Sunday ~ January 2, 2005

We Have Enough Within Us to Ring in the New Year

    "We are to come to him even though the world calls us in a hundred different directions. We are to be fools for his sake. We are to take risks for him and be merry for him. We are to work for peace and pray for miracles. We are to go places and do things and speak words that, without him, we wouldn't even dare dream of. We know so much more than we ever let on about what he would have each of us do in our own lives - what door to open, what hand to take. We have within us, each one, so much more of his power than we ever spend - such misers of miracle we are, such pinchpenny guardians of grace.

If we have a long way to go, God knows we have also come a long way. Through hell and high water we have been delivered as far as this day, this place, with faith maybe not much bigger than a mustard seed but having it on highest authority that that is faith enough. 0 Thou who makest even hell thy habitation and who partest the high waters with thy mighty hand, deliver our world. Deliver us."

Sunday ~ December 12, 2004

   Our Jewish brothers and sisters are in the midst of cele1brating Hanukkah even as we celebrate the Third Sunday of Advent. Kwanzaa comes the day after Christmas, when an African theme meaning 'first' prevails. Christians remember that Jesus's birth was unmarked until the 4th century. Roman churches opposed Saturn the Sun god's festival with the true Son's birth!

Let us enlarge our awareness still further by what was done in December of 1273 when the Muslim poet Rumi died. Born in Afghanistan, reared in Turkey, he is associated often with Damascus. The crusades were still active, but representatives of synagogue, church, and mosque met at his funeral. Rumi said of his visits to all houses of worship, "I see one altar".

In light of today's lessons, listen to a portion of Rumi's blessing given before Book IV of his poetry. "God blesses both and all in the line, and replaces what has been consumed, and provides for those who work the soil of helpfulness, and blesses Muhammad and Jesus and every other messenger and prophet."

How do you read? Jesus alone is God's Son? I can only take in so much? Is God showing me more of my heritage? Do wise men still come to a stable?

Sunday ~ July 25, 2004

WHEN YOU COME TO THE ALTAR, GO WITH THE SPIRIT

   Today's Gospel speaks of asking and receiving, seeking and finding. We are not promised that we will win the lottery if we just ask, nor that a new car will be ours if we only seek it. We all know that is foolishness. So, then, what is the purpose of making requests? What is it that we will receive?

   The passage ends with the gift we will get: the heavenly Father will give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him. If you are not addressing yourself to God, there is hardly any way you can be given this gift. In my theology, the Spirit is the meaning of the Gospel. How could God reach us in our wanderings, in our misadventures? God had to come into the world in the human form of Jesus. The Holy Spirit was working in the world long before the birth of Jesus. Many prophets were spirit filled. Yet for humankind to relate to God's Spirit, they needed a human whose entire life was guided by that Spirit.

   Most of us in the Western world are stuck in a narrow view of an angry God who demands a blood sacrifice for our sins, and because he loves us, he provides his own son to be killed for us. It is our mission now to teach a new interpretation of the Gospel and of Communion, especially to younger people who are absent from our pews. In the midst of terror and violence, they cannot make sense of a Christian faith based on a sacrificial victim.

   There are many richer ways to interpret the meaning of Jesus, and one of them is that God chose this way to make a relationship with us. In the Incarnation and the life of Jesus we see God's creative way of communicating. The Communion Service is not about eating the body and drinking the blood of Christ. It is a meal where Jesus is the host, and to which everyone is invited. We are fed by him. He enters our hearts in a relationship of profound love, and encourages us to move outward into the world with his Spirit inside us.

Sunday ~ July 18, 2004

The Kindness of Strangers

   "Hospitality is one of the occupational hazards of my profession. One is required both to extend it and, what is often worse, to receive it. The clergy are not alone, though, for who of us has not suffered the terror of the knock on the door and the arrival of unannounced friends and relatives just as we are settling down to an afternoon or evening of private pleasure, or even of work? We know that they know that we know that something must be done to entertain them, that food and drink must be offered, conversation made, and civilities observed even when we would rather not have been disturbed. There is within us the notion that we ought always be prepared to show hospitality , and that we ought to enjoy it. That is at least part of the problem of the "giving" part, and there is also the problem of the "receiving" end of things.

