October 28, 2012, The 22nd Sunday after Pentecost

Year B, Proper 25
October 28, 2012
The Reverend Dr. Brent Was

 “Immediately he regained his sight and followed Jesus on his way.”

What does it mean to follow Jesus?

Let’s review the scene here in St. Mark’s Gospel. Jesus and his friends have spent the past five weeks or so traveling from the northern most tip of Galilee, Caesarea Phillipi, all the way down to Jericho, where we meet Bartimeaus this morning.  Jericho is, was basically a suburb of Jerusalem.  So getting to Jericho, they were almost there.  And all along the way, Jesus had been telling his friends bit by bit more about what is in store for him, for all of them, when they get to Jerusalem.  “Are you able to drink the cup that I will drink, or be baptized with the baptism that am baptized with?”  Remember that last week?

It is hard to imagine what must have been going through their minds.  Walking day after day, knowing, or at least having some inkling that something big, something life altering, even life taking kind of big is in store for you at the end of the journey. That was where the disciples were, not having many details, just Jesus’ vague and not so vague references, and yet they kept following, kept walking, one foot in front of the other, each step truly taking them one step closer to that murky inevitable.

What does it mean to follow Jesus?

And on that road leading out of Jericho, a blind man, Bartimeaus, sat along the side of the road begging.  The road from Galilee to Jerusalem leads through Jericho, so all of the Galileans on pilgrimage to the Temple would pass through Jericho’s gates.  This was a perfect place for beggars to get alms from open-hearted pilgrims starting the last stretch of their journey.  Well, Bartimeaus hears that it is Jesus passing by and he calls out to him, “Son of David, have mercy on me!”  But the crowd, the disciples, shushed him.  So he called out louder, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” Jesus stopped, called him over.  The blind beggar leapt up, leaving his precious cloak behind as he rushed to Jesus.  Jesus asked him the same question he asked the disciples last week, “What do you want from me?” Bartimeaus’ request was pretty simple compared the James and John’s request to sit on the right and left hand of Jesus; Bartimeaus just wanted to see again.  Jesus said, “Go, your faith has made you well.”  Then, “immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.”

What does it mean to follow Jesus?

For Bartimeaus, it wasn’t easy, but it was clear.  He was blind.  He heard about Jesus, then asked him to help him to see again, it worked, so he followed him.  For Bartimeaus, he physically followed him, in his case, it meant following him right into the lion’s den of Jerusalem.  For Bartimeaus following Jesus meant a complete and profound change in his entire life.

What does it mean to follow Jesus?

How about the disciples?  That might be a better place to learn about what it means to follow Jesus.  Their call was personal, like in person kind of personal, but none of their call stories were as miraculous as Bartimeaus’.  Initially at least, their experience is closer to ours, but they still each had a complete and profound change of life.  Their following was far from perfect.  The disciples never seemed to get it right, did they, particularly in St. Mark’s gospel?  Constantly misunderstanding things.  Shushing the wrong people.  Cutting off ears.  Denying Jesus before He was even dead, but they kept trying.  That’s what is important.  It was not so much what they did, or how they did it or what they believed, it was that they changed everything in their lives, they left their nets where they lay, and they did not turn back.  Jesus said again and again, “Leave the dead to bury their own.”  “Who is my family?  This is my family.”  “One who puts their hand on the plow and looks back is not fit for the kingdom of heaven.”  They were serious.  And for as many mistakes as they made, they kept trying and trying and trying again.  Now granted, they had the distinct benefit of having their Lord and Savior telling what to do for most of this story.  Really telling them what to do, where to go, what to do and how and with whom.  That would make this all much simpler, wouldn’t it, if Jesus Christ were here telling you what to do, and how and with whom?

I am sorry to say, that we do not, actually, have that excuse; the excuse that Jesus Christ is dead, risen and gone.  That is just not true.  Look to the person next to you.  Everyone look left, everyone is less self-conscious than if everyone was looking at each other.  Seriously, though.  Look at that person.  Realizing what that person needs, what that person needs from you, you are hearing the voice of Jesus Christ.     And when you do it, when you deliver the goods, when you give what the other needs from you, you are following Jesus Christ.  You are making real the kingdom of God.

What does it mean to follow Jesus?  It means doing what you need to do.  Giving what you have to satisfy the needs of others.  It is that simple and yes, it will take your entire life trying to live up to it.

