not like it. It is just too….indiscriminate. It lets rotten sons and crooked tax collectors and common tarts into the kingdom, and it thumbs its nose at really good people….We’ll teach God, we say. We will continue to sing ‘Amazing Grace,’ in church; but we will jolly well be judicious when it comes to explaining it to the riff-raff what it actually means. We will assure them, of course, that God loves them and forgives them, but we will make it clear that we expect them to clean up their act before we clasp them seriously to our bosom.”
What do you think – which of us in this painful (but honest) telling is doing God’s will? The riff-raff who believe God is at work in them to help them change their lives....or we who insist they must change their lives for God to work in them? Which of us is working in the kingdom, where power is turned upside-down and is revealed not by showing righteousness but by showing mercy and pity? Which of us is going into the vineyard to work, and which of us, though we say yes, really mean, but not if I have to work beside them? God, it seems, clasps to the bosom tax collectors and prostitutes and all others who defy the law just as tightly as God clasps us. God expects we will all clean up our acts eventually.
Because the truth is, of course, we are each of us a complicated mix of good and bad, obedient and disobedient, first sons and second sons. We daily utter both defiant no’s and earnest yes’s to God’s invitation to work in the vineyard, and we are prone, like those petulant sons in the parable, to change our minds as soon as we’ve made them up. Perhaps that’s why the old arrangement of reward and punishment doesn’t work and a new, even simpler arrangement is necessary – everyone who believes is in. Everyone who believes that God can take any old heart and mind and spirit and make it new, is in. In fact, the only thing that can keep us out is our refusal to let God have every old heart and mind and spirit, our saying no to any old sinner who has said yes to God.
And what of good behavior, of being obedient, of doing what is right in the eyes of God? Of course God desires us, as Paul writes, to have the same mind in us that was in Christ Jesus, to be willing to give our entire lives over to the service of God. But our obedience, doing what is right in the sight of God, is not what earns us our new heart and our new spirit. Real obedience, vineyard work, kingdom living, occurs only as our joyful response to having that new heart already beating in us and that new spirit already transforming our lives. God is at work in all of us riff-raff, making us beautiful beyond our imagining.
And so let us get ourselves a new heart and a new spirit, a kingdom heart and a kingdom spirit, a generous heart and a generous spirit. What do you think? Amen.
My husband and I have spent our free time over the past couple of months making a few small changes to our kitchen. It’s amazing to me how much work small changes can take, and also what a big difference small changes can make. A fresh coat of exactly the same color paint on our kitchen cabinets, and a new set of hinges and handles….and presto!, our kitchen looks entirely different.
We’ve been inspired, of course, by all those do-it-yourself home makeover shows, which I love to watch. I actually like any sort of makeover show, whether it is a room or a garden or a person being transformed. From the nervous excitement when the design is unveiled by the professional you trust to see possibilities you cannot see, through each anxious decision to try something new, to the breathless anticipation of the big “reveal” at the end of the show when the host asks inevitable question, “Well, what do you think?”.... Truthfully, the disaster stories (when a designer nailed all the furniture to the ceiling, or a hairstylist insists that purple is really your color) can be just as entertaining as the success stories. But the best transformations, I think, are the ones in which the response to “what do you think” is “I never realized this room, this garden, this me, could look so beautiful.”
We could go straight to TLC or HGTV with our readings this morning. Through Ezekiel, God urges the people of Israel to get a new heart and a new spirit. Paul urges Christians in Philippi to adopt the same mind that was in Christ Jesus. These are no small changes!
Then Jesus, our host, begins his parable, What do you think? The chief priests and scribes to whom he is speaking don’t know it – they never really get it – but Jesus is about to reveal to them a transformation beyond their imagining. What do you think? A man had two sons….
By this point in Matthew’s gospel, the chief priests and scribes have had enough of Jesus, who they insist has made far too many unauthorized changes to God’s law. He surrounds himself with sinners, works on the Sabbath, and deals out grace as generously to the riff-raff as to the righteous. He had just the day before literally turned the furniture upside-down in the temple when he insisted that money-changers didn’t belong there, and in fact he had claimed to be able to tear the temple down and rebuild it in three days. They can’t even do that on Trading Spaces!
The preferred arrangement of things was this: if you obey the law, saying yes to God, you are to be commended. If you disobey the law, saying no to God, you are to be reprimanded and excluded from the company of the righteous. It was an arrangement as old as the stars on which Abraham had counted his descendants….and as contemporary as the standards by which we still measure our sisters and brothers today. Good rewarded, bad punished – it’s a simple, straightforward arrangement that lets us know exactly where we, and everyone else, stands.
Then Jesus goes and turns that arrangement squarely on its head. It’s bad enough that last week, in the parable of the vineyard, he suggested that the kingdom be offered to those who hadn’t worked nearly as hard as the rest of us to earn it. In this week’s parable, he offers the kingdom to those who, under the old arrangement of the law, have downright forfeited it by their disobedience, by their defiance of the law - tax collectors and prostitutes and who knows what other sinners. What do you think? A man had two sons; he went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’ He answered, ‘I will not.’
