Genesis 18:20-33; Psalm 138; Colossians 2:6-15; Luke 11:1-13
So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.
No one believes this to be true more than my six-year-old son, Charlie, who asks and searches and knocks all the time. His skill with asking the question “why?” is unparalleled, except perhaps by his ability to search every square inch of the house for his shoes and finally find them in the middle of the living room floor. And if you open the door for him just an inch, he’ll gleefully hook you with his favorite joke in the world:
Knock knock…who’s there…banana…banana who…knock knock…
Orange you hoping I’m not going to do the whole thing? Charlie, like most six-year-olds, I think, can ask and search and knock knock with all the persistence of Abraham bargaining with God. Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city…Suppose five of the fifty are lacking…Suppose forty are found there…How about twenty…What about ten…
To his credit, Abraham has turned his life inside-out for God without so much as a “why?”. He and wife, Sarah, have left their home and begun their journey to a place known only as “the land that I will show you”. They have been promised descendents as numerous as the stars, but have yet to hear the pitter patter of tiny feet searching for tiny shoes. In this morning’s reading from Genesis, it is as though all of Abraham’s unasked questions come tumbling out at once in his bold challenge of God’s decision to destroy sinful Sodom.
His persistence pays off. God answers every question, giving Abraham exactly what he was looking for, although, in the end, not even ten righteous would be found in the condemned city. Paired with our gospel reading on the subject of prayer, we hear of Abraham’s accomplishment and are perhaps surprised the disciples (like us, so full of questions)…we are perhaps surprised the disciples don’t say to Jesus, “Lord, teach us to bargain, teach us to get what we want”. Brother John Kavanaugh writes, “I ask God for everything I want but am nowhere near as successful as Abraham. I ask for health, miracles, x-ray vision to find lost articles, and, interminably, to be a better person. Why not? Jesus said we should pray for our daily bread. That covers a lot. How many times, late at night, have I pounded on the door of heaven, remembering his words from Luke’s gospel: ‘Ask…search…knock, and the door will be opened for you.’”
For once, though, the disciples may have asked Jesus the right question when they said, Lord, teach us to pray. Luke tells us they spoke to Jesus just after he had finished praying – perhaps they had been watching, listening, wondering just what transpired between Jesus and the God he so dearly called Abba, Father. It was not the first time, nor would it be the last, that they observed their Teacher at prayer – Luke’s gospel is filled with accounts of Jesus praying and teaching others about prayer. He prays right after his baptism, when the Holy Spirit comes upon him and a voice from heaven says, You are my son, my Beloved. Jesus prays all day and night before he names the twelve apostles. He often withdraws to pray, alone or in the company of just a few. Over and again, persistently, Luke sets his stories of Jesus’ daily life and work in the context of prayer. Once when Jesus was praying…while he was praying…he prayed more earnestly…when he got up from prayer…
Jesus was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray…” In this morning’s reading, it is as though all the disciples’ unanswered (but not, bless them, unasked!) questions about how to follow Jesus come tumbling out at once in this earnest request. Lord, teach us to pray.
How they must have delighted, as we still delight today, in the answer, in the words that Jesus gave them. When you pray, say, Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial. The Lord’s Prayer, as it has been in every generation, will be spoken by millions of women and men in hundreds of languages this morning, in worship, at bedsides, at summer camp, in battle, in prison cells, at work sites, at home and on the streets, alone and in community. All these, and many millions more who may not say or even know the beloved prayer, will ask and search and knock this morning, pounding on heaven’s door in the darkness of their lives, hoping that God will lend them an answer, an opening to what they want but cannot find.
To some, Jesus’ teaching about prayer sounds like a blank check – ask for anything you want, knock all night long if you have to, pray long enough and hard enough, and God will answer your prayer. To others, it sounds like a bad joke, because if it were true – everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened – if it were true, one preacher wrote, every little girl would be braiding pink ribbons in her own pony’s tail, and every little boy would be Michael Jordan, and all children everywhere would be living in peace. Lord, it’s not working. Lord, teach us to pray.
But there is, I believe, truth in Jesus’ words to his disciples that day, there is an answer to a question they might not have intended to ask. Lord, teach us to pray. In the simple prayer Jesus offered, and in his parable of the late night guest, and in his invitation to ask and search and knock, Jesus teaches his disciples – and so he teaches us – something of what prayer is and something of the One to whom and in whom and of whom we pray. Jesus teaches us not how to fit prayer into our lives but, rather, how to fit our lives into prayer that is, like the One to whom and in whom and of whom we pray, persistent, ongoing, never-ending.
Listen again to Abraham’s conversation with God, so like a child speaking with Abba, Father, wondering just how far he can go before he reaches the limit of God’s mercy and patience, but Abraham gives up before God does. Long before the words will be spoken to his descendents in the desert, Abraham begins to understand that God is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin…
Listen again to the Lord’s Prayer, so familiar to us that we might not have heard it in a long time. Our Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come… In all these words, Jesus is teaching us about God, who cares for us as a loving parent, who alone is hallowed, holy, whose reign of justice and mercy is over all things. Like a parent God tends to our daily needs for sustenance, forgiveness, and deliverance.
Prayer is not about ourselves. It is not about the people we love or the world we live in. It is not making things happen. It is not about striking a bargain. Prayer is about God who is always already present in us and in the people we love and in the world. It is about opening up before God, to whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid. In prayer, we open ourselves to God, who gives us the Holy Spirit – the gift of God’s very self as the breath and life and prayer within us, a gift far more wonderful than anything we could think to ask for. Poet Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote, “Speak to him, for he heareth, and spirit and Spirit can meet. Closer is he than breathing. Nearer than hands and feet.”
Speak to God, for God hears, and spirit and Spirit can meet. As Episcopalians we are fortunate to have not just the Lord’s Prayer but a whole book full of prayers to help us speak, to help us make that space in which we are open before God, in which spirit and Spirit can meet. That book defines prayer, though, as responding to God, by thought and by deeds, with or without words. Prayer is more than what we do here, more than what we say at the dinner table or lying in bed at night or in the minutes before the big presentation or the big test. How can we, instead of just saying our prayers, be persistent in prayer? How can we pattern our lives after the One who teaches us to pray? How can we make prayer the context of our lives?
One of the great saints of our faith made his life a prayer in this way. In the morning when he woke up, he would clasp his hands together and begin, “Dear God…” and then go about his day. In the evening, just before bed, he would clasp his hands together again and say, “Amen.”
Thank goodness that for six-year-olds learning to tell jokes, and for all of us learning to pray, persistence, not perfection, is all we need. Charlie’s knock-knocking sometimes falls flat, but his smile as he delivers his punchline never fails to make me laugh anyway. Perhaps in the same way, when my prayers seem to fall flat, when I don’t use the perfect words, when I don’t get what I thought would be the perfect outcome, God smiles at my effort.
We can be sure that when we pray, what we will get each and every time is God, who is nearer than hands and feet, who surpasses any answer we could hope for, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy. We can be sure that the Holy Spirit will rise in us like breath, renewing and refreshing us to face what challenges or threatens or frightens us. When this is what we ask for, what we search for, what makes us pound the door of heaven, we can be sure that it will indeed be what is given to us, what we find, what is opened to us each and every day.
And so, let us pray. Dear God…
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Proper 10C
Amos 7:7-17; Psalm 82; Colossians 1:1-14; Luke 10:25-37
It is, by now, such a familiar story. A long and perilous journey filled with narrow passages and wide shadows. The way forward winding through seen and, worse, unseen dangers. The road traveled by people who are not who they at first seem to be. And then, just when all hope is lost and life is left for dead, something quite unexpected happens. Help arrives in the person of an unlikely hero whose showing of compassion and courage and commitment makes possible a new beginning, a new life, a new journey. So goes the familiar story of the good…Harry Potter.
Fans and foes alike of young Harry are all this day in the midst of the Octave of Potter, these magical eight days between the record-breaking release of the fifth movie and the much-anticipated release of the seventh and final book. How will it all end? Is Dumbledore really gone? Is Professor Snape good or evil? What really happened the night Harry received his scar, the night his parents’ love for him proved more powerful than the darkest curse ever conjured? It is by now such a familiar story…
After tucking Little Charlie in bed on the eve of the movie’s opening day, I settled down in the living room with my bible and a few scripture commentaries spread across the sofa, my sermon notebook open to a clean page. I looked over the readings a few times and wrote down a few first thoughts – what is a plumb line, lovely prayer in Paul’s letter, I can’t believe I’ve never preached on the good Samaritan before…The television was on, turned down low, but some familiar theme music caught my ear and when I looked up I saw a familiar face with a familiar scar.
An hour later, I returned to my notebook and read the notes I had scribbled during what turned out to be “Harry Potter: the Hidden Secrets”. I wondered if the director of the tv special had ever preached on the good Samaritan before, because the secrets revealed in the special had nothing to do with potions or charms or any sort of magic at all. Instead, they were about the real and perceived connections between Harry and other characters who are family, friends, strangers, enemies, mentors, teachers, classmates…neighbors of sorts, connected by the thread of that ever familiar story of coming of age and finding one’s place in a world that is not always safe and yet not always dangerous.
What must I do to inherit eternal life? a lawyer asked Jesus, intending to test whether Jesus really belonged in the place of teacher. The lawyer knew the right answer, of course, when Jesus in turn asked for his reading of the law on the matter. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself. These familiar words were part of a longer prayer prayed twice daily by faithful Jews, acknowledging God’s compassion for and commitment to the people of Israel. You shall love God with everything that you are…You shall love your neighbor as yourself…You have given the right answer, Jesus said to satisfied lawyer. Do this, and you will live.
If there were a tv special called “The Good Samaritan: the Hidden Secrets,” I suspect the first secret revealed would be the look on the lawyer’s face at the very moment he realized Jesus had said not know this but do this, and you will live, the very moment those words seeped into his heart and soul and mind and sapped his strength. Of that moment, the Reverend Barbara Brown Taylor writes, “Love God and neighbor? Do this and you will live? Do this and you will die, of physical, emotional, and economic exhaustion!” Suddenly eternal life at the end of the road seemed an impossibly long way off, and the road itself overcrowded with people who didn’t know the way like he did. Alright now, Jesus, the lawyer said, desperate to justify his journey, to draw some boundaries, to limit his liability so that he would have a prayer of being able to meet it. Just who is my neighbor, in case the question of loving one ever comes up?
Theologian Frederick Buechner suspects the lawyer wanted a legal definition of neighbor, clearly delineating his range of responsibility, “something on the order of: ‘A neighbor (hereinafter to be referred to as the party of the first part) is to be construed as meaning a person of Jewish descent whose legal residence is within a radius of no more than three statute miles from one’s own legal residence unless there is another person of Jewish descent (hereinafter to be referred to as the party of the second part) living closer to the party of the first part than one is oneself, in which case the party of the second part is to be construed as neighbor to the party of the first part and one is oneself relieved of all responsibility of any sort or kind whatsoever.”
Who is my neighbor?!? Here is another secret – this question is holy, for in answering it we come of age and we find our place in the world and we glimpse, here and now, something of “the depth and breadth and sweetness of eternal life.” Who is my neighbor? Jesus replied not with a legal definition but with a story. A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers…
Jesus didn’t need to say, because the lawyer and everyone knew, that the way from Jerusalem to Jericho was long and perilous, filled with narrow passages and wide shadows, seen and unseen dangers, and people who are not who they at first seem to be. That a traveler would be so brutally attacked, stripped, beaten, and left half dead by the side of that road was a familiar tale. Now by chance a priest was going down that road…so likewise a Levite…Twice hope rises for the battered man and twice it fades as these men see him but cross to the far side of the road and pass him by.
