January 29, 2012
Year B, Epiphany
The Rev. Dr. Brent Was
“Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, and he cried out, ‘What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?’”
Unclean spirits. Demons, even. That is what they mean by unclean spirits; demons. At times in the gospel record these kinds of spirits or demons accounted for mental illness; a supernatural explanation for a very natural occurrence. Jesus would miraculously drive the spirits out, saving the person in part by restoring them to ritual purity. Ritual purity was a big deal, because if you were not ritually pure, you could not go to temple to offer sacrifice; meaning that if you were not ritually pure your access to God was limited, or even non-existent. Mental illness made one impure, as did leprosy (which included skin maladies beyond actual leprosy, any kind of skin eruption, actually, like eczema or acne, hives). An even more common cause of ritual impurity was the pandemic of menstruation. Jesus said that this was ridiculous and did what he could to convince people that God loved them no matter what was going on with their bodies.
At other times, though, the demons of the Gospels represent a much broader problem in humanity: Sin. In many ways, the demons can be looked at as sin personified; that is sin that takes on some of the qualities of a person, a human. They take on personalities, have voices, some times. In our stories of the Evil One-the Accuser-Satan, sin is so profound that it takes on human or human-like form, such when Jesus was in the wilderness and was tempted, “Turn these stones into bread…”
One of the greatest questions in religion and philosophy is how do we know what we know, or more specifically, how do we know that what we know is true or at least accurate. We take the world in through our senses and our imagination, and we process that through our analytical mind and our emotional, feeling self, and it can be really, really hard to know if what we think we see is really what we see, or means what we think it means. This is called Epistemology, the study of the nature of knowledge. As religious people, as people motivated by the life of the spirit, it is important that we understand how we come to understand. For those of us who want to follow the will of God, it is of critical importance that we recognize what is of God and what is not of God. So what does this have to do with demons? Whenever we find ourselves in the more complicated, sensitive corners of our lives, or when we are dealing with really, really important things, like what is right and wrong, like discerning the will of God, like, to be or not to be, demons flock like seagulls folowing a fishing boat.
There are three demons in particular that plague humanity, that really disrupt our ability to be the children of God that we are. They are in so many ways the lesser angels of our nature, and together, they conspire to distort our understanding, our ability to understand the true nature of things, of God, of the world, of ourselves. The first is known as Greed, the second Hatred, and third is goes by Delusion, who also is know as Ignorance. These three demons are formidable foes, but as we will see, we have a new teaching, a new teacher “– with authority. He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.”
Greed, variously known as Hunger, Craving, Thirst, Lust, Jealousy; this demon embodies the realm of consuming, grasping, clinging feelings. He is a ball of fear: fear of change, fear of not having enough, of lack. Avarice, gluttony… seeing the world through the eyes of Greed, we are deceived, and we attach too deep a meaning to things. The things we desire can appear to provide us with real satisfaction, and we can begin to desire things that we think will provide us with wholeness. And it is not just things, it is conditions that we attach to. We are never content with anything or anyone. Greed attaches profound importance to looking outside of ourselves for meaning and satisfaction; dangerous stuff with the fleeting, impermanent nature of things. It is craving, and craving is such a horrible feeling. No one behaves well is his grasp, because we feel like we are always grasping, clinging to the world outside of us. He leads us to believe there is no peace without holding onto that x.
Hatred is another demon we all face. Where Greed leads us to clutch onto the world, Hatred embodies the whole array of feelings that lead us push things away, to avoid, to not deal. This pernicious fellow is usually manifest as an aversion, avoidance of things unpleasant, uncomfortable. Of course we all want to avoid unpleasantness, but we fall under the spell of Hatred, of Aversion when we stop going into the garage because it is too cluttered, or we avoid certain subjects with our spouse because it is always just too much. He leads us to keep the world at distance, eschewing intimacy and honesty, always assuming the worst about others and their intentions, always assuming that a conflict is immanent, and then often complicating matters through pathological conflict avoidance. Hatred has us when we keep the world and ourselves, even, at arms length.
Lastly is Delusion. Delusion infects our ability to truly perceive the world and our place in it. When we do not see cause and effect, we seek happiness in things that cannot provide it and we grow bitter with disappointment and frustration when trying the same thing over and over again never produces different results. How scary, living in a world thinking it is one thing when really it is something else. Like believing that you are alone, that you are talentless or ugly or not worth anyone’s time or effort. That you deserve your lot. Especially when you are down, Delusion jumps up and down on your chest saying, “if you hadn’t been so lazy/stupid/gullible… if you weren’t such a bad person…” Delusion screams so loudly that sometimes we cannot tell what is what, or which way is up. You all know Neibuhr’s Serenity Prayer, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.” Delusion does its best to confound wisdom; in his grip you cannot know the difference.
Some things we cling to, some things we push away, some things we just do not rightly understand. Greed, Hatred, Delusion. These are the most common demons in our midst. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits, he conflated these demonic forces under one label, Disordered Attachments. It is that self-world barrier, how things travel, communicate from me or you to you or me. From the outer to the inner, from the generative posture into the world to the receptive posture into yourself. Any time that barrier is traversed, there is the risk that we might have it wrong, that those demons might get a hand in the mix. The demons are opportunistic. When there is an opening, when we open oursleved to the world, as we must, they come. We must remain vigilant.
We must remain vigilant because the demons are wiley. They deceive us, they conceal themselves within us with great skill and tenacity and they become part of us. We spoke once about the committee in our heads, the voices we hear? These demons can really convince us that they are we. Dangerous. Thank God we are not alone. We haven’t been alone for a very long time. The people in the synagogue were astonished by the authority by which Jesus taught, but they did not recognize Him for who He was. The demon knew. “Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.”
You know the saying sunshine is the best disinfectant? Demons, particularly Greed, Hatred and Delusion, are immanently susceptible to sunlight. Mindfulness is the spiritual equivalent to sunlight. Mindfulness is holy noticing, holy paying attention. It is the sum total of some a process, a process grounded in meditation and prayer that allows us to take stock of our selves, to notice the subtle and not so subtle changes we all go through in the course of a lifetime, or a season of life, or for some of us, any given week. We spoke in Advent of Evelyn Underhill’s notion of prayer and _____? Mortification. Attending to God and dealing with ourselves. That is mindfulness. And how do we learn to do this? What resources do we have as Christians? Well, we have one who teaches with authority, the Holy one of God. We have His church and her traditions and scripture and community. We have each other.
How are we cultivating mindfulness? We have a new Bible study going on before church. We have an on going adult education program that needs more people. We have Sunday School. In Lent some of us will be closely reading a book of Evelyn Underhill’s. Morning prayer is up and running on Fridays. I am here to help with your prayer lives, not only corporately, like I am doing right now, but individually. Give me a call, let’s talk about prayer, about your prayer. We are going to be having monthly potlucks on the third Sunday. Demons hate potlucks. They hate strong community, too.
Demons… Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ has power over them. Greed, Hatred, Delusion. These are just a few of them, the most common, the most persistent. If we are to be the servants of god that we need to be, to be the friends to each other we need to be, we need to get the demons off our collective backs. As Zechariah reminds us, “In the tender compassion of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death, and guide our feet in the way of peace.” AMEN
Monday, January 30, 2012
January 15, 2012, Second Sunday after the Epiphany
January 15, 2012
Year B Epiphany 2 (MLK)
The Rev. Dr. Brent Was
“It is a well known fact that no social institution can survive when it has outlived its usefulness. This capitalism has done. It has failed to meet the needs of the masses.” Who said that? (And no, it was not Newt Gingrich or Rick Perry). Seriously, it does not matter to me if you are Republican or Democrat, I happen to be neither, don’t ask anything more, but I am getting a kick out of Mr. Perry and Mr. Gingrich talking about “vulture capitalism” not because of their party affiliation but because major, main stream politicians are using the word “capitalism,” and in a disparaging way. For so long the parameters of the debate has been shifting rightward, and here it is shifting radically left and in a presidential primary race. God Bless America. God bless Occupy; this is their work.
