The Second Sunday after Christmas
January 2, 2011
The Rev. Natasha Brubaker Garrison
Open with Rilke’s poem “Rest on the Flight into Egypt”
Those were the words of the great German poet Rainier Marie Rilke. It is part of a series of poems he wrote about the life of Mary. This poem puts into tale what happens in response to the dream Joseph has after his child is born. It also hints at what happens in the encounter between God and what is not God—when the not-Gods we worship meet the living God of Joseph and Mary. And at the end of it all they had to rest as in a dream. Perhaps it was a waking dream, perhaps a daydream, but whatever we think it was it was a place where reality was seen through the prism of dream-like distance. Such a dream-like state reminds me of a kaleidoscope; it allows us place to play with the pieces of our world and rearrange them, perhaps into something more good, more whole, more loving, more beautiful.
I think that the Gospel, that encountering Jesus as the Incarnation of a saving, grace-filled God, is an invitation to dream. Dreams abound in Scripture. They are constants in all cultures and often they are associated with divine communication. In some traditions people practice dream incubation to cultivate dreams that are prophetic and or have divine meaning. In our culture we look to them for clues to understanding what is going on in our life or to understand our past. In Hebrew tradition they were clearly prophetic, often future-oriented, and a way to convey important information as we see with the instructions given to Joseph to flee and why.
Whatever dreams are I think most of us sense that in some way they connect us to a deeper reality than our own. Perhaps in dreams we escape the illusion that we are independent beings that are solitary in nature and are swept up into the truth that we are social beings. I often wonder if dreams connect us to a communal conscience, a place where souls meet and share, a place where we touch our source of being, that reality that we name God. Who knows? But what I do know is that dreams are both necessary and powerful.
Dreams can give us a vision for what could be or what is possible. The reading from Jeremiah is full of a portrait of a dream come true: the people come home; there is plenty for all; people are merry and dancing with joy; the land and people are radiant for there is a restoration of the people to wholeness with God and each other. It is a beautiful vision, a dream for what can be. God is naming himself as a father to the people, a guiding hand that leads them to goodness and redemption.
I think that in Jesus people saw the possibility for dreams fulfilled. In Jesus they saw the dream of the outcast brought in made real. In Jesus the hungry were fed without condition or qualification. In Jesus people encountered a voice that spoke for the poor and lonely and that sought to heal those broken or wounded in body and spirit. It is a powerful vision and experience. It is that dream of love made manifest in our lives--that deep hope and need we all have and all need to have met.
The dream or the vision of Jesus is a simple one: all are beloved of God. And if beloved of God than no matter who we are or what we have done, there is a place for us in God’s embrace. No matter our flaws and imperfections, no matter our socio-economic status, no matter if the world flatters us or ignores us, no matter how broken or lost we may feel on the inside the dream that comes to life in Jesus is the coming true of a reality where we are received as we are.
Just as a child receives us as we are. Children, at least at first (I know this changes in time) simply accept that we are as we are and that is enough. Maybe that child-like faith is what Jesus is speaking to when he asks us to understand God as a father, a parent. Perhaps we are to view God with that kind of trust and understanding that we are simply loved. The world often fights that dream. All around us we are told it is hard and complicated to be worthy of love and acceptance. You have to be a certain way and sadly, most of us are far, far from that ideal. It is about power trips and control—as the rest of the story about Herod and his son’s rule in Judea tells us—even at the cost of killing others to maintain one’s grip over them. We kill each other physically all too often and we kill each other spiritually all the time.
Our dreams of a better world, or a better relationship, or to feel better about ourselves are, I believe, divine promptings to flee to Egypt with the Christ-child. By that I mean it is time to let our dreams take flight and be free, protect them from the world that would destroy them, give them space to breathe, and offer them as a gift to a Jesus who will reflect back a grace-filled face of God. I know that when I look in my child’s face I don’t worry about my ratings or my status. All I worry about is loving him enough and well.
I don’t worry that I am unaccepted or judged and found wanting. I find that I am freed from that and all I want is to love him wholly back. I seek to serve the holy in him without thought for my own gain or status or to prove myself worthy. Or, my deep dream that someday we can find ways better than war to solve our disputes and perhaps cultivate virtues that make conflicts less likely. (Give example of Eyes Wide Open combat boot display…) did it end the wars? No. But it keeps the dream alive within me and in the world. Each family we host in our parking lot is keeping the dream to end homelessness alive. It doesn’t solve the issue, but it is a small step towards doing so and keeps us true to our conviction to care for each other and continue to fight for that dream to be made real.
I think this is at the heart of that encounter with the Jesus that flees into Egypt with his parents. Self, in the sense of ego-driven self, fades, and in the journey that happens in response to our dreams we find an open space to receive grace and by extension begin to see the world with eyes shaded by that grace. Suddenly, every one of us is the Christ-child and every one of us is a Mary or Joseph who will do all in their power to love and protect the lives of others for all lives are vessels of the holy.
As Paul writes in his letter to the Ephesians: He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. That is Paul’s encapsulation of the dream made real as knowers and friends of Jesus.
And what happens when our dreams are dark and bad? There is a Jewish practice called Hatavat Halem, which literally means “making the dream a good one”, where a disturbing dream is shared with a rabbi so that a positive interpretation can emerge. Often the positive is revealed via the negative. So, whether our dreams are good or disturbing, our dreams are meant to help us strive for the good both within and without.
In this season of Christmas and as we approach Epiphany, the season of things made manifest, let us take our dreams—daydreams, waking dreams, nighttime dreams and visions—and make these dreams good ones, let us make them be part of making manifest the incarnation of God in Jesus, a place where a tree spreads wide, as though to serve, by our sides, and bows down to embrace us.
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Monday, December 27, 2010
Christmas Eve, December 24, 2010, Year A
The Rev. Natasha Brubaker Garrison
Isaiah 9:2-7, Psalm 96, Titus 2:11-14, Luke 2:1-20
Christmas Eve, 2010
There is something so beautiful about this story that instinctively we feel it must be true. Whether we are Christian or not this story captivates us, invites us into the inside of life to find an eternal truth—a divine understanding. We sense a truth in this story that is deeper and more real than if all the “facts” of it actually happened as described. This is the heart of myth. A myth is not a lie; a myth is not just an invention of fancy. A myth, as one very precocious five-year old explained, is a story that is not true on the outside, but true on the inside. All the details may not be utterly accurate, but that isn’t the heart of the matter. The heart is the truth that is within and that emerges through the way the story is told.
The heart of this story tonight is that God comes to us as one of us in the very same way that all of us come into this world: as a baby, a child. The heart of this story is that through the life of this child we discover how the love and peace of God takes flesh and is lived in the here and now. The heart of this story is that the deep hope for peace on earth is possible and it will become real through what we do and how we understand the world. It is also a collision of myths.
The story takes place in the time of the Roman Empire. Based in Rome its troops and its bureaucrats were stationed throughout the empire’s domain—a domain that covered continents. Calm, called peace by the Emperor, was maintained through strong-arm control, repression, occupation and the imposition of Rome’s norms as the best and only form of civilization.
The myth of the day was that of Rome’s inherent superiority and the greatness of its kingdom for all who were under its control or sway. Luke starts his story by reminding us of this other myth—Augustus was ruler of all the world. He was called the Prince of Peace, Our Lord, Son of God, Counselor and many other titles. They should sound familiar to our ears for they are ones we use for Jesus. But these were the common appellations for the Caesars: found on coins, engraved on statues, recorded in histories.
The peace and order of Rome was also a myth, perhaps better named propaganda or spin. It is here we find the crucial difference. A myth, a true myth, is one that speaks to a universal, to an understanding about human nature and reality that helps us know who we are and what we are, to a revelation of the holy that is larger than any particular people or kingdom or culture. The false myths take a particular and try to make it a universal. This was Rome. What the shepherds heard was the true myth that echoes across the universe eternally.
Luke is inviting us to juxtapose these two kinds of myth and to understand the truth revealed in this child born in humble circumstances to parents trying to survive in a hard and brutal world. Peace comes to all as a gift, not by force. The reviled and outcast, the poor and the rich, the wise and the foolish, all are able to come to Bethlehem to be touched by grace and love. The holy is born in a child that lies in a feeding trough in a city that’s name means house of bread. We are to understand that it is God that feeds us in all ways from the grain of the fields to the spiritual food of the soul. The holy is tangible in a family, in a mother and father, in stars that sing and a universe that reveals God’s glory. These are only some of the truths this story is giving us.