Jesus didn’t need to say, because the lawyer and everyone knew, that priests were the chief religious leaders in the Jewish faith community, and Levites were their lay associates. Both men would be familiar with the command to love their neighbor. But they would also be familiar with the command to enter the Temple clean and undefiled, and touching a corpse would make them unclean. And they would be familiar with road itself, and the possibility that the ones who attacked this man were waiting in the shadows. Perhaps they were in a hurry. Perhaps, just a few shadows back, they had tended to someone else. In any case, weighing their obligations? their fears? their weariness? who knows…they did not stop to help.
And then, just when all hope is lost and life is left for dead, something unexpected happens. Something utterly unexpected. Now a Samaritan while traveling came near him…Jesus didn’t need to say, because the lawyer and everyone knew, that Samaritans were, by Jewish definition, socially outcast religious heretics. But listen to what Jesus does say. When the Samaritan saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds…then put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him…In the original Greek of this gospel text, the phrase “moved with pity” reads something more like, “moved to the depths of his bowels with compassion.” And so help arrives, out of no religious or moral or legal obligation, but rather straight out of the heart and soul and strength and mind of an unlikely hero whose compassion and courage and commitment make possible new life.
Now, Jesus asked the lawyer, Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers? The lawyer said, for the record another right answer, The one who showed him mercy. And Jesus said to him, Go and do likewise.
The story as Luke tells it ends there, in that moment when the lawyer stands face to face with Jesus, with the Way, with the one who daily walked among socially outcast religious heretics and worse, among seen and unseen dangers. Face to face with Jesus, who daily walked among those who would finally strip him, beat him, and leave him for dead on the side of the road. Face to face with Jesus, who daily walked among those for whom his love would prove more powerful than death, among those for whom he would give everything he had to give them a new and eternal life, among those he sent out into the world to go and do likewise, to tell the story, to be the story of compassion and courage and commitment, to show mercy, to be good neighbors. The story ends just as it is beginning…for the lawyer, for us, what will come next?
The competition of countless obligations, the pressure of never enough time, the perception or reality of physical, emotional, and economical exhaustion, the media bombardment of images of suffering and need, the fear of being attacked and left for dead ourselves, the urge to define ourselves by drawing lines that separate us from others, the feeling of inadequacy in the face of a world full of neighbors…these things are familiar as we make our own way down the not-always-safe road through this life.
Who is my neighbor? The question is holy, because to answer it, we must first know who we are. We are people, as Paul writes, whom Jesus has rescued from the power of darkness and welcomed into the kingdom of God. We are people, as our baptismal liturgy says, marked as Christ’s own forever and made members of the household of God. We are people called in that same liturgy to proclaim by word and example the good news of God in Christ, to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves, and to strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being. We are people who respond to that call together, as a community of sisters and brothers, saying I will, with God’s help. We are people who follow the Way only to find that the eternal life toward which we journey in hope is present here and now in the compassion and courage and commitment that bid us stop for our neighbors in need.
In the words of one wizard’s story: “It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities…We’re in a time when we must choose between what is right and what is easy. And remember, Harry, whatever happens, you’re never alone.” In the familiar words of our own faith story, Let us walk with each other, let us walk hand in had, and they’ll know we are Christians – they’ll know we are neighbors – by our love, by our love. Yes, they’ll know we are Christians by our love. Amen.
It is, by now, such a familiar story. A long and perilous journey filled with narrow passages and wide shadows. The way forward winding through seen and, worse, unseen dangers. The road traveled by people who are not who they at first seem to be. And then, just when all hope is lost and life is left for dead, something quite unexpected happens. Help arrives in the person of an unlikely hero whose showing of compassion and courage and commitment makes possible a new beginning, a new life, a new journey. So goes the familiar story of the good…Harry Potter.
Fans and foes alike of young Harry are all this day in the midst of the Octave of Potter, these magical eight days between the record-breaking release of the fifth movie and the much-anticipated release of the seventh and final book. How will it all end? Is Dumbledore really gone? Is Professor Snape good or evil? What really happened the night Harry received his scar, the night his parents’ love for him proved more powerful than the darkest curse ever conjured? It is by now such a familiar story…
After tucking Little Charlie in bed on the eve of the movie’s opening day, I settled down in the living room with my bible and a few scripture commentaries spread across the sofa, my sermon notebook open to a clean page. I looked over the readings a few times and wrote down a few first thoughts – what is a plumb line, lovely prayer in Paul’s letter, I can’t believe I’ve never preached on the good Samaritan before…The television was on, turned down low, but some familiar theme music caught my ear and when I looked up I saw a familiar face with a familiar scar.
An hour later, I returned to my notebook and read the notes I had scribbled during what turned out to be “Harry Potter: the Hidden Secrets”. I wondered if the director of the tv special had ever preached on the good Samaritan before, because the secrets revealed in the special had nothing to do with potions or charms or any sort of magic at all. Instead, they were about the real and perceived connections between Harry and other characters who are family, friends, strangers, enemies, mentors, teachers, classmates…neighbors of sorts, connected by the thread of that ever familiar story of coming of age and finding one’s place in a world that is not always safe and yet not always dangerous.
What must I do to inherit eternal life? a lawyer asked Jesus, intending to test whether Jesus really belonged in the place of teacher. The lawyer knew the right answer, of course, when Jesus in turn asked for his reading of the law on the matter. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself. These familiar words were part of a longer prayer prayed twice daily by faithful Jews, acknowledging God’s compassion for and commitment to the people of Israel. You shall love God with everything that you are…You shall love your neighbor as yourself…You have given the right answer, Jesus said to satisfied lawyer. Do this, and you will live.
If there were a tv special called “The Good Samaritan: the Hidden Secrets,” I suspect the first secret revealed would be the look on the lawyer’s face at the very moment he realized Jesus had said not know this but do this, and you will live, the very moment those words seeped into his heart and soul and mind and sapped his strength. Of that moment, the Reverend Barbara Brown Taylor writes, “Love God and neighbor? Do this and you will live? Do this and you will die, of physical, emotional, and economic exhaustion!” Suddenly eternal life at the end of the road seemed an impossibly long way off, and the road itself overcrowded with people who didn’t know the way like he did. Alright now, Jesus, the lawyer said, desperate to justify his journey, to draw some boundaries, to limit his liability so that he would have a prayer of being able to meet it. Just who is my neighbor, in case the question of loving one ever comes up?
Theologian Frederick Buechner suspects the lawyer wanted a legal definition of neighbor, clearly delineating his range of responsibility, “something on the order of: ‘A neighbor (hereinafter to be referred to as the party of the first part) is to be construed as meaning a person of Jewish descent whose legal residence is within a radius of no more than three statute miles from one’s own legal residence unless there is another person of Jewish descent (hereinafter to be referred to as the party of the second part) living closer to the party of the first part than one is oneself, in which case the party of the second part is to be construed as neighbor to the party of the first part and one is oneself relieved of all responsibility of any sort or kind whatsoever.”
Who is my neighbor?!? Here is another secret – this question is holy, for in answering it we come of age and we find our place in the world and we glimpse, here and now, something of “the depth and breadth and sweetness of eternal life.” Who is my neighbor? Jesus replied not with a legal definition but with a story. A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers…
Jesus didn’t need to say, because the lawyer and everyone knew, that the way from Jerusalem to Jericho was long and perilous, filled with narrow passages and wide shadows, seen and unseen dangers, and people who are not who they at first seem to be. That a traveler would be so brutally attacked, stripped, beaten, and left half dead by the side of that road was a familiar tale. Now by chance a priest was going down that road…so likewise a Levite…Twice hope rises for the battered man and twice it fades as these men see him but cross to the far side of the road and pass him by.
Jesus didn’t need to say, because the lawyer and everyone knew, that priests were the chief religious leaders in the Jewish faith community, and Levites were their lay associates. Both men would be familiar with the command to love their neighbor. But they would also be familiar with the command to enter the Temple clean and undefiled, and touching a corpse would make them unclean. And they would be familiar with road itself, and the possibility that the ones who attacked this man were waiting in the shadows. Perhaps they were in a hurry. Perhaps, just a few shadows back, they had tended to someone else. In any case, weighing their obligations? their fears? their weariness? who knows…they did not stop to help.
And then, just when all hope is lost and life is left for dead, something unexpected happens. Something utterly unexpected. Now a Samaritan while traveling came near him…Jesus didn’t need to say, because the lawyer and everyone knew, that Samaritans were, by Jewish definition, socially outcast religious heretics. But listen to what Jesus does say. When the Samaritan saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds…then put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him…In the original Greek of this gospel text, the phrase “moved with pity” reads something more like, “moved to the depths of his bowels with compassion.” And so help arrives, out of no religious or moral or legal obligation, but rather straight out of the heart and soul and strength and mind of an unlikely hero whose compassion and courage and commitment make possible new life.
Now, Jesus asked the lawyer, Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers? The lawyer said, for the record another right answer, The one who showed him mercy. And Jesus said to him, Go and do likewise.
The story as Luke tells it ends there, in that moment when the lawyer stands face to face with Jesus, with the Way, with the one who daily walked among socially outcast religious heretics and worse, among seen and unseen dangers. Face to face with Jesus, who daily walked among those who would finally strip him, beat him, and leave him for dead on the side of the road. Face to face with Jesus, who daily walked among those for whom his love would prove more powerful than death, among those for whom he would give everything he had to give them a new and eternal life, among those he sent out into the world to go and do likewise, to tell the story, to be the story of compassion and courage and commitment, to show mercy, to be good neighbors. The story ends just as it is beginning…for the lawyer, for us, what will come next?
The competition of countless obligations, the pressure of never enough time, the perception or reality of physical, emotional, and economical exhaustion, the media bombardment of images of suffering and need, the fear of being attacked and left for dead ourselves, the urge to define ourselves by drawing lines that separate us from others, the feeling of inadequacy in the face of a world full of neighbors…these things are familiar as we make our own way down the not-always-safe road through this life.
Who is my neighbor? The question is holy, because to answer it, we must first know who we are. We are people, as Paul writes, whom Jesus has rescued from the power of darkness and welcomed into the kingdom of God. We are people, as our baptismal liturgy says, marked as Christ’s own forever and made members of the household of God. We are people called in that same liturgy to proclaim by word and example the good news of God in Christ, to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves, and to strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being. We are people who respond to that call together, as a community of sisters and brothers, saying I will, with God’s help. We are people who follow the Way only to find that the eternal life toward which we journey in hope is present here and now in the compassion and courage and commitment that bid us stop for our neighbors in need.
In the words of one wizard’s story: “It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities…We’re in a time when we must choose between what is right and what is easy. And remember, Harry, whatever happens, you’re never alone.” In the familiar words of our own faith story, Let us walk with each other, let us walk hand in had, and they’ll know we are Christians – they’ll know we are neighbors – by our love, by our love. Yes, they’ll know we are Christians by our love. Amen.
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Proper 6C
2 Samuel 11:26-12:10, 13-15; Psalm 32:1-8; Galatians 2:11-21; Luke 7:36-50
Summer officially begins in a few days, a fact hardly worth noting since we’ve had our shoes off and the air-conditioning on for weeks now. I’ve lived nearly all my life in the South, and while I love ice cold lemonade and fresh peaches, I really don’t like hot weather or sweet tea, and so I spend my summers searching for and sitting in the shade. Still, some of my favorite summers were spent at my grandparents’ house over in Spartanburg, SC.
