April 29, 2012
The Fourth Sunday of Easter, Year B
The Rev. Dr. Brent Was
“I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me.”
I have a confession, a pretty significant one for a priest to make: I struggle with feeling a personal relationship with Jesus. Don’t get me wrong, Jesus Christ is very much part of my understanding of God, and I understand that Jesus Christ is my savior, the redeemer of all who ask that of Him. Why? Because God loves us and wants us back in Right Relationship with everything. How? Well, He, Jesus Christ saves us in the mystery of His incarnation and baptism, His life and work, His death, resurrection, and ascension to the seat at the right hand of God because in all of these things He somehow reconciles us to God. He somehow aligns us with the arc of the universe, the true nature of things, the imago dei. His presence, Christ’s very real presence as a human being in time and space spans the gap between us and our ability to relate to God and through God, to each other. How? How does it all work, well, that’s the mystery.
But the personal part… the “I have a friend in Jesus” kind of living God presence, O, I struggle. Maybe struggle is the wrong word; I long for it and I wrassel with that longing. Feeling held, nurtured, comforted, protected… I want to feel God like that, feel Jesus looking over my shoulder and giving me that Blessed Assurance that I am in fact loved and valuable and all of that. I have wanted that, but I have only fleetingly ever felt that. Usually I feel God as the grandeur of the creation, as the infinite complexity of ecological systems, as the starkness of silence, as the love of a woman and two little children. I feel God there, I know God’s unmistakable fingerprints, but I don’t usually feel all warm and hugged by Jesus, and I have always felt very self-conscious about that. When I was in divinity school and started feeling a pull towards Christ and His one true church (joke), I asked everyone I could think of the following question: Is a personal relationship with Jesus a pre-requisite for considering one’s self Christian? I did not feel it and did not know if I could be Christian without it. Authentically, genuinely, faithfully Christian, that is. And do you know what, I never got a clear answer. Usually, I got no reply, and when someone did risk a response to my query, it was always evasive. I have chalked up the reticence to answer this question to either simple laziness or deep wisdom.
This, struggles with a feeling of personal, one-on-one relationship with Jesus is not actually an aside. It is central to our consideration of this text. What does it mean that Christ calls himself the “Good Shepherd”? He says, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep… I know my own and my own know me… They will listen to my voice.” If you feel a close personal relationship with Jesus; if you feel the presence of the Living God as Jesus, as a personal encounter with Jesus, then this image of the Good Shepherd gets traction. But what if you experience God in some other way? What if you experience God as the Ground of Being, as an Ultimate Concern, as serendipitous creativity, ruah, the breath of life, or the Cosmic Christ, if you feel God more abstractly, less personally, how does the Good Shepherd fit into your understanding of God? How does the longing, the desire, the need for that, for the good shepherd, protector, friend, personal presence, or how does that fit into our understanding of this text, our God and everything?
This text, like the psalm for today, are sources of great comfort because Jesus is addressing a tragically universal experience of the world: the world is a scary place. Bad things do happen, and to good people. Wolves do scatter the flock, and too often those appointed to be the protectors, they flee at the first sign of trouble like the hired hand. We do not have a benevolent protector and we so desperately long for it and we make a lot of bad choices looking for it because we need that comfort and safety. Additionally, the flock itself is fragmented. Some are outside of the fold and haven’t come within the reach of Christ’s saving embrace. Who doesn’t want a good shepherd looking over you, willing and able to lay down His life for you? Who doesn’t want someone to call you back in when you have strayed too far? Who doesn’t want someone, I don’t know, maybe God, walking with you in the valley of the shadow of death, God’s rod and staff comforting you along the way? I want a table like that spread before me, I want my cup to run over with abundance from God. There is a lot to be scared of, a lot to fear in the world and the good shepherd is an image of God that makes the world feel safe for the flock, for us, for me.
Also, though, I want to dwell in the house of the Lord for ever. This text is so comforting not only because the Good Shepherd is offered as our protector, but because of the intimacy Christ offers. “I know my own and my own know me… I have other sheep who do not belong to this fold, I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice.” This is intimacy; being known, recognized, listened to, valued. Who doesn’t want to feel treasured by the foundation of the universe? I want to be laid down in green pastures, led by still waters. I want to feel held by God, nurtured, mothered more than fathered. This is intimacy with God. St. John offers a vision of an intimate Christ. Bringing us to safety in and intimacy with God; it is Jesus’ job description. Truly, that is the role that the second person in the Trinity satisfies. He is the link between the always and everywhere to the here and now. The actual and eternal. The Living God.
Howard Thurman, the great pastor and theologian of the middle of last century captures this sentiment perfectly in his prose poem “Strange Freedom” from the book The Inward Journey. He wrote, (and this is a sparse adaptation) “It is a strange freedom to be adrift in the world of men without a sense of anchor anywhere… It is a strange freedom to go nameless up and down the streets of other minds where no salutation greets and no sign is given to mark the place one calls one's own. To be known, to be called by one's own name... It is an honor to act as one's very own, it is to live a life that is one's very own, it is to bow before an altar that is one's very own, it is to worship a God who is one's very own. It is a strange freedom to be adrift in the world of men, to act with no accounting, to go nameless up and down the streets of other minds where no salutation greets and no sign is given to mark the place one calls one's own.”
The good shepherd is an antidote to that strange freedom of anonymity and baselessness, lack of accountability and aloneness. Where Thurman feared going nameless up and down the streets of other minds, Jesus calls us by name. Well, that is what we are supposed to feel. That is what Jesus is calling us to feel through the words of St. John. So the big question, the question that still keeps me up at night sometimes is what to do if we don’t feel it that way? Or worse, what do we do if we don’t feel it that way but we want to?
If you just don’t feel it that way and are not so bothered by it, well, good for you. That is great. I should probably follow my former professor’s and pastor’s wise discretion in not answering that question about a personal relationship with Jesus, but I am here. And I am here authentically, genuinely, a priest in Christ’s church. Is a personal relationship with Christ a pre-requisite for being Christian? Who am I to say?
But in the darkness of the night, in the shadow of grief, in the grips of fear, in the wake of disappointment and betrayal, so many of us need, I need an existential hug, warm comfortable arms to seek refuge in. I need to be carried in the palm of God’s hand, I need someone to walk with me through the valley of the shadow of death, their rod and staff close at hand. I need a good shepherd who knows me and I know them. I need it but I don’t often feel it. What is a soul to do?
There is an old joke: a priest goes to the pope and says, “Holy Father, I have lost my faith. How can I keep serving as a priest?” The Holy Father responds, “Fake it.” There is wisdom in that pithy joke. Act as if, is maybe a nicer way of saying it. If you need a good shepherd in your life, then act as if you have one. Pretend that is the way it is. When you pray, imagine it, visualize it, picture God in God’s self calling you by name, seeking you out, spreading out the table before you, your cup over flowing with abundance. Be in that space, a space of comfort and joy, safety and shelter. Being is believing, and one of the great gifts God gives us, a strange freedom we have been blessed with is having a great ability to be many things, often at once. You want to feel loved by God, personally? Well, imagine what that might feel like and you will feel like it. You want the feelings of security and intimacy with Jesus the good shepherd, imagine what that would feel like and you will feel like it. This is one of those rare opportunities to experience the transformative power of prayer very directly. Imagine how you want to feel God, how you need to feel God, imagine and imagine and pray and try to open yourself and you will become what you pray for, a beloved child of God. “But O! How far have I to go to find Him in whom I have already arrived!” AMEN
Monday, April 30, 2012
April 22, 2012 The Third Sunday of Easter
April 22, 2012
The Third Sunday of Easter, Year B
The Rev. Dr. Brent Was
Many years ago, when I was in the Marines, I spent three years in 29 Palms, California. It is in the middle of the Mohave desert; which is a beautiful place, and is absolutely the frontier of human civilization. From the edge of town looking east, it was 100 miles to the next building. It was weird out there sometimes. Once, I was driving with some friends across a particularly desolate stretch of desert highway, and we passed a house out there that was completely enclosed in a giant white cage. It looked like someone had fitted a huge cast iron birdcage exactly to the profile of the house. It was creepy to say the least. One of my friends commented, “I wonder who they are trying to keep out?” My other friend asked, “I wonder who they are trying to keep in?”
What did we talk about last week?_____ Radical hospitality. What led us to thinking about that?______ Locked doors; exactly. The thing about locked doors is that they work both ways. Not only do they keep people out, they also keep people in.
This is a generous church much like this is a hospitable church. It is generous and hospitable and on both counts, we have more to do. A lot more to do. We need to make sure that locked doors do not keep others out nor do they keep us in.