Yet the central truth Luke wants us to grasp is that of the angels’ message: peace on earth. When we glory in God, respond to God and to the God revealed in each other than peace is not merely a wish, but a possibility. The inside truth of this myth is the continual longing of us humans for peace. The plea and hope for it rings through thousands of years of history. The shepherds yearned for it as much as we still do today in a world that is so riddled with violence and seemingly endless war.
Perhaps no story better captures the way that this baby creates peace on earth and this myth becomes experienced truth than the one I am about to share:
My dear sister Janet,
It is 2:00 in the morning and most of our men are asleep in their dugouts—yet I could not sleep myself before writing to you of the wonderful events of Christmas Eve. In truth, what happened seems almost like a fairy tale, and if I hadn’t been through it myself, I would scarce believe it. Just imagine: While you and the family sang carols before the fire there in London, I did the same with enemy soldiers here on the battlefields of France!
As I wrote before, there has been little serious fighting of late. The first battles of the war left so many dead that both sides have held back until replacements could come from home. So we have mostly stayed in our trenches and waited.
But what a terrible waiting it has been! Knowing that any moment an artillery shell might land and explode beside us in the trench, killing or maiming several men. And in daylight not daring to lift our heads above ground, for fear of a sniper’s bullet.
Through all this, we couldn’t help feeling curious about the German soldiers across the way. After all, they faced the same dangers we did, and slogged about in the same muck. What’s more, their first trench was only 50 yards from ours. Between us lay No Man’s Land, bordered on both sides by barbed wire—yet they were close enough we sometimes heard their voices.
Of course, we hated them when they killed our friends. But other times, we joked about them and almost felt we had something in common. And now it seems they felt the same.
Just yesterday morning—Christmas Eve Day—we had our first good freeze. Cold as we were, we welcomed it, because at least the mud froze solid. Everything was tinged white with frost, while a bright sun shone over all. Perfect Christmas weather.
During the day, there was little shelling or rifle fire from either side. And as darkness fell on our Christmas Eve, the shooting stopped entirely. Our first complete silence in months! We hoped it might promise a peaceful holiday, but we didn’t count on it. We’d been told the Germans might attack and try to catch us off guard.
I went to the dugout to rest, and lying on my cot, I must have drifted asleep. All at once my friend John was shaking me awake, saying, “Come and see! See what the Germans are doing!” I grabbed my rifle, stumbled out into the trench, and stuck my head cautiously above the sandbags.
I never hope to see a stranger and more lovely sight. Clusters of tiny lights were shining all along the German line, left and right as far as the eye could see.
“What is it?” I asked in bewilderment, and John answered, “Christmas trees!”
And so it was. The Germans had placed Christmas trees in front of their trenches, lit by candle or lantern like beacons of good will.
And then we heard their voices raised in song.
Stille nacht, heilige nacht . . . .
This carol may not yet be familiar to us in Britain, but John knew it and translated: “Silent night, holy night.” I’ve never heard one lovelier—or more meaningful, in that quiet, clear night, its dark softened by a first-quarter moon.
When the song finished, the men in our trenches applauded. Yes, British soldiers applauding Germans! Then one of our own men started singing, and we all joined in.
The first Nowell, the angel did say . . . .
In truth, we sounded not nearly as good as the Germans, with their fine harmonies. But they responded with enthusiastic applause of their own and then began another.
O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum . . . .
Then we replied.
O come all ye faithful . . . .
But this time they joined in, singing the same words in Latin.
Adeste fideles . . . .
British and German harmonizing across No Man’s Land! I would have thought nothing could be more amazing—but what came next was more so.
“English, come over!” we heard one of them shout. “You no shoot, we no shoot.”
There in the trenches, we looked at each other in bewilderment. Then one of us shouted jokingly, “You come over here.”
To our astonishment, we saw two figures rise from the trench, climb over their barbed wire, and advance unprotected across No Man’s Land. One of them called, “Send officer to talk.”
I saw one of our men lift his rifle to the ready, and no doubt others did the same—but our captain called out, “Hold your fire.” Then he climbed out and went to meet the Germans halfway. We heard them talking, and a few minutes later, the captain came back with a German cigar in his mouth!
“We’ve agreed there will be no shooting before midnight tomorrow,” he announced. “But sentries are to remain on duty, and the rest of you, stay alert.”
Across the way, we could make out groups of two or three men starting out of trenches and coming toward us. Then some of us were climbing out too, and in minutes more, there we were in No Man’s Land, over a hundred soldiers and officers of each side, shaking hands with men we’d been trying to kill just hours earlier!
Before long a bonfire was built, and around it we mingled—British khaki and German grey. I must say, the Germans were the better dressed, with fresh uniforms for the holiday.
Only a couple of our men knew German, but more of the Germans knew English. I asked one of them why that was.
“Because many have worked in England!” he said. “Before all this, I was a waiter at the Hotel Cecil. Perhaps I waited on your table!”
“Perhaps you did!” I said, laughing.
He told me he had a girlfriend in London and that the war had interrupted their plans for marriage. I told him, “Don’t worry. We’ll have you beat by Easter, then you can come back and marry the girl.”
He laughed at that. Then he asked if I’d send her a postcard he’d give me later, and I promised I would.
Another German had been a porter at Victoria Station. He showed me a picture of his family back in Munich. His eldest sister was so lovely, I said I should like to meet her someday. He beamed and said he would like that very much and gave me his family’s address.
Even those who could not converse could still exchange gifts—our cigarettes for their cigars, our tea for their coffee, our corned beef for their sausage. Badges and buttons from uniforms changed owners, and one of our lads walked off with the infamous spiked helmet! I myself traded a jackknife for a leather equipment belt—a fine souvenir to show when I get home.
Newspapers too changed hands, and the Germans howled with laughter at ours. They assured us that France was finished and Russia nearly beaten too. We told them that was nonsense, and one of them said, “Well, you believe your newspapers and we’ll believe ours.”
Clearly they are lied to—yet after meeting these men, I wonder how truthful our own newspapers have been. These are not the “savage barbarians” we’ve read so much about. They are men with homes and families, hopes and fears, principles and, yes, love of country. In other words, men like ourselves. Why are we led to believe otherwise?
As it grew late, a few more songs were traded around the fire, and then all joined in for—I am not lying to you—“Auld Lang Syne.” Then we parted with promises to meet again tomorrow, and even some talk of a football match.
I was just starting back to the trenches when an older German clutched my arm. “My God,” he said, “why cannot we have peace and all go home?”
I told him gently, “That you must ask your emperor.”
He looked at me then, searchingly. “Perhaps, my friend. But also we must ask our hearts.”
And so, dear sister, tell me, has there ever been such a Christmas Eve in all history? And what does it all mean, this impossible befriending of enemies?
For the fighting here, of course, it means regrettably little. Decent fellows those soldiers may be, but they follow orders and we do the same. Besides, we are here to stop their army and send it home, and never could we shirk that duty.
Still, one cannot help imagine what would happen if the spirit shown here were caught by the nations of the world. Of course, disputes must always arise. But what if our leaders were to offer well wishes in place of warnings? Songs in place of slurs? Presents in place of reprisals? Would not all war end at once?
All nations say they want peace. Yet on this Christmas morning, I wonder if we want it quite enough.
Your loving brother, Tom
This recounting of this true event was written by Aaron Shepherd and he has truly captured the truth of this story that has in time become a myth, true mostly on the outside and true on the inside.
If we truly long for the Messiah, for that peace, than we too can hear the songs of the angels’ in the night sky. These soldiers heard it and joined in. They touched the deep inner truth of the myth and held it. They knew that it was in this story of a child who comes to us as a bearer of peace that true salvation and wholeness are found. And for a time they lived it and by their witness asked us all to choose the truer story. The question remains—do we want peace enough? It is possible. The story sings across time and space if our hearts can perceive the angelic host in the stars and the heavenly hosts. The longed for Messiah is here with us if we can embrace it and allow his life to transform ours. It can happen, it does happen. But we, like those soldiers and shepherds must get up and go to Bethlehem to see this thing that God has made known to us.