My brother and I were little then, and we spent nearly every hour of every long summer day playing together, even when we were supposed to be resting after lunch, that hottest part of the day when our shadows disappeared beneath our feet and even the blue sky burned in the sun. Summer is the season when the afternoon shadows grow impossibly long and daylight lingers in the air well past bedtime. We played then, too, chasing fireflies round and round the shadows of trees and grown-ups. We played after we were tucked in the two giant-sized beds in the room we sometimes shared upstairs. A nightlight bathed one wall in a soft glow, more than enough for us to create an entire arkful of shadow animals with our fingers.
The shades and shadows of summer were always part of our play…except when they didn’t seem playful. On rainy days we played inside that big old house, from the attic all the way down to the basement. The staircase to the basement turned several corners before it reached the bottom, and every flick of a lightswitch illuminated just enough of the long way down and around that you could almost see the next lightswitch in the shadows. Piles of old books and rolled up posters and maps and dusty pillows became spooky shapes in the dim light. At night we laughed at the shadow animals we made with our fingers, but the shadows behind the closet door and the shadows under the bed were no laughing matter.
These are the sorts of shadows, the kind in which lurk real and imagined dangers, these are the sorts of shadows that we borrow when we speak of having shadow sides. They are the shadows we wrap around ourselves to hide the real and imagined parts of us that hurt and that cause hurt. Like piles of old books and posters and pillows, perhaps if we shove these parts of us into the shadows, they will be forgotten.
This morning’s readings flip a lightswitch for us, challenging us to see an all too real part of us that causes all too real hurt – we are challenged to see our sinfulness. Individually and as a community of faith we prefer to push the reality of our sin into the shadows, to politely say the confession and receive our absolution and then not to talk any more about sin. But this morning we are asked to face our fear of sin’s darkness and learn how to walk in the light. In our readings this morning we hear the stories of men and women who have done just that: David, Paul, and an unnamed woman, sinners who overcame the shadows of their past and welcomed the bright sunlight of God’s forgiveness.
As king, David should have protected the lives of his people. Instead, David gave orders that poor Uriah be killed so that his beautiful wife Bathsheba might become David’s queen. Of course none of this dark plan was hidden from God, who sent the prophet Nathan to confront the terrible shadows of David’s life. As king, David recognized immediately the sin of the rich man in Nathan’s parable. As a sinner, David couldn’t see whose shadow the rich man cast. Do you see this man? Nathan demanded. You are the man! The story is about you. You, upon whom God has lavished gracious care; you, whom God has always protected; the story is about you, to whom God gave the responsibility of caring for and protecting others. You are the man!
And so David was illuminated. I have sinned against the Lord, he acknowledged humbly, and though he would still suffer the consequences of his actions, he would not suffer the darkness of separation from the Source of his life, the Source of all life and light, who lavished forgiveness upon him not for the first time, and not for the last.
As chief persecutor of the followers of Jesus Christ, Paul (known then as Saul), should have carried out his orders to arrest any who proclaimed Jesus as Lord and Savior. Instead, in a brilliant blinding flash of light, Paul was thrust into deep inner darkness where lurked the sinfulness of his life. When his eyes were finally opened, he could see beyond a shadow of a doubt the way that he would follow. The life I now live, Paul wrote, the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
As a Pharisee, a keeper of God’s law, Simon should have known that the law was given to teach people how to live in relationship with one another and with God, who had long ago promised, I am the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin. Instead, Simon used the law as a lens through which he could see shades and shadows, judge the depth of darkness in a person, and crop them out of his picture of salvation. When a woman began weeping at the feet of one of his dinner guests, Simon saw through his trusted lens only a sinner and a fool. As a Pharisee, Simon recognized immediately the picture in Jesus’ parable – the greater the debt that is canceled, the more gratitude the debtor displays. As a debtor, not in denarii but in sin, Simon couldn’t see that the parable cast a shadow over himself. Do you see this woman? Jesus demanded. Do you really truly see her?
For just a moment, let us hold this picture before us as motionless as children barely breathing, barely containing giggles under their covers when their mother’s shadow appears in the doorway of their bedroom late at night. Do you see this woman? Jesus demanded. Do you see? In the picture, Simon sees a sinner, a woman whose life is unclean and so whose touch would make others unclean. When she takes down her hair to wipe Jesus’ feet, Simon sees a fool, a man who could not possibly be the teacher and prophet he is reputed to be. In Jesus and in the woman, Simon sees the shadow side of the law that is his guiding light, his torch.
Do you see this woman? Jesus demanded. Do you see? In the picture, Jesus also sees a sinner – in fact he sees two sinners. He sees the woman, who has dragged herself and her sins into the light and poured them at his feet, making his weary feet clean just as his touch has made her life clean. And Jesus sees Simon, who is blind to the light of the world at his own table, who withholds himself from his sisters and brothers and, though he cannot see it, from God as he waves his own torch and works his way to salvation.
Do you see this woman? Jesus demanded. Do you see? In the picture, the woman sees a savior. She sees the one who has invited her to the table, welcomed her as an honored guest, and forgiven her before she ever knew to ask. She sees the one who loves her despite her sins and shades and shadows. She sees the one who has shown her how to be in relationship, how to invite and welcome others, how to forgive, and how to love. Another preacher writes, “The woman’s extravagance is a picture – [a bright reflection] – of the extravagance of God’s grace.”
Do you see? With God, our sins are forgiven even before we ask, even if we never ask, even if, like Simon, we never realized we needed forgiving in the first place. Our sins are forgiven. God has let them go. And yet, our sins will continue to overshadow us if we are not able to confess them, to acknowledge our inability to stay in relationship with God without God’s help and grace and love and forgiveness. Do you see? Jesus demanded. The woman’s sins, which were many, have already been forgiven by God’s deep love and dazzling grace; therefore, she is able to show great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven, who knows not how he needs God, loves little. Our sins are forgiven, we are washed and anointed and given a seat at the table. The only thing required of us is the openness to receive this lavish gift of grace, God’s cancellation of every debt, God’s forgiveness of every sin, God’s welcome of all people.
When we open our eyes and see the grace that bathes us from head to our own weary feet and toes; when we face our fear of the dark and reach deep inside ourselves to offer our shadows, our sin, our hurt, all that separates us from God and from one another, we are saved. And yet salvation is not so much a prize we earn or a destination we can ever reach as it is a way of living that may be perfected beyond our life in this place but is lived in part here when we allow God’s grace to illuminate our lives and all the lives and all the world around us. Salvation is lived in part here when we in turn carry that light not to cast shadows around others but to see how they, too, shine. For forgiveness is not restoration to what we were before – it is newness of life, and it carries with it a charge to walk in this way: to walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself for us.
As we are able to receive forgiveness, as we are able to receive grace, as we are able to love in response, as we are able to welcome all people to the table, as we are able to work not for salvation but because we are already saved, so will we hear the words spoken to us that were once said to David, This story is about you. So will we hear the words spoken to us that were once said to an unnamed woman, Your faith has saved you. Go in peace. Amen.
Summer officially begins in a few days, a fact hardly worth noting since we’ve had our shoes off and the air-conditioning on for weeks now. I’ve lived nearly all my life in the South, and while I love ice cold lemonade and fresh peaches, I really don’t like hot weather or sweet tea, and so I spend my summers searching for and sitting in the shade. Still, some of my favorite summers were spent at my grandparents’ house over in Spartanburg, SC.
My brother and I were little then, and we spent nearly every hour of every long summer day playing together, even when we were supposed to be resting after lunch, that hottest part of the day when our shadows disappeared beneath our feet and even the blue sky burned in the sun. Summer is the season when the afternoon shadows grow impossibly long and daylight lingers in the air well past bedtime. We played then, too, chasing fireflies round and round the shadows of trees and grown-ups. We played after we were tucked in the two giant-sized beds in the room we sometimes shared upstairs. A nightlight bathed one wall in a soft glow, more than enough for us to create an entire arkful of shadow animals with our fingers.
The shades and shadows of summer were always part of our play…except when they didn’t seem playful. On rainy days we played inside that big old house, from the attic all the way down to the basement. The staircase to the basement turned several corners before it reached the bottom, and every flick of a lightswitch illuminated just enough of the long way down and around that you could almost see the next lightswitch in the shadows. Piles of old books and rolled up posters and maps and dusty pillows became spooky shapes in the dim light. At night we laughed at the shadow animals we made with our fingers, but the shadows behind the closet door and the shadows under the bed were no laughing matter.
These are the sorts of shadows, the kind in which lurk real and imagined dangers, these are the sorts of shadows that we borrow when we speak of having shadow sides. They are the shadows we wrap around ourselves to hide the real and imagined parts of us that hurt and that cause hurt. Like piles of old books and posters and pillows, perhaps if we shove these parts of us into the shadows, they will be forgotten.
This morning’s readings flip a lightswitch for us, challenging us to see an all too real part of us that causes all too real hurt – we are challenged to see our sinfulness. Individually and as a community of faith we prefer to push the reality of our sin into the shadows, to politely say the confession and receive our absolution and then not to talk any more about sin. But this morning we are asked to face our fear of sin’s darkness and learn how to walk in the light. In our readings this morning we hear the stories of men and women who have done just that: David, Paul, and an unnamed woman, sinners who overcame the shadows of their past and welcomed the bright sunlight of God’s forgiveness.
As king, David should have protected the lives of his people. Instead, David gave orders that poor Uriah be killed so that his beautiful wife Bathsheba might become David’s queen. Of course none of this dark plan was hidden from God, who sent the prophet Nathan to confront the terrible shadows of David’s life. As king, David recognized immediately the sin of the rich man in Nathan’s parable. As a sinner, David couldn’t see whose shadow the rich man cast. Do you see this man? Nathan demanded. You are the man! The story is about you. You, upon whom God has lavished gracious care; you, whom God has always protected; the story is about you, to whom God gave the responsibility of caring for and protecting others. You are the man!
And so David was illuminated. I have sinned against the Lord, he acknowledged humbly, and though he would still suffer the consequences of his actions, he would not suffer the darkness of separation from the Source of his life, the Source of all life and light, who lavished forgiveness upon him not for the first time, and not for the last.
As chief persecutor of the followers of Jesus Christ, Paul (known then as Saul), should have carried out his orders to arrest any who proclaimed Jesus as Lord and Savior. Instead, in a brilliant blinding flash of light, Paul was thrust into deep inner darkness where lurked the sinfulness of his life. When his eyes were finally opened, he could see beyond a shadow of a doubt the way that he would follow. The life I now live, Paul wrote, the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
As a Pharisee, a keeper of God’s law, Simon should have known that the law was given to teach people how to live in relationship with one another and with God, who had long ago promised, I am the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin. Instead, Simon used the law as a lens through which he could see shades and shadows, judge the depth of darkness in a person, and crop them out of his picture of salvation. When a woman began weeping at the feet of one of his dinner guests, Simon saw through his trusted lens only a sinner and a fool. As a Pharisee, Simon recognized immediately the picture in Jesus’ parable – the greater the debt that is canceled, the more gratitude the debtor displays. As a debtor, not in denarii but in sin, Simon couldn’t see that the parable cast a shadow over himself. Do you see this woman? Jesus demanded. Do you really truly see her?
For just a moment, let us hold this picture before us as motionless as children barely breathing, barely containing giggles under their covers when their mother’s shadow appears in the doorway of their bedroom late at night. Do you see this woman? Jesus demanded. Do you see? In the picture, Simon sees a sinner, a woman whose life is unclean and so whose touch would make others unclean. When she takes down her hair to wipe Jesus’ feet, Simon sees a fool, a man who could not possibly be the teacher and prophet he is reputed to be. In Jesus and in the woman, Simon sees the shadow side of the law that is his guiding light, his torch.