But who said that, that capitalism has outlived its usefulness? Martin Luther King, Jr.. I am guessing that that is not one of the quotes we would find in our average high school history book, is it? No. We are taught about the King that led a movement to introduce black people into the fold of full citizenship, and he did it non-violently. His legacy and civil canonization are ensured in this work alone. He changed the face of the world. His work directly made possible our current President’s presidency; and whatever your opinions about our current president, the fact that we as a people could and did elect a black man to that office is something that makes this country better. But this is not all that Dr. King did. And actually, he was martyred precisely when he started getting involved in the other aspects of his work. What was he doing in Memphis when he was assassinated? That’s right, he was there working with the sanitation workers, a largely but certainly not completely black union who were striking for what we would now call a living wage. He became a real threat to the standing order not in the movement towards civil liberties for black folks, but when he started seeing and teaching that poor American folks, both black and white, had a lot more in common with poor folks around the world then they had with the economic elites in their home countries. He really scared the powers that be when he pointed out that the subaltern, the oppressed here shared common cause with the oppressed peasants in Viet Nam they were being sent into battle against. King’s story parallels Archbishop Oscar Romero in that when Romero moved from speaking theologically about love to direct appeals to the soldiers to stop killing their?” countrymen, he too was martyred. But, capitalism has outlived its useful life. Recalling the voice of a great philosopher, “Them’s fightin’ words.
To celebrate the life and witness of The Rev. Dr. King, I want to look closely at a line from one of his sermons that really got into me, and is revealing not only about his work, but is revealing about the nature of our world. He preached, “The greatest problem facing modern man (sic.) is that the means by which we live have outdistanced the spiritual ends for which we live.”
Ends and means is a major theme in King’s work. He was an ardent critic not only of Soviet style communism, but of pure Marxists thought because of its moral relativism. King advocated a Christian socialism, which ensured the just distribution of wealth and privilege and was rooted in accountability to God and neighbor. To Marx, the ends do justify the means so long as the ends are proper. The very essence of the non-violence King ascribed to and enforced within the civil rights movement is that hate can never be overcome by hate, but by love alone; that victory, even, is not the goal, but justice and reconciliation.
So he writes, “the means by which we live have outdistanced the spiritual ends for which we live.” Let’s start with the ends. What are “the spiritual ends for which we live?” _____ It is the beloved community. The reign of God, the Kingdom of God. It is Emmanuel, God with Us. It is justice rolling down like waters and peace like an ever flowing stream. What have we been talking about week in, week out? ____ Our raison d’eter? The great commandment. Loving God and loving neighbor. Exactly. These are our spiritual ends. It is loving our enemy, not as they are but as they might be. I read an article that said it is not that King would advocate loving George Wallace for who and what he was in that time, but loving George Wallace for the God given potential he had to be different, to be better, to be more how God desires us all to be. Humans, the temporal world itself, we are not a product but a process, we are fluid, flowing beings, never static. Loving a process is much like s “mother’s love for her (sometimes) wayward child.” These are the ends. The same ends that we strive for here at Resurrection.
“The means by which we live have outdistanced the spiritual ends for which we live.” Let’s break down the means part. What are the means by which we live? _____
It is everything we are part of. Our politics; how we organize ourselves. Our economy; how we organize things. Our ecology: the complex community in which we live. Our culture: how we make meaning of the world. Our religion: how we endeavor to engage ultimate Reality. Everything that it takes to live as individuals and societies are the means.
So how do these means, these very temporal aspects of our existence outdistance our spiritual ends?_____ Let’s go through it by the numbers. Our politics: the means trump the ends when we value our ideas, our partisans, our candidates over the good of the whole. Wanting the government to sit in deadlock or wanting leadership to fail because it benefits one party over another in electoral politics is an example. The plague of money in politics is another, where some voices are get more attention than others because of what, money? Come on. Fools. We the people cannot govern ourselves, we cannot strive for justice in this climate. The means have outdistanced the ends.
Our economy: when the structures of the economy, the legal framework benefits one group over another, the ends and means are askew. When there is sufficient wealth for everyone to have enough but it is distributed in a way that some have more than they could possibly ever use and others don’t even have what they need, this is sin upon sin upon sin.
Our ecology: when we trade material wealth (which is generally reserved for the few), when we trade that for the health of our air, rivers, soils, and oceans, we are adrift. When we prefer, by law and opinion, cattle over wolves, cheap food over healthy farms, paper over old growth forests, fossil fuels over a future, profits over people; we have let the means trump the ends.
In our culture, the ends are bested by means when we value appearance over substance, when choose distraction and entertainment over beauty. Our culture is bankrupt when the means of delivery are so important that everything contained within is reduced to being “content.” And in our religion the means we live by outdistance the ends we live for when we spend more on evangelism than mission, when we value our denomination over a relationship with God, when our ideas exclude, our doctrines diminish, and our practices, our communities alienate. Remember, Dr. King said that 11:00 on Sunday morning is the most segregated hour of the week…
What is comes down to, these ends and means being out of balance, is that it is all interrelated. He preached, “Strangely enough, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. You can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be.” Dr. King’s vision of the world, its interconnectedness, the interrelatedness of the non-human and human world, the seen and the unseen, the sacred and the profane, the secular and the religious, it is nothing but organic; it is whole, like an organism.
I know that my story is coming out in drips and drabs, but here’s another piece. before we moved to Eugene, I farmed. Windy and I had a little farm in Western Massachusetts for a couple of years, then after a hiatus in Cambridge, we moved to a monastery where I started a small farm for the brothers. We grew 100 kinds of vegetables, some small grains, flowers and kept chickens, turkeys and pigs. It was great. In farming you get an intimate education in the interrelatedness of things. What you do anywhere on the farm, be it an adjustment you try to make in the soil, a redirection of water flow, or a change in how livestock rotates, reverberations throughout the system happen. Sometimes they are subtle reverberations, like a bit more purslane seems to come up after the chickens went through, and sometimes they are more clear, like when I laid perf-pipe to drain the puddle in front of the trash cans and then the road washed away…
What Martin Luther King, Jr. lived, preached and died for; what Jesus Christ lived, preached and died for was the truth that how we live, matters. How we love, Matters. How we pray and worship, how we eat and throw things away, what we do and who we are, the very quality of our lives and the world in which we live, all of these things matter. They matter to those we share the world with, neighbor and neighborhood; and these things matter to God. You matter to God. And for this, and with and for Brother Martin, we give thanks. AMEN
Year B Epiphany 2 (MLK)
The Rev. Dr. Brent Was
“It is a well known fact that no social institution can survive when it has outlived its usefulness. This capitalism has done. It has failed to meet the needs of the masses.” Who said that? (And no, it was not Newt Gingrich or Rick Perry). Seriously, it does not matter to me if you are Republican or Democrat, I happen to be neither, don’t ask anything more, but I am getting a kick out of Mr. Perry and Mr. Gingrich talking about “vulture capitalism” not because of their party affiliation but because major, main stream politicians are using the word “capitalism,” and in a disparaging way. For so long the parameters of the debate has been shifting rightward, and here it is shifting radically left and in a presidential primary race. God Bless America. God bless Occupy; this is their work.
But who said that, that capitalism has outlived its usefulness? Martin Luther King, Jr.. I am guessing that that is not one of the quotes we would find in our average high school history book, is it? No. We are taught about the King that led a movement to introduce black people into the fold of full citizenship, and he did it non-violently. His legacy and civil canonization are ensured in this work alone. He changed the face of the world. His work directly made possible our current President’s presidency; and whatever your opinions about our current president, the fact that we as a people could and did elect a black man to that office is something that makes this country better. But this is not all that Dr. King did. And actually, he was martyred precisely when he started getting involved in the other aspects of his work. What was he doing in Memphis when he was assassinated? That’s right, he was there working with the sanitation workers, a largely but certainly not completely black union who were striking for what we would now call a living wage. He became a real threat to the standing order not in the movement towards civil liberties for black folks, but when he started seeing and teaching that poor American folks, both black and white, had a lot more in common with poor folks around the world then they had with the economic elites in their home countries. He really scared the powers that be when he pointed out that the subaltern, the oppressed here shared common cause with the oppressed peasants in Viet Nam they were being sent into battle against. King’s story parallels Archbishop Oscar Romero in that when Romero moved from speaking theologically about love to direct appeals to the soldiers to stop killing their?” countrymen, he too was martyred. But, capitalism has outlived its useful life. Recalling the voice of a great philosopher, “Them’s fightin’ words.