Isaiah 9:2-7, Psalm 96, Titus 2:11-14, Luke 2:1-20
Christmas Eve, 2010
There is something so beautiful about this story that instinctively we feel it must be true. Whether we are Christian or not this story captivates us, invites us into the inside of life to find an eternal truth—a divine understanding. We sense a truth in this story that is deeper and more real than if all the “facts” of it actually happened as described. This is the heart of myth. A myth is not a lie; a myth is not just an invention of fancy. A myth, as one very precocious five-year old explained, is a story that is not true on the outside, but true on the inside. All the details may not be utterly accurate, but that isn’t the heart of the matter. The heart is the truth that is within and that emerges through the way the story is told.
The heart of this story tonight is that God comes to us as one of us in the very same way that all of us come into this world: as a baby, a child. The heart of this story is that through the life of this child we discover how the love and peace of God takes flesh and is lived in the here and now. The heart of this story is that the deep hope for peace on earth is possible and it will become real through what we do and how we understand the world. It is also a collision of myths.
The story takes place in the time of the Roman Empire. Based in Rome its troops and its bureaucrats were stationed throughout the empire’s domain—a domain that covered continents. Calm, called peace by the Emperor, was maintained through strong-arm control, repression, occupation and the imposition of Rome’s norms as the best and only form of civilization.
The myth of the day was that of Rome’s inherent superiority and the greatness of its kingdom for all who were under its control or sway. Luke starts his story by reminding us of this other myth—Augustus was ruler of all the world. He was called the Prince of Peace, Our Lord, Son of God, Counselor and many other titles. They should sound familiar to our ears for they are ones we use for Jesus. But these were the common appellations for the Caesars: found on coins, engraved on statues, recorded in histories.
The peace and order of Rome was also a myth, perhaps better named propaganda or spin. It is here we find the crucial difference. A myth, a true myth, is one that speaks to a universal, to an understanding about human nature and reality that helps us know who we are and what we are, to a revelation of the holy that is larger than any particular people or kingdom or culture. The false myths take a particular and try to make it a universal. This was Rome. What the shepherds heard was the true myth that echoes across the universe eternally.
Luke is inviting us to juxtapose these two kinds of myth and to understand the truth revealed in this child born in humble circumstances to parents trying to survive in a hard and brutal world. Peace comes to all as a gift, not by force. The reviled and outcast, the poor and the rich, the wise and the foolish, all are able to come to Bethlehem to be touched by grace and love. The holy is born in a child that lies in a feeding trough in a city that’s name means house of bread. We are to understand that it is God that feeds us in all ways from the grain of the fields to the spiritual food of the soul. The holy is tangible in a family, in a mother and father, in stars that sing and a universe that reveals God’s glory. These are only some of the truths this story is giving us.
Yet the central truth Luke wants us to grasp is that of the angels’ message: peace on earth. When we glory in God, respond to God and to the God revealed in each other than peace is not merely a wish, but a possibility. The inside truth of this myth is the continual longing of us humans for peace. The plea and hope for it rings through thousands of years of history. The shepherds yearned for it as much as we still do today in a world that is so riddled with violence and seemingly endless war.
Perhaps no story better captures the way that this baby creates peace on earth and this myth becomes experienced truth than the one I am about to share:
My dear sister Janet,
It is 2:00 in the morning and most of our men are asleep in their dugouts—yet I could not sleep myself before writing to you of the wonderful events of Christmas Eve. In truth, what happened seems almost like a fairy tale, and if I hadn’t been through it myself, I would scarce believe it. Just imagine: While you and the family sang carols before the fire there in London, I did the same with enemy soldiers here on the battlefields of France!
As I wrote before, there has been little serious fighting of late. The first battles of the war left so many dead that both sides have held back until replacements could come from home. So we have mostly stayed in our trenches and waited.
But what a terrible waiting it has been! Knowing that any moment an artillery shell might land and explode beside us in the trench, killing or maiming several men. And in daylight not daring to lift our heads above ground, for fear of a sniper’s bullet.
Through all this, we couldn’t help feeling curious about the German soldiers across the way. After all, they faced the same dangers we did, and slogged about in the same muck. What’s more, their first trench was only 50 yards from ours. Between us lay No Man’s Land, bordered on both sides by barbed wire—yet they were close enough we sometimes heard their voices.
Of course, we hated them when they killed our friends. But other times, we joked about them and almost felt we had something in common. And now it seems they felt the same.
Just yesterday morning—Christmas Eve Day—we had our first good freeze. Cold as we were, we welcomed it, because at least the mud froze solid. Everything was tinged white with frost, while a bright sun shone over all. Perfect Christmas weather.
During the day, there was little shelling or rifle fire from either side. And as darkness fell on our Christmas Eve, the shooting stopped entirely. Our first complete silence in months! We hoped it might promise a peaceful holiday, but we didn’t count on it. We’d been told the Germans might attack and try to catch us off guard.
I went to the dugout to rest, and lying on my cot, I must have drifted asleep. All at once my friend John was shaking me awake, saying, “Come and see! See what the Germans are doing!” I grabbed my rifle, stumbled out into the trench, and stuck my head cautiously above the sandbags.
I never hope to see a stranger and more lovely sight. Clusters of tiny lights were shining all along the German line, left and right as far as the eye could see.
“What is it?” I asked in bewilderment, and John answered, “Christmas trees!”
And so it was. The Germans had placed Christmas trees in front of their trenches, lit by candle or lantern like beacons of good will.
And then we heard their voices raised in song.
Stille nacht, heilige nacht . . . .
This carol may not yet be familiar to us in Britain, but John knew it and translated: “Silent night, holy night.” I’ve never heard one lovelier—or more meaningful, in that quiet, clear night, its dark softened by a first-quarter moon.
When the song finished, the men in our trenches applauded. Yes, British soldiers applauding Germans! Then one of our own men started singing, and we all joined in.
The first Nowell, the angel did say . . . .
In truth, we sounded not nearly as good as the Germans, with their fine harmonies. But they responded with enthusiastic applause of their own and then began another.
O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum . . . .
Then we replied.
O come all ye faithful . . . .
But this time they joined in, singing the same words in Latin.
Adeste fideles . . . .
British and German harmonizing across No Man’s Land! I would have thought nothing could be more amazing—but what came next was more so.
“English, come over!” we heard one of them shout. “You no shoot, we no shoot.”
There in the trenches, we looked at each other in bewilderment. Then one of us shouted jokingly, “You come over here.”
To our astonishment, we saw two figures rise from the trench, climb over their barbed wire, and advance unprotected across No Man’s Land. One of them called, “Send officer to talk.”
I saw one of our men lift his rifle to the ready, and no doubt others did the same—but our captain called out, “Hold your fire.” Then he climbed out and went to meet the Germans halfway. We heard them talking, and a few minutes later, the captain came back with a German cigar in his mouth!
“We’ve agreed there will be no shooting before midnight tomorrow,” he announced. “But sentries are to remain on duty, and the rest of you, stay alert.”
Across the way, we could make out groups of two or three men starting out of trenches and coming toward us. Then some of us were climbing out too, and in minutes more, there we were in No Man’s Land, over a hundred soldiers and officers of each side, shaking hands with men we’d been trying to kill just hours earlier!
Before long a bonfire was built, and around it we mingled—British khaki and German grey. I must say, the Germans were the better dressed, with fresh uniforms for the holiday.
Only a couple of our men knew German, but more of the Germans knew English. I asked one of them why that was.
“Because many have worked in England!” he said. “Before all this, I was a waiter at the Hotel Cecil. Perhaps I waited on your table!”
“Perhaps you did!” I said, laughing.
He told me he had a girlfriend in London and that the war had interrupted their plans for marriage. I told him, “Don’t worry. We’ll have you beat by Easter, then you can come back and marry the girl.”
He laughed at that. Then he asked if I’d send her a postcard he’d give me later, and I promised I would.
Another German had been a porter at Victoria Station. He showed me a picture of his family back in Munich. His eldest sister was so lovely, I said I should like to meet her someday. He beamed and said he would like that very much and gave me his family’s address.
Even those who could not converse could still exchange gifts—our cigarettes for their cigars, our tea for their coffee, our corned beef for their sausage. Badges and buttons from uniforms changed owners, and one of our lads walked off with the infamous spiked helmet! I myself traded a jackknife for a leather equipment belt—a fine souvenir to show when I get home.