Do you see this woman? Jesus demanded. Do you see? In the picture, Jesus also sees a sinner – in fact he sees two sinners. He sees the woman, who has dragged herself and her sins into the light and poured them at his feet, making his weary feet clean just as his touch has made her life clean. And Jesus sees Simon, who is blind to the light of the world at his own table, who withholds himself from his sisters and brothers and, though he cannot see it, from God as he waves his own torch and works his way to salvation.
Do you see this woman? Jesus demanded. Do you see? In the picture, the woman sees a savior. She sees the one who has invited her to the table, welcomed her as an honored guest, and forgiven her before she ever knew to ask. She sees the one who loves her despite her sins and shades and shadows. She sees the one who has shown her how to be in relationship, how to invite and welcome others, how to forgive, and how to love. Another preacher writes, “The woman’s extravagance is a picture – [a bright reflection] – of the extravagance of God’s grace.”
Do you see? With God, our sins are forgiven even before we ask, even if we never ask, even if, like Simon, we never realized we needed forgiving in the first place. Our sins are forgiven. God has let them go. And yet, our sins will continue to overshadow us if we are not able to confess them, to acknowledge our inability to stay in relationship with God without God’s help and grace and love and forgiveness. Do you see? Jesus demanded. The woman’s sins, which were many, have already been forgiven by God’s deep love and dazzling grace; therefore, she is able to show great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven, who knows not how he needs God, loves little. Our sins are forgiven, we are washed and anointed and given a seat at the table. The only thing required of us is the openness to receive this lavish gift of grace, God’s cancellation of every debt, God’s forgiveness of every sin, God’s welcome of all people.
When we open our eyes and see the grace that bathes us from head to our own weary feet and toes; when we face our fear of the dark and reach deep inside ourselves to offer our shadows, our sin, our hurt, all that separates us from God and from one another, we are saved. And yet salvation is not so much a prize we earn or a destination we can ever reach as it is a way of living that may be perfected beyond our life in this place but is lived in part here when we allow God’s grace to illuminate our lives and all the lives and all the world around us. Salvation is lived in part here when we in turn carry that light not to cast shadows around others but to see how they, too, shine. For forgiveness is not restoration to what we were before – it is newness of life, and it carries with it a charge to walk in this way: to walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself for us.
As we are able to receive forgiveness, as we are able to receive grace, as we are able to love in response, as we are able to welcome all people to the table, as we are able to work not for salvation but because we are already saved, so will we hear the words spoken to us that were once said to David, This story is about you. So will we hear the words spoken to us that were once said to an unnamed woman, Your faith has saved you. Go in peace. Amen.
Sunday, June 03, 2007
Trinity Sunday C
Isaiah 6:1-8; Canticle 13; Revelation 4:1-11; John 16:[5-11]12-15
“In that direction,” the Cheshire Cat said, “lives a Hatter: and in that direction…lives a March Hare. Visit either you like: they’re both mad.”
“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked.
“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”
“How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.
“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”
So the preacher feels when she steps up to the pulpit on Trinity Sunday, the bejeweled and lightning-bright air still full of six-winged seraphs singing Holy, Holy, Holy, the words of Jesus still echoing as though across the sea of glass in that heavenly throne room, I have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now…So the preacher feels when she steps up to the pulpit on Trinity Sunday to say something, anything, about God who is Three in One and One in Three…I must be mad, she feels, as she starts in to preach.
It’s not that Episcopalians don’t believe in the Trinity – we proclaim our belief in the ancient doctrine week after week in our saying of the Nicene Creed: I believe in one God, the Father Almighty…I believe in Jesus Christ…I believe in the Holy Spirit…We invoke the Trinity at the end of psalms and prayers: O Father, who with the Son and the Holy Spirit live and reign, one God, for ever and ever…Sermons begin in the name of God who has made us, who loves us and keeps us (or some other Trinitarian formula)…We enter this community of faith when we are baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit…More than 500 Episcopal churches are named Trinity, making it one of the three most common names for our parish communities.
We even have at the back of our prayerbook, in a section titled “Historical Documents,” a proclamation of faith in God the Three in One: We worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity, neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Substance. The Father eternal, the Son eternal, and the Holy Ghost eternal. And yet they are not three eternals but one eternal. The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God. And yet they are not three Gods, but one God. The Athanasian Creed, dating back to the 4th century, goes on and on like this. The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the Holy Ghost incomprehensible. And yet they are not three incomprehensibles, but one incomprehensible…to which Dorothy Sayers added, “The whole thing incomprehensible!”
The Athanasian Creed is just one among many documents and diagrams, metaphors and models, ideas and images by which Christians have tried to explain the Trinity, Creator, Christ and Comforter who are yet one God Almighty, who was and is and is to come. Cloverleaves, triangles, overlapping circles, fish swimming round, fleur-de-lis, abstract formulas, countless combinations of three names – Father, Son, Holy Ghost; Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer; Lover, Beloved, Love – they all point toward who and how God is, but lead us ultimately deeper and deeper down a rabbit hole where none of the usual rules or categories apply. Three and one. Trinity and unity. Separate and undivided. It’s incomprehensible. It’s madness.
While writing his own work on the Trinity, St. Augustine dreamed he was walking along the seashore. He came upon a boy engaged in the curious task of scooping up water from the ocean and pouring it into a small hole he had dug in the sand. The sand soaked up each bucketful, so that the hole was empty every time the boy returned with more water.
When Augustine asked the boy what he was doing, the boy replied, “I am going to pour the entire ocean into that hole.” Augustine laughed. “That’s impossible,” he said. “The ocean is too big, and that hole is too small. You cannot do it.”
Suddenly, the boy became an angel, and said to Augustine, “I have a greater chance of pouring the entire ocean into this hole than you do of understanding the Trinity.”
The beginning of understanding the Trinity, the first drop of the first bucketful of hope, is not in our heads, in finding the right rules and categories, the right images and words. Such an attempt is as incomprehensible, as mad, as trying to pour the ocean into a small hole in the sand. We cannot understand the One who is seated on the throne, whom creatures both earthly and heavenly worship and adore, casting their crowns before the throne, singing, “You are worthy our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.” We cannot understand the One who is beyond any word or thought or image or name we could ever name.
But we can and do experience in incomprehensibly intimate ways the One who is so far beyond ourselves. God, from whose throne come flashes of lightning, and rumblings and peals of thunder, is also God who breathed life upon an infant creation, who breathed air as one of us, who is the breath that sustains our lives and prays for us with sighs too deep for words.
In the 14th century, Julian of Norwich experienced a vision of this divinely inspired and initiated intimacy, and in this relationship between God and creation, she came to know something of the Trinity. “[God] showed me something small,” Julian writes, “no bigger than a hazelnut, lying in the palm of my hand, as it seemed to me, and it was as round as a ball. I looked at it with the eye of my understanding and thought: What can this be? I was amazed that it could last, for I thought that because of its littleness it would suddenly have fallen into nothing. And I was answered in my understanding: This is everything that exists. It lasts and always will because God loves it; and thus everything has being through the love of God.
“In this little thing I saw three properties: The first is that God made it, the second is that God loves it, and the third is that God keeps and preserves it.”
God has been revealed to us in scripture and tradition as a God who not only acts in loving ways but who is in fact Love. As a God who not only calls us into relationship but who is in fact Relationship. As a God who not only permeates our lives but who is in fact Life.
We don’t have to jump down a rabbit hole to find the wonder and madness and mystery of the Trinity, for we experience love and relationship and life here, now, in this place, among those gathered here, and out there, in the vastness of the world, among friends and family and strangers. We experience something of the connectedness, the community that is the very essence of God who is Three in One and One in Three.
This connectedness extends far beyond those whose hands we can shake at the peace, those we tuck into bed at night, those to whom we can make phone calls when we have news to share. It extends beyond the woman we pass each day walking the same road we drive to work, the child at whom we smile when we wait behind him in the check-out line, the homeless person we see sleeping under the bridge every morning. This connectedness extends beyond the people on the coast who received the toiletries and shoes and notebooks we sent, beyond the people who live in harm’s way for whom we pray each Sunday, beyond the people world-wide who share our way of common prayer but not our way of living out the good news.
This connectedness extends also far deeper than our handshakes, our voices on the phone, our eyes upon the world, deeper than our skin that so easily separates us from others. One preacher marveled at what have learned from particle physics, that the atoms within us, as microscopically small as they are, are made up of particles littler still, and that around them is vast empty space. “Matter is not solid, but open,” she writes. Matter is not static but fluid. Perhaps Julian of Norwich was ahead of her time, a particle physicist when the smallest thing she could imagine was a hazelnut. Matter and energy last always, she might have written, because God made them and loves them and preserves them. And now in our time we have learned that the littlest parts of who we are were once in other places in this vast creation – matter and energy last always, and they dance through life, connecting all things to one another over time and space.
Perhaps because they, too, intuited something of the vastness within and around us, some theologians early in the life of the church began to speak of the Trinity as a dance, Three in One and One in Three going round and weaving through and rejoicing in a divine dance of perfect love, perfect relationship, perfect life. We cannot understand its motion, but we do experience it, for the divine dance does not take place in some far away throne room but all around us. One poet writes, “The universe of space and time did not arise by chance, but as the Three, in love and hope, made room within their dance.”
The beginning of understanding the Trinity is knowing that it is not a thing to be explained but, rather, a vast place in which all of creation is contained. God who made us loves us, and has taught us to love; God who loves us keeps and preserves us, and has taught us to dance. The beginning of understanding the Trinity is understanding that we are intimately connected to one another, to every other, in life and relationship and love. We are called to honor those connections, to nurture them, to keep and preserve them, to be not static but fluid, not solid but open. To the world, in which we separate ourselves, it sounds like madness, an incomprehensible calling. To God, in whom is perfect community, it sounds like a song.
Shall we dance?
“In that direction,” the Cheshire Cat said, “lives a Hatter: and in that direction…lives a March Hare. Visit either you like: they’re both mad.”
“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked.
“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”
“How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.
“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”
So the preacher feels when she steps up to the pulpit on Trinity Sunday, the bejeweled and lightning-bright air still full of six-winged seraphs singing Holy, Holy, Holy, the words of Jesus still echoing as though across the sea of glass in that heavenly throne room, I have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now…So the preacher feels when she steps up to the pulpit on Trinity Sunday to say something, anything, about God who is Three in One and One in Three…I must be mad, she feels, as she starts in to preach.
It’s not that Episcopalians don’t believe in the Trinity – we proclaim our belief in the ancient doctrine week after week in our saying of the Nicene Creed: I believe in one God, the Father Almighty…I believe in Jesus Christ…I believe in the Holy Spirit…We invoke the Trinity at the end of psalms and prayers: O Father, who with the Son and the Holy Spirit live and reign, one God, for ever and ever…Sermons begin in the name of God who has made us, who loves us and keeps us (or some other Trinitarian formula)…We enter this community of faith when we are baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit…More than 500 Episcopal churches are named Trinity, making it one of the three most common names for our parish communities.
We even have at the back of our prayerbook, in a section titled “Historical Documents,” a proclamation of faith in God the Three in One: We worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity, neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Substance. The Father eternal, the Son eternal, and the Holy Ghost eternal. And yet they are not three eternals but one eternal. The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God. And yet they are not three Gods, but one God. The Athanasian Creed, dating back to the 4th century, goes on and on like this. The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the Holy Ghost incomprehensible. And yet they are not three incomprehensibles, but one incomprehensible…to which Dorothy Sayers added, “The whole thing incomprehensible!”