To celebrate the life and witness of The Rev. Dr. King, I want to look closely at a line from one of his sermons that really got into me, and is revealing not only about his work, but is revealing about the nature of our world. He preached, “The greatest problem facing modern man (sic.) is that the means by which we live have outdistanced the spiritual ends for which we live.”
Ends and means is a major theme in King’s work. He was an ardent critic not only of Soviet style communism, but of pure Marxists thought because of its moral relativism. King advocated a Christian socialism, which ensured the just distribution of wealth and privilege and was rooted in accountability to God and neighbor. To Marx, the ends do justify the means so long as the ends are proper. The very essence of the non-violence King ascribed to and enforced within the civil rights movement is that hate can never be overcome by hate, but by love alone; that victory, even, is not the goal, but justice and reconciliation.
So he writes, “the means by which we live have outdistanced the spiritual ends for which we live.” Let’s start with the ends. What are “the spiritual ends for which we live?” _____ It is the beloved community. The reign of God, the Kingdom of God. It is Emmanuel, God with Us. It is justice rolling down like waters and peace like an ever flowing stream. What have we been talking about week in, week out? ____ Our raison d’eter? The great commandment. Loving God and loving neighbor. Exactly. These are our spiritual ends. It is loving our enemy, not as they are but as they might be. I read an article that said it is not that King would advocate loving George Wallace for who and what he was in that time, but loving George Wallace for the God given potential he had to be different, to be better, to be more how God desires us all to be. Humans, the temporal world itself, we are not a product but a process, we are fluid, flowing beings, never static. Loving a process is much like s “mother’s love for her (sometimes) wayward child.” These are the ends. The same ends that we strive for here at Resurrection.
“The means by which we live have outdistanced the spiritual ends for which we live.” Let’s break down the means part. What are the means by which we live? _____
It is everything we are part of. Our politics; how we organize ourselves. Our economy; how we organize things. Our ecology: the complex community in which we live. Our culture: how we make meaning of the world. Our religion: how we endeavor to engage ultimate Reality. Everything that it takes to live as individuals and societies are the means.
So how do these means, these very temporal aspects of our existence outdistance our spiritual ends?_____ Let’s go through it by the numbers. Our politics: the means trump the ends when we value our ideas, our partisans, our candidates over the good of the whole. Wanting the government to sit in deadlock or wanting leadership to fail because it benefits one party over another in electoral politics is an example. The plague of money in politics is another, where some voices are get more attention than others because of what, money? Come on. Fools. We the people cannot govern ourselves, we cannot strive for justice in this climate. The means have outdistanced the ends.
Our economy: when the structures of the economy, the legal framework benefits one group over another, the ends and means are askew. When there is sufficient wealth for everyone to have enough but it is distributed in a way that some have more than they could possibly ever use and others don’t even have what they need, this is sin upon sin upon sin.
Our ecology: when we trade material wealth (which is generally reserved for the few), when we trade that for the health of our air, rivers, soils, and oceans, we are adrift. When we prefer, by law and opinion, cattle over wolves, cheap food over healthy farms, paper over old growth forests, fossil fuels over a future, profits over people; we have let the means trump the ends.
In our culture, the ends are bested by means when we value appearance over substance, when choose distraction and entertainment over beauty. Our culture is bankrupt when the means of delivery are so important that everything contained within is reduced to being “content.” And in our religion the means we live by outdistance the ends we live for when we spend more on evangelism than mission, when we value our denomination over a relationship with God, when our ideas exclude, our doctrines diminish, and our practices, our communities alienate. Remember, Dr. King said that 11:00 on Sunday morning is the most segregated hour of the week…
What is comes down to, these ends and means being out of balance, is that it is all interrelated. He preached, “Strangely enough, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. You can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be.” Dr. King’s vision of the world, its interconnectedness, the interrelatedness of the non-human and human world, the seen and the unseen, the sacred and the profane, the secular and the religious, it is nothing but organic; it is whole, like an organism.
I know that my story is coming out in drips and drabs, but here’s another piece. before we moved to Eugene, I farmed. Windy and I had a little farm in Western Massachusetts for a couple of years, then after a hiatus in Cambridge, we moved to a monastery where I started a small farm for the brothers. We grew 100 kinds of vegetables, some small grains, flowers and kept chickens, turkeys and pigs. It was great. In farming you get an intimate education in the interrelatedness of things. What you do anywhere on the farm, be it an adjustment you try to make in the soil, a redirection of water flow, or a change in how livestock rotates, reverberations throughout the system happen. Sometimes they are subtle reverberations, like a bit more purslane seems to come up after the chickens went through, and sometimes they are more clear, like when I laid perf-pipe to drain the puddle in front of the trash cans and then the road washed away…
What Martin Luther King, Jr. lived, preached and died for; what Jesus Christ lived, preached and died for was the truth that how we live, matters. How we love, Matters. How we pray and worship, how we eat and throw things away, what we do and who we are, the very quality of our lives and the world in which we live, all of these things matter. They matter to those we share the world with, neighbor and neighborhood; and these things matter to God. You matter to God. And for this, and with and for Brother Martin, we give thanks. AMEN
January 1, 2012, Holy Name of Jesus, Year B
Holy Name of Jesus, Year B
January 1, 2012
The Rev. Dr. Brent Was
Does anyone recognize the Greek word kenosis? It means something like “self-emptying.”
“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not take equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of slave being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself, and became obedient to the point of death, even death on the Cross. Therefore God also Highly exalted him and gave him a name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee shall bend, in Heaven and on earth and under earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the Glory of the Father.”
Is anyone familiar with this passage? It is amongst the very best that Paul left us with. “…though he was in the form of God, did not take equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of slave being born in human likeness.” Does anyone want to make a stab at what it means?
Paul did not write these words. They actually constitute a hymn that had been used in ceremonies from probably the very first years after Jesus was executed. Remember, Paul was writing long before any of the Gospel writers, at least fifty years before Mark, which was the first of them. But here he is, commending to the folks in Philipi a hymn that he had learned somewhere in his travels.
All good religion is dependent on some balance between the known and the unknowable. The thought, the felt and the wondered upon. The forgotten and the as-of-yet-unrevealed. The seen, the unseen, the imagined and the not even considered. What this little hymn does is bring to the fore the paradox of Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. It teaches us that He is fully God and fully human, and (maybe even most importantly) that that matters. It matters because we can learn from Him. We can practice this. We can walk the path that our God laid before us. You can let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.
So what is this mind? How might it be in us? What is Kenosis?
Since at least the fourth century with Cyril of Alexandria through Sarah Coakley who is writing today, kenosis has been a hot topic. Initially the conversation was about how much of the divine-side of Christ’s nature was suppressed, emptied, so that the fully human side of Christ could live. The gospel record shows Jesus in dismay and anger and hope… things rather impossible for an omniscient/omnipotent God-man. Some of those divine powers had to be dealt with.
Think of our story… our God became incarnate and was born of a most humble and unlikely family. And here, in this realm, he walked around not smiting evil doers, not changing the world with a snap of his Divine fingers, he did yell at some folks, he did cause a ruckus or two, but mostly he did three things: he taught; he healed; and he fed. Poor people, mostly. Humble activities. “He emptied Himself, taking the form of slave… He humbled himself and became obedient, to the point of death, even death on the cross.” No triumphant King of Kings here. He rode to his death on a donkey into Jerusalem in a piece of legendary political lampoon that Abby Hoffman would have appreciated.