Look around us. Seriously, look around. There are amazing people around this place. Such generosity, such energy, such skills and caring concentrated in this place, inside these doors. We have so much to offer, so the first question is, “What does the world need?” Well, we need a new atmosphere. Besides that, what does our community need? _____
As far as I see it, there are two major foci of effort calling to us. We need to alleviate individual human suffering and we need change the system that creates the conditions for suffering. Direct service and structural change. Neither is privileged over the other; both are absolutely essential. There is the cautionary allegory of a river with babies floating downstream in baskets. The caution is we must not simply save the babies, but must address how they got into the river in the first place. We absolutely need to do both, because no matter what is going on upstream, those babies need saving, and now. If you are destitute, we need to help you get food, and shelter, and clothing to you ASAP. And, and we need to address with the force of the gospels the conditions that make poverty possible, if not increasingly probable for far too many of our neighbors and ourselves.
Direct service and structural change. These are our parallel courses. So now we have to ask ourselves the question, “what do we have to offer?”
Of primary importance to this whole endeavor, our whole mission to the world, is the fact that we are a church. We are a community of people, religious people, who primarily form a community in order to love God with all our hearts and minds and souls and love our neighbors as ourselves. We are not a social service agency. Parishes are very inefficient providers of social services. That we operate the home starter kit program, or that we participate in shelter week, the only emergency shelter for homeless families to stay together in Eugene is simply a sign that our government has failed to protect the most vulnerable, and in that it has failed all of us; well, all of us but the very wealthy. In a perfect world, direct social service should not be part of local parish life except for the occasional assistance offered to someone who slips through the social safety net. Truly, our direct service should be that of being a good and generous neighbor, always ready to offer a hand, a cup of sugar, a few dollars. Tragically, though, our government has failed us and it is only going to get worse. Sinfully misplaced priorities have left millions clinging to survival by a thread. We must help. The babies need to be pulled from the river. We will do the best that we can to help those in dire straights because honestly, there are not many others willing or able to that in our society.
While churches are not great social service providers, churches, are exceptionally good at two other forms of mission. What might those be? Here is a hint: one is really exciting and one is really scary, for Episcopalians at least. As for exciting, how is abolition for excitement? Or the civil rights movement? How about Oscar Romero challenging American imperial hegemony and Dietrich Bonheoffer challenging National Socialism? What about Dom Helder Camara, archbishop of Brazil in the 90s when he wrote, “When I feed the hungry, they call me a saint. When I ask why people are hungry, they call me a communist.” Religious people organized in churches are exceptionally good at the big picture, structural change kinds of movements. Collectively we can bring to bear a divinely guided moral voice that can break empires, that can bring justice, that can free people from oppression. If you doubt that, think about the Anglican Church in South Africa. The ANC brought the people to the streets and to the halls of government; the church kept them from becoming the evil they were resisting and to make reconciliation a reality. We are powerful medicine.
The church, us, we, we have a moral voice. We get the benefit of the doubt from our society when it comes to proclaiming what is just, defining right from wrong, forgiving trespasses and confronting evil without hatred or malice. That is what Jesus did among us. That is what Jesus commands us to do. Loving our neighbor as our self is not a passive activity. It is not only an internal process we go through. And it is thoroughly exciting.
Scary, though, is the second form of mission outside these doors that Churches are perfectly suited for: evangelism. Do you think that what we do here is good, worthwhile? Does the community here shore you up in the storm? Do you feel more able to help others? Are you closer to God here, or because of being part of this community? If so, then we have a moral obligation to share it, and not wait passively to welcome or even radically welcome those who find their way to these unlocked doors. This is not about growth in numbers. I am not concerned about that. I am talking about growth in mission, in particular the mission of propgating the gospel in the hearts and minds of our neighbors who need it. We have something good here, something necessary. Something life giving. We need to share it.
But it is bigger than that, the imperative to evangelism, much bigger. It is Earth Day. And there are some scary things on the horizon, a more near horizon than we probably know. The climate is in flux and biological systems, such as human civilization, are hypersensitive to change, and a changing climate changes everything. One of the most profound lessons I learned in my years of farming was the idea of resiliency. Resiliency: in biological systems resiliency is one part flexability, one part healthy constitution, one part balance and a whole mess of fungal and microbiological activity. That is a description of good soil. It is a community, soil, and is sometimes called the soil food web. Minerals, bacteria, fungus, humus, air, water, worms, insects, moles… that is the soil community. And the more flexible, healthy, balanced and alive a soil system is, the more resilient it becomes. Good soil can handle more water in floods, can store more water in droughts and will not erode or compact easily. Good soil will not harbor disease and pests, nor will it support pernicious weed infestations. It can metabolize poisons better, can heal itself faster and can sequester vast amounts of carbon. Oh, and it produces more nutrient dense food with far less inputs than poor soil. Like the fields in China and India that have been cultivated continuously for 3000 years with no loss of fertility.
Churches can be that kind of community; soil-like. Resilient. We internally can weather storms. We would not have made it 2000 years if we couldn’t. And in the coming storms, not only will we be better off, but we can serve our neighbors and neighborhood better. And the more people in the fold, in the rich, resilient community we are building here, the more servants of a needful world will there be; the more our local community will resemble the ecclesia, the beloved community we are striving for. We have the means to be a beacon in this community, a center of mercy and health, vibrancy and love, stability and justice. We need to let our light shine, and brightly, because there is darkness abroad in the world. We have something good going on here, something good for the world. Let’s get out there.
What to do from here? That is always the kicker. Here’s what. Keep up what we are doing now. It is great. Let’s get involved with the Sunday breakfasts down at first Christian. If you are interested, let’s meet outside right after church before the end of life class. This building is empty most of the time. Let’s get it in the swing of things, hosting groups, let’s become a lively hub of this community. Go to an event or read something that will challenge you. Work on your prayer practice, or get one. Ask me about it if you want. Invite someone to church; someone who needs it, someone whom we need, generally those become one in the same. Let’ unlock these doors and let the light shine in, and let our light shine out. AMEN
Many years ago, when I was in the Marines, I spent three years in 29 Palms, California. It is in the middle of the Mohave desert; which is a beautiful place, and is absolutely the frontier of human civilization. From the edge of town looking east, it was 100 miles to the next building. It was weird out there sometimes. Once, I was driving with some friends across a particularly desolate stretch of desert highway, and we passed a house out there that was completely enclosed in a giant white cage. It looked like someone had fitted a huge cast iron birdcage exactly to the profile of the house. It was creepy to say the least. One of my friends commented, “I wonder who they are trying to keep out?” My other friend asked, “I wonder who they are trying to keep in?”
What did we talk about last week?_____ Radical hospitality. What led us to thinking about that?______ Locked doors; exactly. The thing about locked doors is that they work both ways. Not only do they keep people out, they also keep people in.
This is a generous church much like this is a hospitable church. It is generous and hospitable and on both counts, we have more to do. A lot more to do. We need to make sure that locked doors do not keep others out nor do they keep us in.
Look around us. Seriously, look around. There are amazing people around this place. Such generosity, such energy, such skills and caring concentrated in this place, inside these doors. We have so much to offer, so the first question is, “What does the world need?” Well, we need a new atmosphere. Besides that, what does our community need? _____
As far as I see it, there are two major foci of effort calling to us. We need to alleviate individual human suffering and we need change the system that creates the conditions for suffering. Direct service and structural change. Neither is privileged over the other; both are absolutely essential. There is the cautionary allegory of a river with babies floating downstream in baskets. The caution is we must not simply save the babies, but must address how they got into the river in the first place. We absolutely need to do both, because no matter what is going on upstream, those babies need saving, and now. If you are destitute, we need to help you get food, and shelter, and clothing to you ASAP. And, and we need to address with the force of the gospels the conditions that make poverty possible, if not increasingly probable for far too many of our neighbors and ourselves.
Direct service and structural change. These are our parallel courses. So now we have to ask ourselves the question, “what do we have to offer?”
Of primary importance to this whole endeavor, our whole mission to the world, is the fact that we are a church. We are a community of people, religious people, who primarily form a community in order to love God with all our hearts and minds and souls and love our neighbors as ourselves. We are not a social service agency. Parishes are very inefficient providers of social services. That we operate the home starter kit program, or that we participate in shelter week, the only emergency shelter for homeless families to stay together in Eugene is simply a sign that our government has failed to protect the most vulnerable, and in that it has failed all of us; well, all of us but the very wealthy. In a perfect world, direct social service should not be part of local parish life except for the occasional assistance offered to someone who slips through the social safety net. Truly, our direct service should be that of being a good and generous neighbor, always ready to offer a hand, a cup of sugar, a few dollars. Tragically, though, our government has failed us and it is only going to get worse. Sinfully misplaced priorities have left millions clinging to survival by a thread. We must help. The babies need to be pulled from the river. We will do the best that we can to help those in dire straights because honestly, there are not many others willing or able to that in our society.