What do you think? The son who first defies his father is the one who will change his mind and go to work after all. He is the son the chief priests and scribes will correctly identify as the one who does his father’s will over against the son who says he will work in the vineyard, but then does not go. What do you think?
Here comes the big reveal. Truly I tell you, Jesus says, the tax collectors and the prostitutes, who have defied the law, are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John the Baptist came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him; and even after you saw how their lives were transformed, you did not change your minds and believe, you would not go into the vineyard with them.
The new arrangement, it seems, is this. Everyone who believes (as opposed to everyone who behaves) is in.
Robert Farrar Capon writes, “No matter how much we give lip service to the notion of free grace and dying love, we do not like it. It is just too….indiscriminate. It lets rotten sons and crooked tax collectors and common tarts into the kingdom, and it thumbs its nose at really good people….We’ll teach God, we say. We will continue to sing ‘Amazing Grace,’ in church; but we will jolly well be judicious when it comes to explaining it to the riff-raff what it actually means. We will assure them, of course, that God loves them and forgives them, but we will make it clear that we expect them to clean up their act before we clasp them seriously to our bosom.”
What do you think – which of us in this painful (but honest) telling is doing God’s will? The riff-raff who believe God is at work in them to help them change their lives....or we who insist they must change their lives for God to work in them? Which of us is working in the kingdom, where power is turned upside-down and is revealed not by showing righteousness but by showing mercy and pity? Which of us is going into the vineyard to work, and which of us, though we say yes, really mean, but not if I have to work beside them? God, it seems, clasps to the bosom tax collectors and prostitutes and all others who defy the law just as tightly as God clasps us. God expects we will all clean up our acts eventually.
Because the truth is, of course, we are each of us a complicated mix of good and bad, obedient and disobedient, first sons and second sons. We daily utter both defiant no’s and earnest yes’s to God’s invitation to work in the vineyard, and we are prone, like those petulant sons in the parable, to change our minds as soon as we’ve made them up. Perhaps that’s why the old arrangement of reward and punishment doesn’t work and a new, even simpler arrangement is necessary – everyone who believes is in. Everyone who believes that God can take any old heart and mind and spirit and make it new, is in. In fact, the only thing that can keep us out is our refusal to let God have every old heart and mind and spirit, our saying no to any old sinner who has said yes to God.
And what of good behavior, of being obedient, of doing what is right in the eyes of God? Of course God desires us, as Paul writes, to have the same mind in us that was in Christ Jesus, to be willing to give our entire lives over to the service of God. But our obedience, doing what is right in the sight of God, is not what earns us our new heart and our new spirit. Real obedience, vineyard work, kingdom living, occurs only as our joyful response to having that new heart already beating in us and that new spirit already transforming our lives. God is at work in all of us riff-raff, making us beautiful beyond our imagining.
And so let us get ourselves a new heart and a new spirit, a kingdom heart and a kingdom spirit, a generous heart and a generous spirit. What do you think? Amen.
Sunday, June 12, 2005
Proper 6A
Exodus 19:2-8a; Psalm 100; Romans 5:6-11; Matthew 9:35-10:15
Well, if it weren’t for the electric lights, the air-conditioning, and the fact that our shofar was made out of PVC pipe instead of a ram’s horn, you really would have thought our parish hall was a first century Jerusalem marketplace this week. We’ve just finished vacation bible school, during which more than fifty young people visited a variety of marketplace shops of the sort Jesus might have visited back when he wandered the streets of Jerusalem. They painted little clay pots in the pottery tent, tasted honey and almonds and dates in the cooking tent, traced Hebrew letters in the scroll-making tent, and planted seeds in the farmer’s tent.
Now I don’t know if Jesus enjoyed shopping or not – surely he admired skilled handiwork of any sort, being a craftsman, a carpenter, himself. There certainly was fine handiwork in our little marketplace – weaving, jewelry-making, musical instruments, wooden boxes….I don’t know if Jesus enjoyed shopping in the marketplace, but I think he did enjoy watching.
Imagine with me....Jesus sitting just inside the shade of the familiar carpentry shop as countless people hurried by on their way to buy, sell, trade, beg….Imagine his frustration, having spent the whole morning trying to teach his disciples what it really means to love God with your whole heart and soul and strength. And now imagine Jesus watching a frail and elderly widow, jostled by the busy crowds, make her way to the temple treasury, just across the square from where he sat. He watched her fumble through each fold of her old cloak to pull out two small coins, which she drops into the treasury box, while others, more finely dressed, absent-mindedly toss in a coin or two as they walk by on their way to somewhere else….See that woman? He says to his disciples. That’s what it means to love God with everything that you have, to give your whole life to God. Watch her.