The Athanasian Creed is just one among many documents and diagrams, metaphors and models, ideas and images by which Christians have tried to explain the Trinity, Creator, Christ and Comforter who are yet one God Almighty, who was and is and is to come. Cloverleaves, triangles, overlapping circles, fish swimming round, fleur-de-lis, abstract formulas, countless combinations of three names – Father, Son, Holy Ghost; Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer; Lover, Beloved, Love – they all point toward who and how God is, but lead us ultimately deeper and deeper down a rabbit hole where none of the usual rules or categories apply. Three and one. Trinity and unity. Separate and undivided. It’s incomprehensible. It’s madness.
While writing his own work on the Trinity, St. Augustine dreamed he was walking along the seashore. He came upon a boy engaged in the curious task of scooping up water from the ocean and pouring it into a small hole he had dug in the sand. The sand soaked up each bucketful, so that the hole was empty every time the boy returned with more water.
When Augustine asked the boy what he was doing, the boy replied, “I am going to pour the entire ocean into that hole.” Augustine laughed. “That’s impossible,” he said. “The ocean is too big, and that hole is too small. You cannot do it.”
Suddenly, the boy became an angel, and said to Augustine, “I have a greater chance of pouring the entire ocean into this hole than you do of understanding the Trinity.”
The beginning of understanding the Trinity, the first drop of the first bucketful of hope, is not in our heads, in finding the right rules and categories, the right images and words. Such an attempt is as incomprehensible, as mad, as trying to pour the ocean into a small hole in the sand. We cannot understand the One who is seated on the throne, whom creatures both earthly and heavenly worship and adore, casting their crowns before the throne, singing, “You are worthy our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.” We cannot understand the One who is beyond any word or thought or image or name we could ever name.
But we can and do experience in incomprehensibly intimate ways the One who is so far beyond ourselves. God, from whose throne come flashes of lightning, and rumblings and peals of thunder, is also God who breathed life upon an infant creation, who breathed air as one of us, who is the breath that sustains our lives and prays for us with sighs too deep for words.
In the 14th century, Julian of Norwich experienced a vision of this divinely inspired and initiated intimacy, and in this relationship between God and creation, she came to know something of the Trinity. “[God] showed me something small,” Julian writes, “no bigger than a hazelnut, lying in the palm of my hand, as it seemed to me, and it was as round as a ball. I looked at it with the eye of my understanding and thought: What can this be? I was amazed that it could last, for I thought that because of its littleness it would suddenly have fallen into nothing. And I was answered in my understanding: This is everything that exists. It lasts and always will because God loves it; and thus everything has being through the love of God.
“In this little thing I saw three properties: The first is that God made it, the second is that God loves it, and the third is that God keeps and preserves it.”
God has been revealed to us in scripture and tradition as a God who not only acts in loving ways but who is in fact Love. As a God who not only calls us into relationship but who is in fact Relationship. As a God who not only permeates our lives but who is in fact Life.
We don’t have to jump down a rabbit hole to find the wonder and madness and mystery of the Trinity, for we experience love and relationship and life here, now, in this place, among those gathered here, and out there, in the vastness of the world, among friends and family and strangers. We experience something of the connectedness, the community that is the very essence of God who is Three in One and One in Three.
This connectedness extends far beyond those whose hands we can shake at the peace, those we tuck into bed at night, those to whom we can make phone calls when we have news to share. It extends beyond the woman we pass each day walking the same road we drive to work, the child at whom we smile when we wait behind him in the check-out line, the homeless person we see sleeping under the bridge every morning. This connectedness extends beyond the people on the coast who received the toiletries and shoes and notebooks we sent, beyond the people who live in harm’s way for whom we pray each Sunday, beyond the people world-wide who share our way of common prayer but not our way of living out the good news.
This connectedness extends also far deeper than our handshakes, our voices on the phone, our eyes upon the world, deeper than our skin that so easily separates us from others. One preacher marveled at what have learned from particle physics, that the atoms within us, as microscopically small as they are, are made up of particles littler still, and that around them is vast empty space. “Matter is not solid, but open,” she writes. Matter is not static but fluid. Perhaps Julian of Norwich was ahead of her time, a particle physicist when the smallest thing she could imagine was a hazelnut. Matter and energy last always, she might have written, because God made them and loves them and preserves them. And now in our time we have learned that the littlest parts of who we are were once in other places in this vast creation – matter and energy last always, and they dance through life, connecting all things to one another over time and space.
Perhaps because they, too, intuited something of the vastness within and around us, some theologians early in the life of the church began to speak of the Trinity as a dance, Three in One and One in Three going round and weaving through and rejoicing in a divine dance of perfect love, perfect relationship, perfect life. We cannot understand its motion, but we do experience it, for the divine dance does not take place in some far away throne room but all around us. One poet writes, “The universe of space and time did not arise by chance, but as the Three, in love and hope, made room within their dance.”
The beginning of understanding the Trinity is knowing that it is not a thing to be explained but, rather, a vast place in which all of creation is contained. God who made us loves us, and has taught us to love; God who loves us keeps and preserves us, and has taught us to dance. The beginning of understanding the Trinity is understanding that we are intimately connected to one another, to every other, in life and relationship and love. We are called to honor those connections, to nurture them, to keep and preserve them, to be not static but fluid, not solid but open. To the world, in which we separate ourselves, it sounds like madness, an incomprehensible calling. To God, in whom is perfect community, it sounds like a song.
Shall we dance?
Sunday, May 27, 2007
Day of Pentecost C
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Meridian
Acts 2:1-11; Psalm 104:25-37; 1 Corinthians 12:4-13; John 20:19-23
What do you get when you cross a New Yorker with someone from the Massachusetts coast and then send them to raise a family in the Deep South? A friend recently emailed me a link to an online quiz called, “What American Accent Do You Have?” She’s from Minnesota, and was indeed rated as having Midlands accent, which the quiz said was the same thing as having no accent at all. I started answering the questions: “When you say the words ‘c-o-t’ and ‘c-a-u-g-h-t’, do they A) sound the same, B) sound different, or C) sound the same-ish, but a little different?” How about ‘d-o-n’ and ‘d-a-w-n’? What about ‘M-a-r-y’, ‘m-e-r-r-y’, and ‘m-a-r-r-y’?
Now, while my dad grew up in New York and my mom’s parents also met up North, their entire married life was spent down South, and I have lived all but three years of my life in the South. So of course, when I clicked the button to submit my answers, I was rated as having a...Boston accent. I don’t hear it, but then again maybe this could explain why I’m far more likely to dump out a glass of iced tea than to drink it...
Most of the time (myself apparently an exception) the language that we speak, or the dialect within a language, or the accent that shapes our sounding out of words shapes also who we are, how we fit in the cacophony of humanity. Listen to someone speak, and if you’re well-trained in linguistics or at least in stereotypes, you can probably guess where that person is from, sometimes down to a very small geographic area. In 1951, linguist Robert Pittman classified 46 distinct languages in a work he called his “ethnologue”. Today’s 15th edition of that work documents nearly 7300 distinct languages worldwide. Of those, almost 500 are threatened with language extinction, because fewer than 50 people speak them.
Language is at once fascinating and frustrating. It is many-faceted, reflecting an array of alphabets, word meanings, sentence structures, dialects, accents and inflections. Language is what makes communication possible; but it can also be what inhibits communication. It can clarify and confound, integrate and isolate, draw people together and divide them apart. Even within a common language, accents make us sound different (what American accent do you have?), words can carry different meanings, and meanings can be conveyed by different words.
How like language is our dear Anglican church today. Even within a church of common prayer, we are divided by what we say, by how and to whom we truly listen, and by the different meanings we hear conveyed by the Word of God. How hopeful are the words that introduce readings from scripture in some of our newer liturgical resources: Hear what the Spirit is saying to God’s people…
Long before the gale force of the Holy Spirit filled the disciples’ lungs and lit a fire under their feet (or over their heads, as it were), the Feast of Pentecost was a Feast of Many Languages. It began as a harvest festival, an offering of first fruits; after the Babylonian exile, when the Jewish people were widely scattered, it became a festival of salvation, a celebration of the giving of the law at Mt. Sinai some 50 days (from which came the Greek name, pentekostos) following the night of the Passover, the night when God mightily freed them from slavery in Egypt and set them about the task of learning to be God’s people in and for the world. At Pentecost, Jews traveled from wherever the winds of life had blown them back to Jerusalem, where they feasted together with their sisters and brothers who spoke now many languages and led vastly different lives, but who understood a common language of covenant and of what it means to be chosen and beloved of God. All were invited to the Pentecost feast, from those at the center of society to those on its outermost margins – women and men, young and old, rich and poor, servant and free, Parthians and Medes, Judeans and Romans, Phrygians and Pamphylians…all were invited.
The disciples of Jesus were in Jerusalem because the risen Jesus had told them to wait there for the Spirit of God to fill them with the heart and breath they needed to begin the work of being Good News bearers. But as faithful Jews, they would probably have been in Jerusalem anyway for the great feast, loudly praising God for the ancient words of covenant God spoke to Moses: I am the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin. (Ex. 34:6-7) How new those ancient words must have sounded to the wondering, waiting disciples, infused with all they had seen and heard and experienced in the presence of Jesus Christ.
When the day of Pentecost had come, Luke writes, the disciples were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability…At this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. (Acts 2:1-6)
What do you get when you cross a familiar story from scripture with a new hearing of it and send it to live deep in yourself? That the Pentecost event Christians celebrate contains a miracle of speaking is evident – many of our sisters and brothers the world over today heard the gospel read as the joyful noise of a variety of languages and translations. The Holy Spirit did indeed mightily fill the disciples with the heart and breath they needed to speak of God’s wide-embracing love for all people of every nation under heaven. But listen, then, the Pentecost Christians celebrate contains also the miracle of hearing and understanding and receiving that Good News. When all was said and done that day, Luke writes, those who welcomed the message were baptized, and that day about three thousand persons were added. They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. (Acts 2:41, 42)
And so Pentecost remains a Feast of Languages. It remains a festival of salvation, not just now for one people but for all people. It remains a celebration of the law, of how to be God’s people in and for the world, now given a new shape by Jesus who said, I give you a new commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. (John 15:12) The Holy Spirit gives us the ability to speak, and the Holy Spirit gives us the ability to hear and understand and receive the Word of God at times and in places and from people we might not expect.
The Spirit is as many-faceted as language itself, and infinitely more so. So many words and images describe the Holy Spirit of God, words and images that speak to us in different ways at different times – we hear and understand and receive them differently. On this morning just days before the start of a hurricane season predicted to be very active, a rush of violent wind is a disquieting image. On this morning as tens of thousands of acres of wilderness burn in Florida, tongues of flame reduce life to embers. On this morning when we participate in the baptism of Cameron Wade and renew our own baptismal vows, by a sprinkling of water the Holy Spirit falls afresh on us. On this morning as we greet one another as Jesus greeted his friends and disciples, saying Peace be with you (John 20:19), our lungs are filled with the breath of God and we are filled with the Holy Spirit.