   When I am invited out to preach or to lecture, if given a choice I always prefer to stay in a hotel or in an inn rather than in a private home. If the hospitality of good friends, why of course then I accept with delight. It is, as Tennessee Williams has put it, the "kindness of strangers" that is the chore. Booker T. Washington, the great founder of Tuskegee Institute and one of the most traveled lecturers in America, when asked about his fee, invariably replied, "Fifty dollars, and if you entertain me, then one hundred fifty dollars." Hospitality is not simply cookies and punch after church or endless cups of coffee, neither is it simply neighborliness or friendliness. Hospitality is a hassle because it is fundamentally a relationship, an entering into a form of intimacy with strangers and the unknown. Biblical hospitality has little to do with the entertainment of one's friends and the convivial gathering of folk who are much like ourselves. No, biblical hospitality has to do with the kindness of strangers, and that is just its problem, and its opportunity."

From "Sermons : Biblical Wisdom for Daily Living", by Peter J. Gomes
Preacher, The Memorial Church, Harvard University

Sunday ~ July 11, 2004

Who is that half - dead man in the ditch?

   "In Christ's parable, a third man finally did come along, of course. He looked, really looked, and saw not just a man, a man, a man, but saw what was actually sprawled out there in the dust with most of the life whaled out of him. He bound up his wounds, set him on his own beast, took care of him, and his reward was to go down in fame as the good Samaritan, which seems to be a marvelously inept title somehow, because just as I prefer to think of the priest and the Levite as less than really bad, more than just half blind, in the same way I prefer to think of the Samaritan as more than merely good. I prefer to think that the difference between the Samaritan and the other two was not just that he was more morally sensitive than they were but that he had, as they had not, the eye of a poet or a child or a saint - an eye that was able to look at the man in the ditch and see in all its extraordinary unexpectedness the truth itself, which was that at the deepest level of their being, he and that other one there were not entirely separate selves at all. Not really at all."

From "The Magnificent Defeat", a book of sermons by Frederick Buechner.

Sunday ~ July 4, 2004

On Independence Day, our hearts and minds turn to documents that have burned themselves into our understanding of the good life. 

Two sentences support my faith.  Here, too, are other convictions that grow out of Christian insights, and which are reflected in other religions and cultures.  When you talk "politics" this year with someone, test these beliefs against other viewpoints.

Sunday ~ June 27, 2004

Sunday ~ June 20, 2004

June 22nd honors Alban, the First recorded Martyr of Britain, about the year 304

  When a frightened priest struggled through the gate of the Roman fort at Verulamium, he could have hidden his faith; maybe he did, initially. Maybe that is how he got into the fortress in the first place. But something about Alban, the Roman soldier who befriended and sheltered him, encouraged him to open up and share his faith. Do we really appreciate that when the priest "came out," telling Alban who he was and what office he held in the Christian community, he was giving Alban considerable power?

Sunday ~ June 13,2004

Extraordinary Ideas.
 
As I grow older, I find the ordinary and the "extra" are side by side.  I read in a magazine of a tribute to nine scholars in Eastern Orthodoxy.  One was named Gregory Krug!  I'd only expect a Lutheran to have had that name.  A little extra.

Visiting a good man from Austria living in a nursing home reveals that at 97 his English can tickle me.  He said the fake cat lying on his roommate's bed is "a dummy cat"!  (If I had to learn Austrian, what might I come up with?)  I often think of dummy cat. 

When visiting Atlanta, Indiana's library, I see that the children's section features a book on the Chattanooga Lookouts - the baseball team from another one of my home towns!  That was an extra in my visit. 

When giving communion to 10 people at a nursing home in Hackensack, I used a red balloon to demonstrate lifting power (helium), breath, and wind at Pentecost. I blew up a balloon, then let it go wherever it chose.  They had helium-filled balloons tied to their wheelchairs. Ten separate people from varied backgrounds laughed together.  That was an extra.  

Ordinary events?  Yes.

But there were "extras" also.  Seen any good ordinary happenings lately?

Trinity Sunday ~ June 6,2004

A Moment for Meditation

On Trinity Sunday, You May Be on Your Journey, Rather Than a Heretic!  