So the marketplace might have been, for Jesus, a rich source, a deep well of images and stories and metaphors and real-life examples of what he was trying to teach, trying to show….how to love and serve God. See that farmer bringing his crops to market? Well, the kingdom of God is like a harvest….See those oil lamps for sale, how they brighten the dark tent? Well, I am the light of the world….
With fifty children in a smaller-than-it-used-to-be parish hall, we didn’t need any chickens, cows, and sheep to make the marketplace feel authentically chaotic. But Jesus would certainly have seen and heard and smelled animals of all sorts in his day. Imagine with me, Jesus watching a dusty shepherd drive his sheep through the crowded marketplace, guiding the anxious and easily distracted sheep through the maze of tents and people….See that? He might have said. I am the good shepherd….
It was a good image to use. Time and again in the Hebrew scriptures, which Jesus would have known well, the God of Israel was compared to a shepherd and the people of Israel to a flock of sheep with a tendency to wander. We are his people and the sheep of his pasture….
In this morning’s gospel, Jesus has visited just about every crowded marketplace in every village and city he can walk to. He has worn himself out teaching in the synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness. Imagine with me, Jesus leaning against the well in the center of the market square, closing his eyes against the glare of the sun at midday….imagine the weight of knowing that when he opened his eyes again and saw the crowds, he would be filled with compassion, because he would see in their anxious and easily distracted faces that they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd….
Sheep without a shepherd are sheep without a future. Sheep depend upon their shepherd, as the beloved psalm alludes, to lead them to green pastures and still waters, to protect them from predators, to keep them on the path, and to secure them in the fold. Without a shepherd, sheep are indeed anxious and distracted, harassed and helpless, or worse, as another translation of this gospel suggests – wounded and completely exhausted. It seems that, without the compassion and care of the shepherd, sheep have a hard time figuring out what’s best for themselves.
Does that sound like the experience of anyone you know? Anxious and distracted, harassed and helpless, wounded and completely exhausted? My guess is that describes most of us at least some of the time, and perhaps some of us most of the time. We might easily imagine our lives as a marketplace in which we have to navigate a chaotic course through the crowds just to accomplish our daily tasks, while countless people vie for our time and attention and limited resources. It can be hard to figure out what’s best for ourselves, and so, like sheep, we wander and then wonder how we ended up where we are.
Most of the time, when scripture employs the image of sheep and shepherds, there is a clear line drawn – we are the wayward sheep, quick to stray off course into dangerous territory, and God is the compassionate shepherd leading us back to the way, the truth, and the life. Up to a point, this morning’s readings describe just such a relationship between God and God’s people. In Exodus, God leads the people of Israel safely out of Egypt and guides them to the holy mountain. In the psalm, we are sheep in God’s pasture. In the gospel reading, Jesus attends to the needs of the marketplace crowds as a shepherd might attend to the needs of his sheep.
As sheep to God’s shepherd, we are certainly called to follow God, to trust in a marketplace world that constantly tries to entice us to buy its wares that God will nourish our lives, heal our wounds, lead us on right paths, and bring us safely home. Though demands and expectations and distractions are shouted at us from all directions, we are called to follow only the voice of the Good Shepherd.
But this morning’s readings suggest that we are called to something more, more than being just followers, more than being sheep. This morning, we are called to be priests, to be pastors, to be shepherds, full partners with God in having compassion upon, proclaiming truth to, and ministering justice for other lost sheep like ourselves.
It is a calling as ancient as creation itself, when humans were given charge over all living things. It is the calling given to the people of Israel when, having led them like sheep out of danger to safety, God then commissioned them to be a priestly kingdom and a holy nation. It is the calling given to the disciples when, having followed Jesus through every crowded marketplace, they were then sent out to proclaim the kingdom of heaven, to cure the sick, to raise the dead, to cleanse the lepers, to cast out demons….
So how can anxious and easily distracted, harassed and helpless, wounded and completely exhausted sheep possibly become shepherds? My son used to have a little stuffed sheep with a music box inside. The song it played was ‘Jesus loves me.’ What a profound lesson in christology! Jesus, Good Shepherd who loves the sheep, is also Jesus, Lamb of God. Jesus became one of us sheep in order to show us how to be shepherds, how to proclaim the good news of the kingdom, how to cure the illnesses that separate us from one another and from God, how to have compassion on those who are harassed and helpless.
We are called to be shepherds, but it seems we’re still sheep at heart, anxious and easily distracted. We follow God to this place, this fold, week after week, where we hear again the story of how we have been led, where we are nourished with food and drink, where we acknowledge that we are called to something more than just sheepliness. Boldly, not at all like sheep, in our post-communion prayer we ask God to send us out into the world in peace, and grant us strength and courage to love and serve you with gladness and singleness of heart. And then once again, we are urged to Go in peace to love and serve the Lord, to which we reply in our best shepherd voices, Thanks be to God!