While churches are not great social service providers, churches, are exceptionally good at two other forms of mission. What might those be? Here is a hint: one is really exciting and one is really scary, for Episcopalians at least. As for exciting, how is abolition for excitement? Or the civil rights movement? How about Oscar Romero challenging American imperial hegemony and Dietrich Bonheoffer challenging National Socialism? What about Dom Helder Camara, archbishop of Brazil in the 90s when he wrote, “When I feed the hungry, they call me a saint. When I ask why people are hungry, they call me a communist.” Religious people organized in churches are exceptionally good at the big picture, structural change kinds of movements. Collectively we can bring to bear a divinely guided moral voice that can break empires, that can bring justice, that can free people from oppression. If you doubt that, think about the Anglican Church in South Africa. The ANC brought the people to the streets and to the halls of government; the church kept them from becoming the evil they were resisting and to make reconciliation a reality. We are powerful medicine.
The church, us, we, we have a moral voice. We get the benefit of the doubt from our society when it comes to proclaiming what is just, defining right from wrong, forgiving trespasses and confronting evil without hatred or malice. That is what Jesus did among us. That is what Jesus commands us to do. Loving our neighbor as our self is not a passive activity. It is not only an internal process we go through. And it is thoroughly exciting.
Scary, though, is the second form of mission outside these doors that Churches are perfectly suited for: evangelism. Do you think that what we do here is good, worthwhile? Does the community here shore you up in the storm? Do you feel more able to help others? Are you closer to God here, or because of being part of this community? If so, then we have a moral obligation to share it, and not wait passively to welcome or even radically welcome those who find their way to these unlocked doors. This is not about growth in numbers. I am not concerned about that. I am talking about growth in mission, in particular the mission of propgating the gospel in the hearts and minds of our neighbors who need it. We have something good here, something necessary. Something life giving. We need to share it.
But it is bigger than that, the imperative to evangelism, much bigger. It is Earth Day. And there are some scary things on the horizon, a more near horizon than we probably know. The climate is in flux and biological systems, such as human civilization, are hypersensitive to change, and a changing climate changes everything. One of the most profound lessons I learned in my years of farming was the idea of resiliency. Resiliency: in biological systems resiliency is one part flexability, one part healthy constitution, one part balance and a whole mess of fungal and microbiological activity. That is a description of good soil. It is a community, soil, and is sometimes called the soil food web. Minerals, bacteria, fungus, humus, air, water, worms, insects, moles… that is the soil community. And the more flexible, healthy, balanced and alive a soil system is, the more resilient it becomes. Good soil can handle more water in floods, can store more water in droughts and will not erode or compact easily. Good soil will not harbor disease and pests, nor will it support pernicious weed infestations. It can metabolize poisons better, can heal itself faster and can sequester vast amounts of carbon. Oh, and it produces more nutrient dense food with far less inputs than poor soil. Like the fields in China and India that have been cultivated continuously for 3000 years with no loss of fertility.
Churches can be that kind of community; soil-like. Resilient. We internally can weather storms. We would not have made it 2000 years if we couldn’t. And in the coming storms, not only will we be better off, but we can serve our neighbors and neighborhood better. And the more people in the fold, in the rich, resilient community we are building here, the more servants of a needful world will there be; the more our local community will resemble the ecclesia, the beloved community we are striving for. We have the means to be a beacon in this community, a center of mercy and health, vibrancy and love, stability and justice. We need to let our light shine, and brightly, because there is darkness abroad in the world. We have something good going on here, something good for the world. Let’s get out there.
What to do from here? That is always the kicker. Here’s what. Keep up what we are doing now. It is great. Let’s get involved with the Sunday breakfasts down at first Christian. If you are interested, let’s meet outside right after church before the end of life class. This building is empty most of the time. Let’s get it in the swing of things, hosting groups, let’s become a lively hub of this community. Go to an event or read something that will challenge you. Work on your prayer practice, or get one. Ask me about it if you want. Invite someone to church; someone who needs it, someone whom we need, generally those become one in the same. Let’ unlock these doors and let the light shine in, and let our light shine out. AMEN
Thursday, April 12, 2012
April 8, 2012, Easter Day
Easter Day, April 8, 2012
The Rev. Dr. Brent Was
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!) Happy Easter, everyone! Well, we’ve made it. It has been a really amazing Holy Week here. I know I have gone places I have not gone before. On behalf of the whole community, thank you for all of the efforts that so many put into this week. We made it together, together through another descent into the dark night of Holy Week. Last night we rekindled our Eternal flame and we continue the party this morning in our memory and remembering of the life and death and rising again of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!
I do not usually preach children’s sermons. First, they are a lot harder to write than big people sermons; a good parable is exponentially harder to write than an exegesis of a parable. Second, it reminds me that any sermon worth giving should boil down to a page if not a sentence, and it makes me self conscious about all the fun I have with my words each week. Like today, my two minutes with the kids summed up my Easter message: Jesus lives. That’s it. So let’s go have some ham… Jesus lives. That is the message today. Jesus is alive in a very special way. By the grace of God and by the intention of our hearts and minds and bodies, Jesus lives in us. He lives in us individually, personally, like a great love or a true friend. He also lives in us collectively as the heart of this and every Church; He is the Good Shepard, our leader and guide, protector of the faithful. He also lives in the world. His eternal life is manifest in our right intentions, right actions and right efforts, our right relationships, our concern and love for others, particularly the least of these. Jesus lives. There are no qualifications to that statement. He lives.
Jesus lives in us in a very special way. That special life, that form of life that He has in us does one thing: it makes real eternal life. “The Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, keep you in eternal life.” Those are the words we say every week, they are not to be taken lightly; they are not to be taken figuratively. Jesus lives, and in that life reveals to us eternal life, the eternal life that God promises all of us. This eternal life was revealed in Jesus. It was pioneered by Jesus in His triumph over death, in particular the triumph of life over a shameful, violent, unjust death at the hands of men under the influence of greed and hatred and fear and scarcity. These things mean death, they are the way of death. The way of Christ is the way of life. Eternal life, even. And in Christ, we are witnesses to the fact that life always triumphs. In the long run at least, life always triumphs. We are kept in eternal life. We are part of it. We have it.
Obviously I am not saying that we will live forever. No matter how hard you believe or what, we will not live forever, no one does, not in this form, certainly. And I am not talking life in some post-mortem paradise, either. We ought not be concerned with that, with afterlife or whatever speculative theology we can conjure up. We need to be concerned with the life we have here. Even Jesus didn’t live forever, not in the form He walked around in. Eternal life does not mean immortality.
Eternal life is what we find on that mountain the Prophet Isaiah describes. “On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all people a feast of rich food, a feast of well aged wines… And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever. Then the Lord GOD will wipe away the tears from all faces and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth for the Lord has spoken… This is the Lord for whom we have waited; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.” The eternal life we are promised in Christ Jesus is death being conquered, being swallowed up, not the actuality of death, death is just part of the process, what is swallowed up is the fear of death, the shame of death, the fear and shame of our own mortality and the destructive habits this fear engenders. These are the tears being wiped away, this is the disgrace God will take away. In that is eternal life.
What if we lived fearlessly, I mean truly fearlessly? What if we really were not fearful of death? Not that we look forward to it, but what if we really didn’t worry about our inevitable decline and death? What if we were fearless of what others thought of us. What would life look like if we were fearless of the consequences of living out our beliefs, living out our dreams? What if we had no fear of the consequences of doing what is right? What if we were not scared of pushing our ways into the halls of power and telling the scared little men who control things to knock it off? They want our tax dollars to pay for wars and Guantanamo and Total Information Awareness v. 2.0 and not schools or protecting rivers or supporting cities and towns in becoming stable sustainable communities, you know, real national security initiatives … if we all said no, if we withheld our taxes until they did it different, there is nothing they could do about it. If we said could turn the lights out until everyone has healthcare, or the prisons are emptied, or the climate is actually dealt with, if we did that, we stopped cooperating, we’d have action tomorrow. And there is nothing that they could do about it. If we were fearless, we could shut down all the predatory banks by just not paying them anymore. If we all stopped paying on our mortgages or credit cards the banks would become extremely cooperative, wouldn’t they? That is what Gandhi did in India. He was a fearless man, so fearless that a great nation rose in fearlessness with him and peacefully threw-off the English imperialists by not cooperating any more. (Well the Indians were peaceful, the British were God-awfully violent). They stopped buying English cloth and they made their own salt. Fearlessly, they crushed the empire with non-compliance. And did you know, Gandhi had one picture hanging in his house, the picture of another fearless man, Jesus Christ. Eternal life is life lived without fear of the consequences of living.
