Easter 2 2008 - The Rev. Cricket Park, St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Mishawaka, IN and St. Alban's Episcopal Church, Indianapolis, IN (delivered by The Rev. Walter Sherman)
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Easter 2008—The Rev. Stephen Smith
St. Patrick’s Episcopal Church, Dublin, Ohio
I know a man who suffered through a series of unfortunate events in rather quick succession. He lost a very close relative, unexpectedly. He was diagnosed with cancer. And while undergoing treatment had to file for bankruptcy because his business failed; all in the span of a few months.
Six months after that his life had not improved much. He was still grieving. He lost all his hair to chemotherapy, and was unemployed. It was Easter, and on that day he said to me, “Father, I believe in the resurrection, but I’m jealous that Jesus only had to spend three days in the tomb. Sometimes we spend a lot longer.”
He, of course, was referring to how bad his life was—it was lifeless, filled with grief, loss, illness and no small amount of bitterness. His feelings were appropriate to the circumstances. Yet, he did have hope. He said he believed in the resurrection. What I took from that, and form my later conversations with him, was that he really trusted that with God’s help his life would turn around and get better; and his life did improve dramatically over the next couple of years.. He was just aggravated with how long it was taking.
When life is at its worst, we do spend a long time in the tomb. Grief over losing those closest to us can take years. Recovery from major illness or surgery is fraught with perils both physical and emotional that hang on for months. The hurts and abuse we absorb from others can fill us with bitterness, and lasting damage that never seems to go away. These are times we feel as if we are in the tomb, as if we are in the limbo of devastation and still cut off from any sense of newness of life. It is just the way things are sometimes. And we need to pay attention and give these hard parts of life their due. But it can last so long that we, like my friend, become jealous of Jesus who only spent three days in the tomb.
Given this reality it surprises me also to know that the tomb can become a very comfortable place. I know this from my own experience, and that of others. The patterns of grief and loss can become the patterns of depressive thinking. And we can get stuck, like Eeyore, in a negative view of life, the world, and everything around us. Sometimes we can wear our sadness like an old cloak around our shoulders. It may be heavy and uncomfortable, but it’s easy and familiar and so we stay with what we know, and refuse all the efforts of those around us to offer help.
Being a person who has survived cancer, I have sat in support groups and heard the advice, over and over again, that survivors should view themselves as people who happen to have had cancer, not as the cancer itself. But I have also watched as many have been absorbed by the disease, its treatment, and all the physical and emotional stresses that come with it. And there were times when that was a temptation for me, as well. Sometimes, it just seems easier to hide away and stay there.
And the bitterness and resentment we feel at life’s disappointments, failures, and abuse; well we can stay with those for a long time. I know a woman who died of bitterness. Some one she loved was terribly abused and she could never find any healing or reconciliation over it; even though the person who was abused did find a way to go on and live a joyful life. This woman could not. And her anger and bitterness ate away at her until she died well before what should have been her time.
In my personal experience, I have found that it takes work to keep bitterness and anger alive. When I have felt wronged or abused, I too have been filled with bitterness and anger. But I have also reached a point were those feelings didn’t do anything for me anymore. In fact, I got bored with my own hurt and resentment, and let it go. People who carry bitterness and anger for years actually have to work through that stage of boredom just to keep it alive. It takes work, lots of work, if we want to stay in our tombs made of resentment.
It reminds me of the story of the raising of Lazarus in the book, Lamb, which Cricket quoted in her sermon a coupe of weeks ago. Lamb is a fictionalized story of Jesus’ life as if it were being told by a childhood friend. Sometimes sacrilegious, and often humorous, Lamb is surprisingly close in tone and meaning to the Gospels themselves. In the story of the raising of Lazarus, Jesus calls for Lazarus to come out of the tomb and his friend says, “No.”
Sometimes, that’s what we do. Jesus calls us out of our self-imposed tombs, and we say, “No.”
But the message of the resurrection is that the tomb is empty. The tomb could not hold Jesus, and it cannot hold us. Death is not the last word about Jesus, and God has promised that it will not be the last word about us, either. In fact, even the places and times in this life that feel lifeless and dead are, at their worst, only temporary. God has promised us new life, and so Jesus calls us out of our tomb.
Sometimes, however, we say, no. And when we stay in those places that feel dead and lifeless, because its easier, or more comfortable, or less work just to stay there. And so we miss the gifts they can give us. That’s right—I said gifts.
Times of mourning and grief can give us the gift of celebration—celebrating the life of the one we have lost, and finding joy in having known them at all. Times of illness can give us the gift of gratitude, a sense of thankfulness for life itself. And times of failure or deep hurt can give us the gift of compassion—not only for others, but for ourselves (no doubt the person we are least likely to be compassionate with).
At least one of the messages of Easter is that the tomb is empty. It cannot hold Jesus. Death is not the last word about the Christ, or about us. The tomb is not our permanent residence. We my come out of it with marks of the harshness of life just as Jesus did, but we can come out. And so, Jesus calls us out of those places in our own lives that make us feel dead and lifeless and says, “Come out. Come out of your tomb and come to life.”
All we need to do is say, “Yes.”
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Good Friday 2008--The Rev. Cricket Park
St. Patrick’s, Dublin, Ohio
It’s dangerous to read poetry. Poetry messes with you. It doesn’t stay hidden. It creeps into your soul and lurks there, ready to surprise you when you least expect it.
Good Friday is a night for poetry. It is the poet’s art to try to make sense of this insanity. A man is dead. His followers are scattered. All seems lost. Community appears destroyed. Hope may as well be abandoned.
Abandon hope all ye who enter here.