Following Jesus means satisfying the needs of others to the best of our abilities, and when we fail, to get up and try again.  It means standing up for those who can’t stand on their own, and it means standing aside so that those who have not had a chance to stand up on their own, can.   It means looking into the faces we pass on the street, from the gun carrying police officer on patrol, to the transgendered street kid hanging out in Kesey Square, to the guy we find sleeping on the back porch some mornings, it means looking into their face and knowing that Jesus Christ is speaking to you, directly to you in their countenance in a very particular and mysterious way.  And the more uncomfortable that person makes you, the more likely it is that it really is Jesus staring at us through those yellowed, blood shot eyes attached to a body that has drank too much and bathed too little these past few years.

What does it mean to follow Jesus?  The same as it did for Bartimeaus and the disciples: a complete and profound change of life.  I can’t sugar coat it.  There is nothing easy or pleasant about following Jesus Christ.  Look where he leads us: prisons, brothels, tax offices, torture chambers, court rooms, crosses. As our Sarah Miles, our speaker at Convention this week might say, following Jesus leads us to all the wrong people in all the wrong places.

We don’t, most of us, just drop everything like the sons of Zebedee and take off following Jesus Christ that we find in the Body of Christ, the Ecclesia, the people.  To make our following stick, to built habits of discipleship, we need to start with baby steps to the kingdom.  It is like tithing.  If you jump right to that, unless you are very wealthy, it is going to be hard, unpleasant, and unlikely that you’ll complete your pledge or make one again next year.  You start by maybe looking at the percentages, what does three percent look like, the proportional giving idea, then looking at what you gave last year and maybe closing the gap some.  Then next year, maybe that 3% is looking more doable.  And then four or six percent the year after, and then maybe the rest goes to other important institutions.  Win and I gave 2% last year.  It was a tough year financially, a layoff, one income and not full time at that.  But now things are more settled, so we went up to 4%, $2400.  That is what we can do this year.  Next year, we might have more courage, more faith, and we can probably give more.  Baby steps.

Following Jesus looks and probably feels a lot the same.  It is hard, it feels risky, scary.  But the needs of the world, the needs of the people we share this world with are so blindingly apparent.  Overwhelmingly so. So start with that one thing.  That one thing more…  a stretch.  Sign up to serve breakfast with Christine and the crew at First Christian or come play with the kids during shelter week.  Those are pre-packaged introductions to Jesus, but it is following Jesus just the same.  You might strike up a conversation with someone you wouldn’t usually speak with.  That is a first step in following Jesus.  Listen to or learn something new, something that you had possibly even dismissed at one point.  Open yourself and engage, pre-requisites for following Jesus.  Or follow someone that you see following Jesus. For when you can’t see Jesus enough on your own, you can follow someone you trust that does.  There are people in this church you can follow.  One person came to church a couple of weeks go without socks because she gave them to someone who needed them more than she did. And that was just that Sunday, it is always something, something more than she can ask or imagine giving, but there is always enough to give more. And giving things, money, that is the least of it.  Give of yourself; that is what the other really needs. Following Jesus means complete and profound changes in the way things are.  But look around… we need some complete and profound change to the way things are. Start with yourself.  Start with Jesus.  AMEN.

October 21, 2012, 21st Sunday after Pentecost

October 21, 2012, Proper 24, The 21st Sunday after Pentecost

Job 38:1-7

The Rev. Jo Miller

The Patience of Job, Really?

Those who have the written copy of the homily can see my title. So for those of you who are listening I titled my homily “The Patience of Job, Really?” A brief break down of this wonderful folk tale turned into a play is needed here: Two weeks ago the scenes from Chapters 1-2 were set to tell of God’s testing of Job. Chapters 3-31 grows into a dialogue between Job and three of his “friends”. Modern counselors may call them toxic friends. The debate is over the meaning of divine justice, Job’s suffering, ending with Job

demanding that God appear and defend himself if he is a just God.

Then there is a sudden appearance of a fourth adversary, Elihu, who challenges both the friends and Job demanding they submit to divine control of human events. The penultimate act in Chapters 38 -41 has God himself appear and recite the powers and marvels beyond human understanding which show Job’s demands for justice to be arrogant. Job summits twice and then the final act of the old folk tale has God restoring Job to his past greatness.

Like I said Job is a great play written in stages around 600 to 500 BCE.  Suffering is primal. Suffering has been with human kind for as long as our kind has walked the surface of this beautiful earth. There are many forms of suffering and for the most part we want or demand that someone or something be responsible. In the book of Job we have Job’s wife and friends throwing salvos of blame on Job. It’s Job’s fault. Job knows himself to be righteous and above reproach and cannot fathom why God has harmed him. Is it God’s fault?  In America we take care of much of our suffering by suing someone in hopes that their pain will relieve our own or bring us closure.