Newspapers too changed hands, and the Germans howled with laughter at ours. They assured us that France was finished and Russia nearly beaten too. We told them that was nonsense, and one of them said, “Well, you believe your newspapers and we’ll believe ours.”
Clearly they are lied to—yet after meeting these men, I wonder how truthful our own newspapers have been. These are not the “savage barbarians” we’ve read so much about. They are men with homes and families, hopes and fears, principles and, yes, love of country. In other words, men like ourselves. Why are we led to believe otherwise?
As it grew late, a few more songs were traded around the fire, and then all joined in for—I am not lying to you—“Auld Lang Syne.” Then we parted with promises to meet again tomorrow, and even some talk of a football match.
I was just starting back to the trenches when an older German clutched my arm. “My God,” he said, “why cannot we have peace and all go home?”
I told him gently, “That you must ask your emperor.”
He looked at me then, searchingly. “Perhaps, my friend. But also we must ask our hearts.”
And so, dear sister, tell me, has there ever been such a Christmas Eve in all history? And what does it all mean, this impossible befriending of enemies?
For the fighting here, of course, it means regrettably little. Decent fellows those soldiers may be, but they follow orders and we do the same. Besides, we are here to stop their army and send it home, and never could we shirk that duty.
Still, one cannot help imagine what would happen if the spirit shown here were caught by the nations of the world. Of course, disputes must always arise. But what if our leaders were to offer well wishes in place of warnings? Songs in place of slurs? Presents in place of reprisals? Would not all war end at once?
All nations say they want peace. Yet on this Christmas morning, I wonder if we want it quite enough.
Your loving brother, Tom
This recounting of this true event was written by Aaron Shepherd and he has truly captured the truth of this story that has in time become a myth, true mostly on the outside and true on the inside.
If we truly long for the Messiah, for that peace, than we too can hear the songs of the angels’ in the night sky. These soldiers heard it and joined in. They touched the deep inner truth of the myth and held it. They knew that it was in this story of a child who comes to us as a bearer of peace that true salvation and wholeness are found. And for a time they lived it and by their witness asked us all to choose the truer story. The question remains—do we want peace enough? It is possible. The story sings across time and space if our hearts can perceive the angelic host in the stars and the heavenly hosts. The longed for Messiah is here with us if we can embrace it and allow his life to transform ours. It can happen, it does happen. But we, like those soldiers and shepherds must get up and go to Bethlehem to see this thing that God has made known to us.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
December 19, 2010, The Fourth Sunday of Advent, Year A
The Rev. Natasha Brubaker Garrison
Isaiah 7:10-16, Psalm 80:1-7, 16-18, Romans 1:1-7, Matthew 1:18-25
Advent IV, Year A
The story of Jesus' birth—yes, this is it in Matthew in that line “until she had borne a son”—is not the easiest of stories to connect to the season of Advent. It is so stark and to the point (and Matthew's author had many points he was making in the short 8 verses) that it is hard to connect it to the themes of anticipation, waiting, receptivity, and so forth that we tend to associate with Advent. It is much easier to make these connections when hearing Luke's version. In trying to think about how to tie this passage in to the theme of waiting that I have been preaching on, I discovered an interesting symmetry in the stories of Mary and Jesus. It may take me awhile to ramble my way there, but I will get there I promise. Let me know if you think what I see makes sense. That symmetry I discovered led me to think of the tensions of waiting and living both in the here and now in a world that still needs full redemption—as our prayers of the people so perfectly illustrated--and being part of the Body of Christ that is living the resurrected life of full redemption and grace.
Tension is one of the things we see in this story today. The tensions laid out here are ones that repeat in this Gospel: tension between the letter and the spirit of the law and between early Christians, many of whom were Jewish, and Jews being two of them. In this story, Joseph chooses not to follow the strict letter of the law in his planned response to Mary's pregnancy. According to the law she would have been stoned. Scholars and historians tend to agree that by this time this punishment was not generally implemented and other ways had been adopted, though still ones that cast shame. Joseph instead, as best he can, opts for mercy in a way that respects both the law and the command to love given by Jesus. This story was written years after Jesus' death and the author is clearly injecting the command to love of Jesus back into this story. Joseph embodies the dilemma of many early Christians who were Jewish and Matthew portrays him to be a prototype and example for these early followers of Jesus. Likewise, we too live in the same tension of adherence to the law and responding to situations where the law or legal response seems inadequate, wrong or misguided, with mercy and love.
Likewise, Jesus is understood to be the son of God by the movement of the Holy Spirit and the participation of Mary. Joseph gives him a human lineage of the house of David. For Paul as we hear in today's readings, it seems quite clear that he understands Jesus' birth and conception to happen in a way like ours (descended from David according to the flesh). Luke takes this story in Matthew and expands on it dramatically. At the time this was written similar stories about the birth of Moses from a virgin were in circulation, so even within culture and scripture there are multiple ways to understand the origin's of Jesus. And that is a good thing. We can explore and engage all of them.
The early hearers of this story weren't worried about the tension of this as we are and all the other issue we have brought into this story such as original sin, purity, a negative view of human sexuality, etc.. The story points to the union of the divine saving plan and the royal human household of Israel—its kings and anointed ones. Matthew's author and his understanding of how Jesus was conceived are concerned not with biological questions, but with the function this person would have in the saving of Israel by God. In other words, the focus is on Jesus' role and function, not his nature. Is he human? Is he divine? Is he a hybrid? These aren't Matthew's questions really. His concern is what this child is going to accomplish for God and for God's people. This story of Jesus' conception and parentage are never referred to again in any way and even if deleted the confession and understanding of Jesus' role as a savior would still stand firm in this Gospel. This is not the proof so to speak of Jesus' identity. It is his life and the cross and what God brings forth from it.
And it is here that I would like to explore a bit and start winding my way to the symmetry between Mary and Jesus. The heart of this whole passage is, at least to me, that line “and they shall name him Emmanuel, which means, God is with us”. This is the kernel, the nugget of theological insight, the gem. He isn't named Emmanuel of course; he is named Jesus which is play on the Hebrew word “to save” and related to the name Joshua who in the Hebrew Scriptures was a saving figure in history. But Jesus saves us by being with us.
That is the very crux of the incarnation. And it is amazing when we think on it. We preachers often get pressure to always connect the readings with the nitty gritty of daily life, but sometiems we need to simple spend time on our theology and what it proclaims. We need to ponder it and contemplate it for that is what shapes how we see and understand the daily nitty gritty. So for us we hear this: Jesus saves us by being one with us. It is the total and complete merging of divinity and humanity until we perceive that there is no separation between the two in him. And if we belong to him, than our hope too is to be so close to God that our humanity is totally infused with divinity. It is a sharing of natures and being. It is participatory and active and also full of tension—we live in Christ, but all has not been reconciled to him in this world.
It is all about embodiment. We humans are best at understanding what is enfleshed. If we believe as we confess that the nature of God is love, than love came to be embodied in the way we could understand: in a human being. It is about bodies: Jesus' body, Mary's body, Christ's Body, my body, your body, our body. It has always puzzled me that for so much of the church for so long there was, and still is, disdain and even feelings of disgust towards the human body. It is precisely in a human body that God chooses to express the greatest acts and revelations of love. It is in and through a body that we are fed and grow into Christ's image.
It was at this point in my ramblings that I suddenly saw this mirror image of Jesus and Mary. Before his death Jesus gives us the the Eucharistic Meal, Holy Communion, and it opens with the words, this is my body given for you. Jesus gives his body to the cross to reveal God's salvation. Jesus gives us the gifts of bread and wine understood now to be so much more than that—the very nourishment of God. We are fed by him and through him and our task is to then go out and feed others. We wait for our acts of nourishment to bring forth the kingdom and persevere in doing them even when it seems they have no impact.