And then what? Go in peace to love and serve the Lord! In some parishes, everyone promptly sits down and listens to the postlude. Go in peace to love and serve the Lord! In some parishes, everyone promptly kneels and watches as the cross and torches are processed back up the aisle and placed in their holders. Go in peace to love and serve the Lord! In most parishes, everyone promptly goes out to….to eat, or to nap, or to mow the yard, or to catch up on homework, or to go swimming….Our shepherd’s crooks are forgotten by the door, and we are sheep again.
Now, I’m not suggesting that we don’t take time to nourish and refresh our bodies, to engage our responsibilities as parents, as students, as professionals, as homeowners….but it is curious, isn’t it, how quickly these and other important things can distract us from being shepherds, even from being obedient sheep? What if our response to the dismissal, Go in peace to love and serve the Lord, was not Thanks be to God but, rather, the response made by the people of Israel at the foot of Mount Sinai, when the people all answered as one: “Everything that the Lord has spoken we will do”?
Imagine with me how our Sunday afternoons, how each day of our lives might look different if we followed the Good Shepherd out those doors not just because we are his sheep, but because he calls us to be shepherds, too? Everything that the Lord has spoken, everything that Jesus has shown us, we will do….
Perhaps, like the Israelites, we would still wander away from God, distracted by louder voices, sparklier things, and seemingly better deals….perhaps like the disciples, we would still be wayward, fearing things that might hurt us and scattering at the first sign of danger. But imagine with me....Jesus, Good Shepherd, Jesus, Lamb of God, in the midst of the marketplace, beckoning us to follow, inviting us to share, handing us authority, having compassion on our anxiety, seeking us in our lostness over and over again. We are not sheep without a shepherd, thanks be to God. Amen.
Well, if it weren’t for the electric lights, the air-conditioning, and the fact that our shofar was made out of PVC pipe instead of a ram’s horn, you really would have thought our parish hall was a first century Jerusalem marketplace this week. We’ve just finished vacation bible school, during which more than fifty young people visited a variety of marketplace shops of the sort Jesus might have visited back when he wandered the streets of Jerusalem. They painted little clay pots in the pottery tent, tasted honey and almonds and dates in the cooking tent, traced Hebrew letters in the scroll-making tent, and planted seeds in the farmer’s tent.
Now I don’t know if Jesus enjoyed shopping or not – surely he admired skilled handiwork of any sort, being a craftsman, a carpenter, himself. There certainly was fine handiwork in our little marketplace – weaving, jewelry-making, musical instruments, wooden boxes….I don’t know if Jesus enjoyed shopping in the marketplace, but I think he did enjoy watching.
Imagine with me....Jesus sitting just inside the shade of the familiar carpentry shop as countless people hurried by on their way to buy, sell, trade, beg….Imagine his frustration, having spent the whole morning trying to teach his disciples what it really means to love God with your whole heart and soul and strength. And now imagine Jesus watching a frail and elderly widow, jostled by the busy crowds, make her way to the temple treasury, just across the square from where he sat. He watched her fumble through each fold of her old cloak to pull out two small coins, which she drops into the treasury box, while others, more finely dressed, absent-mindedly toss in a coin or two as they walk by on their way to somewhere else….See that woman? He says to his disciples. That’s what it means to love God with everything that you have, to give your whole life to God. Watch her.
So the marketplace might have been, for Jesus, a rich source, a deep well of images and stories and metaphors and real-life examples of what he was trying to teach, trying to show….how to love and serve God. See that farmer bringing his crops to market? Well, the kingdom of God is like a harvest….See those oil lamps for sale, how they brighten the dark tent? Well, I am the light of the world….
With fifty children in a smaller-than-it-used-to-be parish hall, we didn’t need any chickens, cows, and sheep to make the marketplace feel authentically chaotic. But Jesus would certainly have seen and heard and smelled animals of all sorts in his day. Imagine with me, Jesus watching a dusty shepherd drive his sheep through the crowded marketplace, guiding the anxious and easily distracted sheep through the maze of tents and people….See that? He might have said. I am the good shepherd….
It was a good image to use. Time and again in the Hebrew scriptures, which Jesus would have known well, the God of Israel was compared to a shepherd and the people of Israel to a flock of sheep with a tendency to wander. We are his people and the sheep of his pasture….
In this morning’s gospel, Jesus has visited just about every crowded marketplace in every village and city he can walk to. He has worn himself out teaching in the synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness. Imagine with me, Jesus leaning against the well in the center of the market square, closing his eyes against the glare of the sun at midday….imagine the weight of knowing that when he opened his eyes again and saw the crowds, he would be filled with compassion, because he would see in their anxious and easily distracted faces that they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd….