The book of Job has become an indictment on God at times. Carl Jung wrote such a book called “God’s Answer to Job.” He understood ultimately that he was writing more about the inner dark qualities of the Self because talking about God is nearly impossible. As Jung wrote, “The tendency is to anthropomorphize and give the Deity a quasi-human personality.” In my opinion this is what most if not all of our theologies do. In the earlier years of

Christianity people were brought under many forms of suffering by the powers that be if they did not agree with the authorities who had a firm handle on God.

When we talk about God, we are creating God, psychologically speaking, and we are, in essence, talking about ourselves which is limiting. In Jung’s terms we can only apprehend or try to comprehend God through our own, limited psyches. And, oh the suffering this has caused not only to ourselves but to others as we impose our own small finite understandings of God and the Universe on others.

Job was hurting and his friends did not bring a salve to soften the pain but barbs. They played the judgment game. Throughout this play one hears false judgments and false expectations which inflict mental suffering upon the already physically and emotionally suffering Job.

Job kept asking the unanswerable question why?? Why is the question that falls out of our mouths when pain and suffering hit us. Why did I get sick?  Why did my son get washed off the rocks by the ocean? Why did my husband have to die at that random shooting? No answer. When we hear the troubled cry we give feeble answers. We try to find someone or something to blame when the best thing we can do is to sit and cry with them. There are no answers. And, it is hard to find God in the pain. We struggle to grasp how God works in this universe of ours. Instead of us realizing we are in God's universe.  Has God preprogrammed my life and there is no choice? Is this universe just a random experiment of chaos versus order?

There is nothing wrong in wanting life to be pleasant and free of pain and suffering. We all want that. However, every pleasant experience must inevitable change or end. Even the best ones of all. We are routinely separated from things we enjoy. And someday that separation will be permanent. Friends drift away, children leave home, careers end, families disappoint, and eventually our own final breath comes and goes. Everything that begins must also cease. Everything that comes together must also disperse. Experiences are incapable of being completely satisfying. That is a downer if I ever heard one.

The biggest downer however is the doctrine of retributive justice which is the overall theme in the book of Job. Retributive justice is the doctrine found especially in Proverbs and all too often today. It is the doctrine that God so ordered the world that everyone receives reward or punishment commensurate with his or her behavior. Jesus worked against this doctrine throughout his short ministry and yet it hangs tough today. We forget that the rain falls on the just and unjust alike. Jesus gives us a glimpse of God. Jesus touched the untouchables, loved the unloved, healed the sick, gave hope to the hopeless.  Jesus confronted those who cast judgments and who looked for power.  Ultimately, in Jung’s book he writes that God’s answer to Job was Jesus. Jesus understood and knew the meaning of suffering. There is a salve in that. There are many healing depths in the living Spirit of the Christ.

But, what do we hear in God’s answer out of the whirlwind? Last week we heard Job demand an audience with God. This week he gets that audience, but it wasn’t what he was expecting or wanted perhaps. God pours out on the poor man sixty rhetorical questions that cascade out of the whirlwind like stinging pellets of ice that render Job speechless.  Centuries of reflections on this rather cryptic answer have failed to produce a generally agreed-upon answer. So I’m not going to give you one. I may suggest that it all depends on how we have decided to view and have a relationship with this whirlwind. One early 20th century mystic and healer

simple referred to the IS-NESS of God. The IS-NESS of God works for me.  God is. I am also rather fond of the Celtic view of God. It is the wildness of God they comprehend.

From “The Book of Creation” J Philip Newell writes, and this is long:”  Into this essentially unknowable and infinite realm of God a dome of space and time is created. It is like a womb or matrix of life. In it will appear all that is to be created. St. Paul speaks of the One ‘in whom we live and move and have our being.’ Creation is planted, as it were, in the waters of God’s life. It is rooted in the Unseen. All that is born in this matrix of life has its inception in the Infinite. Creation’s life partakes of the essence of God’s life, and to that extent is a theophany or manifestation of the mystery of God. 

A mighty wind sweeps over the face of the waters. Earth, air, fire and water, the constituents of everything that will be, are in a whirlwind of motion.  It is a wild wind carrying the incipient life of the universe in its wings.”

We are carried at all times in the wings of the creative divine. It is not always an easy ride.

J

October 7, 2012, 19th Sunday after Pentecost

October 7, 2012

19^th Sunday after Pentecost, Year B, Proper 22

The Rev. Dr. Brent Was

          “There once was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job.”