That famous sign above the gateway to the Inferno says it all. Dante captured in one sentence all the emotions Good Friday conveys. It was no mistake that the character Dante and his companion and guide Virgil enter the gates of Upper Hell at 7 pm on Good Friday. At this hour, I’m sure the disciples felt they had been abandoned. At this hour, I’m sure Jesus knew he had been abandoned. At this hour, my heart is heavy. Community abandoned is the overarching theme of the first book of Dante’s Divine Comedy.
Of course, we know that Purgatory and Paradise are in the character Dante’s future. It is in these places where we come to understand community restored and community realized. That’s not to say that the traveling is always easy or that there is no purgation to be endured and refinements to be considered. Knowing one is saved doesn’t negate the consequences of our earthly choices. We all must journey through Good Friday to get to Easter.
The devise Dante the author used to describe this journey is made up of concentric circles. I let my mind wander a bit about these circles. Surely, I thought, there is an application to my own life here, an application that connects me to the Gospel. And, of course there is. The connection came in Jesus’ discourse with his disciples when they gathered in the upper room, when he said “I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends.”
Circles of friends. That is where Dante and the Gospel and my life all intersect. I have many, many circles of friends. I suspect that you do too. Much like the circles of the inferno, the cornices of purgatory, or the orbiting planets of paradise, my friendships range from a plethora of superficial necessities to the intimacy and trust shared by only a few. It’s funny that they all share the term ‘friendship’ when the circles are so varied.
I don’t see these ‘circles’ as a mountain to circumnavigate or as the type that emanate from a central point like something dropped into a pond of water. Rather, I experience them as a person whose hope and desire is to create space where community might flourish. The circles are permeable – there are no fences. People move in and out of them depending on the circumstances of our meeting. I have always believed (yes, sometimes to my detriment) that I should treat others as friends and not simply acquaintances or business colleagues. I treat people better – I more easily seek to serve Christ in them – if I call them friends.
Having worked nationally as a meeting planner and within church circles, I am happy to say I have friends everywhere. Admission to my friendship circles isn’t difficult. A willingness to treat me with respect, to enjoy this amazing life we’ve been given to share with each other, and the capacity to laugh and have fun is all one needs. For the most part, friendships for me are easily made and long-lived.
However, there is one circle – the one that abides close to my heart – that I choose to protect. Only a handful of people enter that circle. In this holy place, I share my most secret self with my most trusted friends. In it, they are invited, but not required, to share their most secret selves with me. It is a place of great intimacy and vulnerability. Therefore it can be a place of great danger. For when one exposes one’s heart, one chooses to risk losing everything.
Jesus knew that. That handful of people gathered in that upper room were the ones he’d called, healed, included, trusted, and loved beyond measure. It was from that inner circle that his betrayer came. You see, when we open up the inner circle of our hearts we not only invite people into intimate relationship with us, but we expose ourselves to the possibilities of betrayal, physical or psychological damage, and sometimes, death itself.
I do not have the capacity in my heart to open myself to everyone in that way. Experience and prior betrayals have taught me to keep my heart and my Self protected. Damage control is of utmost importance.
To be totally self-giving, totally self-sacrificing, is beyond my capability. Even if I had the capability, I confess that I lack the desire. I choose to close the door of my inmost self to all but a sacred, beloved few because the risk to my own being is just too great for me to bear.
Ah…then comes poetic insight. The cross of Jesus is the key to God’s inmost heart. Through his death, Jesus opens for all of us the door to the inner most circle of God’s love. Because of Jesus’ willingness to be vulnerable, because of his willingness to endure shame and death, because of his constant and self-giving love, we are counted among the beloved of God. God’s circle envelopes the whole of creation. We can rest in Christ’s arms, confident in his love, assured that his love for us is eternal. Even death cannot take this intimate reality from us.
Oh my friends, it is dangerous to read poetry. When you allow it into your Self, the poet’s art creeps into your soul and lurks there, ready to surprise you when you least expect it. But, if you let it in, let it become a part of you, what insights into the heart of God may come.
Thanks be to God.
The Rev. C. B. Park
Assistant Rector
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Epiphany 2008
The Rev. Stephen Smith, St. Patrick’s, Dublin
With 2000 years of history behind us, we easily forget that Christianity hit the first century world as a new revelation, a new idea, an Epiphany. True it rooted itself in historic Judaism, but it went far beyond that tradition. Judaism always had a sense of God being revealed in history, witness the Exodus from Egypt as an historical event with God’s imprint all over it. The Hebrew people also saw God in the stuff of life, in the rainbow as a symbol of God’s covenant with all humanity. And even human beings could represent the presence of God, as we see with Abraham’s three visitors at the oaks of Mamre, or the words of the Lord spoken through the prophets.
To claim one person, however, as the fullest embodiment of the presence of God in human form, within human history was unheard of. Yet Christianity said Jesus of Nazareth revealed the fullness of God, and in fact was one with God. This represented a new idea; unheard of; bordering on heresy and sometimes called blasphemy.
Even more, Christianity united Jews and non-Jews in the worship of the one God as revealed in Jesus Christ. In the first century only a minority within Judaism claimed that eventually Jews and Gentiles would unite in the worship of the one true God. And the vast majority within the Roman world wanted nothing to do with this strange sect of the Hebrews who kept to themselves and followed bizarre rituals around food. Yet, Christianity dared to bring both together. It was a new idea. It was an Epiphany.
So Matthew attempts to dramatize in the account of the wise men visiting the manger. Jew and Gentile are brought together to pay homage to the one God, as revealed in Jesus of Nazareth.
There would be additional epiphanies, new revelations. Within 200 years the early Church would decide on the 27 books that would be considered the new sacred word of God for all time, what we now call our New Testament. By the fifth century, the doctrine of the Trinity would reach its final form as a new revelation to explain how Jesus of Nazareth and the God of all creation, along with the Holy Spirit, could all be one with each other.