Eternal life means living life to it fullest potential. Living it to the end, embracing the full range of being that life encompasses. A full life has pain and pleasure, happiness and sadness, loss and reward, life and death. Living an eternal life means that we live with our hearts open to the world, knowing that such openness invites both wondrous joy and bone crushing sorrow. Eternal life is lived out in loving someone, in having a child. Every relationship we can imagine will end in death, there is no getting around that, but living in eternal life we still risk to love. What choice do we have? There is so much to love. Jesus shows us the way to this life lived fully conscious of the consequences. His crucifixion and resurrection, his condemnation and his vindication. He lived His earthly life eternally. Now, He simply lives.
Eternal life is life lived tapped into the very true fact of limitless love, the very true fact that you can never be too kind or too forgiving, or too happy, or too generous. You probably cannot have too much fun. Maybe you can have too much chocolate, but that is just a maybe. Eternal life is life lived in this very moment, the only place God can meet us. Jesus long ago went up against the powers of death, the empire and its stoodges, and definitively, definitively He showed us that life always triumphs, in the end, life always triumphs. His eternal generosity, His fearlessness in the face of corruption and violence, His kindness and his forgiveness, the endless hope he had for His friends, the sadness He bore for others; these things lasted fifteen hundred years longer than Rome, two thousand years longer than the Temple, and they continue to live. Jesus Christ and the eternal life that he carries for us continues to live in our hearts and minds, it continues in the keeping of His feasts and fasts and the life of His church. The eternal life of Jesus Christ which we remember today is a promise of eternal life freely offered to all. Jesus lives.
This gift we have been given, Christ’s life within our life, it extracts a high price. An eternally high price actually. To accept the life of Jesus within us and the eternal life He promises, the price is that we may no longer live for just ourselves, just for our little worlds, for our own little concerns. The eternal life Jesus Christ offers is useless to us if we hold onto it for ourselves. It cannot exist in a single heart. What we must do is to tenderly hold that life; we must cherish it, adore it, to value it more than anything else we can imagine, and then we must radically and recklessly give it away to anyone and everyone who will have it. The eternal life of Christ within us is an unquenchable flame of love, it is an endless stream of truth, it an unfathomably deep wellspring of generosity. It cannot run out. It does not always lead to tranquility and pleasure, look, it led Jesus to the Cross, but it will absolutely lead us to where we are supposed to go, it will make us the person, the community, the world that God intends us to be. Jesus lives that we may share in His eternal life.
I want to thank you all for having Windy, the girls and me here with you this season, this morning. There is a sweet, sweet spirit in this place. May this be the first of many, many Easters together. Jesus lives! AMEN
The Rev. Dr. Brent Was
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!) Happy Easter, everyone! Well, we’ve made it. It has been a really amazing Holy Week here. I know I have gone places I have not gone before. On behalf of the whole community, thank you for all of the efforts that so many put into this week. We made it together, together through another descent into the dark night of Holy Week. Last night we rekindled our Eternal flame and we continue the party this morning in our memory and remembering of the life and death and rising again of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!
I do not usually preach children’s sermons. First, they are a lot harder to write than big people sermons; a good parable is exponentially harder to write than an exegesis of a parable. Second, it reminds me that any sermon worth giving should boil down to a page if not a sentence, and it makes me self conscious about all the fun I have with my words each week. Like today, my two minutes with the kids summed up my Easter message: Jesus lives. That’s it. So let’s go have some ham… Jesus lives. That is the message today. Jesus is alive in a very special way. By the grace of God and by the intention of our hearts and minds and bodies, Jesus lives in us. He lives in us individually, personally, like a great love or a true friend. He also lives in us collectively as the heart of this and every Church; He is the Good Shepard, our leader and guide, protector of the faithful. He also lives in the world. His eternal life is manifest in our right intentions, right actions and right efforts, our right relationships, our concern and love for others, particularly the least of these. Jesus lives. There are no qualifications to that statement. He lives.
Jesus lives in us in a very special way. That special life, that form of life that He has in us does one thing: it makes real eternal life. “The Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, keep you in eternal life.” Those are the words we say every week, they are not to be taken lightly; they are not to be taken figuratively. Jesus lives, and in that life reveals to us eternal life, the eternal life that God promises all of us. This eternal life was revealed in Jesus. It was pioneered by Jesus in His triumph over death, in particular the triumph of life over a shameful, violent, unjust death at the hands of men under the influence of greed and hatred and fear and scarcity. These things mean death, they are the way of death. The way of Christ is the way of life. Eternal life, even. And in Christ, we are witnesses to the fact that life always triumphs. In the long run at least, life always triumphs. We are kept in eternal life. We are part of it. We have it.
Obviously I am not saying that we will live forever. No matter how hard you believe or what, we will not live forever, no one does, not in this form, certainly. And I am not talking life in some post-mortem paradise, either. We ought not be concerned with that, with afterlife or whatever speculative theology we can conjure up. We need to be concerned with the life we have here. Even Jesus didn’t live forever, not in the form He walked around in. Eternal life does not mean immortality.
Eternal life is what we find on that mountain the Prophet Isaiah describes. “On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all people a feast of rich food, a feast of well aged wines… And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever. Then the Lord GOD will wipe away the tears from all faces and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth for the Lord has spoken… This is the Lord for whom we have waited; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.” The eternal life we are promised in Christ Jesus is death being conquered, being swallowed up, not the actuality of death, death is just part of the process, what is swallowed up is the fear of death, the shame of death, the fear and shame of our own mortality and the destructive habits this fear engenders. These are the tears being wiped away, this is the disgrace God will take away. In that is eternal life.
What if we lived fearlessly, I mean truly fearlessly? What if we really were not fearful of death? Not that we look forward to it, but what if we really didn’t worry about our inevitable decline and death? What if we were fearless of what others thought of us. What would life look like if we were fearless of the consequences of living out our beliefs, living out our dreams? What if we had no fear of the consequences of doing what is right? What if we were not scared of pushing our ways into the halls of power and telling the scared little men who control things to knock it off? They want our tax dollars to pay for wars and Guantanamo and Total Information Awareness v. 2.0 and not schools or protecting rivers or supporting cities and towns in becoming stable sustainable communities, you know, real national security initiatives … if we all said no, if we withheld our taxes until they did it different, there is nothing they could do about it. If we said could turn the lights out until everyone has healthcare, or the prisons are emptied, or the climate is actually dealt with, if we did that, we stopped cooperating, we’d have action tomorrow. And there is nothing that they could do about it. If we were fearless, we could shut down all the predatory banks by just not paying them anymore. If we all stopped paying on our mortgages or credit cards the banks would become extremely cooperative, wouldn’t they? That is what Gandhi did in India. He was a fearless man, so fearless that a great nation rose in fearlessness with him and peacefully threw-off the English imperialists by not cooperating any more. (Well the Indians were peaceful, the British were God-awfully violent). They stopped buying English cloth and they made their own salt. Fearlessly, they crushed the empire with non-compliance. And did you know, Gandhi had one picture hanging in his house, the picture of another fearless man, Jesus Christ. Eternal life is life lived without fear of the consequences of living.
Eternal life means living life to it fullest potential. Living it to the end, embracing the full range of being that life encompasses. A full life has pain and pleasure, happiness and sadness, loss and reward, life and death. Living an eternal life means that we live with our hearts open to the world, knowing that such openness invites both wondrous joy and bone crushing sorrow. Eternal life is lived out in loving someone, in having a child. Every relationship we can imagine will end in death, there is no getting around that, but living in eternal life we still risk to love. What choice do we have? There is so much to love. Jesus shows us the way to this life lived fully conscious of the consequences. His crucifixion and resurrection, his condemnation and his vindication. He lived His earthly life eternally. Now, He simply lives.
Eternal life is life lived tapped into the very true fact of limitless love, the very true fact that you can never be too kind or too forgiving, or too happy, or too generous. You probably cannot have too much fun. Maybe you can have too much chocolate, but that is just a maybe. Eternal life is life lived in this very moment, the only place God can meet us. Jesus long ago went up against the powers of death, the empire and its stoodges, and definitively, definitively He showed us that life always triumphs, in the end, life always triumphs. His eternal generosity, His fearlessness in the face of corruption and violence, His kindness and his forgiveness, the endless hope he had for His friends, the sadness He bore for others; these things lasted fifteen hundred years longer than Rome, two thousand years longer than the Temple, and they continue to live. Jesus Christ and the eternal life that he carries for us continues to live in our hearts and minds, it continues in the keeping of His feasts and fasts and the life of His church. The eternal life of Jesus Christ which we remember today is a promise of eternal life freely offered to all. Jesus lives.