In modernity, though, the discussion of kenosis has taken on a much more interesting tenor. A more subversive tenor. Because if Jesus Christ teaches us one thing besides loving God and neighbor, it is that every one of His followers has a religious responsibility to subvert the powers and principalities of the world. What all this kenosis, this self emptying, this humbling to the point of death teaches is that the our greatest power is found in our vulnerability. We, these meek and fragile creatures with intensely limited abilities, we are powerful precisely in our humility. I think of Gandhi and the salt marches. Did you see the scene in the Ben Kingsley movie Gandhi, where rank upon rank of men walked into the swinging clubs of British imperial police. It was said that the British Empire broke on the heads of those martyrs. I think of the people just 35 years later walking across the Edmund Pettus Bridge to Selma. And the dogs and the fire hoses. I think of that lone young man standing before the tank in Tianamen Square in 1989. Or Mohamed Bouazizi, the Tunisian man who sparked the Arab Spring with his self-immolation.
It is everyday going to off to a job that you do not like, but that you need to support your family. It is getting up in the middle of the night with the sick child. Maybe it is getting up night after night after night with a child that will not get better. The nursing back to health, or gently accompanying our parents to their deaths. I know that the most powerful thing I have ever done had nothing to do with the tanks I used to command, the tractors I farmed with, or the people I ordered about in industry, no, the most powerful thing I have done in my life is filling the supporting role I had in the conception, gestation, birthing and now raising of two little girls. Humble work. And powerful. In it, the world will be changed. It already is happening.
Keep in mind, and I think this is what Paul was relaying, true power has very little to do with what we do. True power lays in who we are. Rosa Parks was a 42 year old, black church lady when she finally had had enough. She did not “do” anything. What she did was stop being what she was expected to be. She was expected to be compliant. She had not a lick of power in the conventional sense, but her being who she truly was, what God made her to be, powerful. So powerful that Montgomery, that this nation was changed forever.
What kenosis means is that true power, the power of God is manifest in those who most give it up to God. To those who most realize that it is not about them. It is not about me. Or my little community, my concerns, my nation. It is about God and God’s will. It is about conforming to the true nature of things. True power manifests in those who most fully submit to God. God is always on the side of the conventionally powerless, because physical power, the power to destroy, to kill, the power to make others do what you want them to do, it is nothing. It is not important. It pales in the face of the power of love, the power of creativity and friendship, imagination, the power of healing, and nurturing. It pales in the face of the power of hugs. “He emptied himself, taking the form of slave, being born in human likeness.”The greatest power in the world is the power to be.
Submission is part of kenosis. This is troubling, particularly for the oppressed, particularly for children, particularly for women, who do not need any more religiously sanctioned reasons to submit to anything or anyone. But a gift that current theologians like Sarah Coakley have given the world is tying the notion of kenosis to lives of practice. She writes that “we can only be properly empowered if we cease to set the agenda, if we make space for ‘God to be God’”. Remember, not being the one in charge is not shameful because truly, not one of us, not one human is actually in charge, preached by a person at least nominally in charge, mind you. And the more and more we think we are in charge, or worse, act like it, the further and further from God, from moral power, from true power, we are.
Here is how prayer can change the world. When we approach God, we need to put ourselves aside, put our needs and fears and comfort aside, our personalities, our histories, our lives aside, and meet God on God’s terms. This is kenosis, this is emptying ourselves. Bowing before the Lord is an experience shared by kings and serfs; priests and people; the CEO and the person who launders his shirts. The 99 and the 1 percent hold equal individual power in the economy of God, though the 99% generally have a leg up in the humility race. And therefore are more powerful, truly.
The one insight I ever had in meditation was along these lines. After a week of 16 hour days in the meditation hall, a question came to me. We were in silence, I had not heard my voice the whole week, and it occurred to me, that voice in our heads, the one that is us, the “me” voice, well the question that came to me was, “Whose voice is that?” In the kenosis of rigorous prayer, the emptying into silence, what I always assumed to be me was revealed to be yet another construct, another idea and not the true nature of things. We all have a chorus in our head, and we cannot really get on to God until we tame some of those voices, until we empty ourselves, until we find a way to really submit to Almighty God’s self. “And every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the Glory of the Father.” AMEN
January 1, 2012
The Rev. Dr. Brent Was
Does anyone recognize the Greek word kenosis? It means something like “self-emptying.”
“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not take equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of slave being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself, and became obedient to the point of death, even death on the Cross. Therefore God also Highly exalted him and gave him a name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee shall bend, in Heaven and on earth and under earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the Glory of the Father.”
Is anyone familiar with this passage? It is amongst the very best that Paul left us with. “…though he was in the form of God, did not take equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of slave being born in human likeness.” Does anyone want to make a stab at what it means?
Paul did not write these words. They actually constitute a hymn that had been used in ceremonies from probably the very first years after Jesus was executed. Remember, Paul was writing long before any of the Gospel writers, at least fifty years before Mark, which was the first of them. But here he is, commending to the folks in Philipi a hymn that he had learned somewhere in his travels.
All good religion is dependent on some balance between the known and the unknowable. The thought, the felt and the wondered upon. The forgotten and the as-of-yet-unrevealed. The seen, the unseen, the imagined and the not even considered. What this little hymn does is bring to the fore the paradox of Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. It teaches us that He is fully God and fully human, and (maybe even most importantly) that that matters. It matters because we can learn from Him. We can practice this. We can walk the path that our God laid before us. You can let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.
So what is this mind? How might it be in us? What is Kenosis?
Since at least the fourth century with Cyril of Alexandria through Sarah Coakley who is writing today, kenosis has been a hot topic. Initially the conversation was about how much of the divine-side of Christ’s nature was suppressed, emptied, so that the fully human side of Christ could live. The gospel record shows Jesus in dismay and anger and hope… things rather impossible for an omniscient/omnipotent God-man. Some of those divine powers had to be dealt with.
Think of our story… our God became incarnate and was born of a most humble and unlikely family. And here, in this realm, he walked around not smiting evil doers, not changing the world with a snap of his Divine fingers, he did yell at some folks, he did cause a ruckus or two, but mostly he did three things: he taught; he healed; and he fed. Poor people, mostly. Humble activities. “He emptied Himself, taking the form of slave… He humbled himself and became obedient, to the point of death, even death on the cross.” No triumphant King of Kings here. He rode to his death on a donkey into Jerusalem in a piece of legendary political lampoon that Abby Hoffman would have appreciated.
In modernity, though, the discussion of kenosis has taken on a much more interesting tenor. A more subversive tenor. Because if Jesus Christ teaches us one thing besides loving God and neighbor, it is that every one of His followers has a religious responsibility to subvert the powers and principalities of the world. What all this kenosis, this self emptying, this humbling to the point of death teaches is that the our greatest power is found in our vulnerability. We, these meek and fragile creatures with intensely limited abilities, we are powerful precisely in our humility. I think of Gandhi and the salt marches. Did you see the scene in the Ben Kingsley movie Gandhi, where rank upon rank of men walked into the swinging clubs of British imperial police. It was said that the British Empire broke on the heads of those martyrs. I think of the people just 35 years later walking across the Edmund Pettus Bridge to Selma. And the dogs and the fire hoses. I think of that lone young man standing before the tank in Tianamen Square in 1989. Or Mohamed Bouazizi, the Tunisian man who sparked the Arab Spring with his self-immolation.
It is everyday going to off to a job that you do not like, but that you need to support your family. It is getting up in the middle of the night with the sick child. Maybe it is getting up night after night after night with a child that will not get better. The nursing back to health, or gently accompanying our parents to their deaths. I know that the most powerful thing I have ever done had nothing to do with the tanks I used to command, the tractors I farmed with, or the people I ordered about in industry, no, the most powerful thing I have done in my life is filling the supporting role I had in the conception, gestation, birthing and now raising of two little girls. Humble work. And powerful. In it, the world will be changed. It already is happening.
Keep in mind, and I think this is what Paul was relaying, true power has very little to do with what we do. True power lays in who we are. Rosa Parks was a 42 year old, black church lady when she finally had had enough. She did not “do” anything. What she did was stop being what she was expected to be. She was expected to be compliant. She had not a lick of power in the conventional sense, but her being who she truly was, what God made her to be, powerful. So powerful that Montgomery, that this nation was changed forever.