But there the canon closes. There are no new revelations, no more epiphanies. From that point on, everything is simply interpretation of all that has gone before.
And oh how we have interpreted. It led to continuous fractures within Christianity, and beyond. In the 7th century the Muslims arose with a new interpretation that claimed even to be an epiphany, a new revelation. But we said no, there are no more new revelations. The canon is closed. And so Islam separated itself from Christianity and Judaism. The Greek Christians broke with Rome over interpretation in the 11th century. The Protestant Reformation came in the 16th century, which in turn fragmented us into even more and various versions of the faith, all over fights about interpretation. In the 19th century, the Mormons, the Ba’hai and the Sikhs all claimed new interpretations at the level of new revelation. Again we said no, there are no new revelations, and so these groups split away from the other monotheistic religions of the world. And all these splits, all these interpretations and even claims of new revelation, came mixed with violence, persecution and sometimes war.
When we are sure we have the ultimate revelation (the ultimate truth), and only interpretation remains, then we tend to claim we have the right or orthodox interpretation, and by implication anyone who disagrees with us is wrong. Philip Pullman, the author of the Golden Compass, claims that monotheistic religions, by the very nature of their claim for ultimate truth, promote violence against all who disagree with them. Unfortunately, if you look at some of our history, he makes a valid point. We in the monotheistic religions have been so sure of ourselves that we lapse easily into self-righteousness and arrogance. We have been so ready to reject anything different or new, that at times we have been prone to reject the people who proclaim new ideas through persecution, violence, and even death.
The United Church of Christ here in the United States has come up with a slogan, a catch phrase, if you will that may help us look beyond this tendency to self-righteously justified violence and rejection. That may seem strange that a slogan would have such an effect. But words have power, both to hurt, and to heal.
The UCC’s phrase is simply, “God is still speaking.”
The canon of scripture may be closed. There will be no additions to the New Testament. The canon of doctrine may be closed. Christians are unwilling to say anything definitive about God beyond the Trinity. But even if we agree that these issues are closed to discussion (at least for us Christians), it does not mean God is through with us, or that God has stopped speaking to us.
We as a people must be open to new revelation, to new epiphanies.
If the Hebrew people had not been open to new Epiphanies, new revelations after the Exodus, then they would have been stuck with the idea that God sanctioned the killing of all people who were not Jewish. Because that is exactly what the Chosen People believed when they entered the Promised Land. They interpreted God’s directives as the justification for the Genocide of the Canaanites. And if you don’t believe me, read the book of Joshua some time.
Without new Epiphanies, new revelations, we would not have embraced Jesus as the Messiah, or as the full embodiment in human form, of the presence of God on earth.
Without new revelations, new Epiphanies, we would not have translated the Bible into the languages of the world, but rather left it is original Greek and Hebrew, or perhaps the later Latin so prized by the Church of the Middle Ages.
Without new revelations, new Epiphanies, we would have continued the Crusades as a war against anyone who disagreed with us, and justified mass slaughter in God’s name.
And it is only with the last decade’s peace accords in Ireland that we have finally said that Protestant Christians and Catholic Christians killing each other in God’s name is simply no longer acceptable.
But still there is violence among and between those who claim they have ultimate truth. Still there is killing in God’s names: between Jews and Muslims in Israel and the West Bank; between Christians and Muslims in Sudan; between Sikhs, Muslims and Hindus in India and Pakistan. Among Muslims as Sunni and Shi’a kill each other.
I believe that as long as we are still willing to kill each other in God’s name then we have not attained ultimate truth, we have failed in our interpretation, and we must be open to the idea that not only is God not finished with us yet, but “God is still speaking.”
So long ago, Matthew described the Epiphany as wise men from other nations, other traditions, seeing the incredible gift of God that Jesus was. Nowhere does it say that the wise men became Jews or even Christian themselves. Rather, they returned to their home countries, and presumably, their home religions.
The Epiphany is thus, a story about the world, with all its differences, rejoicing in the new thing that God is doing. Until all of us, all over the globe, can rejoice together in what God is doing among us then we have fallen short of the full meaning of the Epiphany. God still has something left to say to us. And until there is peace and a sensed of shared joy, we must hold our interpretations and our righteousness loosely and keep listening, because God is still speaking.
The Morning of Christmas
(with apologies to Clement C. Moore)
By the Rev. Cricket Park
‘Twas the morning of Christmas, and all through God’s house
Not a creature was stirring, well, maybe a mouse.
The altar guild set up for the morning with care
They’re a meticulous group, and not one has blue hair!
The assistant priest’s family nestled all snug in their beds,
“We were at church all last night. Don’t wake us!” they said.
So I grabbed my collar and walked toward the door
Stopping only to pet the dogs sprawled out on the floor.
When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter
I hurried outside to see what was the matter.
There in the yard, all covered with moss, was an angel
Who looked up and said “Help me, I’m lost.”
“That’s obvious,” I replied to my bedraggled guest.
“Why don’t you come in, sit a spell, and rest.”
“Oh, I couldn’t,” said she. “I’m in a bit of a bind.”
“I’m supposed to be announcing good news and – I’ve gotten behind.”
She brushed away something that looked like a cloud
And adjusted her wings and then wondered out loud,
“I must have taken a wrong turn over France.
The Eiffel Tower was all lit up and I chose to glance
Backward for just a minute, and when I looked ‘round
The rest of the seraphim were not to be found.”
Amused, I told her that I understood. People come and go
Quickly around here, not that they should.
We miss a lot when we’re hurried, like the lights on the tower,
Or the crisp morning air, or a carol’s gentle power.
We’ve had so much activity the past few weeks at church that
Christmas came not with a whisper – it was more like a lurch!
“Find ushers! Find acolytes! Try not to curse!