What Holy Spirit accent do you have? We are sent out from this place today, as Jesus sent his disciples, with a mission to speak about God’s deeds of power, to be reconcilers, to love one another and the world as Jesus loves us. Paul, so gifted with words, reminds us that the Holy Spirit chooses specially for each and every one of us and activates in us a variety of holy gifts. Imagine that these gifts are languages, for language is not limited to sound – our hands, our faces, our vocations, our passions in life, our relationships speak. To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, to another gifts of healing, to another the working of miracles (1 Cor 12:8-10)…to another is given through the same Spirit the joy of preparing meals, the capacity to care for animals, the parenting and grandparenting of children, the teaching of students, the ability to build homes, the courage to fight fires, the knowledge to predict fierce winds and gentle rains...
But we are also sent out from this place to listen: to hear and understand and receive the Good News from those whose gifts are not like ours, whose languages are different, whose lives are unfamiliar. Listen again to the Pentecost story, in which language, which from the opening pages of scripture in the Babel story divided humanity, now brings us together without diminishing any of our diversity, our richness. Pentecost is about one Spirit, one Body, one Church in many, many languages. Hear what the Spirit is saying to God’s people. It may sound cacophonous to us, but it’s music to God’s ears.
In fact, in the words of a song sung by computer-animated vegetables who tell bible stories to children (see, all kinds of gifts out there, all kinds of languages!)…in the words of their song:
It’s a great big beautiful world, with lots of lots of people.
I’ve seen singin’, dancin’, prayin’, clappin’, and every kind of steeple.
But the Bible makes it plain that in Christ we’re all the same.
One day we’ll gather together in his name.
Whoever you are, wherever you are, by faith you can be a part
of the Heavenly First United Bapticostal Presbylutheran Methodiscopal
Avengelical Evangestolic Nazaristic Faith-a-holic Charismental Fundamatic
Holy Spirit-filled Fanatic Church of God in Christ our Lord,
where all God’s children harmonize and sing in one accord.
You can call yourself what you will – it don’t make no difference, we’re still
one Spirit, one Body, one Church, one Faith, one Lord. Amen.
Acts 2:1-11; Psalm 104:25-37; 1 Corinthians 12:4-13; John 20:19-23
What do you get when you cross a New Yorker with someone from the Massachusetts coast and then send them to raise a family in the Deep South? A friend recently emailed me a link to an online quiz called, “What American Accent Do You Have?” She’s from Minnesota, and was indeed rated as having Midlands accent, which the quiz said was the same thing as having no accent at all. I started answering the questions: “When you say the words ‘c-o-t’ and ‘c-a-u-g-h-t’, do they A) sound the same, B) sound different, or C) sound the same-ish, but a little different?” How about ‘d-o-n’ and ‘d-a-w-n’? What about ‘M-a-r-y’, ‘m-e-r-r-y’, and ‘m-a-r-r-y’?
Now, while my dad grew up in New York and my mom’s parents also met up North, their entire married life was spent down South, and I have lived all but three years of my life in the South. So of course, when I clicked the button to submit my answers, I was rated as having a...Boston accent. I don’t hear it, but then again maybe this could explain why I’m far more likely to dump out a glass of iced tea than to drink it...
Most of the time (myself apparently an exception) the language that we speak, or the dialect within a language, or the accent that shapes our sounding out of words shapes also who we are, how we fit in the cacophony of humanity. Listen to someone speak, and if you’re well-trained in linguistics or at least in stereotypes, you can probably guess where that person is from, sometimes down to a very small geographic area. In 1951, linguist Robert Pittman classified 46 distinct languages in a work he called his “ethnologue”. Today’s 15th edition of that work documents nearly 7300 distinct languages worldwide. Of those, almost 500 are threatened with language extinction, because fewer than 50 people speak them.
Language is at once fascinating and frustrating. It is many-faceted, reflecting an array of alphabets, word meanings, sentence structures, dialects, accents and inflections. Language is what makes communication possible; but it can also be what inhibits communication. It can clarify and confound, integrate and isolate, draw people together and divide them apart. Even within a common language, accents make us sound different (what American accent do you have?), words can carry different meanings, and meanings can be conveyed by different words.
How like language is our dear Anglican church today. Even within a church of common prayer, we are divided by what we say, by how and to whom we truly listen, and by the different meanings we hear conveyed by the Word of God. How hopeful are the words that introduce readings from scripture in some of our newer liturgical resources: Hear what the Spirit is saying to God’s people…
Long before the gale force of the Holy Spirit filled the disciples’ lungs and lit a fire under their feet (or over their heads, as it were), the Feast of Pentecost was a Feast of Many Languages. It began as a harvest festival, an offering of first fruits; after the Babylonian exile, when the Jewish people were widely scattered, it became a festival of salvation, a celebration of the giving of the law at Mt. Sinai some 50 days (from which came the Greek name, pentekostos) following the night of the Passover, the night when God mightily freed them from slavery in Egypt and set them about the task of learning to be God’s people in and for the world. At Pentecost, Jews traveled from wherever the winds of life had blown them back to Jerusalem, where they feasted together with their sisters and brothers who spoke now many languages and led vastly different lives, but who understood a common language of covenant and of what it means to be chosen and beloved of God. All were invited to the Pentecost feast, from those at the center of society to those on its outermost margins – women and men, young and old, rich and poor, servant and free, Parthians and Medes, Judeans and Romans, Phrygians and Pamphylians…all were invited.
The disciples of Jesus were in Jerusalem because the risen Jesus had told them to wait there for the Spirit of God to fill them with the heart and breath they needed to begin the work of being Good News bearers. But as faithful Jews, they would probably have been in Jerusalem anyway for the great feast, loudly praising God for the ancient words of covenant God spoke to Moses: I am the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin. (Ex. 34:6-7) How new those ancient words must have sounded to the wondering, waiting disciples, infused with all they had seen and heard and experienced in the presence of Jesus Christ.
When the day of Pentecost had come, Luke writes, the disciples were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability…At this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. (Acts 2:1-6)
What do you get when you cross a familiar story from scripture with a new hearing of it and send it to live deep in yourself? That the Pentecost event Christians celebrate contains a miracle of speaking is evident – many of our sisters and brothers the world over today heard the gospel read as the joyful noise of a variety of languages and translations. The Holy Spirit did indeed mightily fill the disciples with the heart and breath they needed to speak of God’s wide-embracing love for all people of every nation under heaven. But listen, then, the Pentecost Christians celebrate contains also the miracle of hearing and understanding and receiving that Good News. When all was said and done that day, Luke writes, those who welcomed the message were baptized, and that day about three thousand persons were added. They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. (Acts 2:41, 42)
And so Pentecost remains a Feast of Languages. It remains a festival of salvation, not just now for one people but for all people. It remains a celebration of the law, of how to be God’s people in and for the world, now given a new shape by Jesus who said, I give you a new commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. (John 15:12) The Holy Spirit gives us the ability to speak, and the Holy Spirit gives us the ability to hear and understand and receive the Word of God at times and in places and from people we might not expect.
The Spirit is as many-faceted as language itself, and infinitely more so. So many words and images describe the Holy Spirit of God, words and images that speak to us in different ways at different times – we hear and understand and receive them differently. On this morning just days before the start of a hurricane season predicted to be very active, a rush of violent wind is a disquieting image. On this morning as tens of thousands of acres of wilderness burn in Florida, tongues of flame reduce life to embers. On this morning when we participate in the baptism of Cameron Wade and renew our own baptismal vows, by a sprinkling of water the Holy Spirit falls afresh on us. On this morning as we greet one another as Jesus greeted his friends and disciples, saying Peace be with you (John 20:19), our lungs are filled with the breath of God and we are filled with the Holy Spirit.
What Holy Spirit accent do you have? We are sent out from this place today, as Jesus sent his disciples, with a mission to speak about God’s deeds of power, to be reconcilers, to love one another and the world as Jesus loves us. Paul, so gifted with words, reminds us that the Holy Spirit chooses specially for each and every one of us and activates in us a variety of holy gifts. Imagine that these gifts are languages, for language is not limited to sound – our hands, our faces, our vocations, our passions in life, our relationships speak. To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, to another gifts of healing, to another the working of miracles (1 Cor 12:8-10)…to another is given through the same Spirit the joy of preparing meals, the capacity to care for animals, the parenting and grandparenting of children, the teaching of students, the ability to build homes, the courage to fight fires, the knowledge to predict fierce winds and gentle rains...
But we are also sent out from this place to listen: to hear and understand and receive the Good News from those whose gifts are not like ours, whose languages are different, whose lives are unfamiliar. Listen again to the Pentecost story, in which language, which from the opening pages of scripture in the Babel story divided humanity, now brings us together without diminishing any of our diversity, our richness. Pentecost is about one Spirit, one Body, one Church in many, many languages. Hear what the Spirit is saying to God’s people. It may sound cacophonous to us, but it’s music to God’s ears.
In fact, in the words of a song sung by computer-animated vegetables who tell bible stories to children (see, all kinds of gifts out there, all kinds of languages!)…in the words of their song:
It’s a great big beautiful world, with lots of lots of people.
I’ve seen singin’, dancin’, prayin’, clappin’, and every kind of steeple.
But the Bible makes it plain that in Christ we’re all the same.
One day we’ll gather together in his name.
Whoever you are, wherever you are, by faith you can be a part
of the Heavenly First United Bapticostal Presbylutheran Methodiscopal
Avengelical Evangestolic Nazaristic Faith-a-holic Charismental Fundamatic
Holy Spirit-filled Fanatic Church of God in Christ our Lord,
where all God’s children harmonize and sing in one accord.
You can call yourself what you will – it don’t make no difference, we’re still
one Spirit, one Body, one Church, one Faith, one Lord. Amen.
Sunday, April 15, 2007
Easter 2C
Acts 5:27-32; Psalm 118:14-29; Revelation 1:4-8; John 20:19-31
Isn’t it interesting how very young children so adamantly believe what they see, and that they also see more than we adults can believe. I remember studying in a child psychology class the principles of object permanence and conservation, how matter really matters to young children. If you show a stuffed animal to a young child, and then hide the animal behind a piece of paper, she won’t look for it – when she cannot see it, for her it does not exist. And if you show a child two identical glasses filled with the same amount of water, and then pour all the water from one glass into a glass that is taller and skinnier, he will tell you that the tall, skinny glass has more water in it – when he sees it, for him the difference in water level means a difference in amount. Matter really matters – children believe what they see, hear, taste, touch and smell.
And yet…also for very young children, stuffed animals talk, imaginary friends play, tricycles travel at lightspeed through outer space, and delicious casseroles are made out of leaves and pebbles and sand and water. Matter really matters, but there is much more to matter than meets the eye.
As we grow older, though, these relationships between seeing and believing become somehow reversed. We eventually learn that a stuffed animal behind a piece of paper does in fact still exist, but it no longer talks to us. We know that different sizes and shapes of containers will displace the same amount of water differently, but none of them will make a casserole if you add leaves and pebbles and sand. Matter still matters, but we find ourselves somewhere between no longer believing everything we see, hear, taste, touch and smell and yet demanding this very sort of evidence in order to believe.
Jesus was dead – there was no doubt about that. Thomas had seen the awful cross and heard the last gasping breaths as he felt hot tears roll down his own face. Not so very long before, they had all been with Jesus when they received word that their dear friend Lazarus was ill. Jesus wanted to go to him. It’s too dangerous, the disciples insisted. It’s too near Jerusalem – the last time you were there you were nearly killed! We won’t let you go. When Jesus silenced them with the news that Lazarus was already dead, it was for once not Peter who spoke up, but Thomas, sullen but determined to keep following. If Jesus is going, at great risk to himself, let us also go, that we may die with him, Thomas said.