What kenosis means is that true power, the power of God is manifest in those who most give it up to God. To those who most realize that it is not about them. It is not about me. Or my little community, my concerns, my nation. It is about God and God’s will. It is about conforming to the true nature of things. True power manifests in those who most fully submit to God. God is always on the side of the conventionally powerless, because physical power, the power to destroy, to kill, the power to make others do what you want them to do, it is nothing. It is not important. It pales in the face of the power of love, the power of creativity and friendship, imagination, the power of healing, and nurturing. It pales in the face of the power of hugs. “He emptied himself, taking the form of slave, being born in human likeness.”The greatest power in the world is the power to be.
Submission is part of kenosis. This is troubling, particularly for the oppressed, particularly for children, particularly for women, who do not need any more religiously sanctioned reasons to submit to anything or anyone. But a gift that current theologians like Sarah Coakley have given the world is tying the notion of kenosis to lives of practice. She writes that “we can only be properly empowered if we cease to set the agenda, if we make space for ‘God to be God’”. Remember, not being the one in charge is not shameful because truly, not one of us, not one human is actually in charge, preached by a person at least nominally in charge, mind you. And the more and more we think we are in charge, or worse, act like it, the further and further from God, from moral power, from true power, we are.
Here is how prayer can change the world. When we approach God, we need to put ourselves aside, put our needs and fears and comfort aside, our personalities, our histories, our lives aside, and meet God on God’s terms. This is kenosis, this is emptying ourselves. Bowing before the Lord is an experience shared by kings and serfs; priests and people; the CEO and the person who launders his shirts. The 99 and the 1 percent hold equal individual power in the economy of God, though the 99% generally have a leg up in the humility race. And therefore are more powerful, truly.
The one insight I ever had in meditation was along these lines. After a week of 16 hour days in the meditation hall, a question came to me. We were in silence, I had not heard my voice the whole week, and it occurred to me, that voice in our heads, the one that is us, the “me” voice, well the question that came to me was, “Whose voice is that?” In the kenosis of rigorous prayer, the emptying into silence, what I always assumed to be me was revealed to be yet another construct, another idea and not the true nature of things. We all have a chorus in our head, and we cannot really get on to God until we tame some of those voices, until we empty ourselves, until we find a way to really submit to Almighty God’s self. “And every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the Glory of the Father.” AMEN
Christmas Eve, Year B, December 24, 2011
Christmas Eve, December 24, 2011, Year B
The Rev. Dr. Brent Was
Merry Christmas, everyone! This week Hannah Maeve and I were reading A Child’s Christmas in Wales, by that drunken genius Dylan Thomas. It is a beautifully written vision of all the Christmas comings and goings as seen through the eyes of a ten-year-old boy. Of course the telling paid some attention to the presents he received over the years. There were the useful presents and the useless presents. “Bags of moist and many-colored jelly babies… a false nose and a tram-conductor’s cap… never a catapult; once by mistake that no one could explain a little hatchet…” and, among other things, “a celluloid duck that made, when you pressed it, a most unducklike sound.” Those were in the useless column. Amongst useful gifts were “engulfing mufflers of the old coach days, mittens made for giant sloths… blinding tam-o’-shanters like patchwork tea cozies…” and most importantly, for me the real take away from the whole story was the last gift mentioned; over the years the boy had received a host of books, including “books that told me everything about the wasp, except why.”
“Do not be afraid; for see – I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger…” and the heavenly host sang out, “Glory to God in the Highest Heaven, and on Earth, peace, good will to all.”
What does it mean that Christ, our God was born to us on the floor of a barn? There is of course the tragic side to the story: there is noting edifying about being born into poverty, being born outside in the cold, far from home. There is another, maybe even more disconcerting side to the story: this birth, the birth of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, the Wonderful Counselor, Prince of Peace, Superstar even, this birth was so ordinary. We say that we hate tragedy but what we really hate is the ordinary. Jesus was born exactly like all of us were born or were supposed to have been born. Jesus was wrapped as babies were wrapped and was laid in a safe place on clean straw while his mother attended to the things mothers have to attend to after child birth. What does this mean to us that this is our story of God?
What does it mean that the angels announced the birth of the savior not to Kings and Queens, not to Priests and high officials but to shepherds on some God-forsaken hillside watching their sheep, shivering in the cold. The shepherds were likely slaves, and were certainly very, very low in Jewish society. What does it mean to us that people like that were the first to get the very best news the whole world had ever gotten, and from Angles?
What does it mean? Well, partially it means that that hill was not so God-forsaken. No hill is, actually. Otherwise, in the nether regions of theology we describe what it means in terms of Mystery. Great is the mystery of faith. Why did it happen this way? Mystery. Why are we who we are? Mystery. Why wasps? Mystery.
Wendell Berry once had a conversation with a friend about rain. They watched a tree during a rain storm, and his friend commented that the course the rain drop took from the sky, dripping its way through the canopy and the branches down to the earth and back into the water cycle was random. The path was random. Berry disagreed. He said that to know something was random you must have an infinite set of data points, because there just might be a pattern if you could see it all. The better explanation is that the rain drop emerges from mystery, travels for a while where it can be observed and experienced, and flows back into mystery. Into God. Sounds a little like our lives, no?
Blaming it all on mystery does not absolve us from the responsibility of dealing with the world, with root causes, daily tasks, and relationships both casual and intimate, but it necessitates that we deal with these things and that we approach the world from a posture of radical humility. Ours is a radically humble religion. We do not know as much as we would like to, or usually supposed that we know. Our God and Savior was born in the modern day equivalent of a truck stop, or maybe out back behind a Motel 6 off of a freeway near Flint, Michigan to folks about two steps away from living in their car. Our God tells that the first will be last and the last will be first. Our God tells us that we are accountable to God and to each other for what we do and how we do it, and why. And our God tells us that we are loved no matter what. It means that we do not know what happens when we die but that we do not need to worry, world without end.
What does this embracing of mystery mean to us on our average Tuesday morning? It means do not trust your assumptions or preconceived notions. It means that when you think you know who someone is by what they appear to be, you are bound to be wrong. It means that God and God’s Church offer many more questions than answers because answers are ends of roads, questions are forks. It means that we must consider what it really means to be comfortable; we must consider what the difference is between what we dream of, what we want and what we need. It means that when it comes to love, reckless abandon is always appropriate. So is smiling. So are good dogs, and kittens, whether good or bad if you can even tell the difference.
Tonight we celebrate the birthday of Jesus Christ, the mysterious incarnation of Emmanuel, God With Us. Some of us spend a lot of time gathering around this table in our weekly celebration of His life and work and death and Resurrection. Some of us get here a lot less frequently. But whether we are here often or nearly never; whether we believe a whole lot, just a little or almost even not at all; no worries, no fear, all are welcome at this humble table. God in Christ is just glad that you are here. May God bless you and all that you love. And Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night. AMEN
The Rev. Dr. Brent Was
Merry Christmas, everyone! This week Hannah Maeve and I were reading A Child’s Christmas in Wales, by that drunken genius Dylan Thomas. It is a beautifully written vision of all the Christmas comings and goings as seen through the eyes of a ten-year-old boy. Of course the telling paid some attention to the presents he received over the years. There were the useful presents and the useless presents. “Bags of moist and many-colored jelly babies… a false nose and a tram-conductor’s cap… never a catapult; once by mistake that no one could explain a little hatchet…” and, among other things, “a celluloid duck that made, when you pressed it, a most unducklike sound.” Those were in the useless column. Amongst useful gifts were “engulfing mufflers of the old coach days, mittens made for giant sloths… blinding tam-o’-shanters like patchwork tea cozies…” and most importantly, for me the real take away from the whole story was the last gift mentioned; over the years the boy had received a host of books, including “books that told me everything about the wasp, except why.”
“Do not be afraid; for see – I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger…” and the heavenly host sang out, “Glory to God in the Highest Heaven, and on Earth, peace, good will to all.”