This gift we have been given, Christ’s life within our life, it extracts a high price. An eternally high price actually. To accept the life of Jesus within us and the eternal life He promises, the price is that we may no longer live for just ourselves, just for our little worlds, for our own little concerns. The eternal life Jesus Christ offers is useless to us if we hold onto it for ourselves. It cannot exist in a single heart. What we must do is to tenderly hold that life; we must cherish it, adore it, to value it more than anything else we can imagine, and then we must radically and recklessly give it away to anyone and everyone who will have it. The eternal life of Christ within us is an unquenchable flame of love, it is an endless stream of truth, it an unfathomably deep wellspring of generosity. It cannot run out. It does not always lead to tranquility and pleasure, look, it led Jesus to the Cross, but it will absolutely lead us to where we are supposed to go, it will make us the person, the community, the world that God intends us to be. Jesus lives that we may share in His eternal life.
I want to thank you all for having Windy, the girls and me here with you this season, this morning. There is a sweet, sweet spirit in this place. May this be the first of many, many Easters together. Jesus lives! AMEN
Good Friday, April 6, 2012
Good Friday, April 6, 2012
The Rev. Dr. Brent Was
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? and are so far from my cry and from the words of my distress? O my God, I cry in the day time, but you do not answer, by night, but I find no rest.”
On Sunday we talked about the fact that we cannot have Easter without Good Friday. We cannot have resurrection without death, we cannot have new life in God without that descent into the dark night. It is tragic, the need we seem to have for that suffering, but it does seem that our need for this descent is the nature of things in this world as we know it. It is imperative, however, that we remember that our need for this darkness is nothing to be celebrated or glorified, it is not to be sought out, suffering will come of its own accord. Rather, we need to remember the suffering, steel our resolve to remove its root causes while strengthening ourselves to bear it for the foreseeable future.
Today is that dark night in the church’s journey. We have to remember the tragedy of today, not the triumph. We have to remember the horror of today, not the glory. Jesus did not die for the sins of the world; Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior died because of the sins of the world. The sins of the world are the sins of humanity and chief among them is our tendency to allow civilization to time and time again devolve into Empires. In our complacent lack of resistance, we bring upon ourselves overwhelming imperial violence and greed, ever present collaborationist avarice and myopia, and at the hands of us, we who are at least passively complicit, we experience spectacular mindlessness and a remarkable, a truly remarkable ability to look the other way.
We have to be very careful not to glorify the suffering of Christ because there is a terrible corollary to the law that says we cannot have Easter without Good Friday. That corollary is that we can have Good Friday without Easter.
Good Friday is the Good Friday we remember because of Easter. On Easter something phenomenal happened. But Joseph and Nicodemus did not know what was in store as they prepared Jesus’ body for burial. They could not have known. On that Friday, before it was Good, they did not expect resurrection. The world changing events of Easter backfilled meaning onto that horrid Friday. That backfilling of meaning made it God’s Friday, the Good Friday we remember right now.
But how many anonymous Good Fridays have people of this world suffered through without the saving grace of Easter in their wake? How much pain has been suffered, how much evil has been borne, how many people have righteously cried, “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?” and not heard an answer?
Across the world today, thousands will perish in their own personal Good Fridays. Thousands of men, women and children were hung today on the crosses of famine, war, preventable disease, unclean water, hatred and fear. Someone will be crucified on the deserts of Arizona or Texas fleeing towards a better life El Norte. Someone will be crucified in an industrial accident in a poorly regulated Bangladesh, China or Thailand. Someone will be crucified on an IED in Afghanistan, and on an apply named Hellfire missile in Pakistan. Someone right here in Eugene might be crucified on the cross of homelessness like Tom Eagan was, or on the cross of domestic violence like too many women and children are year in, year out in this and every community around the world. And the sun sets on these Good Fridays like that first Good Friday, without apparent meaning, feeling forsaken, in despair. And without an Easter to follow, this suffering is meaningless, the deaths are meaningless. They have no power to change the world let alone give solace and strength to those left is such suffering’s wake.
That is where we come in; the faithful. We must bear witness, for only in bearing witness can meaning be made. And where meaning is made there is a chance, a small chance maybe, but a chance that redemption will occur. Because in the absence of meaning, grace is hard to come by and we are redeemed by grace alone. It is clear, at least, that without witnesses, without meaning being made, without grace, redemption can never happen. Fortunately, by the grace of God, terrible suffering, needless death, and great injustice always have witnesses. The women standing by the cross and the men who placed Jesus in the tomb, they were the witnesses two thousand years ago. And through whatever happened on Easter, that stupendous thing God accomplished over those two days, their witness continues to echo.
We, the faithful, we need to be the women standing near the cross. We need to be the Marys: Mary, mother of our Lord and her sister; Mary, wife of Clopus and Mary Magdalene, Christ’s most faithful disciple. We need to be Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus crouching in that tomb. We need to witness with eyes wide open the cruelty we heap upon each other. We need to witness with eyes wide open the injustices of the world. And through righteous witness, we may begin to come to conclusions, we may begin to make meaning, we may begin to see that most suffering is preventable. We will see clearly that abuse and depravation are not God’s will; but that justice and life are. We will become invigorated, maybe angered, possibly stirred, something, we will be moved to action, moved to say “Not in my name”, or “Enough!” or simply “STOP!” There are so many Good Fridays without Easters to follow, but it does not have to remain that way.
Closing the gap between all of those anonymous Good Fridays and Easter… Maybe that is the mission we are on. Maybe that is what God intends for us. Maybe we are to witness fully the horrors that occur across the world. Maybe we are to witness them and to recognize them for what they are; that is unnecessary, inexcusable, forgivable but inexcusable. When we recognize the horrors of the world for what they are, what choice do we have but to pray and ask, “How may I help?”
Getting involved, actually putting yourself into a situation to relieve suffering, to give comfort, to heal, to befriend, to accept, to have and to hold, so often that is a sacrifice. Intercession, genuine prayer, this too is a sacrifice. And as Evelyn Underhill teaches us, sacrifice always costs something, it always means some suffering, “even though the most deeply satisfying joy of which we are capable is mingled with its pain.” Our vocation of Christians is to love God with all of our hearts, all of our minds, and all of our souls; and to love our neighbor as our self. We could do no better on both accounts to witness the Good Fridays occurring both near and far, and sacrificing what we have that others may live the lives God intends for them. As we emerge from the darkness, may this be our Eastertide prayer. AMEN
The Rev. Dr. Brent Was
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? and are so far from my cry and from the words of my distress? O my God, I cry in the day time, but you do not answer, by night, but I find no rest.”
On Sunday we talked about the fact that we cannot have Easter without Good Friday. We cannot have resurrection without death, we cannot have new life in God without that descent into the dark night. It is tragic, the need we seem to have for that suffering, but it does seem that our need for this descent is the nature of things in this world as we know it. It is imperative, however, that we remember that our need for this darkness is nothing to be celebrated or glorified, it is not to be sought out, suffering will come of its own accord. Rather, we need to remember the suffering, steel our resolve to remove its root causes while strengthening ourselves to bear it for the foreseeable future.
Today is that dark night in the church’s journey. We have to remember the tragedy of today, not the triumph. We have to remember the horror of today, not the glory. Jesus did not die for the sins of the world; Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior died because of the sins of the world. The sins of the world are the sins of humanity and chief among them is our tendency to allow civilization to time and time again devolve into Empires. In our complacent lack of resistance, we bring upon ourselves overwhelming imperial violence and greed, ever present collaborationist avarice and myopia, and at the hands of us, we who are at least passively complicit, we experience spectacular mindlessness and a remarkable, a truly remarkable ability to look the other way.
We have to be very careful not to glorify the suffering of Christ because there is a terrible corollary to the law that says we cannot have Easter without Good Friday. That corollary is that we can have Good Friday without Easter.
Good Friday is the Good Friday we remember because of Easter. On Easter something phenomenal happened. But Joseph and Nicodemus did not know what was in store as they prepared Jesus’ body for burial. They could not have known. On that Friday, before it was Good, they did not expect resurrection. The world changing events of Easter backfilled meaning onto that horrid Friday. That backfilling of meaning made it God’s Friday, the Good Friday we remember right now.
But how many anonymous Good Fridays have people of this world suffered through without the saving grace of Easter in their wake? How much pain has been suffered, how much evil has been borne, how many people have righteously cried, “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?” and not heard an answer?