Mary is the mirror of this. If Jesus gives us the body of God, Mary gives God her body. She too says this is my body the moment she says yes to the invitation to bear the Messiah. For nine months her very being feeds and nurtures this little life. Her body very literally feeds that of Jesus, just as in time his life will be the food of salvation for her and for all who believe in him. Mary is with Jesus and he with her in the most intertwined and unified way: one dwells within the other. Talk about being with one another! Mary as one person holds within her the divine incarnation of love and brings it forth in the person of Jesus. Jesus as that incarnation shares it with the whole world and allows it to be received by us as a whole and as individual persons. Like Jesus whose body endures the cross and is raised a spiritual body as Paul says, Mary's body bears pain and is forever changed in the act of childbirth. In some ways Jesus and Mary can be seen not only as the Messiah and Virgin Israel, which is certainly one of the many levels that Matthew wants us to read this story on, who is to be saved, but also as the masculine and feminine ways we understand the holy. Jesus does not come to be without her; Mary does not come to fullness of life without him.
And in all of this we find a variety of ways that God is with us. God is within us. God is among us. God is our very being as the Body of Christ. Mary is blessed to be the very first person that the God we know in Jesus is with. He is with her in the most intimate way possible: connected, tethered to her for life and the sustaining of life. In time, it is we who will be tethered to him for sustained life through the bread and the wine and the life and the cross and the resurrection of Jesus the Messiah.
Like Mary, we wait. We wait for Jesus to grow in us so fully that we totally and utterly his. We wait for the Body of Christ in the world to be a witness to his mercy and peace and compassion and for the world to respond. We wait for the love of God that was embodied in Jesus to be embodied in each of us and in this world—heaven on earth, where it should be, the will of God indistinguishable from ours.
Isaiah 7:10-16, Psalm 80:1-7, 16-18, Romans 1:1-7, Matthew 1:18-25
Advent IV, Year A
The story of Jesus' birth—yes, this is it in Matthew in that line “until she had borne a son”—is not the easiest of stories to connect to the season of Advent. It is so stark and to the point (and Matthew's author had many points he was making in the short 8 verses) that it is hard to connect it to the themes of anticipation, waiting, receptivity, and so forth that we tend to associate with Advent. It is much easier to make these connections when hearing Luke's version. In trying to think about how to tie this passage in to the theme of waiting that I have been preaching on, I discovered an interesting symmetry in the stories of Mary and Jesus. It may take me awhile to ramble my way there, but I will get there I promise. Let me know if you think what I see makes sense. That symmetry I discovered led me to think of the tensions of waiting and living both in the here and now in a world that still needs full redemption—as our prayers of the people so perfectly illustrated--and being part of the Body of Christ that is living the resurrected life of full redemption and grace.
Tension is one of the things we see in this story today. The tensions laid out here are ones that repeat in this Gospel: tension between the letter and the spirit of the law and between early Christians, many of whom were Jewish, and Jews being two of them. In this story, Joseph chooses not to follow the strict letter of the law in his planned response to Mary's pregnancy. According to the law she would have been stoned. Scholars and historians tend to agree that by this time this punishment was not generally implemented and other ways had been adopted, though still ones that cast shame. Joseph instead, as best he can, opts for mercy in a way that respects both the law and the command to love given by Jesus. This story was written years after Jesus' death and the author is clearly injecting the command to love of Jesus back into this story. Joseph embodies the dilemma of many early Christians who were Jewish and Matthew portrays him to be a prototype and example for these early followers of Jesus. Likewise, we too live in the same tension of adherence to the law and responding to situations where the law or legal response seems inadequate, wrong or misguided, with mercy and love.
Likewise, Jesus is understood to be the son of God by the movement of the Holy Spirit and the participation of Mary. Joseph gives him a human lineage of the house of David. For Paul as we hear in today's readings, it seems quite clear that he understands Jesus' birth and conception to happen in a way like ours (descended from David according to the flesh). Luke takes this story in Matthew and expands on it dramatically. At the time this was written similar stories about the birth of Moses from a virgin were in circulation, so even within culture and scripture there are multiple ways to understand the origin's of Jesus. And that is a good thing. We can explore and engage all of them.
The early hearers of this story weren't worried about the tension of this as we are and all the other issue we have brought into this story such as original sin, purity, a negative view of human sexuality, etc.. The story points to the union of the divine saving plan and the royal human household of Israel—its kings and anointed ones. Matthew's author and his understanding of how Jesus was conceived are concerned not with biological questions, but with the function this person would have in the saving of Israel by God. In other words, the focus is on Jesus' role and function, not his nature. Is he human? Is he divine? Is he a hybrid? These aren't Matthew's questions really. His concern is what this child is going to accomplish for God and for God's people. This story of Jesus' conception and parentage are never referred to again in any way and even if deleted the confession and understanding of Jesus' role as a savior would still stand firm in this Gospel. This is not the proof so to speak of Jesus' identity. It is his life and the cross and what God brings forth from it.
And it is here that I would like to explore a bit and start winding my way to the symmetry between Mary and Jesus. The heart of this whole passage is, at least to me, that line “and they shall name him Emmanuel, which means, God is with us”. This is the kernel, the nugget of theological insight, the gem. He isn't named Emmanuel of course; he is named Jesus which is play on the Hebrew word “to save” and related to the name Joshua who in the Hebrew Scriptures was a saving figure in history. But Jesus saves us by being with us.
That is the very crux of the incarnation. And it is amazing when we think on it. We preachers often get pressure to always connect the readings with the nitty gritty of daily life, but sometiems we need to simple spend time on our theology and what it proclaims. We need to ponder it and contemplate it for that is what shapes how we see and understand the daily nitty gritty. So for us we hear this: Jesus saves us by being one with us. It is the total and complete merging of divinity and humanity until we perceive that there is no separation between the two in him. And if we belong to him, than our hope too is to be so close to God that our humanity is totally infused with divinity. It is a sharing of natures and being. It is participatory and active and also full of tension—we live in Christ, but all has not been reconciled to him in this world.
It is all about embodiment. We humans are best at understanding what is enfleshed. If we believe as we confess that the nature of God is love, than love came to be embodied in the way we could understand: in a human being. It is about bodies: Jesus' body, Mary's body, Christ's Body, my body, your body, our body. It has always puzzled me that for so much of the church for so long there was, and still is, disdain and even feelings of disgust towards the human body. It is precisely in a human body that God chooses to express the greatest acts and revelations of love. It is in and through a body that we are fed and grow into Christ's image.
It was at this point in my ramblings that I suddenly saw this mirror image of Jesus and Mary. Before his death Jesus gives us the the Eucharistic Meal, Holy Communion, and it opens with the words, this is my body given for you. Jesus gives his body to the cross to reveal God's salvation. Jesus gives us the gifts of bread and wine understood now to be so much more than that—the very nourishment of God. We are fed by him and through him and our task is to then go out and feed others. We wait for our acts of nourishment to bring forth the kingdom and persevere in doing them even when it seems they have no impact.
Mary is the mirror of this. If Jesus gives us the body of God, Mary gives God her body. She too says this is my body the moment she says yes to the invitation to bear the Messiah. For nine months her very being feeds and nurtures this little life. Her body very literally feeds that of Jesus, just as in time his life will be the food of salvation for her and for all who believe in him. Mary is with Jesus and he with her in the most intertwined and unified way: one dwells within the other. Talk about being with one another! Mary as one person holds within her the divine incarnation of love and brings it forth in the person of Jesus. Jesus as that incarnation shares it with the whole world and allows it to be received by us as a whole and as individual persons. Like Jesus whose body endures the cross and is raised a spiritual body as Paul says, Mary's body bears pain and is forever changed in the act of childbirth. In some ways Jesus and Mary can be seen not only as the Messiah and Virgin Israel, which is certainly one of the many levels that Matthew wants us to read this story on, who is to be saved, but also as the masculine and feminine ways we understand the holy. Jesus does not come to be without her; Mary does not come to fullness of life without him.
And in all of this we find a variety of ways that God is with us. God is within us. God is among us. God is our very being as the Body of Christ. Mary is blessed to be the very first person that the God we know in Jesus is with. He is with her in the most intimate way possible: connected, tethered to her for life and the sustaining of life. In time, it is we who will be tethered to him for sustained life through the bread and the wine and the life and the cross and the resurrection of Jesus the Messiah.
Like Mary, we wait. We wait for Jesus to grow in us so fully that we totally and utterly his. We wait for the Body of Christ in the world to be a witness to his mercy and peace and compassion and for the world to respond. We wait for the love of God that was embodied in Jesus to be embodied in each of us and in this world—heaven on earth, where it should be, the will of God indistinguishable from ours.