Sheep without a shepherd are sheep without a future. Sheep depend upon their shepherd, as the beloved psalm alludes, to lead them to green pastures and still waters, to protect them from predators, to keep them on the path, and to secure them in the fold. Without a shepherd, sheep are indeed anxious and distracted, harassed and helpless, or worse, as another translation of this gospel suggests – wounded and completely exhausted. It seems that, without the compassion and care of the shepherd, sheep have a hard time figuring out what’s best for themselves.
Does that sound like the experience of anyone you know? Anxious and distracted, harassed and helpless, wounded and completely exhausted? My guess is that describes most of us at least some of the time, and perhaps some of us most of the time. We might easily imagine our lives as a marketplace in which we have to navigate a chaotic course through the crowds just to accomplish our daily tasks, while countless people vie for our time and attention and limited resources. It can be hard to figure out what’s best for ourselves, and so, like sheep, we wander and then wonder how we ended up where we are.
Most of the time, when scripture employs the image of sheep and shepherds, there is a clear line drawn – we are the wayward sheep, quick to stray off course into dangerous territory, and God is the compassionate shepherd leading us back to the way, the truth, and the life. Up to a point, this morning’s readings describe just such a relationship between God and God’s people. In Exodus, God leads the people of Israel safely out of Egypt and guides them to the holy mountain. In the psalm, we are sheep in God’s pasture. In the gospel reading, Jesus attends to the needs of the marketplace crowds as a shepherd might attend to the needs of his sheep.
As sheep to God’s shepherd, we are certainly called to follow God, to trust in a marketplace world that constantly tries to entice us to buy its wares that God will nourish our lives, heal our wounds, lead us on right paths, and bring us safely home. Though demands and expectations and distractions are shouted at us from all directions, we are called to follow only the voice of the Good Shepherd.
But this morning’s readings suggest that we are called to something more, more than being just followers, more than being sheep. This morning, we are called to be priests, to be pastors, to be shepherds, full partners with God in having compassion upon, proclaiming truth to, and ministering justice for other lost sheep like ourselves.
It is a calling as ancient as creation itself, when humans were given charge over all living things. It is the calling given to the people of Israel when, having led them like sheep out of danger to safety, God then commissioned them to be a priestly kingdom and a holy nation. It is the calling given to the disciples when, having followed Jesus through every crowded marketplace, they were then sent out to proclaim the kingdom of heaven, to cure the sick, to raise the dead, to cleanse the lepers, to cast out demons….
So how can anxious and easily distracted, harassed and helpless, wounded and completely exhausted sheep possibly become shepherds? My son used to have a little stuffed sheep with a music box inside. The song it played was ‘Jesus loves me.’ What a profound lesson in christology! Jesus, Good Shepherd who loves the sheep, is also Jesus, Lamb of God. Jesus became one of us sheep in order to show us how to be shepherds, how to proclaim the good news of the kingdom, how to cure the illnesses that separate us from one another and from God, how to have compassion on those who are harassed and helpless.
We are called to be shepherds, but it seems we’re still sheep at heart, anxious and easily distracted. We follow God to this place, this fold, week after week, where we hear again the story of how we have been led, where we are nourished with food and drink, where we acknowledge that we are called to something more than just sheepliness. Boldly, not at all like sheep, in our post-communion prayer we ask God to send us out into the world in peace, and grant us strength and courage to love and serve you with gladness and singleness of heart. And then once again, we are urged to Go in peace to love and serve the Lord, to which we reply in our best shepherd voices, Thanks be to God!
And then what? Go in peace to love and serve the Lord! In some parishes, everyone promptly sits down and listens to the postlude. Go in peace to love and serve the Lord! In some parishes, everyone promptly kneels and watches as the cross and torches are processed back up the aisle and placed in their holders. Go in peace to love and serve the Lord! In most parishes, everyone promptly goes out to….to eat, or to nap, or to mow the yard, or to catch up on homework, or to go swimming….Our shepherd’s crooks are forgotten by the door, and we are sheep again.
Now, I’m not suggesting that we don’t take time to nourish and refresh our bodies, to engage our responsibilities as parents, as students, as professionals, as homeowners….but it is curious, isn’t it, how quickly these and other important things can distract us from being shepherds, even from being obedient sheep? What if our response to the dismissal, Go in peace to love and serve the Lord, was not Thanks be to God but, rather, the response made by the people of Israel at the foot of Mount Sinai, when the people all answered as one: “Everything that the Lord has spoken we will do”?
Imagine with me how our Sunday afternoons, how each day of our lives might look different if we followed the Good Shepherd out those doors not just because we are his sheep, but because he calls us to be shepherds, too? Everything that the Lord has spoken, everything that Jesus has shown us, we will do….
Perhaps, like the Israelites, we would still wander away from God, distracted by louder voices, sparklier things, and seemingly better deals….perhaps like the disciples, we would still be wayward, fearing things that might hurt us and scattering at the first sign of danger. But imagine with me....Jesus, Good Shepherd, Jesus, Lamb of God, in the midst of the marketplace, beckoning us to follow, inviting us to share, handing us authority, having compassion on our anxiety, seeking us in our lostness over and over again. We are not sheep without a shepherd, thanks be to God. Amen.