Do you remember the story of the teacher asking a little girl in class what she was doing?  "I'm drawing a picture of God."  Then the teacher says, "But no one knows what God looks like."  Little girl:  "They will when I get through!"  Of course the Trinity is a sophisticated doctrine.  Not three gods in one, but God being seen in Jesus and in the Holy Spirit.  We've all sung, "God in three Persons, blessed Trinity."  But not three people!  Persons comes from how some 4th century Christians used a Greek theatre idea to express their faith in God.  A Greek actor would hold a mask in front of his or her face to indicate which part was being played.  Persona or mask, but not persons as in people.  But even that is not satisfactory:  it makes it look like God is separated from the representation.  

We know that Christians for 300 years considered themselves to be under God's Kingdom alone.  When Constantine got religion,  in 325 C.E.,  he "took on" Christianity as his special religion.  Some of us think the more truthful phrase is to say the emperor "took over".  Constantine was Roman; he didn't like things messy, diverse, pulling this way and that.  In return for becoming legal and above ground, Christianity had to learn how to lock step.  Up until then, prominent bishops and theologians were still thrashing out how to speak about God, Jesus and the Spirit.  Some were talking from a biblical background.  Some were very influenced by the mystery in God's ways.  Others were schooled in Hellenistic ways of thinking.  And still others felt the tug between how Western Christians saw God differently than Eastern Christians.

This is why the period before the Nicene Creed is "messy".  I don't know of a better way to put it.  Many people of faith in God

were trying to explain this wonderful gospel, this "good news".  Not all of them agreed.  The Roman Emperor Constantine wanted a lock step. So he bullied the bishops to take just one approach for all Christians.  Maybe you're a different person - wanting to show your love for God in Jesus and the Spirit, but not quite ready to buy into one doctrine.  Messy is OK.

Mothers Day ~ SUNDAY, April 11, 2004 

      To move from deadness to newness of life - what better salvation could there be?

TUESDAY, March 2, 2004

                                When the Roll Is Called

During my childhood in the Bible Belt of the South, although I belonged to a mainline Presbyterian church, we sang the old Gospel songs.  Among them, a favorite was “When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder, I’ll Be There”.  It has a rollicking tune and almost makes you want to take off for “up yonder” right now!

      Everyone’s life plan includes either a version of life after death, or a denial that there is any.  Some of us remain open-minded.  We cannot imagine life being a dead end; on the other hand, we cannot imagine exactly what it may be.  It would seem a vast waste to accumulate a lifetime of experience and have nowhere to take it.  The idea of resting through eternity may be appealing to our fellow humans who have been overworked and underpaid, to say nothing of actually abused.  For those of us who lead satisfying lives, we hope, first, that our opposites will have another chance.  Next, we would like to continue a personal existence with relationships, and meaningful work.  But what do we know?  Relationships to us involve bodies, and work requires tasks. We may find an entirely different order of being.

       For that reason, I have a greater interest in whether I respond when the Roll Is Called  Down Here.  Will I answer “present” when asked to make a hard choice?  When told to go on a mission?  When my own needs and wants must be placed second or third?

      What about the less grandiose questions?  What about the ordinary daily rounds?  What if I get up in the morning already tired, and my day seems blah?

THURSDAY, April 1, 2004

                                       There’s a Wildness in God’s Mercy

You are no doubt familiar with the old hymn “There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy”. Once, while singing it, I couldn’t get out of my head  the thought that there is also a wildness in God’s mercy.  Our own compassion could never be as vast or unexpected.  We simply cannot be wicked enough to fall outside the limits of being loved and accepted.  I’m honestly appalled that serial killers can receive mercy from God.  Yet it fits with the wild quality of God’s nature.

     In a hymn entitled “Take My Gifts” appear these lines:

     “Take the fruit that I have gathered from the tree your Spirit sowed,

       harvest of your own compassion, juice that makes the wine of God,

       spiced with humor, laced with laughter, flavor of the Jesus life,

       tang of risk and new adventure, taste and zest beyond belief.”

      God  does not hold back or withhold.  I do.   I am not able to give unreservedly, no strings attached.  My compassion for one who has offended me is limited. Not only that, but I also crave retribution.  Therefore, when I think of trying to follow the God-model, I have to venture into the land of the outlandish.  Wild country, unfamiliar. The Spirit is calling me there, even though I balk.