Monday, November 15, 2010
November 14, 2010, 25th Sunday after Pentecost
November 14, 2010
The Rev. Natasha Brubaker Garrison
Malachi 4:1-21, Ps 98, 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13, Luke 21:5-19
There is an old saying: It's always darkest before the dawn.
If you've ever been up in the early hours it seems true. The darkness seems almost tangible. A heavy stillness covers things. The sky has no light in it, especially once the moon has set. Sometimes the thought has come to my mind, “what if the sun decides not to rise today?” Each morning the rising sun is a small miracle for those with eyes of faith to see it, ensuring that life continues on this planet. The gift of light and warmth is given each day by a loving God. A sunrise is a symbol of hope; a sunrise is a reminder that God is faithful and reliable.
But in that darkness there is a choice we make. Do we hold firm to the belief that the light will come even if at the moment there is no sign of it, or do we become afraid?
It is the same choice the presents itself in all kinds of darkness or times of distress. When we are overwhelmed by burdens or sorrows do we hold fast to the promise of life in Jesus or do we give into fear and despair? When societal problems are huge and seem intractable do we give into anxiety and blaming those who are seen as the face of those problems? When history seems bent on a nihilistic course full of suffering and destruction do we abandon God or our faith that calls us to continue to live as people acting for mercy, peace, reconciliation and compassion? Or do we make an even bigger mistake and think God is causing it all and in so doing judging who is good and who is not?
Our reading from Luke today is posing these kinds of questions. On on leve it was speaking to the very particular history that had happened in ancient Israel. On another it is speaking to the repetition of such events since human nature has changed very little if at all in the 2000 years since.
Let's hear it again, this time from the version “The Message”.
The immediate setting of this reading is the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. It didn't take anyone with special clairvoyant powers to predict this. Judea chaffed under occupation and occasionally there were violent flare-ups. Eventually, the insurrections grew and Rome came down as empires do when those under their sway aren’t behaving as they ought and came down hard, burning the Temple, killing thousands upon thousands. The cultic worship life of Jesus' people was finished. The Temple was never rebuilt and Judaism was practiced in new ways. From the ashes grew the synagogues and rabbinical faith we know today.
In these chaotic and increasingly violent times, the followers of Jesus were handed over, were put on trial and, some think, asked to abandon the non-violent stance to stand in opposition to the Romans. So, Luke is describing real events in the life of the early Church and looking at the present to see what the future holds based on current events.
The trouble is that we have taken these texts and turned them into the final end of the world by God. They are not. They are about what humans have done and continue to do. No one knows when the world will end, not even the Son of God, so anyone who uses such texts and then predicts such events is assuming quite a lot! Apparently, they have more inside information than Jesus! But more to the point is that the pull and the driving energy of such types—the doomsday, apocalypse, types--is FEAR. Fear you will be left behind. Fear you aren't saved. Fear you aren't on the right side of a vengeful God. Fear of others. Fear of changing things, of addressing social problems, because the idea is that things are running their right course and God is driving the truck right towards the wall. Fear if that we did some serious self-reflection we might find that things were found wanting, that maybe we aren’t as right as we thought.
But is that the faith to which we who follow Jesus are called? Is that the Good News he lived and preached?
One of the resounding themes in Scripture from the earliest stories of the Hebrew people to the letters of Paul encouraging the early Church to the Gospels is this: Fear not.
Moses is worried about what to say to Pharaoh. God tells him to not fear; he will be given what he needs. The Israelites fear the change of leaving Egypt and time and again when fear threatens to devour them or causes them to distrust God (think the Golden Calf incident), God gives them signs to encourage them. Often the prophets are a bit anxious about their message, yet God sustains them saying to not be afraid. This doesn’t mean that there won’t be painful consequences to staying true to their message. It does mean that staying true to it is about staying true to oneself and to God’s ultimate hope for us even when that hope will encounter resistance.
The angels who come to Mary and to others always begin their meeting with the words fear not. Though the task given is often one that will be hard and perhaps even lead to death, the assurance is given that God is with them and that fear will destroy their self, their soul, which is a destruction worse than those who can hurt the body….as we hear time and again.
So many of the world’s values, worldly values as we theology wonks say, have as one of their roots fear. We fear that we won’t have enough. We fear those who are different than us though we really can’t say why. We fear change. We fear losing our privilege or our power, if we are one of those who has it. We fear death. And the consequences are greed, hatred, anger, vengeance, war, constructing elaborate rationales as to why some should be poor or exploited or discriminated against as a way to make us feel secure and unafraid. We get stuck in the way things are done because we are afraid of what change may demand. We can be almost perverse in this clinging. Even when we can see that what we are doing is not working, may in fact, be deadly, we resist and avoid and deny.
In my own life I see the consequences when I live out of fear. I become suspicious, narrow, grouchy, and judgmental. I lose the ability to laugh or play. I am increasingly selfish and self-absorbed, unable to see others with clarity. They become projections of my worst thoughts and traits. When Tommy was in the hospital there was a lot to fear. But I looked at the fears, touched them and then let go because I realized if I got lost in the fear I wouldn’t be able to love my child. I am convinced that part of why he lived and is thriving is because I did not let the fear take hold.
Jesus taught something else. Love of others. Love of enemies. Mercy. Trust that if one shares generously with all than all will have enough. Difference does not mean less than. Conflict can lead to peace not violence. Power over others will corrupt us and draw us away from God. In this ethical frame there is not room for fear to shape our response. No, Jesus asks us to hold to another truth: trust. Trust in God and God’s goodness. Trust in living a life shaped by loving stances towards others that can only happen when we don’t start from a place of fear.
Fear is a parasite of the soul. It rots us away from within. And this is what I think Jesus is getting at when he says, “By your endurance you will gain your souls.” Soul, in the Greek “psyche”, can be best understood as life, your self, your whole self. The call Jesus is making is to hold fast to his teachings even when all around you seems to say, what! That’s crazy! Go and get rid of those people or cut funds for this or launch an attack over there to get rid of the threat. In such times it is our thinking and our vision, which is the biggest threat and which feeds the fear that reinforces it. Fear begets fear and when we live in fear there is no room for creativity or seeing new ways forward. It devours us and it eats up our self.
Jesus is saying continue to be true to the Gospel. Continue to stand compassion and the work of reconciliation. Continue to believe sharing is better than hording. Continue to live into a generous and merciful spirit. Continue to see the reflection of God in every person, loved as much as you by the creator. Be humble. He says: “Fear not little flock, for it is God’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” This is true even if in holding true to the Gospel we seem to “lose” in this world.
In this time in our world and in our country, one of the most powerful witnesses we are called to as followers of Jesus is to not succumb to the fear. A healthy group does not use fear or threats to hold together. All day, every day, we are encouraged to be afraid and to distrust others. Fear-mongering, war-mongering and threats are the common coin of conversation. Jesus is telling us who believe in him and follow him to save our lives, to not give into the atmosphere of fear. To not get caught up in fear of immigrants, fear of Muslims, fear of compromise, fear of changing course to avoid coming calamities such as global climate change; fear of crime, etc. etc. We are to be bold voices for trust, for caring, for partnership and possibility, for creative thinking around the very real challenges that face us with the touchstone being mercy and compassion. Talk about swimming against the tide. But Jesus tells us: fear is not of God.
In the Sudan, as you know, there is a civil war raging between the north and south. It is over many things, but the line of demarcation also falls along a religious one of Christians and Muslims. There is a strong Anglican Church in the south and one day two priests saw fighters from the north coming towards them and it was obvious that their intentions were not good. These two men got onto their knees and prayed, in Arabic, for the fighters, praying for blessings for them and for goodness. The fighters spared their lives. Something powerfully good happened here through this witness and act of trust. Imagine what might be if things like this happened more often.
I believe there is no more powerful act we can make at this time than to be people of hope and trust. There is no more vital witness than to stand against the fear and the animosity and hate and anger it spawns. The world needs this witness; it needs this testimony. And this Good News of God is the rising of the sun of righteousness and wings full of healing…in God’s time.
The Rev. Natasha Brubaker Garrison
Malachi 4:1-21, Ps 98, 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13, Luke 21:5-19
There is an old saying: It's always darkest before the dawn.