Sunday, May 29, 2005
Proper 4 A
Deuteronomy 11:18-21, 26-28; Psalm 31:1-5, 19-24; Romans 3:21-25a, 28; Matthew 7:21-27
When I was little, I loved my stuffed animals, and I was absolutely convinced that my stuffed animals loved me. Long after I was too old for tea parties and Barbie dolls, I still snuggled up with my favorite stuffed toy – a small gray cat who I’m told was once white and fluffy. I imagined – or did I actually believe? – that she was the wise old leader of my stuffed animal collection, and that, when I left the room, she would gather the others together to talk and play and have stuffed animal adventures. I never heard Kittycat or the others speak, and I never saw them move, but I was certain that they could.
And so, I’ll admit my now all grown-up heart took a delighted little leap back into childhood when I sat in a darkened movie theater and watched Toy Story for the first time. Right there on the screen, Mr. Potato Head and Slinky Dog, little green army men and Barbie dolls, and all the other toys came to life right before my eyes. I knew it!
Of course, long before Toy Story reminded us of the special relationship between a child and a toy-that-becomes-more-than-just-a-toy, there was another beloved story about just such a relationship. It is the story of a little boy who finds in his Christmas stocking a fat and bunchy, brown- and white-spotted, with real thread whiskers, sawdust-filled velveteen rabbit.
I’m sure you know the story. The Velveteen Rabbit doesn’t get played with much at first, passed over for fancier toys, models of real boats and soldiers, toys with moving and mechanical parts. He’s sad, and wonders if he’s worth very much at all. In that child’s room, the wise old leader of the toys is the Skin Horse, whose words inspired not only the Velveteen Rabbit but countless children and adults who read the book.
“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?” “Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”
We – you and I – human beings – start out with a good deal more life than a stuffed animal. We are made with far more intricate care and detail. Somewhere in the tiny curves and fissures of how we were made, we understand that we are, of course, quite real – we exist – we breathe – we speak – we move...
But today’s readings suggest there is something more to life than breathing and speaking and moving. When it comes to living as God, who made us, intended for us to live, I wonder if we are Real yet. Or are we more like stuffed toys – wondrously made, yes, but seemingly lifeless. Perhaps we, too, have to become Real along the way.
Our scripture stories tell us that for a long, long time we have been loved, REALLY loved. That’s what Torah, the law, was supposed to be about – how much the Hebrew people were loved by God. At its heart, Torah was God’s revelation of how the Hebrew people could live out that love each and every day, in the ordinary circumstances of their lives, in their breathing and speaking and moving. It began with the most important law of all, carved first on those stone tablets as the foundation of a life lived in faith: Hear, O Israel, the Lord is your God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.
Torah was about being in a special relationship with God, not as chosen individuals but as a chosen and loved people. Always, being loved by God has been meant being in relationship not only with God but with all of God’s people. It is an intimate relationship individually, meant, as our reading from Deuteronomy tells, to permeate our hearts and souls and bodies – all of who we as individuals are. But it was also an intimate relationship corporately, meant to be passed on from one generation to the next, to permeate entire households all at once, to mark even the gates that stand between one household and the next – all of who we as a community are.
As the story goes, in time, the people of Israel began to lose sight of the heart of Torah, God’s revelation of how to live as loved people. If the law continued to be fixed on their foreheads and written on their doorposts at all, it was as a checklist against which they suspiciously measured one another’s performance as chosen people, as though the law were a pre-requisite for God’s love instead of a response to it. And so the law, given to bring the community of God’s people to life, slowly became as something stiff, rigid, stuffed, staring straight ahead out of eyes wondrously made, perhaps, but fixed on self-preservation and self-promotion.
This was not the Real life that God desired for us who have been loved, REALLY loved, from even before we were made. And so the story does not end there. God became one of us in the person of Jesus so that in Jesus we might finally understand that loving God and loving those whom God loves (which is to say, everyone) are inseparable. Jesus was for us a living Torah, a Real life whose breathing and speaking and moving were centered on God, not on himself.
Today’s gospel reading comes at the very end of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, in which he talked at length and in great detail about this kind of Real life, with words that have long-since permeated our hearts and souls and bodies and been handed down from one generation to the next. Blessed are the meek, the merciful, the pure in heart….let your light shine….turn the other cheek….love your enemies….do not parade your piety….pray this way, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name”….do not worry about tomorrow….do not judge, that you may not be judged….ask and it shall be given, seek and you shall find….do to others as you would have them do to you…It’s all in there.
But a Real life, Jesus wanted to be sure we understood, is one lived this way because God loves us, not so that God will love me. Because God has chosen us, not so that God will choose me. After all, the first commandment was not impress the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and might, but love. REALLY love.