          Job.  The book of Job was the decisive take on theodicy by the people of ancient Israel, and we haven’t come up with an upgrade in all these thousands of years.  The Book of Job about sums up the plight of existence, it unfolds theodicy marvelously. Theodicy, what does that word mean?  “The vindication of divine goodness and providence in view of the presence of evil.”  The word has Greek origins, a conjunction of the words God and Justice.  The theological shorthand is “the problem of evil.”  What does that mean, “the problem of evil?”____  Right, that if God is an omnipotent God, all powerful and all good, how could (or why would) God have left evil in the world.  That is a very, very good question.  Why do bad things happen to good people?  How could terrible things befall those who, like Job, are upright and blameless?  That is the question of the hour, or at least the next 15 minutes.

                   The Book of Job. Try not to get hung up on the bet between God and Satan. This story is not at all about the capriciousness of God.   The conversation that starts the tale is only a literary tool to set up the story.  It provides a pretense to illustrate that there is no rational reason for suffering, no divine will behind the terrible things that befall people, there is no rhyme or reason for most human suffering.  The story is told to set up that the arguments of Job’s friends, Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar and Elihu.  Their reasoning is that suffering happens only when God wills it and that God wills it only on the wicked.  The form of the story makes that logic preposterous: we know that Job is blameless and upright, God knows this, the narrator tells us that God knows, but bad things still happen to him.  

          So I hope we are here beyond the developmental stage of believing that bad things happen only to the deserving.  Right?  We all know that terrible things happen to un-terrible people.  We know that God does not rain punishment down on the wicked like Jerry Falwell would have us believe, blaming 9-11 on lesbians and Wiccans.  Beyond ridiculous.  What this story is teaching us through the millennia is that we cannot possibly know why bad things happen to good people, good things happen to bad people and why most of us in the middle just take it as it comes.  The lesson of Job is that we cannot know the hows or whys of the workings of the world, we cannot explain fate, nor assign blame.  It is beyond our abilities to comprehend so deal with it.  Somehow, “resolution is to be found in  the depths of a pious life lived before a mysterious God.”  Thank you Mr. Job.

Is that satisfactory?  Does this explain to us how evil can occur in a world created by God?  Not really.  Remember, evil, theologically speaking, is a large category.  There is evil as in evil-doing, nefarious activities, predation, greed, inflicting harm on others kind of evil. That is easily explained away in the doctrine of original sin, that we, humans have a choice to close with and meet God or to turn away from God. War is an explicable evil.  Poverty is an explicable evil.  Humans have resisted relieving the suffering of poverty by not sharing, so that’s evil. In turning away from God we will hurt others.  That is the easy evil.

The hard evil to explain away is a tsunami that kills 280,000 across the Indian Ocean or small pox that killed 300,000,000 last century.  HIV/AIDS is an evil.  Cancer in its infinite varities is an evil.  Each of these evils are what theologians call “natural evil.”  Evil is best thought of as simply a source of suffering.  Anything that causes suffering, by intention or simple consequence, fit in the category “evil.”  

But again, when it comes to all things theological, the question is how does any of this help us in our day in, day out lives?  Job lays out the idea of theodicy, the understanding that God is not involved in the creation, propagation and execution of evil.  Does this help us deal with any given Tuesday morning?  Does this make the bad news we have received, or some day are guaranteed to receive any easier to bear?  Does it? ___  I don’t see it. So what is the point? Was Job foolish in remaining faithful?  And where does that leave us?

Thursday was the Feast of St. Francis.  We, that is ten dogs and twenty people celebrated it on the side lawn that evening.   The gospel for this feast is from St. Matthew, and includes the passage, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens…  For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”  

Does anyone know anything about yokes?  Hannah Maeve and I are reading “The Little House on the Prairie” series by Laura Ingalls Wilder.   We are on the third book, Farmer Boy, which tells the story of the Upstate New York boyhood of Almanzo Wilder, Laura Ingalls’ eventual husband.  Almanzo’s father gives him a pair of steer that he is to train as oxen.  Key to this gift was the yoke that Mr. Wilder carved of light, strong cedar.  From the first training session, Almanzo paid close attention to that yoke, molding it perfectly to the curve of their necks with a piece of glass, wiping it down after each use so the moisture did not soak in, keeping it clean, hanging it properly, all so that it would not irritate their necks.  Oxen can bear incredible loads, can made heavy burdens light so long as the yoke is easy, that it fits perfectly, that it does not strain or chafe or irritate.

Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior is our Savior in that he offers us a yoke that makes the heaviest burdens bearable.  He is that yoke.  His life and death and His Body that persists in the Church, the Christ event carved, honed, smoothed that yoke so that we all may take it upon ourselves and bear the loads we all have to bear, or will have to bear.  Even the unbearable.  