If you've ever been up in the early hours it seems true. The darkness seems almost tangible. A heavy stillness covers things. The sky has no light in it, especially once the moon has set. Sometimes the thought has come to my mind, “what if the sun decides not to rise today?” Each morning the rising sun is a small miracle for those with eyes of faith to see it, ensuring that life continues on this planet. The gift of light and warmth is given each day by a loving God. A sunrise is a symbol of hope; a sunrise is a reminder that God is faithful and reliable.
But in that darkness there is a choice we make. Do we hold firm to the belief that the light will come even if at the moment there is no sign of it, or do we become afraid?
It is the same choice the presents itself in all kinds of darkness or times of distress. When we are overwhelmed by burdens or sorrows do we hold fast to the promise of life in Jesus or do we give into fear and despair? When societal problems are huge and seem intractable do we give into anxiety and blaming those who are seen as the face of those problems? When history seems bent on a nihilistic course full of suffering and destruction do we abandon God or our faith that calls us to continue to live as people acting for mercy, peace, reconciliation and compassion? Or do we make an even bigger mistake and think God is causing it all and in so doing judging who is good and who is not?
Our reading from Luke today is posing these kinds of questions. On on leve it was speaking to the very particular history that had happened in ancient Israel. On another it is speaking to the repetition of such events since human nature has changed very little if at all in the 2000 years since.
Let's hear it again, this time from the version “The Message”.
The immediate setting of this reading is the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. It didn't take anyone with special clairvoyant powers to predict this. Judea chaffed under occupation and occasionally there were violent flare-ups. Eventually, the insurrections grew and Rome came down as empires do when those under their sway aren’t behaving as they ought and came down hard, burning the Temple, killing thousands upon thousands. The cultic worship life of Jesus' people was finished. The Temple was never rebuilt and Judaism was practiced in new ways. From the ashes grew the synagogues and rabbinical faith we know today.
In these chaotic and increasingly violent times, the followers of Jesus were handed over, were put on trial and, some think, asked to abandon the non-violent stance to stand in opposition to the Romans. So, Luke is describing real events in the life of the early Church and looking at the present to see what the future holds based on current events.
The trouble is that we have taken these texts and turned them into the final end of the world by God. They are not. They are about what humans have done and continue to do. No one knows when the world will end, not even the Son of God, so anyone who uses such texts and then predicts such events is assuming quite a lot! Apparently, they have more inside information than Jesus! But more to the point is that the pull and the driving energy of such types—the doomsday, apocalypse, types--is FEAR. Fear you will be left behind. Fear you aren't saved. Fear you aren't on the right side of a vengeful God. Fear of others. Fear of changing things, of addressing social problems, because the idea is that things are running their right course and God is driving the truck right towards the wall. Fear if that we did some serious self-reflection we might find that things were found wanting, that maybe we aren’t as right as we thought.
But is that the faith to which we who follow Jesus are called? Is that the Good News he lived and preached?
One of the resounding themes in Scripture from the earliest stories of the Hebrew people to the letters of Paul encouraging the early Church to the Gospels is this: Fear not.
Moses is worried about what to say to Pharaoh. God tells him to not fear; he will be given what he needs. The Israelites fear the change of leaving Egypt and time and again when fear threatens to devour them or causes them to distrust God (think the Golden Calf incident), God gives them signs to encourage them. Often the prophets are a bit anxious about their message, yet God sustains them saying to not be afraid. This doesn’t mean that there won’t be painful consequences to staying true to their message. It does mean that staying true to it is about staying true to oneself and to God’s ultimate hope for us even when that hope will encounter resistance.
The angels who come to Mary and to others always begin their meeting with the words fear not. Though the task given is often one that will be hard and perhaps even lead to death, the assurance is given that God is with them and that fear will destroy their self, their soul, which is a destruction worse than those who can hurt the body….as we hear time and again.
So many of the world’s values, worldly values as we theology wonks say, have as one of their roots fear. We fear that we won’t have enough. We fear those who are different than us though we really can’t say why. We fear change. We fear losing our privilege or our power, if we are one of those who has it. We fear death. And the consequences are greed, hatred, anger, vengeance, war, constructing elaborate rationales as to why some should be poor or exploited or discriminated against as a way to make us feel secure and unafraid. We get stuck in the way things are done because we are afraid of what change may demand. We can be almost perverse in this clinging. Even when we can see that what we are doing is not working, may in fact, be deadly, we resist and avoid and deny.
In my own life I see the consequences when I live out of fear. I become suspicious, narrow, grouchy, and judgmental. I lose the ability to laugh or play. I am increasingly selfish and self-absorbed, unable to see others with clarity. They become projections of my worst thoughts and traits. When Tommy was in the hospital there was a lot to fear. But I looked at the fears, touched them and then let go because I realized if I got lost in the fear I wouldn’t be able to love my child. I am convinced that part of why he lived and is thriving is because I did not let the fear take hold.
Jesus taught something else. Love of others. Love of enemies. Mercy. Trust that if one shares generously with all than all will have enough. Difference does not mean less than. Conflict can lead to peace not violence. Power over others will corrupt us and draw us away from God. In this ethical frame there is not room for fear to shape our response. No, Jesus asks us to hold to another truth: trust. Trust in God and God’s goodness. Trust in living a life shaped by loving stances towards others that can only happen when we don’t start from a place of fear.
Fear is a parasite of the soul. It rots us away from within. And this is what I think Jesus is getting at when he says, “By your endurance you will gain your souls.” Soul, in the Greek “psyche”, can be best understood as life, your self, your whole self. The call Jesus is making is to hold fast to his teachings even when all around you seems to say, what! That’s crazy! Go and get rid of those people or cut funds for this or launch an attack over there to get rid of the threat. In such times it is our thinking and our vision, which is the biggest threat and which feeds the fear that reinforces it. Fear begets fear and when we live in fear there is no room for creativity or seeing new ways forward. It devours us and it eats up our self.
Jesus is saying continue to be true to the Gospel. Continue to stand compassion and the work of reconciliation. Continue to believe sharing is better than hording. Continue to live into a generous and merciful spirit. Continue to see the reflection of God in every person, loved as much as you by the creator. Be humble. He says: “Fear not little flock, for it is God’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” This is true even if in holding true to the Gospel we seem to “lose” in this world.
In this time in our world and in our country, one of the most powerful witnesses we are called to as followers of Jesus is to not succumb to the fear. A healthy group does not use fear or threats to hold together. All day, every day, we are encouraged to be afraid and to distrust others. Fear-mongering, war-mongering and threats are the common coin of conversation. Jesus is telling us who believe in him and follow him to save our lives, to not give into the atmosphere of fear. To not get caught up in fear of immigrants, fear of Muslims, fear of compromise, fear of changing course to avoid coming calamities such as global climate change; fear of crime, etc. etc. We are to be bold voices for trust, for caring, for partnership and possibility, for creative thinking around the very real challenges that face us with the touchstone being mercy and compassion. Talk about swimming against the tide. But Jesus tells us: fear is not of God.
In the Sudan, as you know, there is a civil war raging between the north and south. It is over many things, but the line of demarcation also falls along a religious one of Christians and Muslims. There is a strong Anglican Church in the south and one day two priests saw fighters from the north coming towards them and it was obvious that their intentions were not good. These two men got onto their knees and prayed, in Arabic, for the fighters, praying for blessings for them and for goodness. The fighters spared their lives. Something powerfully good happened here through this witness and act of trust. Imagine what might be if things like this happened more often.
I believe there is no more powerful act we can make at this time than to be people of hope and trust. There is no more vital witness than to stand against the fear and the animosity and hate and anger it spawns. The world needs this witness; it needs this testimony. And this Good News of God is the rising of the sun of righteousness and wings full of healing…in God’s time.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Sermon update September 2010
The Rev. Garrison has been on maternity leave through most of the summer. She is back at work but her sermons have been more spontaneous than scripted so there have been no copies to post.