What does it mean that Christ, our God was born to us on the floor of a barn? There is of course the tragic side to the story: there is noting edifying about being born into poverty, being born outside in the cold, far from home. There is another, maybe even more disconcerting side to the story: this birth, the birth of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, the Wonderful Counselor, Prince of Peace, Superstar even, this birth was so ordinary. We say that we hate tragedy but what we really hate is the ordinary. Jesus was born exactly like all of us were born or were supposed to have been born. Jesus was wrapped as babies were wrapped and was laid in a safe place on clean straw while his mother attended to the things mothers have to attend to after child birth. What does this mean to us that this is our story of God?
What does it mean that the angels announced the birth of the savior not to Kings and Queens, not to Priests and high officials but to shepherds on some God-forsaken hillside watching their sheep, shivering in the cold. The shepherds were likely slaves, and were certainly very, very low in Jewish society. What does it mean to us that people like that were the first to get the very best news the whole world had ever gotten, and from Angles?
What does it mean? Well, partially it means that that hill was not so God-forsaken. No hill is, actually. Otherwise, in the nether regions of theology we describe what it means in terms of Mystery. Great is the mystery of faith. Why did it happen this way? Mystery. Why are we who we are? Mystery. Why wasps? Mystery.
Wendell Berry once had a conversation with a friend about rain. They watched a tree during a rain storm, and his friend commented that the course the rain drop took from the sky, dripping its way through the canopy and the branches down to the earth and back into the water cycle was random. The path was random. Berry disagreed. He said that to know something was random you must have an infinite set of data points, because there just might be a pattern if you could see it all. The better explanation is that the rain drop emerges from mystery, travels for a while where it can be observed and experienced, and flows back into mystery. Into God. Sounds a little like our lives, no?
Blaming it all on mystery does not absolve us from the responsibility of dealing with the world, with root causes, daily tasks, and relationships both casual and intimate, but it necessitates that we deal with these things and that we approach the world from a posture of radical humility. Ours is a radically humble religion. We do not know as much as we would like to, or usually supposed that we know. Our God and Savior was born in the modern day equivalent of a truck stop, or maybe out back behind a Motel 6 off of a freeway near Flint, Michigan to folks about two steps away from living in their car. Our God tells that the first will be last and the last will be first. Our God tells us that we are accountable to God and to each other for what we do and how we do it, and why. And our God tells us that we are loved no matter what. It means that we do not know what happens when we die but that we do not need to worry, world without end.
What does this embracing of mystery mean to us on our average Tuesday morning? It means do not trust your assumptions or preconceived notions. It means that when you think you know who someone is by what they appear to be, you are bound to be wrong. It means that God and God’s Church offer many more questions than answers because answers are ends of roads, questions are forks. It means that we must consider what it really means to be comfortable; we must consider what the difference is between what we dream of, what we want and what we need. It means that when it comes to love, reckless abandon is always appropriate. So is smiling. So are good dogs, and kittens, whether good or bad if you can even tell the difference.
Tonight we celebrate the birthday of Jesus Christ, the mysterious incarnation of Emmanuel, God With Us. Some of us spend a lot of time gathering around this table in our weekly celebration of His life and work and death and Resurrection. Some of us get here a lot less frequently. But whether we are here often or nearly never; whether we believe a whole lot, just a little or almost even not at all; no worries, no fear, all are welcome at this humble table. God in Christ is just glad that you are here. May God bless you and all that you love. And Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night. AMEN
Monday, January 23, 2012
3rd Sunday after the Epiphany, January 22, 2012
Year B Epiphany 3
January 22, 2012
The Rev. Dr. Brent Was
“Follow me and I will make you fish for people.” This text is about discipleship and evangelism. In a progressive church community like ours, besides talking about race or money (our money, not money in the abstract), about the most uncomfortable subject we encounter in church is evangelism.
Usually we look at this reading from the perspective of the called, of Simon and Andrew and James and John. Why did they follow? Why so immediately? Would I have left my dad in such a lurch? Would I have followed at all? Good questions.
I am wondering, though, about something else. I am wondering about Jesus in this story. Why did He want these men to follow Him? And more so, He wanted them to follow Him to learn how to get more followers. He was training the trainers. What was the big deal? And why so immediately, why the rush?
So, help me here. Why was Jesus out evangelizing? And yes, it was because his dad told him to. But why else?
Jesus knew that He had something of immense value that needed to be shared. He had good news; very, very good news. The Word, a radically new understanding of God was manifest and had to get out there, out here. And so, He spent his short public life telling everyone He could, everything that He knew about this very Good News. And what good news did He have? That God loves us, no questions asked, and we are responsible for reflecting that love back unto God and out into the world to the best of our ability. That is it. Oh, and the addendum that the more you love that radically the more you will be reviled, persecuted, even dismissed as a religious wacko, which of course requires that you love even that much more and so on and so on until in the end all you have is love, ceaselessly.
So in a bit, we are going to head downstairs and do our political duty as Episcopalians. We are going to attend to the business of this church; electing our leaders, electing our representatives to the Diocesan Convention, which conducts the business of the Diocese. We are going to review what we did this past year and, at least fiscally speaking, what the coming year has in store. Pretty exciting. We’l get back to this.
Why is evangelism such a touchy subject in progressive churches?
(don’t want to impose, have some doubts, embarrassed – don’t want to be “one of them”)
Ok, I am going to be completely honest here (not that I am not already honest but I want to draw attention to this). I have always been hesitant about evangelism. Where I am from it is very impolite to talk about faith, particularly about Christian faith, and your own faith and church and all of that. But as I have gone down the rabbit hole of religious devotion and life, that reticence has faded. (And not just because my livelihood depends on it, either.)
What has changed for me? I am getting, finally, an inkling, a whiff, a taste of how good, how really, really good the Good News is. This stuff will change your life. It is changing mine, constantly. And when we, when I find something that good, it is like the prelude last week, how can I keep from singing? (well, for everyone’s sake I won’t be singing too, too much, just enough, though.) Really, if what we find here is as good as it can be, as good as it needs to be, as good as the good news we proclaim actually is, how will we not be like Jesus on that beach? We will need to tell others, “follow me, or at least come with me this Sunday. I know some really cool people.”
So we are going downstairs in a bit. And like some other things that we do around here, we are going to do it a little differently this year. We will sit around tables, having a meal that everyone made in their homes to share. We will study the Bible together, if briefly. We’ll conduct all the business we need to conduct, but I m hoping that we will do it, maybe a little more religiously? Maybe a bit more reflective of the absolutely fabulous thing that we have here? We have some of the very best news ever told, we have some beautiful people gathered around it, we have concentrated some resources here that provide a brilliant base of operations for mission in this neighborhood, in this city, really, into the whole world… wherever the Spirit sees fit to lead us.
I think I remember like two sermons I have ever heard. One of them, preached by an eminent old Unitarian, used a New Yorker cartoon as the text. It was in two frames. The first had a bearded man walking down the street with a placard saying, “I’m a fool for Jesus.” In the second frame, the man is passing by and we see the back of the sign, “Whose fool are you?”
I think of that beach, and those young men and Jesus and all the rashness, the immediacy of it all and that little pragmatist in me says, fools. How foolish, I would never… I wouldn’t ask anyone to do that. I am not that confident. Then I remember the Good News; lights in the darkness, Word made flesh, people healed, thousands fed, resurrection and life everlasting… Whose fool am I? Jesus’. Fisher of men? How can I refuse. Why? Because we have something That Good. It has immense value, and not only to us, that is the least of it, but it has immense value to the world.
I asked a couple of weeks ago if we are going to do this, this whole church thing. What I mean is that if I am part of this community, we are going to become fishers of men. We are going to grow. In numbers? I am sure that will happen. If you build it they will come. But numbers, just help get me to full time, that is my only concern about numbers. But growth, I am ultimately concerned in growth. That we grow closer to God in Christ and each other. That we grow the breadth and scope of our collective and private religious practice. That we grow the breadth and scope of our ministry to those who need help in body, mind and/or spirit. That we grow our children into the men and women they were born to be. That we grow in our ability to love and be loved. That is the pearl of great price that we have inherited. It is going to take effort, risks, it will mean appearing foolish at times, it will require being actually foolish at times, but that is the deal. So, are we going to do this?