      Dylan Thomas speaks this way about the birth of Christ: “Blessing on the wild Child..... and the mothering maiden who bore him with a bonfire in his mouth and rocked him like a storm.”

PALM  SUNDAY,  April 4, 2004

                                       Everybody Loves a Parade

When I was a child, I visualized   Palm Sunday as a gigantic parade, with a cast of thousands.  The crowds were  ushering the Lord of Lords into Jerusalem.  Later my vision was corrected to understand that a small band of followers waved palms, and that the King of Kings was riding on a donkey, to a fatal destiny.

     The Passion Gospel packs a mighty wallop because it encompasses the entire week.  Is it read on Palm Sunday, since so many people will not appear again in church until Easter, and they will have missed the story? 

      His followers still seem to have expected a triumph, a conquering hero.  Jesus knew better.  He was not going to win as the world defines it.  Yet he has chosen to go to Jerusalem, where he is in double jeopardy because Lazarus is there, and  the high priests have the murder of Lazarus on their agenda, as the subject of a miracle which has drawn even more people to Jesus.

      Jesus could have gone another way and delayed his death.  But he had a finely tuned sense of the inevitable, and his integrity demanded that he go straight forward to meet it.  This ride into Jerusalem has both the cheering and the doom summed up in the hymn “Ride on, ride on, in majesty; In lowly pomp ride on to die”.  It makes my stomach feel like a rollercoaster: the thrill of “Ride on”, followed by the “lowly pomp” of the Lord of Life riding on a colt.  I would like to halt the drama and have it turn out another way.  I want the parade to continue.  I want Jesus to win.  He will.  But not now, not yet, and not without the trials and horrors of the remainder of Holy Week. 

March 21, 2004

A Word from Russia

   The Russian writer Alexander Pushkin, who wrote in the early 19th century, is greatly revered by his countrymen. The final lines of one of his poems, “Message to Siberia” reads

    “The heavy clanging chains will fall The walls will crumble at a word; And Freedom greet you in the light, And brothers give you back the sword.”

   This summarizes our longing through the ages, from the beginnings of civilization to the present day, that peace will come and we will see that we are all brothers and sisters.

   When we made a long desired trip to Russia in 1999, traveling on a river boat from St. Petersburg to Moscow, instead of cruise diversions such as bingo, we had a phenomenally gifted speaker on Russian history and politics, a beautiful woman professor from a university. When you learn the story of a country’s evolution, there is much greater understanding of some of the horrors of its history. When our schoolbooks do not whitewash the evolution of our own country, we can see that even in our beloved democracy, terrible events have happened.

   God has set us in communities that are political. We have the task of monitoring their philosophies and actions. God does not have a chosen people. He chooses all people. When we don’t respect and protect those other people, and in fact blame them for the problems in the world, we are failing to follow the will of God. Wouldn’t it be amazing if an American president pointed the finger at ourselves and said “Here is how we need to change our behavior in order to bring peace”, rather than “We must catch and destroy the evil monsters out there”.

   We have “swords” in the form of prejudices for some cultures and against others. Cynics will say they are often financially motivated. We are highly interested in blame - the other person’s, not our own. During Lent, I would direct you to reflect on your feelings about “alien” or “foreign” countries and cultures. Someone has to begin saying “brother”, “sister”.

March 7, 2003

LIFE IS LENT

Never forget that life is lent to us.  It does not belong to us, and we will not have it forever.  In the American culture, most of us, for as long as we are able, move at a fast pace, accomplishing goals and tasks. We have no time to reflect on the meaning of life.  I am fond of saying that we all have the same 24 hours in a day.

This Lent I propose that we give ourselves the gift of time alone.

      Lent is often referred to as a journey, which suggests a path, a road, with a destination at the end.  Eastern philosophy views life as circular.  Have you experienced this: an issue which you thought had been resolved, laid to rest, or set aside, suddenly re-appears in your line of vision and troubles you?  This is one of the meanings of circularity: our problems remain our problems; they just circle around again over time, usually in a different form and when we are at a different stage of development.  “Ah!  There you are again”, we exclaim in surprise.  Now we are challenged to deal with them as our present selves.