Some time later, at a house in the heart of hostile Jerusalem, the disciples had what would be their last supper with Jesus. He told them many things that night about himself and about them and about how he believed in them. At one point he described a place with many rooms, a place where he would soon be going and where he would one day take them, and then he said they knew the way to that place. But Thomas couldn’t follow Jesus’ words, and he blurted out, Jesus, what are you saying? We don’t know where you’re going! How could we know the way? Thomas, you’re looking right at it – don’t you see? replied Jesus. I am the Way…
But the way had led to a cross, and now Jesus was dead. For two days and two nights Thomas and the others who had followed Jesus this far sat stunned inside the house, doors locked and curtains drawn against their fear of following him to their own deaths.
Perhaps they needed supplies – water, bread, oil for a lamp. Perhaps they needed to send word to other followers hiding in other homes. Perhaps he just needed to breathe air not so heavy with grief. We don’t know why Thomas left, or when exactly. We don’t know if he was there when Peter and John rushed back with astonishing news of an empty tomb, or when Mary Magdalene rushed back to tell them she had seen Jesus alive.
We do know that while Thomas was gone, Jesus came and stood among the disciples and said, “Peace be with you.” He showed them his hands and his side, and said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” And then he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” In nearly every account of Jesus appearing to his followers after his resurrection, they do not recognize him. Mary Magdalene thought he was the gardener. Two disciples on the road to Emmaus thought he was simply another traveler. In Luke’s version of his appearing in a room full of disciples, they think he is a ghost. Jesus was dead – there was no doubt about that.
Matter matters – why else would God have created it and called it good, why else would God have become flesh and dwelled among us? Matter matters, and so it was that belief in the resurrection began not at the door of an empty tomb but rather in personal encounters with the Risen Jesus. Many scholars agree that these were the first stories told about the resurrection – angels and rolled away stones and neatly folded linens would be written about later. Belief began in the presence of Jesus when they saw his wounds, heard his words, felt his breath move across their chaos and create in them a new life.
Thomas, then, isn’t so unusual in his doubting, in his desire to see and touch what he wants to believe, but what he can’t believe. And it isn’t so unusual for Jesus to grant him his desire. Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe. In that gracious offer, Thomas suddenly sees beyond what his eyes could ever comprehend and utters the most complete and powerful confession in John’s gospel, My Lord and my God!
John tells us that Jesus looked at Thomas and said, Have you believed because you have seen? And then his next words, if they were also spoken to Thomas, sound like a gentle reprimand, Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe. Consider, though, that in none of the resurrection appearance stories does Jesus admonish doubt – instead, he commissions those who can hardly believe what they are seeing and hearing to go out and help others to see that life is possible, love is unconditional, grace is abundant, and forgiveness is free. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe, Jesus says, bringing Thomas into the mission begun a week earlier when the air heavy with darkness and grief had become all light and Spirit-filled. Blessed are those who have not seen…Thomas, let them see me in you…
Thomas and all the rest would be the first to tell the story to those who had not seen Jesus, not the way they had, anyway, when they were accompanying Jesus on dusty roads, through crowded towns, across raging waters, in a house in Jerusalem. But matter matters – the people would see Jesus in the signs and wonders performed by the disciples, they would hear Jesus in the disciples’ preaching and teaching, they would touch Jesus in the disciples’ outstretched hands. And some would come to believe, and then they would tell the story….so that still others would come to believe, and then they would tell the story….until one day, someone told the story to us.
We are among those blessed by Jesus that day, we who have not seen and yet have come to believe. We are among those who have received the Holy Spirit in baptism and are commissioned to proclaim the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is more than a pretty story, more than something to believe in or not. Resurrection is a way of life, of living. Resurrection is about being transformed from people who just live until we die into people who live because Jesus lives.
And so it is not only our telling of the story, but our living of it that bears witness. Indeed, many of us came to believe not just because someone told us about Jesus but because someone was Christlike to us. The Reverend Mary Morrison writes, “Whenever we practice forgiveness, whenever we overcome the power of death in its many forms – hatred, violence, indifference – the spirit of Christ is alive and well in believers and resurrection life is expressed again in this time and place. We can’t ‘prove’ the resurrection, but we can be fingers pointing to it whenever we are signs that the life of Christ has not been extinguished, but is enfleshed in us and in every Christian community.”
Matter still matters – how well we know this in a church where water is poured across our brow, the sweet smell of oil anoints us, we chew and sip bread and wine, we embrace one another in peace. Week after week we encounter Jesus through what we see, hear, taste, touch and smell. The risen Body of Christ is here – right here, in us and through us, and we are called to be his Body out there. “Christ has no body now but ours,” wrote St. Teresa of Avila. “Christ has no body now but ours; no hands, no feet on earth but ours. Ours are the eyes through which he looks compassion on this world. Ours are the feet with which he goes about doing good. Ours are the hands with which he blesses people.”
The story of Thomas encourages us to engage our life in Christ using all our senses. It is far more than a story about doubt – instead, it is a story about following, about becoming, about being a witness to what we have seen and to what we have not seen but still believe. It is a story about how the Resurrection of Jesus Christ works within us who, like Thomas, are sometimes brave and sometimes very much afraid, sometimes open to mystery and sometimes demanding evidence, sometimes believing and sometimes doubting, sometimes seeing things we can’t believe and sometimes believing what we cannot see. It is a story about being blessed because we are matter and because we do matter.
Let us pray together the collect for today. Almighty and everlasting God, who in the Paschal mystery established the new covenant of reconciliation: Grant that all who have been reborn into the fellowship of Christ’s Body may show forth in their lives what they profess by their faith; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Isn’t it interesting how very young children so adamantly believe what they see, and that they also see more than we adults can believe. I remember studying in a child psychology class the principles of object permanence and conservation, how matter really matters to young children. If you show a stuffed animal to a young child, and then hide the animal behind a piece of paper, she won’t look for it – when she cannot see it, for her it does not exist. And if you show a child two identical glasses filled with the same amount of water, and then pour all the water from one glass into a glass that is taller and skinnier, he will tell you that the tall, skinny glass has more water in it – when he sees it, for him the difference in water level means a difference in amount. Matter really matters – children believe what they see, hear, taste, touch and smell.
And yet…also for very young children, stuffed animals talk, imaginary friends play, tricycles travel at lightspeed through outer space, and delicious casseroles are made out of leaves and pebbles and sand and water. Matter really matters, but there is much more to matter than meets the eye.
As we grow older, though, these relationships between seeing and believing become somehow reversed. We eventually learn that a stuffed animal behind a piece of paper does in fact still exist, but it no longer talks to us. We know that different sizes and shapes of containers will displace the same amount of water differently, but none of them will make a casserole if you add leaves and pebbles and sand. Matter still matters, but we find ourselves somewhere between no longer believing everything we see, hear, taste, touch and smell and yet demanding this very sort of evidence in order to believe.
Jesus was dead – there was no doubt about that. Thomas had seen the awful cross and heard the last gasping breaths as he felt hot tears roll down his own face. Not so very long before, they had all been with Jesus when they received word that their dear friend Lazarus was ill. Jesus wanted to go to him. It’s too dangerous, the disciples insisted. It’s too near Jerusalem – the last time you were there you were nearly killed! We won’t let you go. When Jesus silenced them with the news that Lazarus was already dead, it was for once not Peter who spoke up, but Thomas, sullen but determined to keep following. If Jesus is going, at great risk to himself, let us also go, that we may die with him, Thomas said.
Some time later, at a house in the heart of hostile Jerusalem, the disciples had what would be their last supper with Jesus. He told them many things that night about himself and about them and about how he believed in them. At one point he described a place with many rooms, a place where he would soon be going and where he would one day take them, and then he said they knew the way to that place. But Thomas couldn’t follow Jesus’ words, and he blurted out, Jesus, what are you saying? We don’t know where you’re going! How could we know the way? Thomas, you’re looking right at it – don’t you see? replied Jesus. I am the Way…
But the way had led to a cross, and now Jesus was dead. For two days and two nights Thomas and the others who had followed Jesus this far sat stunned inside the house, doors locked and curtains drawn against their fear of following him to their own deaths.
Perhaps they needed supplies – water, bread, oil for a lamp. Perhaps they needed to send word to other followers hiding in other homes. Perhaps he just needed to breathe air not so heavy with grief. We don’t know why Thomas left, or when exactly. We don’t know if he was there when Peter and John rushed back with astonishing news of an empty tomb, or when Mary Magdalene rushed back to tell them she had seen Jesus alive.
We do know that while Thomas was gone, Jesus came and stood among the disciples and said, “Peace be with you.” He showed them his hands and his side, and said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” And then he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” In nearly every account of Jesus appearing to his followers after his resurrection, they do not recognize him. Mary Magdalene thought he was the gardener. Two disciples on the road to Emmaus thought he was simply another traveler. In Luke’s version of his appearing in a room full of disciples, they think he is a ghost. Jesus was dead – there was no doubt about that.
Matter matters – why else would God have created it and called it good, why else would God have become flesh and dwelled among us? Matter matters, and so it was that belief in the resurrection began not at the door of an empty tomb but rather in personal encounters with the Risen Jesus. Many scholars agree that these were the first stories told about the resurrection – angels and rolled away stones and neatly folded linens would be written about later. Belief began in the presence of Jesus when they saw his wounds, heard his words, felt his breath move across their chaos and create in them a new life.
Thomas, then, isn’t so unusual in his doubting, in his desire to see and touch what he wants to believe, but what he can’t believe. And it isn’t so unusual for Jesus to grant him his desire. Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe. In that gracious offer, Thomas suddenly sees beyond what his eyes could ever comprehend and utters the most complete and powerful confession in John’s gospel, My Lord and my God!
John tells us that Jesus looked at Thomas and said, Have you believed because you have seen? And then his next words, if they were also spoken to Thomas, sound like a gentle reprimand, Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe. Consider, though, that in none of the resurrection appearance stories does Jesus admonish doubt – instead, he commissions those who can hardly believe what they are seeing and hearing to go out and help others to see that life is possible, love is unconditional, grace is abundant, and forgiveness is free. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe, Jesus says, bringing Thomas into the mission begun a week earlier when the air heavy with darkness and grief had become all light and Spirit-filled. Blessed are those who have not seen…Thomas, let them see me in you…
Thomas and all the rest would be the first to tell the story to those who had not seen Jesus, not the way they had, anyway, when they were accompanying Jesus on dusty roads, through crowded towns, across raging waters, in a house in Jerusalem. But matter matters – the people would see Jesus in the signs and wonders performed by the disciples, they would hear Jesus in the disciples’ preaching and teaching, they would touch Jesus in the disciples’ outstretched hands. And some would come to believe, and then they would tell the story….so that still others would come to believe, and then they would tell the story….until one day, someone told the story to us.
We are among those blessed by Jesus that day, we who have not seen and yet have come to believe. We are among those who have received the Holy Spirit in baptism and are commissioned to proclaim the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is more than a pretty story, more than something to believe in or not. Resurrection is a way of life, of living. Resurrection is about being transformed from people who just live until we die into people who live because Jesus lives.
And so it is not only our telling of the story, but our living of it that bears witness. Indeed, many of us came to believe not just because someone told us about Jesus but because someone was Christlike to us. The Reverend Mary Morrison writes, “Whenever we practice forgiveness, whenever we overcome the power of death in its many forms – hatred, violence, indifference – the spirit of Christ is alive and well in believers and resurrection life is expressed again in this time and place. We can’t ‘prove’ the resurrection, but we can be fingers pointing to it whenever we are signs that the life of Christ has not been extinguished, but is enfleshed in us and in every Christian community.”