You get that cancer diagnosis.  Your child falls ill, very ill.  You never saw that other car.  You lose your job and your home and everything in your life is turned upside down.  The specter of depression descends upon you again.  There is no reason for this.  God is not to blame.  You are not to blame.  Bad things happen; how good or evil you happen to be has no bearing on what happens to you and how.  There is no explanation: this is the lesson of Job and his chapters of lament against unjust, underserved suffering, but we must go on.  We must live our lives as well as we can, no matter what is happening.  That is the will of God, which is revealed in our will to live.  It is that same force that through the green fuse drives the flower that drives us to keep breathing, to keep our hearts pumping, to keep us reaching out to each other, giving and receiving love.  We must bear what is sometimes unbearable.  It is not fair.  It is not right, but there it is. And, and, thanks be to God AND, there is Jesus Christ, standing before us saying, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

There is no discernible reason for evil and suffering, but there is a discernible balm.  So much human suffering is caused, or at least is deepened by isolation, by feeling isolated, alienated from the world, from friends, families, from our own bodies, everything.  So much of the suffering I witness in you all, the people I serve here is related to feelings of aloneness. In God, you are never alone.  In Christ, you are never alone.  In the Holy Spirit, you are never alone.  In community, be it Divine or temporal, you are never alone.  This is the mystery and gift of faith.  To the skeptic, the unbeliever, maybe all it comes down to is a metaphysical slight of hand, that if you have faith, if you believe hard enough that you are not alone, in fact, you will not be alone.  Fine.  That is the resolution of Job.  Would he have persisted in proclaiming the injustice of his suffering if he felt alone?  Would he have endured?  Could he have endured without the existential calm, the holy equanimity of faith?  Not faith that it will get better but faith that you are not alone and that you can bear it.  

Jesus Christ does not promise to heal our bodies, though mysteriously some are healed. Jesus Christ does not promise protection from evil, though somehow, some are protected .  Jesus Christ, our church, our religion does not, cannot promise you that everything is going to be OK, because often it is not going to be OK. Moms die.  Children die.  Floods happen.  Lightening strikes. But somehow, deep in the recesses of mystery, taking on the yoke of a Savior, sharing your burden with the One who bore so much, you will find comfort for your journey, no matter where you are, no matter where have been and no matter where you are going.  In faith you are never alone.  In faith, in Christ, your yoke is easy and your burden is light. AMEN

October 14, 2012, 20th Sunday after Pentecost

October 14, 2012

20^th Sunday after Pentecost, Year B, Proper 23

The Rev. Dr. Brent Was

          “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” 

          This is a hard gospel. For as wealth-centric a nation as we live in, it is considered terribly rude to speak about such things. But as Paul reminds us, “The word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow…”  When it came to class and caste, wealth and poverty Jesus did not mince words.  We must not either, nor may we shy from the piercing truth of the Word of God.

          Today, Jesus teaches us about proper relationships to wealth along two lines.  First is the injustice of concentrated wealth.  Second is the overall moral and spiritual hazard of wealth itself, of materialism.  We, as Jesus did, will walk down both roads.

          But first, I need to be honest about my own hypocrisy in relation to this gospel and in relation to wealth.  I surely count myself among the wealthy.  The clerical shirt I am wearing today was made in Indonesia in what I have to assume was slave-like conditions.  That’s morally upright, no?  More was spent on my education alone than the vast majority of the world will spend in their lifetimes on everything.  In placing myself in this story, I am there, kneeling before Jesus Christ right next to that man as he says, “Jesus, look at all the good that I do,” then being dismayed at how much more I have left to do, how many more pounds of flesh I owe the world’s collective kitty, how much more I have to pare away from my worldly excesses and attachments.  All I can say is that I am praying on it and trying to do better and that I will keep praying on it and keep trying to do better; that is all I ask of you all.

          So a man whom Jesus knows to be wealthy presents himself and asks, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”  Jesus’ reply was not as straight forward as it seems. “Do not defraud” is not in the Decalogue. The Greek distinctly refers to economic exploitation.  It infers a violation of trust somewhere along the lines of “keeping back the wages of hirelings” or “refusing to return things deposited with another for safekeeping.”  So when Jesus says “sell what you own, and give the money to the poor,” the connotation is clearly, “return what you have wrongly taken, then you may be my follower.”  Jesus proscribes reparations, a timeless and true form of reconciliation.  And the man’s glum response is a timeless and true reaction to such a direct call to reconciliation.