AMEN
January 22, 2012
The Rev. Dr. Brent Was
“Follow me and I will make you fish for people.” This text is about discipleship and evangelism. In a progressive church community like ours, besides talking about race or money (our money, not money in the abstract), about the most uncomfortable subject we encounter in church is evangelism.
Usually we look at this reading from the perspective of the called, of Simon and Andrew and James and John. Why did they follow? Why so immediately? Would I have left my dad in such a lurch? Would I have followed at all? Good questions.
I am wondering, though, about something else. I am wondering about Jesus in this story. Why did He want these men to follow Him? And more so, He wanted them to follow Him to learn how to get more followers. He was training the trainers. What was the big deal? And why so immediately, why the rush?
So, help me here. Why was Jesus out evangelizing? And yes, it was because his dad told him to. But why else?
Jesus knew that He had something of immense value that needed to be shared. He had good news; very, very good news. The Word, a radically new understanding of God was manifest and had to get out there, out here. And so, He spent his short public life telling everyone He could, everything that He knew about this very Good News. And what good news did He have? That God loves us, no questions asked, and we are responsible for reflecting that love back unto God and out into the world to the best of our ability. That is it. Oh, and the addendum that the more you love that radically the more you will be reviled, persecuted, even dismissed as a religious wacko, which of course requires that you love even that much more and so on and so on until in the end all you have is love, ceaselessly.
So in a bit, we are going to head downstairs and do our political duty as Episcopalians. We are going to attend to the business of this church; electing our leaders, electing our representatives to the Diocesan Convention, which conducts the business of the Diocese. We are going to review what we did this past year and, at least fiscally speaking, what the coming year has in store. Pretty exciting. We’l get back to this.
Why is evangelism such a touchy subject in progressive churches?
(don’t want to impose, have some doubts, embarrassed – don’t want to be “one of them”)
Ok, I am going to be completely honest here (not that I am not already honest but I want to draw attention to this). I have always been hesitant about evangelism. Where I am from it is very impolite to talk about faith, particularly about Christian faith, and your own faith and church and all of that. But as I have gone down the rabbit hole of religious devotion and life, that reticence has faded. (And not just because my livelihood depends on it, either.)
What has changed for me? I am getting, finally, an inkling, a whiff, a taste of how good, how really, really good the Good News is. This stuff will change your life. It is changing mine, constantly. And when we, when I find something that good, it is like the prelude last week, how can I keep from singing? (well, for everyone’s sake I won’t be singing too, too much, just enough, though.) Really, if what we find here is as good as it can be, as good as it needs to be, as good as the good news we proclaim actually is, how will we not be like Jesus on that beach? We will need to tell others, “follow me, or at least come with me this Sunday. I know some really cool people.”
So we are going downstairs in a bit. And like some other things that we do around here, we are going to do it a little differently this year. We will sit around tables, having a meal that everyone made in their homes to share. We will study the Bible together, if briefly. We’ll conduct all the business we need to conduct, but I m hoping that we will do it, maybe a little more religiously? Maybe a bit more reflective of the absolutely fabulous thing that we have here? We have some of the very best news ever told, we have some beautiful people gathered around it, we have concentrated some resources here that provide a brilliant base of operations for mission in this neighborhood, in this city, really, into the whole world… wherever the Spirit sees fit to lead us.
I think I remember like two sermons I have ever heard. One of them, preached by an eminent old Unitarian, used a New Yorker cartoon as the text. It was in two frames. The first had a bearded man walking down the street with a placard saying, “I’m a fool for Jesus.” In the second frame, the man is passing by and we see the back of the sign, “Whose fool are you?”
I think of that beach, and those young men and Jesus and all the rashness, the immediacy of it all and that little pragmatist in me says, fools. How foolish, I would never… I wouldn’t ask anyone to do that. I am not that confident. Then I remember the Good News; lights in the darkness, Word made flesh, people healed, thousands fed, resurrection and life everlasting… Whose fool am I? Jesus’. Fisher of men? How can I refuse. Why? Because we have something That Good. It has immense value, and not only to us, that is the least of it, but it has immense value to the world.
I asked a couple of weeks ago if we are going to do this, this whole church thing. What I mean is that if I am part of this community, we are going to become fishers of men. We are going to grow. In numbers? I am sure that will happen. If you build it they will come. But numbers, just help get me to full time, that is my only concern about numbers. But growth, I am ultimately concerned in growth. That we grow closer to God in Christ and each other. That we grow the breadth and scope of our collective and private religious practice. That we grow the breadth and scope of our ministry to those who need help in body, mind and/or spirit. That we grow our children into the men and women they were born to be. That we grow in our ability to love and be loved. That is the pearl of great price that we have inherited. It is going to take effort, risks, it will mean appearing foolish at times, it will require being actually foolish at times, but that is the deal. So, are we going to do this?
AMEN
The Baptism of Our Lord, January 8, 2012
The Baptism of Our Lord Year B
January 8, 2012
The Rev. Dr. Brent Was
“I have baptized you with water; but He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit…”
Today we remember the Baptism of our Lord. I love Baptisms. For babies, you are just holding this little person and they are being welcomed into this big, ancient, global family. There is so much nurture in that action, there is such a village. And for bigger folks, it is like wow. What a commitment. You have been moved by God in Christ with the Holy Spirit to do something very radical, very counter-cultural (at least out here in Oregon, progressive Christian Baptism is very alternative, even edgy).
I am guessing that most everyone here has been baptized. It did not have to be an Episcopal baptism, any form or tradition counts, so to speak, so long as it was done in the name of the Triune God. And if you were not baptized, no worries, you are still welcome to share in the Feast at God’s table, we should probably talk about it, but certainly everyone is welcome. Historically this was NOT the case. Everyone worshiped together, the Baptized and those in training, the catechumen, up until the Eucharist, then the un-Baptized had to leave. The transition in our worship from the liturgy of the word to the liturgy of the table reflects this ancient polity. And the catechumate was rigorous; like three year long rigorous. Can you imagine how powerful that first communion would have been, years of study and work. There is certainly something to be said for the high commitment church where it takes dedication, hard work, where there are high expectations to fully participate. We really are not supposed to have an open table, but I believe it is better to err on the side of inclusion. But this is not a small deal, and we have to ask ourselves, what does Baptism mean?
Well, what does Baptism mean? And let us look to the source of all that is good and holy, the BCP. Where would we look? Exactly, the Catechism. Someone look to page 858. What is Holy Baptism? And then two lines down, what is the inward and spiritual grace in Baptism? Someone else…
Adopted as children; inheritors of the Kingdom of God. Union with Christ in his death and resurrection, birth into God’s family, the church… these are very good things, and true things, but something very, very important is missing, particularly in this post-Christian age. Inheritors of the church? Yes that it generous, but this vision of baptism feels sort of like inheriting a crazy uncle’s slowly sinking yacht. This vision of Baptism is inward looking, and if there is anything that the history of Christian hegemony in the West teaches, it is that this is a terrible religion when it is inward looking. Christianity, the Church is just plain dangerous when it is more concerned with itself than with the world. All religions are
Baptism is fantastic. (And don’t get me wrong, the Church is fantastic, too). Baptism is powerful. It is important. It is one of the two sacraments that Christ Himself instituted. How do we bring it back to holy relevance in a world where membership in this club does not mean a whole lot? Particularly as we learn more and more that being Christian is a great privilege, and that it is as great a privilege to be Jewish, or Muslim, or Hindu or whatever. The privilege comes in being a person of faith in a community of faith, not in which lineage we find ourselves. So why is baptism into the church important? As I will say time and time again, it is all about mission. And what is mission? It is what God is up to in the world, and our job, our sole job as Christians is to discern what God is up to in the world and figure out what to do about that.
I understand baptism much like I understand ordination. It is like an ordination into “Das Priestertum aller Gläubigen.” The Priesthood of all believers. I see it in SAT terms: priests are to the laity as the baptized are to the world. And what is ordination but a commissioning for mission. It is being set aside by a community for certain purposes. Priests are set aside for specific service and leadership roles and are responsible for certain sacramental obligations. Deacons proclaim the Gospel, both in church and in the world, with words and with action. And the rest of us, the Baptized? What is our responsibility? What are we set aside for?