Matter still matters – how well we know this in a church where water is poured across our brow, the sweet smell of oil anoints us, we chew and sip bread and wine, we embrace one another in peace. Week after week we encounter Jesus through what we see, hear, taste, touch and smell. The risen Body of Christ is here – right here, in us and through us, and we are called to be his Body out there. “Christ has no body now but ours,” wrote St. Teresa of Avila. “Christ has no body now but ours; no hands, no feet on earth but ours. Ours are the eyes through which he looks compassion on this world. Ours are the feet with which he goes about doing good. Ours are the hands with which he blesses people.”
The story of Thomas encourages us to engage our life in Christ using all our senses. It is far more than a story about doubt – instead, it is a story about following, about becoming, about being a witness to what we have seen and to what we have not seen but still believe. It is a story about how the Resurrection of Jesus Christ works within us who, like Thomas, are sometimes brave and sometimes very much afraid, sometimes open to mystery and sometimes demanding evidence, sometimes believing and sometimes doubting, sometimes seeing things we can’t believe and sometimes believing what we cannot see. It is a story about being blessed because we are matter and because we do matter.
Let us pray together the collect for today. Almighty and everlasting God, who in the Paschal mystery established the new covenant of reconciliation: Grant that all who have been reborn into the fellowship of Christ’s Body may show forth in their lives what they profess by their faith; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Sunday, April 08, 2007
Easter Day C
Episcopal Church of the Advent, Sumner
Acts 10:34-43; Psalm 118:14-17, 22-24; Colossians 3:1-4; Luke 24:1-10
Legend has it that, not so very long ago, a certain Mississippi Delta priest stepped into the pulpit on Easter morning, looked out at the congregation and preached one of the most powerful Easter sermons ever heard, although it was only five words long. “It’s true,” the priest said with conviction. “It’s all true. Amen.”
I wonder if Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James and the other women began with those same words when they arrived breathless at the place where the rest of the disciples were hiding in fear and doubt and grief. It’s true; it’s all true! Everything Jesus told us – it’s all true! We went to the tomb to anoint him in his death, but he is alive. He is not there, but has risen! It’s true; it’s all true!
I wonder if Peter began with those same words when he proclaimed the good news to the gentiles. It’s true; it’s all true! Everything you have been told about Jesus – it’s all true! We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear...It’s true; it’s all true!
I wonder how Peter felt when the gentiles to whom he preached – a Roman centurion and his family – believed and were baptized immediately, whereas Peter and the rest of the disciples had not believed the women’s story of angels and empty tombs. In the verse just following our gospel reading this morning, Luke tells us that the women’s words seemed to the disciples to be nothing but an idle tale – it couldn’t be true. None of it could be true.
Angels and empty tombs, life after death – they had seen Jesus do extraordinary things, but this they could not believe. Resurrection was no more a category in their minds than was hope in their hearts. They had seen Jesus die, and with him everything in which they had dared to believe about the power of God to save.
There is really nothing new about contemporary challenges to the truth of the empty tomb – the disciples themselves were the first to doubt, to question, to find it hard to believe. The book of Acts contains numerous accounts of those who considered it an idle tale, such as one Roman governor who noted that even the Jews had certain points of disagreement about a certain Jesus, who had died, but whom Paul asserted to be alive. History is full of women and men who claimed that none of it could be true. An empty tomb proves nothing; as one historian pointed out, it is simply “Public evidence for a mystery.”
In the opening verses of his gospel account, Luke tells his readers that it will be an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. It’s true; it’s all true…And so Luke would have us understand, in an orderly way, how events took place on that first Easter morning. The women go to the tomb, find the stone rolled away and the body missing, and are told by angels that Jesus has risen. They go back and tell all this to the disciples, who do not believe them. Peter – whether hoping the women are right or wanting to prove they are wrong, we do not know – goes to the tomb and discovers that, indeed, the linens are there but Jesus is not. Then he went home, Luke writes, amazed at what had happened.
An orderly account of truth? Public evidence for a mystery? Either way, Luke knew that an empty tomb by itself cannot compel faith – in fact, it is just as likely to confound it, for tombs can be emptied in many ways. And so Luke’s story continues with appearances by the risen Jesus to those who had followed and loved him, beginning that same day with two weary disciples on the road to Emmaus. They did not recognize Jesus until he sat at dinner with them, took bread, blessed, and broke it. Soon after, he appeared to a room full of disciples who also did not recognize Jesus until he invited them to touch him, and he ate with them, and reminded them of words he had spoken to them before he had died.
It is an orderly account, as Luke claimed it would be. But many scholars agree that the first stories of resurrection that were told, before any were ever written down, were not stories of an empty tomb but, rather, stories of Jesus appearing to his followers, personal encounters with Jesus. In these encounters, belief in the power of God to save was resurrected, given new life. You are witnesses of all these things, Jesus told them, and according to Peter, Jesus commanded them to preach to the people and to testify that he was the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead – and so they told the story. It’s true; it’s all true! Everything that Jesus told us – it’s all true!
Some people said it was an idle tale. But some people, like the Roman centurion to whom Peter preached, believed. And so they told the story. Some people said it was an idle tale. But others believed, and so they told the story…until one day, someone who did not think it an idle tale told us.
On this Easter morning, we are the ones who are witnesses. The tomb is empty. We are the ones commanded to preach. What shall we say? Resurrection is more than a historical event, a publicly evidenced mystery. It is more than a pretty story, more than just something to believe in or not. Resurrection is a way of life, of living. Resurrection is about being transformed from people who just live until we die into people who live because Jesus lives.
And so it is not only our telling of the story, but our living of it that bears witness. Indeed, many of us came to believe not just because someone told us about Jesus but because someone was Christlike to us. St. Francis once wrote, “Preach the gospel at all times – if necessary, use words.” Are we limited to talking about what Jesus did, or can we show what Jesus is doing here and now? Can we speak of the risen Christ in the world, the church, our communities, our lives? Do we, as we state in our baptismal vows, proclaim by word and example the good news of God in Christ?
Let us tell the story, not only with our lips but in our lives. Some people will say it is an idle tale. But others will believe…and so they will tell the story…Let us be encouraged by the first believers, who together with the latest and with everyone in between, struggled deeply and daily with doubt and faith, despair and hope, grief and joy, guilt and forgiveness, loathing and love. Let us believe the first believers and stand on the shoulders of other believers across time and space, who have believed and lived and taught that God raised Jesus from the dead. Let us join their Easter chorus, saying, Alleluia, Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed, alleluia. It’s true; it’s all true! Amen.
Acts 10:34-43; Psalm 118:14-17, 22-24; Colossians 3:1-4; Luke 24:1-10
Legend has it that, not so very long ago, a certain Mississippi Delta priest stepped into the pulpit on Easter morning, looked out at the congregation and preached one of the most powerful Easter sermons ever heard, although it was only five words long. “It’s true,” the priest said with conviction. “It’s all true. Amen.”
I wonder if Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James and the other women began with those same words when they arrived breathless at the place where the rest of the disciples were hiding in fear and doubt and grief. It’s true; it’s all true! Everything Jesus told us – it’s all true! We went to the tomb to anoint him in his death, but he is alive. He is not there, but has risen! It’s true; it’s all true!
I wonder if Peter began with those same words when he proclaimed the good news to the gentiles. It’s true; it’s all true! Everything you have been told about Jesus – it’s all true! We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear...It’s true; it’s all true!
I wonder how Peter felt when the gentiles to whom he preached – a Roman centurion and his family – believed and were baptized immediately, whereas Peter and the rest of the disciples had not believed the women’s story of angels and empty tombs. In the verse just following our gospel reading this morning, Luke tells us that the women’s words seemed to the disciples to be nothing but an idle tale – it couldn’t be true. None of it could be true.
Angels and empty tombs, life after death – they had seen Jesus do extraordinary things, but this they could not believe. Resurrection was no more a category in their minds than was hope in their hearts. They had seen Jesus die, and with him everything in which they had dared to believe about the power of God to save.
There is really nothing new about contemporary challenges to the truth of the empty tomb – the disciples themselves were the first to doubt, to question, to find it hard to believe. The book of Acts contains numerous accounts of those who considered it an idle tale, such as one Roman governor who noted that even the Jews had certain points of disagreement about a certain Jesus, who had died, but whom Paul asserted to be alive. History is full of women and men who claimed that none of it could be true. An empty tomb proves nothing; as one historian pointed out, it is simply “Public evidence for a mystery.”
In the opening verses of his gospel account, Luke tells his readers that it will be an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. It’s true; it’s all true…And so Luke would have us understand, in an orderly way, how events took place on that first Easter morning. The women go to the tomb, find the stone rolled away and the body missing, and are told by angels that Jesus has risen. They go back and tell all this to the disciples, who do not believe them. Peter – whether hoping the women are right or wanting to prove they are wrong, we do not know – goes to the tomb and discovers that, indeed, the linens are there but Jesus is not. Then he went home, Luke writes, amazed at what had happened.
An orderly account of truth? Public evidence for a mystery? Either way, Luke knew that an empty tomb by itself cannot compel faith – in fact, it is just as likely to confound it, for tombs can be emptied in many ways. And so Luke’s story continues with appearances by the risen Jesus to those who had followed and loved him, beginning that same day with two weary disciples on the road to Emmaus. They did not recognize Jesus until he sat at dinner with them, took bread, blessed, and broke it. Soon after, he appeared to a room full of disciples who also did not recognize Jesus until he invited them to touch him, and he ate with them, and reminded them of words he had spoken to them before he had died.
It is an orderly account, as Luke claimed it would be. But many scholars agree that the first stories of resurrection that were told, before any were ever written down, were not stories of an empty tomb but, rather, stories of Jesus appearing to his followers, personal encounters with Jesus. In these encounters, belief in the power of God to save was resurrected, given new life. You are witnesses of all these things, Jesus told them, and according to Peter, Jesus commanded them to preach to the people and to testify that he was the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead – and so they told the story. It’s true; it’s all true! Everything that Jesus told us – it’s all true!
Some people said it was an idle tale. But some people, like the Roman centurion to whom Peter preached, believed. And so they told the story. Some people said it was an idle tale. But others believed, and so they told the story…until one day, someone who did not think it an idle tale told us.
On this Easter morning, we are the ones who are witnesses. The tomb is empty. We are the ones commanded to preach. What shall we say? Resurrection is more than a historical event, a publicly evidenced mystery. It is more than a pretty story, more than just something to believe in or not. Resurrection is a way of life, of living. Resurrection is about being transformed from people who just live until we die into people who live because Jesus lives.
And so it is not only our telling of the story, but our living of it that bears witness. Indeed, many of us came to believe not just because someone told us about Jesus but because someone was Christlike to us. St. Francis once wrote, “Preach the gospel at all times – if necessary, use words.” Are we limited to talking about what Jesus did, or can we show what Jesus is doing here and now? Can we speak of the risen Christ in the world, the church, our communities, our lives? Do we, as we state in our baptismal vows, proclaim by word and example the good news of God in Christ?
Let us tell the story, not only with our lips but in our lives. Some people will say it is an idle tale. But others will believe…and so they will tell the story…Let us be encouraged by the first believers, who together with the latest and with everyone in between, struggled deeply and daily with doubt and faith, despair and hope, grief and joy, guilt and forgiveness, loathing and love. Let us believe the first believers and stand on the shoulders of other believers across time and space, who have believed and lived and taught that God raised Jesus from the dead. Let us join their Easter chorus, saying, Alleluia, Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed, alleluia. It’s true; it’s all true! Amen.
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