Plan liturgies! Write sermons! All choirs rehearse!
From the back of the narthex, to the top of the wall
Announce the birth of Jesus to one and to all.”
My angel guest looked at me half-bemused
“Then, I am too late,” she said. “You’ve heard the good news.”
You know about the Son of God coming to earth,
You’ve heard of his Mother, his miraculous birth.
I guess that kind of good news travels fast, travels far
With cell phones and the internet – who needs a star!”
Then she sat on the ground again and lowered her head,
“Angels really aren’t necessary, are they?” she said.
With a tear in my eye, I sat down in the moss
And offered my hand and replied “What a loss
It would be if no angels were near
To bring tidings of great joy throughout the year.
You’re the best part of the story, you help us remember
Christ is with us always, not just in December.
“We may not behold you with haloes or wings
But we all feel your presence – from shepherds to kings.
You were there that blessed night - the first indication,
raising voices in joy to God’s Incarnation.
Therefore, whenever we see Christ in each others’ eyes
You angels are with us – that’s no surprise!
So, take heart dear friend, don’t be blue.
The story of Jesus isn’t right without you.”
She spoke not a word, but stood up with a start,
And straightened her wings, put a hand to her heart.
Then, with a wink, she took to the air,
Her halo shone brightly around her gray hair.
And I heard her exclaim, as she flew out of sight
Happy Christmas to all and to all through Twelfth Night! |
Advent 3 Year A
The Rev. Stephen Smith, St. Patrick’s, Dublin, Ohio
It was a dream,
Yes, in Joseph’s day they probably put more stock in dreams as a means of communication from God than we do today. But still . . .
It was a dream. And the Angel told him to go ahead and take Mary for his wife, because the child she carried came from God.
Before the dream Joseph had resolved to put Mary away quietly. It was not simply because she was pregnant. That happened all the time in those days. A man and a woman were betrothed, and sometimes the woman became pregnant even before the official ceremony. No doubt the men in the village would laugh and wink at the father and say, “Couldn’t wait, eh?”
The same would happen among the women I am sure. But there would also be concern, worry, and fear. Would the man still go through with the wedding? He could always claim the child was not his. The men had so much more control over women in those days.
No, it was not simply because Mary was pregnant. It was because Joseph knew he was not the father. He resolved to divorce Mary quietly. But how quiet would it be in the little town of Nazareth, which maybe had a population of 600 or 700 in Jesus’ time. As soon as Mary began to show, then everyone would know.
The law was clear. She was to be stoned to death; the man, too, if they could figure out who it was.
But Joseph had a dream.
It was just a dream.
And so Joseph ignored the law and its harsh penalties. He put aside his rights as one who could have claimed he was wronged. He showed compassion to the woman to whom he was bound. And, he humbled himself to be the surrogate father of one not his own flesh and blood, and trusted that all of this was from God.
All because he had a dream.
We have heard the Christmas stories so many times that the shock value with which they hit their earliest hearers is lost on us. We clothe our children in the roles, put on wonderful pageants, sing glorious carols and easily lay aside the scandal.
For just a moment, try and grasp the thin thread on which the origins of our Gospel hang. In Luke’s version of the story it all depends on a young woman, Mary, saying yes to God’s invitation. And here in Matthew’s Gospel it all depends on Joseph setting aside his rights by law, even perhaps his dignity, and allowing himself to trust in God because of what–not a multitude of the heavenly host and angelic voices from heaven as in Luke—but a dream.
It was just a dream, and on that thin thread of hope and trust, Matthew tells us, the Gospel hangs.
Speaking of hanging by a thread, I must share with you as your rector that the fate of one of our neighboring parishes in the Columbus area is hanging by a thread. I’m speaking of St. Matthew’s, Westerville. Last month the Church had a vote about whether to stay affiliated with the Episcopal Church, or to join with a group associated with the Anglican Church of Nigeria. The vote was taken because of the conflict and controversy that has dogged the Episcopal Church in recent years.
Just over 200 people voted to align with Nigeria and leave the Episcopal Church. Just over 100 voted to continue with the Episcopal Church. A meeting was held last Sunday at which it was announced that the parish would disassociate from the Episcopal Church and join with Nigeria. Needless to say, this did not please the 100 or so who wanted to continue as Episcopalians.
So this Sunday morning, there are two different Church services taking places in Westerville at two different settings. One involves those who have left the Episcopal Church, and the other involves those who want to stay.
Until now, our Diocese has been fortunate. Since the late 1970s, we have not witnessed the conflict and schism others parts of our Church have seen over issues such as the 1979 Prayer Book Revision, Women’s Ordination, and issues of sexuality. St. Patrick’s has been fortunate. The issues of the wider Church have not become the source of conflict in our congregation. But now, it is in our backyard,
What does the future hold? Our Bishop will soon be asking us to support those who wish to stay with the Episcopal Church, to attend worship services with them to help boost their morale and their numbers and to show them we are thinking about them. To offer support and consulting where we can to help them spiritually and emotionally rebuild. And the Bishop will also ask us to pray for those who are leaving, for their grief and loss, and recovery from all that may have led them to make this decision to abandon the Episcopal Church.
Beyond these initial steps, we cannot tell what the future holds. The fate of one of sister church hangs by a thread. Some who are involved in this conflict might even say that the fate of the Gospel itself hangs by a thread.
Well it wouldn’t be the first time, and probably not the last.
And we can learn from Joseph. When it seems as if all that God is doing hinges on something as small as a dream, or something as precarious as inner-Church conflict, then we are called to trust and show compassion.
Like Joseph we trust that God has something better in store for us. I am a student of Church history, and I have found as I look back through time that every controversy of the Church has righted itself eventually. Some say that’s only because history is written by the winners. But I trust that God desires more for us than simply losers and winners.