Across the world today, thousands will perish in their own personal Good Fridays. Thousands of men, women and children were hung today on the crosses of famine, war, preventable disease, unclean water, hatred and fear. Someone will be crucified on the deserts of Arizona or Texas fleeing towards a better life El Norte. Someone will be crucified in an industrial accident in a poorly regulated Bangladesh, China or Thailand. Someone will be crucified on an IED in Afghanistan, and on an apply named Hellfire missile in Pakistan. Someone right here in Eugene might be crucified on the cross of homelessness like Tom Eagan was, or on the cross of domestic violence like too many women and children are year in, year out in this and every community around the world. And the sun sets on these Good Fridays like that first Good Friday, without apparent meaning, feeling forsaken, in despair. And without an Easter to follow, this suffering is meaningless, the deaths are meaningless. They have no power to change the world let alone give solace and strength to those left is such suffering’s wake.
That is where we come in; the faithful. We must bear witness, for only in bearing witness can meaning be made. And where meaning is made there is a chance, a small chance maybe, but a chance that redemption will occur. Because in the absence of meaning, grace is hard to come by and we are redeemed by grace alone. It is clear, at least, that without witnesses, without meaning being made, without grace, redemption can never happen. Fortunately, by the grace of God, terrible suffering, needless death, and great injustice always have witnesses. The women standing by the cross and the men who placed Jesus in the tomb, they were the witnesses two thousand years ago. And through whatever happened on Easter, that stupendous thing God accomplished over those two days, their witness continues to echo.
We, the faithful, we need to be the women standing near the cross. We need to be the Marys: Mary, mother of our Lord and her sister; Mary, wife of Clopus and Mary Magdalene, Christ’s most faithful disciple. We need to be Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus crouching in that tomb. We need to witness with eyes wide open the cruelty we heap upon each other. We need to witness with eyes wide open the injustices of the world. And through righteous witness, we may begin to come to conclusions, we may begin to make meaning, we may begin to see that most suffering is preventable. We will see clearly that abuse and depravation are not God’s will; but that justice and life are. We will become invigorated, maybe angered, possibly stirred, something, we will be moved to action, moved to say “Not in my name”, or “Enough!” or simply “STOP!” There are so many Good Fridays without Easters to follow, but it does not have to remain that way.
Closing the gap between all of those anonymous Good Fridays and Easter… Maybe that is the mission we are on. Maybe that is what God intends for us. Maybe we are to witness fully the horrors that occur across the world. Maybe we are to witness them and to recognize them for what they are; that is unnecessary, inexcusable, forgivable but inexcusable. When we recognize the horrors of the world for what they are, what choice do we have but to pray and ask, “How may I help?”
Getting involved, actually putting yourself into a situation to relieve suffering, to give comfort, to heal, to befriend, to accept, to have and to hold, so often that is a sacrifice. Intercession, genuine prayer, this too is a sacrifice. And as Evelyn Underhill teaches us, sacrifice always costs something, it always means some suffering, “even though the most deeply satisfying joy of which we are capable is mingled with its pain.” Our vocation of Christians is to love God with all of our hearts, all of our minds, and all of our souls; and to love our neighbor as our self. We could do no better on both accounts to witness the Good Fridays occurring both near and far, and sacrificing what we have that others may live the lives God intends for them. As we emerge from the darkness, may this be our Eastertide prayer. AMEN
April 5, 2012, Maundy Thursday
Maundy Thursday, Year B,
April 5, 2012
The Rev. Dr. Brent Was
The other day I finally noticed what poem is framed in that little frame over there. Any one know what it is? “The Creation” from God’s Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse by James Weldon Johnson. It reminded me of another part of that book, the first chapter. It is called “Listen Lord – A Prayer”. I’ve adapted it a little a bit to fit liturgically. There are copies over there to take home and they have Mr. Johnson’s original language.
Listen Lord – A Prayer
O Lord, we come this evening
Knee-bowed and body-bent
Before Thy throne of grace.
O Lord--this evening--
Bow our hearts beneath our knees,
And our knees in some lonesome valley.
We come this evening --
Like empty pitchers to a full fountain,
With no merits of our own.
O Lord--open up a window of heaven,
And lean out far over the battlements of glory,
And listen this evening.
Lord, have mercy on proud and dying sinners--
Sinners hanging over the mouth of hell,
Who seem to love their distance well.
Lord--ride by this evening --
Mount Your milk-white horse,
And ride-a this evening --
And in Your ride, ride by old hell,
Ride by the dingy gates of hell,
And stop poor sinners in their headlong plunge.
And now, O Lord these people of God,
Who break the bread of life this evening --
Shadow them in the hollow of Thy hand,
And keep them out of the gunshot of the devil.
Take them, Lord--this evening--
Wash them with hyssop inside and out,
Hang them up and drain them dry of sin.
Pin their ear to the wisdom-post,
And make their words sledge hammers of truth--
Beating on the iron heart of sin.
Lord God, this evening--
Put their eyes to the telescope of eternity,
And let them look upon the paper walls of time.
Lord, turpentine their imaginations,
Put perpetual motion in their arms,
Fill them full of the dynamite of Thy power,
Anoint them all over with the oil of Thy salvation,
And set their tongues on fire.
And now, O Lord--
When we’ve done drunk our last cup of sorrow--
When we’ve been called everything but children of God--
When we’re done traveling up the rough side of the mountain--
O--Mary's Baby--
When we start down the steep and slippery steps of death--
When this old world begins to rock beneath our feet--
Lower us to our dusty graves in peace
To wait for that great gittin'-up morning--Amen.
He’s good. Now here is another good one. Here is St. Paul:
“The Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ‘This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.’ For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.”
Paul is writing to the struggling little church in Corinth. There was contention there, lots of it, even about the Lord’s Supper. Right before this, he criticizes those who drink all of the wine and become drunk, and those who eat all of the bread while others are left hungry. Fair enough. Then right after tonight’s section, he tells us that we will be accountable for how we approach the Eucharist. “Examine yourselves, and only then eat of the bread and drink of the wine. For all who eat and drink without discerning the Lord’s body eat and drink judgment on themselves.”
That poem by James Weldon Johnson, it is an examination of ourselves, a confession, a humble and joyful and spot-on confession of our own true nature. “We come… knee-bowed and body-bent… empty pitchers to a full fountain… proud and dying sinners…in a headlong plunge.” We ask, “Shadow us in the hollow of Thy hand… wash us inside and out… pin our ears to the wisdom-post.” We need these things. “Make our words sledgehammers of truth.” They are not always. “Put our eyes to the telescope of eternity.” We need to look beyond our selves. “…turpentine our imaginations.” We need to think beyond ourselves. “Put perpetual motion in our arms.” We need to get to work. “Anoint us with the oil of Thy salvation and set our tongues on fire.” Come Holy Spirit, come.
Two-thousandish years ago, Jesus sat at a table not unlike this one. Oh, the setting was different and we have better lighting and fewer pebbles in the chick peas and we are all going to brush our teeth tonight, but he was having a ritual supper, a seder with friends that he was on a religious mission with. That is what we are doing; having a ritual supper, a remembrance of our Jewish Lord’s remembrance of the original Passover in Egypt another thousand years before that. Memories upon memories upon memories. And we are friends in Christ because we are joined together on a religious mission to make real the Kingdom of God. And to his friends, then to their friends, then to Paul’s friends it was handed down, these words, these practices, this Way. And these words and practices, this Way kept being handed down from generation to generation leading to this very night.
Regularly we gather as friends, our hearts and minds open to the love of God and each other. We gather around a table, to be nourished in body, mind and spirit. We share a meal, usually symbolically in the Eucharist, sometimes literally like our potlucks, and on very special occasions, like tonight, we do both. And always, we examine ourselves; we must examine ourselves. That is part of it. Where are we today? What is closed off inside? What is bruised? What is ornery or angry or scared? Where am I empty? Where do I need God in my life? Where do I need you, or you or you to come to my aid? What do I have to offer? How much of the dynamite of Thy power do I have to spare?
So let’s examine ourselves together. Turn to one of your neighbors. Share with them something that you need tonight. And share with them a gift that you bring, something that you have to share. Because that, that is why we are really here…
Now, before we break the bread of life together, let us remember together one more of Jesus Christ’s actions on that last night of His human life. Let us love one another just as He loves us in the washing of feet. AMEN
April 5, 2012
The Rev. Dr. Brent Was
The other day I finally noticed what poem is framed in that little frame over there. Any one know what it is? “The Creation” from God’s Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse by James Weldon Johnson. It reminded me of another part of that book, the first chapter. It is called “Listen Lord – A Prayer”. I’ve adapted it a little a bit to fit liturgically. There are copies over there to take home and they have Mr. Johnson’s original language.
Listen Lord – A Prayer
O Lord, we come this evening
Knee-bowed and body-bent
Before Thy throne of grace.
O Lord--this evening--
Bow our hearts beneath our knees,
And our knees in some lonesome valley.