We are set aside to live a Gospel life, a life directed by our experience of God in Christ. We are set aside to love God with everything we’ve got and love our neighbor as ourselves. That is it. That is the reason for being Christian, receiving in baptism the commission to follow the great commandment. And practically, what does that look like? What are we supposed to do? What is Great Commandment living? We are supposed to live with intention. We are supposed to live with purpose. To live an examined life. To strive to do meaningful work. To leave the world better than we find it. To pick up after ourselves, and others if they forget, or can’t, or won’t. to turn the other cheek. To share our wealth, not only with the church to support this work, but also with causes we believe in, with our neighbors in the form of taxes. We should treat people as they actually deserve to be treated, that is as a child of God. We are supposed to consume less, and choose the local thing, that shirt or tomato or bottle of wine, and to buy it from a neighbor. We are supposed to take care of our bodies and our minds. We are supposed to pray, and study scripture, and have our faith as a guiding force in our lives.
We are supposed to be the people that we know we are supposed to be. That is why we come to church, to be reminded that being good takes work. It is not always the easy or natural path. We come to church to start over again, weekly, comforted and forgiven, and strengthened and renewed, to take on a one day at a time kind of life. The only reason we do what we do here; the fellowship, the friendship here at Resurrection; the fun we have, the easy laughs, the good food… the feeling of home here is valuable in that it helps us do the work in the world that we have been given to do; to love God and neighbor more than it seems possible, or wise.
Are we going to do this? We’ve had our first season together, the Advent-Christmastide, I am getting to know you all individually and collectively. As I wrote in my newsletter article, we are doing a lot of things, and well, and goodness, we are just scratching the surface. We’ve got a lot to learn together; about God and our relationship to God, about discernment and mission, about our Holy Scripture and our history, about how to organize ourselves for mission, how to invite others to join us in this work, in short, how to to act justly, love mercy and to walk humbly with our God. This is what you got signed up for in Baptism. Are we together in this? Are we going to build up an outpost of the Kingdom together? Are we ready to fulfill our vows? Really?
I am going to give one of my hero’s the last words. Whatever I am talking about, this poem is pretty much what I mean. This is the “Manifesto of the Mad Farmer’s Liberation Front” by Wendell Berry.
Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion - put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?
Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn't go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.
AMEN
January 8, 2012
The Rev. Dr. Brent Was
“I have baptized you with water; but He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit…”
Today we remember the Baptism of our Lord. I love Baptisms. For babies, you are just holding this little person and they are being welcomed into this big, ancient, global family. There is so much nurture in that action, there is such a village. And for bigger folks, it is like wow. What a commitment. You have been moved by God in Christ with the Holy Spirit to do something very radical, very counter-cultural (at least out here in Oregon, progressive Christian Baptism is very alternative, even edgy).
I am guessing that most everyone here has been baptized. It did not have to be an Episcopal baptism, any form or tradition counts, so to speak, so long as it was done in the name of the Triune God. And if you were not baptized, no worries, you are still welcome to share in the Feast at God’s table, we should probably talk about it, but certainly everyone is welcome. Historically this was NOT the case. Everyone worshiped together, the Baptized and those in training, the catechumen, up until the Eucharist, then the un-Baptized had to leave. The transition in our worship from the liturgy of the word to the liturgy of the table reflects this ancient polity. And the catechumate was rigorous; like three year long rigorous. Can you imagine how powerful that first communion would have been, years of study and work. There is certainly something to be said for the high commitment church where it takes dedication, hard work, where there are high expectations to fully participate. We really are not supposed to have an open table, but I believe it is better to err on the side of inclusion. But this is not a small deal, and we have to ask ourselves, what does Baptism mean?
Well, what does Baptism mean? And let us look to the source of all that is good and holy, the BCP. Where would we look? Exactly, the Catechism. Someone look to page 858. What is Holy Baptism? And then two lines down, what is the inward and spiritual grace in Baptism? Someone else…
Adopted as children; inheritors of the Kingdom of God. Union with Christ in his death and resurrection, birth into God’s family, the church… these are very good things, and true things, but something very, very important is missing, particularly in this post-Christian age. Inheritors of the church? Yes that it generous, but this vision of baptism feels sort of like inheriting a crazy uncle’s slowly sinking yacht. This vision of Baptism is inward looking, and if there is anything that the history of Christian hegemony in the West teaches, it is that this is a terrible religion when it is inward looking. Christianity, the Church is just plain dangerous when it is more concerned with itself than with the world. All religions are
Baptism is fantastic. (And don’t get me wrong, the Church is fantastic, too). Baptism is powerful. It is important. It is one of the two sacraments that Christ Himself instituted. How do we bring it back to holy relevance in a world where membership in this club does not mean a whole lot? Particularly as we learn more and more that being Christian is a great privilege, and that it is as great a privilege to be Jewish, or Muslim, or Hindu or whatever. The privilege comes in being a person of faith in a community of faith, not in which lineage we find ourselves. So why is baptism into the church important? As I will say time and time again, it is all about mission. And what is mission? It is what God is up to in the world, and our job, our sole job as Christians is to discern what God is up to in the world and figure out what to do about that.
I understand baptism much like I understand ordination. It is like an ordination into “Das Priestertum aller Gläubigen.” The Priesthood of all believers. I see it in SAT terms: priests are to the laity as the baptized are to the world. And what is ordination but a commissioning for mission. It is being set aside by a community for certain purposes. Priests are set aside for specific service and leadership roles and are responsible for certain sacramental obligations. Deacons proclaim the Gospel, both in church and in the world, with words and with action. And the rest of us, the Baptized? What is our responsibility? What are we set aside for?
We are set aside to live a Gospel life, a life directed by our experience of God in Christ. We are set aside to love God with everything we’ve got and love our neighbor as ourselves. That is it. That is the reason for being Christian, receiving in baptism the commission to follow the great commandment. And practically, what does that look like? What are we supposed to do? What is Great Commandment living? We are supposed to live with intention. We are supposed to live with purpose. To live an examined life. To strive to do meaningful work. To leave the world better than we find it. To pick up after ourselves, and others if they forget, or can’t, or won’t. to turn the other cheek. To share our wealth, not only with the church to support this work, but also with causes we believe in, with our neighbors in the form of taxes. We should treat people as they actually deserve to be treated, that is as a child of God. We are supposed to consume less, and choose the local thing, that shirt or tomato or bottle of wine, and to buy it from a neighbor. We are supposed to take care of our bodies and our minds. We are supposed to pray, and study scripture, and have our faith as a guiding force in our lives.
We are supposed to be the people that we know we are supposed to be. That is why we come to church, to be reminded that being good takes work. It is not always the easy or natural path. We come to church to start over again, weekly, comforted and forgiven, and strengthened and renewed, to take on a one day at a time kind of life. The only reason we do what we do here; the fellowship, the friendship here at Resurrection; the fun we have, the easy laughs, the good food… the feeling of home here is valuable in that it helps us do the work in the world that we have been given to do; to love God and neighbor more than it seems possible, or wise.
Are we going to do this? We’ve had our first season together, the Advent-Christmastide, I am getting to know you all individually and collectively. As I wrote in my newsletter article, we are doing a lot of things, and well, and goodness, we are just scratching the surface. We’ve got a lot to learn together; about God and our relationship to God, about discernment and mission, about our Holy Scripture and our history, about how to organize ourselves for mission, how to invite others to join us in this work, in short, how to to act justly, love mercy and to walk humbly with our God. This is what you got signed up for in Baptism. Are we together in this? Are we going to build up an outpost of the Kingdom together? Are we ready to fulfill our vows? Really?
I am going to give one of my hero’s the last words. Whatever I am talking about, this poem is pretty much what I mean. This is the “Manifesto of the Mad Farmer’s Liberation Front” by Wendell Berry.
Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion - put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?
Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn't go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.
AMEN
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