          So that is pretty clear, no?  If the wealth you possess was generated by exploitation, if it was stolen or extorted from those weaker or less advantaged than yourself, then obviously there are moral and spiritual issues.  A demand for reconciliation would be justified if your wealth came at the expense of others and you care to consider yourself a follower of Jesus Christ.  Yes?  That is the text and it holds true today.  But the bigger question is whether concentrated wealth is ever “clean”?  Can wealth ever be consolidated in a way that is not at the expense of others?

          The law of wealth is that wealth begets wealth.  And that is OK, it would be fine, actually, if everyone had equal access to the means of wealth, but that is patently not the case.  Forbes Magazine just released its voyeuristic list of the 400 richest people.  40% of those on that list earned their fortunes the old fashioned way: they inherited it.  Talk about a violation the first social sin identified by Gandhi: that is the sin of wealth without work.  It is sinful in that it is detached from reality. Wealth takes work, so if you have it without work, your whole ability to relate to the true nature of things will be distorted. You will be distanced from God.

          Wealth is concentrated by the few largely because the very means of gaining wealth are already concentrated.  If you are born poor, the vast, vast, vast majority of the time you are gong to die poor.  It is just as true that if you are born wealthy, the chance of you dying poor is about the same as, oh I don’t know, as a camel fitting through the eye of a needle?  A tiny percentage, let’s round it to 1% of the world’s population controls most of the world’s resources, and structurally that is not going to change.  Now that is a moral and spiritual problem.

          All the world is a commonwealth.  No one lives in a vacuum.  No one works or earns or amasses a fortune on their own.  I am not going to get into the theology of the ownership of the means of production, or the economics of the public ownership of the infrastructure of commerce; the roads, ports, the electromagnetic spectrum, the laws and courts that makes business, hence the concentration of wealth possible, but when some have at their command more wealth than required to meet any worldly desire while others do not have enough to meet even the most basic worldly needs, what we are witnessing is sin.  What we are experiencing is a form of evil.  When wealth is concentrated to the detriment of others, the commonwealth is violated, by which I mean, which Jesus means, the kingdom of God is pushed once again out of reach. “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!”  The depth of this sin is made ever so worse when the suffering of poverty, or the stresses of keeping out of poverty prevents us from being the children of God we were born to be.  Can wealth ever become great, ever become concentrated in a way that is not, or does not lead to evil?  I find that hard to imagine.

          But Jesus was not only concerned with the problem of concentrated wealth, but with material riches in general.  Remember how dismissive he was when the disciples critiqued the woman who poured the costly ointment on his head?  It was valued the same as a year’s worth of wages.  The disciples cried, “We could have sold it and fed the poor!”  He tells them to leave her alone, that the value ascribed to material things is bupkis when compared to the value of relationships, of kindness displayed, generosity offered.  No material thing has value when compared to our relationship with God and with each other.  Jesus, God, is very concerned with misplaced priorities.  Jesus, God is very concerned with what St. Ignatius of Loyola called disordered attachments.

          Jesus, in this part of St. Mark’s gospel is clearly talking about the virtues of the itinerant life, the virtue of mission-oriented poverty.  “Give up everything and follow me.”  Give up all of the worldly things that get in the way of your complete and utter service to God and the people of God.  So everyone here, we already are settling for second best.  Just like those of us who are married, or have children, Paul was clear that the celibate life was better, but if you must be married, if the misery or distraction of celibacy would interfere with the rest of your vocation as a Christian, if celibacy would prevent you from being as good as you could be otherwise, then get married, have sex, but do it responsibly, do it honestly.  I think we can transfer that teaching to our material wealth.  Be a householder and not a mendicant, but do it well, live modestly if not simply.

          Having what you need is a God given right.  Sufficient food, clothing, shelter, healthcare, meaningful work… this is not an exhaustive list, anything without which we cannot be full and productive participants in the kingdom of God, these are fundamental needs established by our creator.  But when we start accumulating more than that, when we start having “relationships” with inanimate objects, our attachments to worldly things become disordered and we start having problems.  Remember Mae West, she said, “Too much of a good thing is just right.” She was wrong.  Too much of a good thing is just that, too much.  It chokes us.  It distracts us from what is truly right and good and joyful, what has meaning, what endures. Where our attention is, there follows our bodies, our hearts, our very souls.

          So what are we to do?  What are we to do with our own wealth?  How do we discern what we need, what is enough and what is too much? How do we discern what comes between us and right relationship with God and each other? Well, it just so happens that our stewardship campaign begins today, so any excess wealth you have…  Truly, these are intimate questions and I don’t have the answers.  I don’t know what is too much, what is too little and what is just right.  Windy and I don’t know what our family needs as opposed to simply wants.  We used to live with monks and they decided all the material things together, collectively and that was that.  Sometimes I long for that simplicity of process even with all its flaws, but that is not the world most of us live in.