And as Joseph did with Mary we must embrace compassion. Those with whom we disagree in any Church conflict are not the spawn of Satan, even if we feel tempted by anger or righteous indignation to treat them that way. They are our brothers and sisters in Christ. And no self-justifying interpretation of the law, whether Biblical or secular, will imbue us with compassion. It is only a heart touched by God, as Joseph’s was, that allows us access to the ability to see those with whom we disagree as fellow pilgrims.
Pray for all the people of St. Matthew’s.
And in these times of conflict, turst God. Have compassion for one another. The Messiah is coming. God will not forsake us.
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Proper 19--Year C
Watch an interactive sermon featuring St. Patrick's newest member
Agnes Day | 
Part One |
Proper 15 Year C Luke 12:49-56, August 19, 2007
The Rev. Stephen Smith, St. Patrick’s, Dublin
Today’s lessons are hard. They’re just plain hard. In the Hebrew Scriptures, both from Isaiah and the Psalm, we hear about the destruction of Israel. The people of Israel are compared to a vineyard that failed to yield good fruit and so was trampled down. It is a reminder of the implosion of the state of Israel into self-indulgence, a failure to care for the poor, and a lack of justice that led to its decline and eventual destruction by the kingdom of Assyria.
The letter to the Hebrews tells of the great people of faith from days gone by. Yet even in this lesson we read such edifying things as the story of some one being sawn in two.
And in the Gospel, Jesus tells us that his coming into the world brings with it conflict; and not just any conflict, but the kind that divides even the closest relationships of families.
It’s true. When God reaches into the very core of our being and touches us there, it does things to us. It turns our world upside down. It transforms us. It stirs our emotions. And sometimes it makes us crazy—crazy with our own certainty and self-righteousness; crazy with fear and rage toward anyone who might not agree with us or experience God in the same way we do. And so conflict is inevitable.
We only need look at our history, from the earliest days of Christianity, and we will see violence and conflict. As Graham Nash said, “So many people have died in the name of Christ that I can’t believe it all.”
In the first century, when Christianity was trying to decide if it was a sub-set of Judaism or a whole new thing, we fought. Jews and Christians became violent with one another and we have plenty of evidence of bloodshed, from Stephen to James, and many others.
In the fourth century, when Christianity became the religion of the Roman Empire, the Christian majority began to have a loathing for its pagan past. In Alexandria, a mob filled with rage and fury burned the library there and thousands of great works from antiquity were lost forever.
During the time of the crusades we seethed with rage over who controlled the Holy Land. We sent thousands of knights to battle the Muslims and so enflamed a conflict that still holds repercussions in our own day.
In the split between the Protestants reformers and the Catholic Church, we engendered conflict that turned into war by the middle of the 17th century. And that war did not fully end until peace was reached in Northern Ireland in the late 20th century.
And even today, in the Anglican Communion, we fight over matters that some think are trivial and others see as the most vital and important issues facing the Church.
Jesus told us we would have days like these. He just did not tell us there would be so many.
The author of the letter to Hebrews thought that the life, death and resurrection of Jesus had made all the difference in the universe; that all the witnesses and people of faith from his past had been waiting for and longing for his day, seeking a better country that would come only with the advent of the messiah. It did not happen. We remained imperfect human beings. We can forgive the optimism of the author of the letter to the Hebrews. It was the early days of Christianity and everyone was filled with hope for the future. They did not yet have our bloody history.
But Jesus’ life, death and resurrection did change things. It did not make us any less prone to error and conflict, but opened the possibility for us to choose God’s kingdom more and more, and to turn away from those things that impede God’s goodness and God’s kingdom from impacting this world.
So what we do see in history is that every time we sank to new lows as human beings in our violence and conflict in the name of religion, God raised up for us new witnesses, new voices of faith to get us back on track.
In the first century the saints are too numerous to mention. There was of course, Paul, and Peter, and also Stephen and James, and all the Apostles who joyfully spread the faith even in the face of conflict and sometimes martyrdom.
In the fourth century, even though the library in Alexandria burned, God raised up Augustine. He was the learned mind of the middle ages, and the study of his writings kept alive some level of learning.
At the end of the crusades, St. Francis rose up to be a voice for peace and simplicity in a time of extravagance and war. He was one of the few Christian leaders who actually sought dialogue and peace with Muslim leaders.
The wars between Protestant and Catholic may have been bloody, but we still have the witness of Luther on one side and Ignatius Loyola on the other. Both man taught us how to open ourselves up to the presence and love of God.
And in our day, we still do not know who God will raise up to get us back on track. But if our history and the letter to the Hebrews are any example, then we know God will raise up some one. The saints of tomorrow are being made today.
So, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let is press on with hope and with faith. We trust that God’s goodness will win out in the end.
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Proper 13 Year C Luke 12:13-21, August 5, 2007
The Rev. Stephen Smith, St. Patrick’s Dublin, Ohio
Today’s Gospel reminds me of that skit by George Carlin about “stuff.”
We are obsessed with stuff as a culture. We want more stuff, the latest stuff, the best stuff, and the goods stuff. And soon our houses, closets and basements are full of stuff. So we rent storage spaces to store our stuff. And then we buy bigger houses, so we can get more stuff.
What Carlin says is true, and we find it funny because we know our obsession with stuff is crazy. But we don’t like to talk about it. In fact, we don’t like to talk about either of the issues raised by today’s Gospel: our obsession with stuff, and death.
As far as stuff is concerned, we know that our overly consumerist culture is a house of cards that will one day fall apart around us if we don’t change our ways. It is simply not possible to sustain our current level and pace of consumption. But it defines us.