A life that has become Real is one that is lived, one that loves, because God loved us first, because God chose us already, because we are already in relationship with God before our living according to the law, before our living as Jesus taught us to live, ever begins. Our entire life is built on God’s desire to be in relationship with us, God’s love for us….a solid rock that cannot be moved, that cannot be chiseled away, that will not crumble, that can support the weight of the entire world.
To believe we can make it on our own, that our good works will somehow earn us a greater share of that rock, that love, that salvation…it’s as foolish as building a house (no matter how wondrously made!) in a dry river bed the day before the rainy season begins. Jesus warns today that those of us who live a good life because we want God to love us, and those of us who live a good life because we know God loves us – we all end up building good houses out of good works. But only one will stand. Only one is Real.
To the world, of course, those of us building on rock will appear to be the foolish ones. The commandments the world would have us live by are all about self-preservation, self-promotion. Love your neighbor as yourself? Love your enemies? Turn the other cheek? Sure, if it helps you get ahead, if it makes you look good. Ask and it shall be given, seek and you shall find? How about, take, because you deserve it?
Becoming Real, it seems, is hard work. It goes against our instinct to look out for ourselves, to seek personal success, to remain a wondrously made, fat and bunchy, brown- and white-spotted, sawdust-filled, velveteen rabbit. Beautiful by the world’s standards. Lifeless by love’s standards. Becoming Real is hard work.
“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit. “Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful…. “That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. [That’s a perfect description of my Kittycat]. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.” [That’s also a perfect description of my Kittycat].
Jesus is always truthful, too. He tells us that, no matter where we build our houses, our lives, our relationships, the rainy seasons will come. Time and again we will be faced with a decision – do we seek to preserve our own lives, or do we trust that God to preserve us all?
If we try to build our houses, our lives, our relationships on ourselves, out of fear that God’s love has limits, that there isn’t enough to go around and so we must grab as much as we can, we will become a rigid structure, easily toppled by the storms of life.
But if we build our houses, our lives, our relationships on God who made us, who loved us first…well, remember what our seniors told us a few weeks ago. Together, we are living stones, set on the foundation of Jesus Christ to form the household of God, in which there is room enough for all of creation. The storms of life will batter us, but living stones will sway in the wind and not break. We may lose a few shingles and shutters, and our paint may peel and crack, but to the one who understands, we will be Beautiful. We will be Real.
Let us build together a house on the rock of God’s love for us all, love that preceded our making and will outlast our living. Let each of us become a living stone that helps the others to stand. That’s how we become Real. And, as the wise old Skin Horse told the Rabbit, much, I’m sure, to Jesus’ delight, “Once you are Real you can’t become unreal again. It lasts for always.” Amen.
When I was little, I loved my stuffed animals, and I was absolutely convinced that my stuffed animals loved me. Long after I was too old for tea parties and Barbie dolls, I still snuggled up with my favorite stuffed toy – a small gray cat who I’m told was once white and fluffy. I imagined – or did I actually believe? – that she was the wise old leader of my stuffed animal collection, and that, when I left the room, she would gather the others together to talk and play and have stuffed animal adventures. I never heard Kittycat or the others speak, and I never saw them move, but I was certain that they could.
And so, I’ll admit my now all grown-up heart took a delighted little leap back into childhood when I sat in a darkened movie theater and watched Toy Story for the first time. Right there on the screen, Mr. Potato Head and Slinky Dog, little green army men and Barbie dolls, and all the other toys came to life right before my eyes. I knew it!
Of course, long before Toy Story reminded us of the special relationship between a child and a toy-that-becomes-more-than-just-a-toy, there was another beloved story about just such a relationship. It is the story of a little boy who finds in his Christmas stocking a fat and bunchy, brown- and white-spotted, with real thread whiskers, sawdust-filled velveteen rabbit.
I’m sure you know the story. The Velveteen Rabbit doesn’t get played with much at first, passed over for fancier toys, models of real boats and soldiers, toys with moving and mechanical parts. He’s sad, and wonders if he’s worth very much at all. In that child’s room, the wise old leader of the toys is the Skin Horse, whose words inspired not only the Velveteen Rabbit but countless children and adults who read the book.
“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?” “Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”
We – you and I – human beings – start out with a good deal more life than a stuffed animal. We are made with far more intricate care and detail. Somewhere in the tiny curves and fissures of how we were made, we understand that we are, of course, quite real – we exist – we breathe – we speak – we move...
But today’s readings suggest there is something more to life than breathing and speaking and moving. When it comes to living as God, who made us, intended for us to live, I wonder if we are Real yet. Or are we more like stuffed toys – wondrously made, yes, but seemingly lifeless. Perhaps we, too, have to become Real along the way.
Our scripture stories tell us that for a long, long time we have been loved, REALLY loved. That’s what Torah, the law, was supposed to be about – how much the Hebrew people were loved by God. At its heart, Torah was God’s revelation of how the Hebrew people could live out that love each and every day, in the ordinary circumstances of their lives, in their breathing and speaking and moving. It began with the most important law of all, carved first on those stone tablets as the foundation of a life lived in faith: Hear, O Israel, the Lord is your God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.