We come this evening --
Like empty pitchers to a full fountain,
With no merits of our own.
O Lord--open up a window of heaven,
And lean out far over the battlements of glory,
And listen this evening.
Lord, have mercy on proud and dying sinners--
Sinners hanging over the mouth of hell,
Who seem to love their distance well.
Lord--ride by this evening --
Mount Your milk-white horse,
And ride-a this evening --
And in Your ride, ride by old hell,
Ride by the dingy gates of hell,
And stop poor sinners in their headlong plunge.
And now, O Lord these people of God,
Who break the bread of life this evening --
Shadow them in the hollow of Thy hand,
And keep them out of the gunshot of the devil.
Take them, Lord--this evening--
Wash them with hyssop inside and out,
Hang them up and drain them dry of sin.
Pin their ear to the wisdom-post,
And make their words sledge hammers of truth--
Beating on the iron heart of sin.
Lord God, this evening--
Put their eyes to the telescope of eternity,
And let them look upon the paper walls of time.
Lord, turpentine their imaginations,
Put perpetual motion in their arms,
Fill them full of the dynamite of Thy power,
Anoint them all over with the oil of Thy salvation,
And set their tongues on fire.
And now, O Lord--
When we’ve done drunk our last cup of sorrow--
When we’ve been called everything but children of God--
When we’re done traveling up the rough side of the mountain--
O--Mary's Baby--
When we start down the steep and slippery steps of death--
When this old world begins to rock beneath our feet--
Lower us to our dusty graves in peace
To wait for that great gittin'-up morning--Amen.
He’s good. Now here is another good one. Here is St. Paul:
“The Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ‘This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.’ For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.”
Paul is writing to the struggling little church in Corinth. There was contention there, lots of it, even about the Lord’s Supper. Right before this, he criticizes those who drink all of the wine and become drunk, and those who eat all of the bread while others are left hungry. Fair enough. Then right after tonight’s section, he tells us that we will be accountable for how we approach the Eucharist. “Examine yourselves, and only then eat of the bread and drink of the wine. For all who eat and drink without discerning the Lord’s body eat and drink judgment on themselves.”
That poem by James Weldon Johnson, it is an examination of ourselves, a confession, a humble and joyful and spot-on confession of our own true nature. “We come… knee-bowed and body-bent… empty pitchers to a full fountain… proud and dying sinners…in a headlong plunge.” We ask, “Shadow us in the hollow of Thy hand… wash us inside and out… pin our ears to the wisdom-post.” We need these things. “Make our words sledgehammers of truth.” They are not always. “Put our eyes to the telescope of eternity.” We need to look beyond our selves. “…turpentine our imaginations.” We need to think beyond ourselves. “Put perpetual motion in our arms.” We need to get to work. “Anoint us with the oil of Thy salvation and set our tongues on fire.” Come Holy Spirit, come.
Two-thousandish years ago, Jesus sat at a table not unlike this one. Oh, the setting was different and we have better lighting and fewer pebbles in the chick peas and we are all going to brush our teeth tonight, but he was having a ritual supper, a seder with friends that he was on a religious mission with. That is what we are doing; having a ritual supper, a remembrance of our Jewish Lord’s remembrance of the original Passover in Egypt another thousand years before that. Memories upon memories upon memories. And we are friends in Christ because we are joined together on a religious mission to make real the Kingdom of God. And to his friends, then to their friends, then to Paul’s friends it was handed down, these words, these practices, this Way. And these words and practices, this Way kept being handed down from generation to generation leading to this very night.
Regularly we gather as friends, our hearts and minds open to the love of God and each other. We gather around a table, to be nourished in body, mind and spirit. We share a meal, usually symbolically in the Eucharist, sometimes literally like our potlucks, and on very special occasions, like tonight, we do both. And always, we examine ourselves; we must examine ourselves. That is part of it. Where are we today? What is closed off inside? What is bruised? What is ornery or angry or scared? Where am I empty? Where do I need God in my life? Where do I need you, or you or you to come to my aid? What do I have to offer? How much of the dynamite of Thy power do I have to spare?
So let’s examine ourselves together. Turn to one of your neighbors. Share with them something that you need tonight. And share with them a gift that you bring, something that you have to share. Because that, that is why we are really here…
Now, before we break the bread of life together, let us remember together one more of Jesus Christ’s actions on that last night of His human life. Let us love one another just as He loves us in the washing of feet. AMEN
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
April 1, 2012, Palm Sunday
Palm Sunday, April 1, 2012, Year B
The Rev. Dr. Brent Was
So here we go again. Our annual journey into the challenges of Holy Week. If we were to be true to the narrative trajectory of Holy Week, the narrative handed down to us in the Gospels, today would look different. Over the course of Holy Week we celebrate the joy and memorialize the horror of the most famous week in our cultural heritage. The path leads us to joy into horror and back into joy. We start with the joyous and subversively triumphant anti-imperial entrance into the capitol on Palm Sunday. We then move to the pensive fellowship, restless prayer and midnight arrest of Maundy Thursday. This is followed by the interrogation, torture and death by execution of Good Friday, which runs into the profound mystery of Holy Saturday with Jesus’ descent to the dead. Finally we arrive again to the indelible Eastertide joy of Christ’s rising from the dead. From joy into horror and back into joy.
Our morning started on that trajectory. Our Liturgy of the Palms recalls for us the raucous if not joyful political theater our Savior enacted. It is how the week is supposed to start. But then, as we came in here to celebrate the Eucharist, things changed. What was our Gospel? Right… it was the Passion according to St. Mark. Does that strike you as odd? Today, Palm Sunday, is a remembrance of a joyful day. Sure, it is not without some apprehension of course, but today we are supposed to remember the bold statement against injustice that Jesus led his disciples into Jerusalem with. But look at the top of your bulletin, o n page 2. It says “Palm Sunday” and “Sunday of the Passion.” These are two separate memories. Why do we skip ahead to the Passion?
Honestly, the real reason is that not enough people go to church on Good Friday. Not here, but historically in the Church. It would not do if most of us experienced Holy Week as the Joy of Palm Sunday right into the Joy of Easter. It doesn’t work that way. We cannot have Easter without Good Friday.
Why? Why do we need Good Friday? Why does life take death? As I said last week, I do not know. I do not know why we seem to need that descent into the dark night, but the experience of billions of people over thousands of years across countless traditions reflects this existential fact that it is in fact darker just before dawn. Religion at its best helps us make meaning of life. It sometimes offers answers to ponder, sometimes rules to live by, and sometimes it gives us very true stories to remember in exceptionally deep ways. The Passion is one of those stories that we remember deeply in word, deed and sacrament. The Gospel readings we have heard over the course of this Lent have been inviting us into such deep memories, guiding us along the way towards this week “Let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake and for the sake of the Gospel will save it.” “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have life eternal.” “Those who love their life, lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”
What if “believing in something” means having some special trust and confidence in something. “For God so loved the world that everyone who trusts in him may not perish…” “…whomever follows his lead will not perish…” I follow people I trust. I follow feelings and ideas that I trust, too; most of us do. And those who want to save their lives, to save their current miserable, unengaged, unexamined lives, those who want business as usual, those who love their life as it is, a life this far from God, this far from justice and truth, you, we are doomed if that is our fancy. We are going to lose that life. But those who hate this kind of life, hate the way things are, who are fed up with preventable poverty and illness, whose skin crawls that some control obscene wealth while others have nothing. To those of us whose stomachs turns with the violence of scared governments and scared people, those in particular who are willing to stand up for those who cannot, to them, to you, to us, eternal life is promised. And, there is a Way to this, there is a Way to this life that we have been promised and shown. The Way, actually. The Way, the Truth, the Life is the long and the short of it.
The movement of Palm Sunday and the movement of the Passion, the Way of the Cross, these are part of the Way. They are memories of The Way, reminders of it, teachers of it. For the first decades of the church, they did not call themselves Christians, they called themselves followers of The Way. And The Way, The Way is a path laid out for us, and it is not an easy one, the Way always leads us through Good Friday.
On the Way up to Jerusalem on Palm Sunday Jesus proclaims his arrival as a moral authority over and against imperial domination, local collaboration, and religious complicity. He sees what is wrong with this world, he knows what is wrong with this world and with us, and he says, “Enough! Ya Basta!” And he forces the entangled hands of the powers that be. The Chief Priests, the Pharisees, and their Roman handlers take the bait: hook, line and sinker.