          We are entering our time of stewardship, which is all about our relationship to the material world.  This is a time to hold all of this in our individual and collective hearts.  As you are considering how you will support the life of this community, you might pray on this gospel. Mark 10:17-31.  Read it and ponder it.  Talk about it as a family or with a friend. Have a conversation about what you have, what your wealth does and does not do for you, and what it all means.  And give.  We break the power wealth holds over us when we give it away.  Give to the church, yes, I am asking for that; it is a Christian’s responsibility to support the Body of Christ.  And also give to KLCC.  Give to ShelterCare, Sponsors, the HIV Alliance, St. Vinnies, the Relief Nursery, give to whatever draws your soul.  Give as if your life depends on it, because really, it does, and so do the lives of others.  AMEN

September 30, 2012, 18th Sunday after Pentecost

September 30, 2012

18^th Sunday after Pentecost, Year B, Proper 21

The Rev. Dr. Brent Was

          “…to be thrown into hell where the worm never dies and the fire is never quenched.”

          If we rarely speak about sin in Episcopal churches, we never speak about Hell.  I have been thinking about Hell a bit recently.  It came up at the youth confirmation class, briefly, nothing to be concerned about, but it was there.  And it came up on the retreat I was on two weeks ago.  We were thinking about themes for a preaching year and one I am considering was “Come to church or go to hell.”    Or, “Come to our church or Go to hell,” something like that.  We’ll be talking about it at vestry next week…

          The doctrine of hell evolved poorly from antiquity to the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment to Modernity. Threats of hell generally fail to bring us closer to God and/or each other, which is the essential test of any theology.  However, we need to be careful dismissing the whole notion of Hell out of hand in our modern, enlightened condition. Hell is part of our ancient heritage, our inheritance as Christians, and I am afraid to say, is part of our reality, a condition within the fabric of existence.  

Why do we have to deal with Hell besides the fact that it is real?  First, historically, there is the Sheol of damnation.  The Pit as spoken of by the writer of Psalm 30.  “O Lord you brought up my soul from Sheol, restored me to life from among those gone down to the pit… What profit is there in my death if I go down to the Pit?  Will the Dust praise you?  Will it tell of your faithfulness?”  This is our heritage, we pray the psalms, daily, some of us, we need to account for the Pit.  

Then there is the Gehenna of Jeremiah, the unquenchable fire.  This refers to an abomination of Israel whereby folks would sneak off to a valley called Hinnom and perform banned rituals, including sacrificing children to Baal on a fiery altar.  Even the venerable Isaiah ends his (their – there were at least a couple of authors of Isaiah) even Isaiah ends his incomparable work with the words, “And they shall go out and look at the dead bodies of the people who have rebelled against me; for their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh.”

          And if the Psalmist, Jeremiah and Isaiah’s attention to this matter does not convince you that we need to talk about it, then we have to look to Jesus and his teaching, in particular our passage from St. Mark this morning. In colorful and unequivocal language, Jesus warns His disciples not to scandalize the little ones, the believers.  Scandalize comes from the Greek to trip up along the way, to create a stumbling block.  If you do that, Jesus says, it is not going to work out; you’d be better off dead, a mill stone around the neck being the 1^st century equivalent of cement shoes.  Likewise, if a part of your body causes you trouble, remove it, for it is better to lived maimed in this life than to be cast into Gehenna, the burning pit, the world of the worm and fire, Hell.

          And if the teaching of Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior does not convince you that we need to think about hell every once in a while, maybe the fact that Heaven and Hell are about the most commonly cited church doctrines in our society, cited most frequently by the unchurched and others who have no idea what they are talking about.  The popularly construed idea that all good dogs, people go to heaven and the naughty will burn in eternal hellfire, well, the naughty and the unbaptized… this is not Biblical Christianity.  It is not part of our religion.  If we are to take our show on the road, carry the unabridged Good News in our community through word and works, we need to understand what we are doing. Thinking about Hell we might learn little more about the true nature of things, about God in Christ with the Holy Spirit, about our relationship to that eternal mystery, to life, the universe and everything.

          A mature notion of the doctrine of hell arises “…in light of the real possibility of eternal failure and to recognize revelation as a claim of the utmost seriousness.”  That definition is from John Ratzinger, aka Pope Benedict the 13^th.   I don’t make it a habit to quote Popes; in particular this Pope, but here, the Vicar of Christ is right.  Our own existence is the eternal consequence of the union of our mother and father.  The act of giving life has eternal consequences.  Giving life to a child, to the plants and animals whose reproductivity is subject to our whim, to what and whom we choose to eat or displace due to our needs and desires… these all have eternal consequences.  