Torah was about being in a special relationship with God, not as chosen individuals but as a chosen and loved people. Always, being loved by God has been meant being in relationship not only with God but with all of God’s people. It is an intimate relationship individually, meant, as our reading from Deuteronomy tells, to permeate our hearts and souls and bodies – all of who we as individuals are. But it was also an intimate relationship corporately, meant to be passed on from one generation to the next, to permeate entire households all at once, to mark even the gates that stand between one household and the next – all of who we as a community are.
As the story goes, in time, the people of Israel began to lose sight of the heart of Torah, God’s revelation of how to live as loved people. If the law continued to be fixed on their foreheads and written on their doorposts at all, it was as a checklist against which they suspiciously measured one another’s performance as chosen people, as though the law were a pre-requisite for God’s love instead of a response to it. And so the law, given to bring the community of God’s people to life, slowly became as something stiff, rigid, stuffed, staring straight ahead out of eyes wondrously made, perhaps, but fixed on self-preservation and self-promotion.
This was not the Real life that God desired for us who have been loved, REALLY loved, from even before we were made. And so the story does not end there. God became one of us in the person of Jesus so that in Jesus we might finally understand that loving God and loving those whom God loves (which is to say, everyone) are inseparable. Jesus was for us a living Torah, a Real life whose breathing and speaking and moving were centered on God, not on himself.
Today’s gospel reading comes at the very end of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, in which he talked at length and in great detail about this kind of Real life, with words that have long-since permeated our hearts and souls and bodies and been handed down from one generation to the next. Blessed are the meek, the merciful, the pure in heart….let your light shine….turn the other cheek….love your enemies….do not parade your piety….pray this way, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name”….do not worry about tomorrow….do not judge, that you may not be judged….ask and it shall be given, seek and you shall find….do to others as you would have them do to you…It’s all in there.
But a Real life, Jesus wanted to be sure we understood, is one lived this way because God loves us, not so that God will love me. Because God has chosen us, not so that God will choose me. After all, the first commandment was not impress the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and might, but love. REALLY love.
A life that has become Real is one that is lived, one that loves, because God loved us first, because God chose us already, because we are already in relationship with God before our living according to the law, before our living as Jesus taught us to live, ever begins. Our entire life is built on God’s desire to be in relationship with us, God’s love for us….a solid rock that cannot be moved, that cannot be chiseled away, that will not crumble, that can support the weight of the entire world.
To believe we can make it on our own, that our good works will somehow earn us a greater share of that rock, that love, that salvation…it’s as foolish as building a house (no matter how wondrously made!) in a dry river bed the day before the rainy season begins. Jesus warns today that those of us who live a good life because we want God to love us, and those of us who live a good life because we know God loves us – we all end up building good houses out of good works. But only one will stand. Only one is Real.
To the world, of course, those of us building on rock will appear to be the foolish ones. The commandments the world would have us live by are all about self-preservation, self-promotion. Love your neighbor as yourself? Love your enemies? Turn the other cheek? Sure, if it helps you get ahead, if it makes you look good. Ask and it shall be given, seek and you shall find? How about, take, because you deserve it?
Becoming Real, it seems, is hard work. It goes against our instinct to look out for ourselves, to seek personal success, to remain a wondrously made, fat and bunchy, brown- and white-spotted, sawdust-filled, velveteen rabbit. Beautiful by the world’s standards. Lifeless by love’s standards. Becoming Real is hard work.
“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit. “Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful…. “That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. [That’s a perfect description of my Kittycat]. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.” [That’s also a perfect description of my Kittycat].
Jesus is always truthful, too. He tells us that, no matter where we build our houses, our lives, our relationships, the rainy seasons will come. Time and again we will be faced with a decision – do we seek to preserve our own lives, or do we trust that God to preserve us all?
If we try to build our houses, our lives, our relationships on ourselves, out of fear that God’s love has limits, that there isn’t enough to go around and so we must grab as much as we can, we will become a rigid structure, easily toppled by the storms of life.
But if we build our houses, our lives, our relationships on God who made us, who loved us first…well, remember what our seniors told us a few weeks ago. Together, we are living stones, set on the foundation of Jesus Christ to form the household of God, in which there is room enough for all of creation. The storms of life will batter us, but living stones will sway in the wind and not break. We may lose a few shingles and shutters, and our paint may peel and crack, but to the one who understands, we will be Beautiful. We will be Real.
Let us build together a house on the rock of God’s love for us all, love that preceded our making and will outlast our living. Let each of us become a living stone that helps the others to stand. That’s how we become Real. And, as the wise old Skin Horse told the Rabbit, much, I’m sure, to Jesus’ delight, “Once you are Real you can’t become unreal again. It lasts for always.” Amen.
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