As the noted physicist Brian Swimme says, reality is defined not only by scientific fact, but by cultural identity. We look quaintly at age-old cultures that sat around a campfire telling stories and repeating chants in order to reinforce their cultural identity. Yet we sit around the glow of the television, watching stories and hearing over and over the chants and slogans of advertising that tell us our cultural identity over and over again. It tells us we are consumers and nothing more. As Swimme says, we need a more meaningful identity than that.
And death—reading today’s Gospel brought to mind two other items I read this week. First, I remember Friday’s article in the Dispatch about the five people known dead from that horrible bridge collapse up in Minneapolis. There was the cosmetology student on her way to class, to improve her life so she could care for her children; the nurse working to support her family; and the illegal immigrant who’s work supported not only his family here in the states but two families in Mexico.
These people were not defined in the paper by their accomplishments, or by how much stuff they had. No, they were defined by the people they left behind, by who they were giving their lives to.
The second piece of reading that struck me this week came from Jimmy Buffett’s book, A Pirate looks at Fifty. In the book, Buffett describes a near fatal pane crash he suffered in August of 1994. He is a pilot and owns a number of planes. Back in 94 he had a sea plane that he used to take fishing. He would fly over the ocean and look for where the fish were, and then radio his bodies in a boat to meet him. He’s no dummy—fish where you see fish!
Well, after fishing on this day, as he took off in his plane, one of his floats caught a bit of wake from boat, which pulled the plane down enough that the wing on that same side caught the wake as well. The speed of trying to take off, combined with the pressure on the float and wing from the wake, pulled the plane into the air and then crashed it to its side and turned it over on its back. It began to sink rapidly. Jimmy was able to get himself out of the plane before it went under, and escaped with only his life. The plane and all its contents were a total loss.
But the post-traumatic stress reactions to the crash stayed with Buffett a long time. He finally went to a psychiatrist for counseling, which as Buffett says, being a southern man with a repressive Catholic upbringing, is like going for root canal and a colonoscopy all in the same day.
Finally, his counselors said to him, “Jimmy, your life is not a performance—performing is just something you do.” His inner voice said, “No do you get it?”
What did he get? He got that up until that point his life had all been about him: what he could get, what kind of praise and adulation he could receive, how his performance would bring him whatever he wanted in life. And he had treated not only his career that way, but his wife, his children and his friends. He realized he could not appreciate the gift that life is until he stopped performing and focused on others, those he cared for.
You see that’s anecdote to our acquisitive culture—not to take in, but to give away. We appreciate the gift that life is, when we give ourselves away.
And the first thing I think of when I think of giving ourselves away is the Millennium development goals. Yes, I know we’ve already heard about them and are probably bored by them. After all, I watched our adult education classes go from an average attendance of 25 to 30 people down to 6 or 7 when we focused on the Millennium Development Goals. We’ve sent this before, trying to help the rest of the world, and it doesn’t work, we might say. I understand that cynicism. I experienced it, between 1985 and 1991. In 1985, when my son was born, the album We are the World was released. And I felt such incredible optimism thinking my son what grow up in a world that did not tolerate extreme poverty, hunger and starvation.
Then, in 1991, we went to Somalia—to care for a country where poverty, hunger and starvation were rampant. And instead we encountered a branch of radical Islam that saw our presence as an opportunity to attack. Here we were trying to help, and instead became mired in others’ ideological and religious hatred in ways that still effect us today.
It would be enough to make anyone say, “Why bother?’
Well, we care, we bother because it is simply unacceptable that one sixth of the world’s population lives in extreme poverty, and nearly 180,00 children day of starvation every day.
We can’t impact the whole world, but we can do something. For example, our Vacation Bible School always has an outreach project. This year it was the Episcopal Relief and Development Fund’s clean water project. We raised almost $300 which will probably go to dig a well in some remote village, perhaps in Uganda. And because we are sending this money through ERD and the wider Anglican Communion (with its 700 million members) the money goes straight to the community that needs it and by-passes corporate governments and bloated bureaucracies. So our children may have just saved dozens or even hundreds of lives from disease and perhaps even death.
Or here in Columbus, our member Pete Wilkinson is part of the Coalition for the Homeless. There stated goal is to end economically-based transitional homelessness. In other words, if some one’s economic circumstances lead to by homeless for a time, then there should be a shelter a half-way house, or some community based place of refugee where they can go. There is no reason why we cannot end such transitional homelessness.
But what of the chronically homeless; those who choose to remain on the street. Well, a priest of this diocese, Leeann Reat, holds a Eucharist and lunch in an abandoned field every Sunday. She calls it street Church. And 40 to 50 chronically homeless people come. They even had a baptism a couple months ago.
Will this get these people off the streets? Probably not. But it may lift their souls.
And even closer to home, we can give ourselves away to anyone around us. John Rucker had that wonderful article in the newsletter thanking the congregation for its prayers and car for him this last year. We can reach out to anyone who needs us.
We are a culture obsessed with stuff. And the only cure for that is to give ourselves away. We can give fresh water to some one on the other side of the world, we can feed the homeless and support places for them to live, or we can reach out to some one right next to us.
Life is a gift that can only truly be appreciated when it is given away. |
Sermon by the Rev. Cricket Park, July 8, 2007
In the Name of God: Father, +Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
The psalms aren’t the usual jumping off place for sermon writing. Today’s psalm, however, called to me. It called to me because of the two verses in the middle:
While I felt secure, I said, “I shall never be disturbed.
You, LORD, with your favor, made me as strong as the mountains.”
Then you hid your face, and I was filled with fear.
They are pivotal verses that make you want to stop and say ‘hmmmm’. For the most part, this is a psalm of thanksgiving. The psalmist is praising God for deliverance from sickness and death, and from grief. But there, there in the middle, the psalmist confront us with God’s favor and God’s absence as if they were two sides of the same coin.