On the Way up to Golgotha on Good Friday, he bears not only the cross, but the sins of the world. It is not some gift he give us, he is not taking away our sins, but it is the principalities and powers of the world who are so corrupted, so ashamed of their station in life that they heap insult upon torture upon death on to the most precious of God’s gifts. When people are behaving as badly as the Priests and Pharisees and Roman occupiers behaved, most cannot help hurting others. It is a grotesque aspect of human power relationships. The spectacle of our Lord’s humiliation on the cross should bring to our minds shame, not glory. Shame that we are able to do something like that, or allow something like that to be done in our name. Shame at not caring for the least of these. Of humanity’s ability to ignore, excuse or even justify incredible suffering. Like our current Supreme Court’s debate on health care. The argument is about whether we are required to help our neighbor who is sick or injured or in need. For shame. Shame that Guantanamo is still open. That was supposed to be a priority. Shame that we are launching drone attacks not only in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also increasingly in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Shame for the sins we have done and those done on our behalf.
These are the lessons of the Way that Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior leads us on. And He leads us there directly through Good Friday because our own complicity in the systems of domination and our own willful ignorance of suffering in the world is so deep that we must die to this life. We are so entangled in our patterns of thought and feelings about the world, that we must die to this life. We must descend into that dark night and be changed, be purged of our false attachments, cleansed of our petty aversions, cured of our constant delusions. We must follow Jesus through the great winnowing in order that we can see the truth that the vision of the world that we cling to is false, that the Kingdom is at hand for those with the eyes to see it, the ears to hear it, the heart to feel it.
The Way of Palm Sunday and the Way of the Cross are both paths that we must walk on the Way of God. Jesus Christ took the first steps towards the narrow gate and the first steps up that dark hill, begging his disciples, begging us to take up our own cross and follow him. To do this, we must follow Him through Good Friday. We must follow Him through Good Friday and depart this life lived disconnected from God and move to a life infused with the Holy Spirit. We must follow Him through Good Friday, departing this life where reality is murky and distorted to a life where the true nature of things is experienced in Technicolor. We must follow Him through Good Friday, departing this life where we know right from wrong to a life where we know right from wrong and we do not tolerate the latter, no matter the cost.
This is the Way of Palm Sunday. This is the Way of the Passion, the Way of the Cross. This is the Way of Jesus Christ. And it leads us, ever leads us through Good Friday to the Glory of Resurrection, the gift of new life in God. A new life worth living, worth raising our children in, a new life worth sharing far and wide into the world. This is the Way, the Truth, the Life. AMEN
The Rev. Dr. Brent Was
So here we go again. Our annual journey into the challenges of Holy Week. If we were to be true to the narrative trajectory of Holy Week, the narrative handed down to us in the Gospels, today would look different. Over the course of Holy Week we celebrate the joy and memorialize the horror of the most famous week in our cultural heritage. The path leads us to joy into horror and back into joy. We start with the joyous and subversively triumphant anti-imperial entrance into the capitol on Palm Sunday. We then move to the pensive fellowship, restless prayer and midnight arrest of Maundy Thursday. This is followed by the interrogation, torture and death by execution of Good Friday, which runs into the profound mystery of Holy Saturday with Jesus’ descent to the dead. Finally we arrive again to the indelible Eastertide joy of Christ’s rising from the dead. From joy into horror and back into joy.
Our morning started on that trajectory. Our Liturgy of the Palms recalls for us the raucous if not joyful political theater our Savior enacted. It is how the week is supposed to start. But then, as we came in here to celebrate the Eucharist, things changed. What was our Gospel? Right… it was the Passion according to St. Mark. Does that strike you as odd? Today, Palm Sunday, is a remembrance of a joyful day. Sure, it is not without some apprehension of course, but today we are supposed to remember the bold statement against injustice that Jesus led his disciples into Jerusalem with. But look at the top of your bulletin, o n page 2. It says “Palm Sunday” and “Sunday of the Passion.” These are two separate memories. Why do we skip ahead to the Passion?
Honestly, the real reason is that not enough people go to church on Good Friday. Not here, but historically in the Church. It would not do if most of us experienced Holy Week as the Joy of Palm Sunday right into the Joy of Easter. It doesn’t work that way. We cannot have Easter without Good Friday.
Why? Why do we need Good Friday? Why does life take death? As I said last week, I do not know. I do not know why we seem to need that descent into the dark night, but the experience of billions of people over thousands of years across countless traditions reflects this existential fact that it is in fact darker just before dawn. Religion at its best helps us make meaning of life. It sometimes offers answers to ponder, sometimes rules to live by, and sometimes it gives us very true stories to remember in exceptionally deep ways. The Passion is one of those stories that we remember deeply in word, deed and sacrament. The Gospel readings we have heard over the course of this Lent have been inviting us into such deep memories, guiding us along the way towards this week “Let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake and for the sake of the Gospel will save it.” “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have life eternal.” “Those who love their life, lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”
What if “believing in something” means having some special trust and confidence in something. “For God so loved the world that everyone who trusts in him may not perish…” “…whomever follows his lead will not perish…” I follow people I trust. I follow feelings and ideas that I trust, too; most of us do. And those who want to save their lives, to save their current miserable, unengaged, unexamined lives, those who want business as usual, those who love their life as it is, a life this far from God, this far from justice and truth, you, we are doomed if that is our fancy. We are going to lose that life. But those who hate this kind of life, hate the way things are, who are fed up with preventable poverty and illness, whose skin crawls that some control obscene wealth while others have nothing. To those of us whose stomachs turns with the violence of scared governments and scared people, those in particular who are willing to stand up for those who cannot, to them, to you, to us, eternal life is promised. And, there is a Way to this, there is a Way to this life that we have been promised and shown. The Way, actually. The Way, the Truth, the Life is the long and the short of it.
The movement of Palm Sunday and the movement of the Passion, the Way of the Cross, these are part of the Way. They are memories of The Way, reminders of it, teachers of it. For the first decades of the church, they did not call themselves Christians, they called themselves followers of The Way. And The Way, The Way is a path laid out for us, and it is not an easy one, the Way always leads us through Good Friday.
On the Way up to Jerusalem on Palm Sunday Jesus proclaims his arrival as a moral authority over and against imperial domination, local collaboration, and religious complicity. He sees what is wrong with this world, he knows what is wrong with this world and with us, and he says, “Enough! Ya Basta!” And he forces the entangled hands of the powers that be. The Chief Priests, the Pharisees, and their Roman handlers take the bait: hook, line and sinker.
On the Way up to Golgotha on Good Friday, he bears not only the cross, but the sins of the world. It is not some gift he give us, he is not taking away our sins, but it is the principalities and powers of the world who are so corrupted, so ashamed of their station in life that they heap insult upon torture upon death on to the most precious of God’s gifts. When people are behaving as badly as the Priests and Pharisees and Roman occupiers behaved, most cannot help hurting others. It is a grotesque aspect of human power relationships. The spectacle of our Lord’s humiliation on the cross should bring to our minds shame, not glory. Shame that we are able to do something like that, or allow something like that to be done in our name. Shame at not caring for the least of these. Of humanity’s ability to ignore, excuse or even justify incredible suffering. Like our current Supreme Court’s debate on health care. The argument is about whether we are required to help our neighbor who is sick or injured or in need. For shame. Shame that Guantanamo is still open. That was supposed to be a priority. Shame that we are launching drone attacks not only in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also increasingly in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Shame for the sins we have done and those done on our behalf.
These are the lessons of the Way that Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior leads us on. And He leads us there directly through Good Friday because our own complicity in the systems of domination and our own willful ignorance of suffering in the world is so deep that we must die to this life. We are so entangled in our patterns of thought and feelings about the world, that we must die to this life. We must descend into that dark night and be changed, be purged of our false attachments, cleansed of our petty aversions, cured of our constant delusions. We must follow Jesus through the great winnowing in order that we can see the truth that the vision of the world that we cling to is false, that the Kingdom is at hand for those with the eyes to see it, the ears to hear it, the heart to feel it.
The Way of Palm Sunday and the Way of the Cross are both paths that we must walk on the Way of God. Jesus Christ took the first steps towards the narrow gate and the first steps up that dark hill, begging his disciples, begging us to take up our own cross and follow him. To do this, we must follow Him through Good Friday. We must follow Him through Good Friday and depart this life lived disconnected from God and move to a life infused with the Holy Spirit. We must follow Him through Good Friday, departing this life where reality is murky and distorted to a life where the true nature of things is experienced in Technicolor. We must follow Him through Good Friday, departing this life where we know right from wrong to a life where we know right from wrong and we do not tolerate the latter, no matter the cost.
This is the Way of Palm Sunday. This is the Way of the Passion, the Way of the Cross. This is the Way of Jesus Christ. And it leads us, ever leads us through Good Friday to the Glory of Resurrection, the gift of new life in God. A new life worth living, worth raising our children in, a new life worth sharing far and wide into the world. This is the Way, the Truth, the Life. AMEN
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