More obviously, the choice to end a life, an enemy’s, a condemned prisoner’s, a civilian bystander on a battlefield, an unborn baby’s…  killing has eternal consequences.  I am not saying that all killing is wrong, or that some killing is right; I do not know if or when it is ok to take another’s life, but what I am saying, what Ratzinger is saying, is that in the freedom given to us by God in the form of choice, there is the possibility of failure.  We can fail to make the right choice and sometimes we can fail so badly as to have eternal consequences that are quite terrible.  We as human beings we have to make sure we are choosing well.  

One of the ways that Jesus Christ offers us salvation is revealing to us that yes God loves us absolutely and unconditionally, and that there are things we need to do to make sure we are being and acting in accordance with God’s will.  The world is changed, sometimes forever, by the life and death decisions we make hourly. And when it comes to choice there are at times good choices, better choices and wrong choices, some of which are very wrong choices, so wrong that we can have eternal and actual failures.

As most of you know, in another life I am also a farmer.  A farmer is one who has a real and active relationship with living communities, the soil-food web, the dynamics of herd or flock life, forest or prairie or river bottom ecosystems.  Everything a farmer does is a life or death decision.  Deciding which turkey gets the seat of honor at Thanksgiving.  Which pig will be bred and which will be slaughtered.  Which virgin ground is to be plowed and which will remain in a pristine condition.  The great Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner writes that hell should only be discussed when it comes to choices, decisions in which there are irrevocable consequences.  Plowing unbroken prairie is an irrevocable consequence.  It will never be the same.  Cutting old growth forest is an irrevocable consequence.  The  ecosystem is changed forever.  Deciding which turkey dies and which is left to perpetuate the species is an irrevocable consequence, particularly for that one bird.  It is not always a bad irrevocable consequence, but irrevocable, un-undoable, yes it is.  And while we all constantly make decisions that cause the life of some to continue and others to end, the farmer, like the fisher and the logger, like the soldier and the police officer, they are the ones carrying out those decisions, the ones doing them, as our confession goes, “on our behalf. 

It all comes down to freedom.  The freedom we have been blessed with by God all comes down to the “will and possibility of positing the definitive.  It is not the possibility of constant revision of decisions.”  The notion of hell has nothing to do with vindictive punishment, a consequence assigned by another in light of our actions.  Hell is the making of our own free will, be it through ignorance or malice, we can choose something other than God, we can chose something in oppostion to the true nature of things, to the way things are supposed to be, God’s will.   In making those choices, in rejecting the path of Grace we are freely and constantly offered, in ignoring the call to love one another, to turn the other cheek, to be the servant of all, to hold as precious the least of these… in choosing to reject these things we become more and more likely to make bad decisions with irrevocable consequences, decisions you cannot recover from physically, psychologically, emotionally, or spiritually.  And living like that, living outside of God’s will for us and the world is a “contradiction of the abiding and perfected world, and this contraction will be a torment.”  The dissonance, the static the turmoil of living outside of the kingdom of God, outside of God’s influence, that is the torment of hell.

Remember Hell refers not so much to a place, nor even to a time after death, but to the condition of being “finally lost and estranged from God in all dimensions of existence.”  Dante’s Inferno, or the paintings like Bosch’s “Garden of Earthly Delights”, “The Last Judgement” by Angelica or the one by his contemporary Lochner, these are graphic representations of what a life estranged from God must be like.  The barrenness and pain of that separation, the separation from all that is good and dependable, the knowledge that you are so far down the wrong path that God in God’s self can’t reverse the path you have gone down on your own...  that is a picture of hell that resonates in our modern world.

So what is the use of the doctrine of Hell to us in the here and now?  Is it to scare us straight?  To put the fear of God in our soul that we all be good boys and girls?  No, but it is to remind us of the eternal and actual forces we are subject to.  To remind us that what we do, who we are, how we decide to conduct ourselves in the world, with each other, with God, matters.  Our lives are irrevocable consequences of decisions others have made, and now we are making those decisions not only for ourselves but for others, our children and for generation upon generation to come.  We bear the burden of freedom, so it is imperative that we pray on, study, listen and learn the will of God, and do and be what that will calls us to do and be.  That is the Christian Way.  That is the Gospel truth.

So, we have to decide if we’ll put a sign outside that says “Come to church or go to hell.”  Is that truth in advertising?  Who am I to say?  I’m leaving that up to the vestry.  AMEN