These verses make me think about the story my mother tells about my learning to walk. She says that I would hold onto one end of a string and my dad would hold the other end while I walked along. Apparently, I would be walking (well, waddling anyway) confidently ahead, with a smile on my face and a song in my heart (I’ve always been very dramatic), until I realized that my dad had dropped his end of the string. At that point, she said, I plopped down on the floor and began to cry.
Everything was fine as long I believed that Daddy was holding on to me. Everything was fine as long as I didn’t think I was walking alone. There was nothing worse in the mind of the 18-month-old Cricket than walking in the world holding a limp string.
There’s nothing worse for a 48-year-old (or a 16-year-old, or a 69-year-old, or an ANY-year-old) than walking in this world believing that God is absent. This is especially true when we have felt secure in what we have perceived to be God’s favor…healing from illness, triumph over our enemies, joy after weeping. Why would God hide from us? What on earth would cause God drop the string?
Well, perhaps God’s tired of being on our leash.
Thinking back on my whole string experience, I can see that I had been given everything I needed to be able to walk when I was ready to do that. I had two legs that I could put in front of the other. I had a sense of balance. What was lacking was the confidence I needed to do it on my own. The bridge I had to cross was from being upset that I didn’t have the string to being thankful that I had legs and balance and the desire to get from here to there. I needed to move from thinking that I had nothing to the knowledge that I’d been given everything. Until I did that, I was keeping my father at the end of my line. He needed me to use the gifts I had to walk and become self-sufficient so that he could go about the other things our family needed from him. That didn’t mean that he wasn’t there for hugs and reading Winnie-the-Pooh. Dad just needed me to become my own self.
God’s a lot like that. God wants us to become our own selves. God doesn’t want to be at the end of our leashes, or have us at the end of strings like marionettes. I’m convinced that when we are on our behinds wondering where God is, we are in a place where God is able to communicate with us and inspire us to move to where we need to be. God takes no pleasure seeing us miserable, but God knows that more often than not it is out of misery that we more easily make the change from seeing life as something we live through without the things we think we wast to experiencing life as an adventure for which we have been equipped with all we need.
The paths we follow in order to become the person that God created us to be sometimes take very sharp turns. And, when they do, they knock us over and make us achy and cross. We just can’t forget that we’ve been given everything we need to keep moving down the path. God has given us the gifts to move, even dance, with confidence toward our true selves. We may not be able to see the divine face, but we can be assured of God’s presence in the faces of those around us. And we can’t forget that our face may be the divine presence God has placed in the path of someone who has found themselves in the middle of the road without help.
The people living in the path of Hurricane Katrina know misery only too well. Sitting in safety in Dublin, Ohio, we cannot even imagine what it would be like to – literally – lose everything. It was bad enough to lose the lives of friends and family and pets, but losing things that they valued—a home, clothing, photographs compounded the grief. On top of that, many learned that the insurance companies they trusted would fail to cover their financial losses and their own governments would fail to act with expediency to care for them: the very people they were created to protect. And to make matters worse, some religious leaders laid the blame for this disaster on the victims themselves! Talk about being on the edge of the Pit.
In the midst of this pain, God is providing the people of the Gulf Coast the things that they need. It isn’t just FEMA trailers or volunteers to help with immediate disaster relief. God is giving us and them the desire to get from here to there. God continually is calling people to this mission field in prayer, in giving of money, and in their abilities to hammer and drill and saw. Our leadership, knowing the specific talents of this congregation, discerned the best time for us to take on each type of ministry in that place. We have moved from prayers and almsgiving to power tools. Today, our youth group is on its way to do good work and foster hope. As they go forward on this mission trip, we should continue to hold them in prayer so that they might be strengthened on their way. You see, when the people they are helping look for the face of God, they will see the faces of our youth and adult leaders and if they remember to look carefully, our youth and adult leaders will see Christ in the eyes of those people they are helping.
This is how God turns wailing into dancing. This is how God clothes us with joy. We are given the gifts we need to care for each other and the confidence we need to walk forward knowing that we are always in God’s presence because we are with each other. Instead of holding us up by strings, God provides us with hands so that we might hold each other in support and hearts that we might love each other into being.
Therefore our hearts sing to you without ceasing; O LORD our God, we will give you thanks for ever. Amen.
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Easter 5 Year C, The Rev. Stephen Smith, May 6, 2007
St. Patrick's Episcopal Church, Dublin, Ohio
My grandfather was a Methodist Minister in the hills of Kentucky. And like a lot of country people he had a distrust of large institutions. He was a member of one, the Methodist Church, but he was weary of their influence on the lives of individuals. And when I was in seminary he used to say to me, “Stevie,” (yes he was the only one who called me “Stevie” and here I was 30 years old); “Stevie,” he said, “Don’t let religion get in the way of your faith.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant back then, but the longer I stay in this Church business the more I understand what he tried to get across. We, in institutional religion, can get so preoccupied with our own self importance it’s simply shameful. We get wrapped up in the trappings of the faith, or the practice of our religion, or doctrine and dogma, or the intricacies of worship that we forget why we have these things in the first place. The fall-de-rall and froo-froo of our vestments and services, doctrines and bible is meant to lead us to encounter with the living God, not to be ends in themselves.
Now don’t get me wrong. I love our liturgy. And some of the most profound experiences of God I ever encountered took place when my butt was in the pew of a church during very ritualized worship. But that’s the point—we are meant to experience God, not just liturgy, doctrine and scripture.
Too often, however, we allow religion to get in the way of that encounter—to get in the way of our faith.
That’s what Peter faced in today’s lesson when he describes how he welcomed Cornelius into the faith, and he defends that action before others. You see, Cornelius was not a Jew. In fact, he was a Roman soldier, and yet Peter baptized his entire household.