      In the Broadway play “Metamorphoses”, almost the entire stage is occupied by a pool of water.  It becomes the sea for the Greek characters as they go on long journeys to far countries, beseech their gods, wrestle with their guilt, exalt their heroes.  One symbolism of the pool may be that they reflected about meaning.

      Only you can give yourself the gift of time, during Lent, to examine the particular life you have been lent.  Look at your issues which keep circling round.

Absorb the special joys you have taken for granted..  Stop putting one foot in front of the other in a mindless, linear, well-worn path.  To reflect is to nourish, to make yourself in better shape, not to wear new clothes, but to cherish your unique time on this earth.

February 29, 2003

Moving the Mask

Now the work of Lent  begins.  If you take  that  time alone, you will come face

to face with your own mask.  What you present to the world is rarely in sync with

who you really are.  For example, if you are a people pleaser, you present the facade that makes others like you.

     In college I made a conscious decision to stop being a shy introvert, and overshot to be a wild extrovert, on the theory that to assume the pose would create the reality.  My crowd gave the outrageous parties, wrote the scandalous articles for the university paper, and cozied up to the most unconventional profs.  How I

enjoyed all this, because it was so different from the fearful high school girl, who was brainy, but, let’s face it, nerdy.  I didn’t even look like the same person, thanks be to God!  This mask served me well at a time when I needed it.

     The time comes to move the mask aside, or else get stuck in your own delusion: namely, that it is you.  It represents a part of you; that’s why you are able to wear it so well.  It conceals other parts.  The Phantom of the Opera wore a mask to conceal his age so he could win the heart of a young woman.  But he could never show her his entire face.

       In fact, we show all of ourselves to a very small number of intimates, but it matters that we know what is behind the mask.  Once I tried the experiment of being utterly transparent - what you saw was what you got - and it was a mini- disaster.  No one knew how to deal with all the reality of what I was feeling.  Nor should I put on them that burden.  “How are you?”  “Oh, I’m a raving lunatic because my kid is flunking algebra!”  No one wants to hear it.

      So, moving the mask means taking it away from your own face and looking in the mirror, so that you behold your inner world and decide how best to use the outer facade.

February 22, 2004

Some words are so familiar to us as Christians or Jews that we say them without any understanding. Such a word is Glory, translated from the Hebrew shekinah. To be sure, we're quite familiar with using Glory, as in "Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost." Or in the word of the full Lord's Prayer: "For the kingdon, the power, and the glory are yours..." Today's lessons refer to it in Moses' shining face and the need to veil it's brightness, in Paul's writings, and in the Transfiguration experience, which allways ends the Epiphany season.

Very subtly, the meaning of Glory has shifted from a word to symbolize God's presence and splemdor to something that is simply optimistic. Even gusto singing of "Glory,glory,halleluja" diminishes it. When someone is taken aback, they're apt to say. "Oh, my God!" - not in awe but in surprise. Bruce Larson has titled a chapter in his book on Luke as: "The Glory of the Ordinary."

Glory is about God's extraordinary presence.The next time you see life in the world as 'bleak', remember you've seen an illusion. The reality is that God's world is filled with Glory. Catch a glimpse of it. Tune into the Gloria in excelsis Deo of that presence wherever you find it, as in Hymn 96's glorious refrain.

February 15, 2004              Click to hear this meditation.
An excerpt from Caring, by Fr. Mortin T. Kelsey (Paulist Press, 1981)

Some people deal with injustice by taking it upon themselves. Almost nothing was done to help the plight of the poor when St. Francis made lady poverty his bride and went to live among the most destitute, the dispossessed and starving, the lepers and outcasts. One of his followers found Francis out in the cold night shivering and asked him why he was there. He replied that in this way he joined the vast fellowship of those who were cold and homeless and bore their burden with them. Francis so touched the heart of his indifferent age that the church was revitalized and the poor were ministered to by thousands upon thousands of friars who followed Francis.

And Francis showed the same kind of warmth and love to those who surrounded him in the order. One of his companions came to Francis annoyed and irratated by the way people admired and followed him and exclaimed sarcastically: "Why did God pick you?" Francis replied with simplicity: "He looked for the most unlikely and most unprofitable servant he could find so that his Glory, not mine, would show through."