We have to go back a ways in the story to appreciate what’s going on here. During his earthly life and even after his resurrection, Jesus told his disciples that the gospel was meant for all people. The risen Christ even said his message should reach to the ends of the earth, according to Luke, and that they apostles should go out and make disciples of all nations, according to Matthew.
But as usually, Jesus closest followers did what they seem to do best. They ignored Jesus completely. Christianity began as simply a covenant renewal movement within Judaism. It made little to no effort to reach out beyond its Jewish roots. The earliest disciples kept kosher, the kept the Sabbath and worshipped in the temple.
Like much of Judaism in Jesus’ day the early disciples were obsessed with keeping the holiness code to preserve their own holiness and that of God’s as well. Now the best minds of the time knew that God’s holiness could never be compromised, no matter what humanity did. But the popular theology said otherwise as people clung to their ritual and tradition and avoided the non-Jews who did not keep kosher or Sabbath.
But Peter has a vision while he is praying at the home of his friend Simon the Tanner. He is hungry, and he beholds a sheet being lowered from heaven with all kinds of animals on it, both the kosher and non-kosher. And it seems as if God is telling him to eat whatever he wants. Peter says no. But since God has invited him to take anything God says, “what I have made clean do not say that it is unclean.”
At that very moment, soldiers show up at Simon the Tanner’s house looking for Peter. They want him to come with them. What did Peter think at that point? It was Roman soldiers who killed Jesus. Where they coming for him: to arrest him, or even kill him. On mere faith alone, he goes with them up the coast from Joppa to Caesarea, a Roman sea port and garrison. Peter meets Cornelius and discovers that this man, who has lived among Jews so long has come to encounter the love of this God and he loves God in return.
Peter has a decision to make. What does he do with this Roman soldier who clearly is not keeping kosher, and who is not a Jew. Well, Peter does not religion get in the way of his faith. Instead he welcomes Cornelius and his entire household with open arms. They have experienced and encountered the love of God, what other criteria is needed.
We forget how controversial Peter’s action was back then. It rocked the Church. Debates were held, councils called, and division ensued, all over whether or not to welcome non-Jews into the early Christian community. And now, today, the Church has spread through the entire non-Jewish world. We are here today because Peter saw an encounter with God as more important than his dogma, doctrine and ritual. He did not let his religion get in the way of his faith.
But we have done that so often in our history. In the middle ages we fought over baptism. In the middle ages, theologians did not have a very high opinion of human nature. Instead we were all tainted with original sin which passed from generation to generation through the reproductive process itself. Original sin made us unworthy of God and the only cure was baptism—the washing away of original sin. Otherwise, we were doomed to spend eternity in hell.
Well, some medieval thinkers just could not buy the idea that small children and infants, who had no ability to make conscious choices of their own could possibly be so punished by God simply because they weren’t baptized. So they invented limbo, a place between heaven and hell, even though it has no traditional precedent in any religion and no Biblical warrant whatsoever.
When we make religion more important than faith we paint ourselves into theological corners that just seem ridiculous years later. Even the Roman Catholic Church has abandoned the idea of limbo.
We still get mixed up. Now it is over science, history and religion. This week, a new museum is opening in northern Kentucky close to where my grandfather used to preach. It is called the Museum of Biblical History and Science. And its goals are to demonstrate that the earth is only 5000 years old, that dinosaurs and humans lived together at the same time, and that everything reported in scripture is both historically and scientifically factual, despite appearances to the contrary.
Once again we are painting ourselves into theological corners over our obsession with religion, with doctrine and dogma, rather than living our faith as an encounter with the love of God.
Even our sacraments, which we hold so dear in the Episcopal Church, are not ends in themselves, but means by which we encounter God. The stuff we use is just stuff, and even though we bless it here, God was not absent from it before we placed on the altar. Wine is a simple of celebrations with one another, and God is certainly in our celebrations and times of joy and laughter with one another. Bread is the symbol of our work and substance, and don’t we give thanks to God at meals as the source of our sustenance? Don’t we often see our work as a way of transforming the world for the better, something god would have us do?
Even the priesthood: Vanessa Clark will be ordained a priest next month, but I am sure she is already beginning to live into that reality even now. She is beginning to appreciate the role she plays as one who is set aside, ordained, to proclaim and share the presence of God and God’s love. The ordination service, no matter how grand, will not take that away, but only amplify it. And, I got news for you Vanessa, your living into the sacrament of orders does not end there. My first real sense of my role as a priest really came to me in experience of God working through me despite my own depleted resources. And that was three years after my ordination.
And today, we recognize two baptisms that took place under emergency situations. Ava was premature and while in the hopital, there were doubts as to whether or not she would survive. But she did. She is here today and alive and well. But when things were tough, an emergency baptism was performed. Ella, was orphaned in Russia, and an orthodox priest went through the orphanage and baptized her and every child newborn just because no one knew what would become of them.
In these circumstances, where a baptism takes place in private, because it is an emergency, we are called to add the missing ingredient which is all of you—the community of the faithful. To do that we go through the entire baptismal service except for one thing. We don’t actually put water on the child and baptize her in the name of the Trinity. Instead we sprinkle her with aspergeous and then the whole community, in order to remind us all of our baptism and welcome these two children into our community.
It’s a lot of ceremony and ritual. But remember, it is there to remind us of God and God’s love for us. And to say that God’s love was somehow absent from these precious children before they were baptized, or before we recognized their baptisms here is just ludicrous. It is painting ourselves into another theological corner.
It was God’s love that brought them into this world, and God’s love that sustained them through dark times in the hospital and orphanage. Today’s sacrament represents simply an opportunity to recognize that love and remind ourselves of it.
That’s the purpose of it all—all the ritual, all the doctrine, all the theology. It is to remind us of God’s love, so that we don’t let religion get in the way of our faith.
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