Monday, June 7, 2010
June 6, 2010, The 2nd Sunday after Pentecost
SERMON preached on the Second Sunday after Pentecost (5C)
6 June, 2010 - Ted Berktold
When I was a young child, my awareness of wartime casualties centered on an annual Memorial Day visit to the grave of my uncle Joe, who was buried in the military cemetery at Fort Snelling, Minnesota. Mom would cut a bouquet of flowers, pack a substantial picnic, and the whole family would drive off for the day listening to the car radio and my mother's re-telling the tragedy of his death on the beach at Anzio in far-away Italy before I was born. He was a name to me - that's about all. I remember a photograph of him - a handsome young man in his soldier's uniform. Watching Ken Burn’s epic series “War” a few years ago gave me a new perspective on Anzio, in the prayer of a soldier there. “God help us,” he said. “And you come yourself. Don’t be sending Jesus. This ain’t no place for children.” When we would arrive at the cemetery with its row upon row of white markers, I would realize that many other people must have died as well, but the numbers never meant very much to me. The day was largely an outing, an unusual kind of outing, but there was nothing sad or gloomy about it. Even my mother used to enjoy it, although she would always end the day saying: "I suppose the time will come when no one will do this." She was right - we don't do it any more. My father is dead, Mom’s in a nursing home, my brothers and sisters are grown up and moved away like me and have other things to do on Memorial Day, so no one goes to that cemetery any more.
Memorial Day is more than an outing. When I visited the D-Day beaches several years ago, I found it more than a tourist destination in the Normandy countryside. Instinctively, I became more and more somber as I drew near the beaches. When I reflect on the amount of life lost in the wars of the last century alone, I shudder. Millions have been killed, including hundreds of thousands of Americans. Millions of British and French and Germans – tens of millions of Russians and Japanese soldiers and civilians - more than I ever imagined looking at those rows of white markers honoring America's dead at Fort Snelling. How many have been scarred or disabled, some for life? How difficult it is to pray out name and rank, week after week, remembering the dead in Iraq and Afghanistan in our own day.
There is a truth, found in Memorial Day, which goes deeper than statistics, a truth we know, but do not always stop to remember. It is this; someone has paid for everything we have. Think about this parish. Although some of you are founding members, this parish was here for many of today’s members when you arrived. Someone else started it. Life is never a free ride. There is a cost involved in anything that amounts to something. No baby is born; no child is raised to maturity without cost to its parents. No job continues through dozens of years without sacrifice. No marriage vows are kept though a lifetime without cost to both people. No nation has ever existed that has cost its people nothing. Think of our own nation, its original inhabitants from whom so much was taken, and its European settlers who established our government and made our laws. Present-day Americans have what we have because others were willing to pay the price for it. Some people paid the full price of their lives to preserve it.
One of the gravest dangers facing the world today is that we think, or at least we are sometimes encouraged to think, that we can have what we want for nothing. If we want happiness, someone else will give it to us. If we want peace, someone, somewhere, will give it to us. That isn't true, of course. The good things in life are bought with a price. The price of our salvation was paid by the blood of Jesus on the cross. In the first centuries after Jesus, spreading that news cost people their lives. Salvation is offered freely to anyone who will receive it, but it came at a great price.
Memorial Day and D-Day raise a question in me. Why do people fight? Why have so many people been killed? What was the potential of the young theologian Dietrich Bonheoffer, executed in a Nazi prison just before the fall of Berlin in 1945, or my own uncle Joe, or the young men and women we name in our prayers each week? How many others were lost who had within them the possibilities of great and creative things that never came to pass? And why do people in families fight? Why are management and labor always at war? Why young and old? Why do Christians fight so much? I don't pretend to know the answer, but this much I can say: People fight because they are aggressive by nature, some much more so than others. We must be aggressive up to a certain point. When we see something we want, we go after it. The complication is that two people often see the same thing. You see it happen among children. Two children want the same toy, so they fight over it. Two business firms want the same contract and fight to get it, because they feel that their future depends on closing that deal.
Competition adds fuel to the aggressive instinct. On a still greater scale, two countries want the same land, the same natural resources, the same oil fields or water, or the same prestige; and they fight for it. They fight, and history makes it clear that one fight leads to another. The war to end all wars was not the last fight. The treaties that followed, according to some historians, made World War II inevitable. To make things more vicious, when one person does something wrong, innocent people suffer the consequences. Life would be much simpler if that were not true. I don't know why God allows that to be. I don't think God planned it so. All I know is that evil is contagious.
The question all this raises on such a weekend is: Must this go on forever? Are we doomed to live in a world like this for the rest of our lives, and are our children to face a world like this? Aggressive people, aggressive nations. One fight leading to another. The innocent suffering as well as the guilty. This much we can say - the cost of life will continue. Aggressive instincts will not disappear from human nature. Conflict of interests will always be a factor in situations and relationships. But fighting need not continue. Peace is possible. We can learn to disagree with opponents and help them learn to disagree with us without destroying one another. We can learn to handle hostility, and keep it under control in our relationships.
The authors of several gospels saw the truth more clearly than we often do. They used a language we don't easily understand; it is the language of the spirit of God. They said, “You can’t serve two masters.” They didn't have to fight people because they didn't have to fight God. Through their relationship with Jesus they were able to tell us that God's love dwells among us, and because of that, peace is possible. Peace on earth, good will among people - that is God's will.
For those who have seen war and felt the power of death, D-Day and Memorial Day are more than an outing. For those of us who have felt God's saving grace, this sacrament is more than a picnic. It is a sacrificial prayer we make in the name of Jesus who died that we might live; who gave his body and his blood as a sign of God's endless love for us. In doing so, he gave us the peace that passes understanding.
Let us pray:
Loving Lord
Let your love be here
Fill us with your peace
Let your joy be here
Fill us with your grace
Let your light be here
Fill us with your power
Let us know that you are here
Fill us with your presence
Today and every day.
Amen.
6 June, 2010 - Ted Berktold
When I was a young child, my awareness of wartime casualties centered on an annual Memorial Day visit to the grave of my uncle Joe, who was buried in the military cemetery at Fort Snelling, Minnesota. Mom would cut a bouquet of flowers, pack a substantial picnic, and the whole family would drive off for the day listening to the car radio and my mother's re-telling the tragedy of his death on the beach at Anzio in far-away Italy before I was born. He was a name to me - that's about all. I remember a photograph of him - a handsome young man in his soldier's uniform. Watching Ken Burn’s epic series “War” a few years ago gave me a new perspective on Anzio, in the prayer of a soldier there. “God help us,” he said. “And you come yourself. Don’t be sending Jesus. This ain’t no place for children.” When we would arrive at the cemetery with its row upon row of white markers, I would realize that many other people must have died as well, but the numbers never meant very much to me. The day was largely an outing, an unusual kind of outing, but there was nothing sad or gloomy about it. Even my mother used to enjoy it, although she would always end the day saying: "I suppose the time will come when no one will do this." She was right - we don't do it any more. My father is dead, Mom’s in a nursing home, my brothers and sisters are grown up and moved away like me and have other things to do on Memorial Day, so no one goes to that cemetery any more.
Memorial Day is more than an outing. When I visited the D-Day beaches several years ago, I found it more than a tourist destination in the Normandy countryside. Instinctively, I became more and more somber as I drew near the beaches. When I reflect on the amount of life lost in the wars of the last century alone, I shudder. Millions have been killed, including hundreds of thousands of Americans. Millions of British and French and Germans – tens of millions of Russians and Japanese soldiers and civilians - more than I ever imagined looking at those rows of white markers honoring America's dead at Fort Snelling. How many have been scarred or disabled, some for life? How difficult it is to pray out name and rank, week after week, remembering the dead in Iraq and Afghanistan in our own day.
There is a truth, found in Memorial Day, which goes deeper than statistics, a truth we know, but do not always stop to remember. It is this; someone has paid for everything we have. Think about this parish. Although some of you are founding members, this parish was here for many of today’s members when you arrived. Someone else started it. Life is never a free ride. There is a cost involved in anything that amounts to something. No baby is born; no child is raised to maturity without cost to its parents. No job continues through dozens of years without sacrifice. No marriage vows are kept though a lifetime without cost to both people. No nation has ever existed that has cost its people nothing. Think of our own nation, its original inhabitants from whom so much was taken, and its European settlers who established our government and made our laws. Present-day Americans have what we have because others were willing to pay the price for it. Some people paid the full price of their lives to preserve it.
One of the gravest dangers facing the world today is that we think, or at least we are sometimes encouraged to think, that we can have what we want for nothing. If we want happiness, someone else will give it to us. If we want peace, someone, somewhere, will give it to us. That isn't true, of course. The good things in life are bought with a price. The price of our salvation was paid by the blood of Jesus on the cross. In the first centuries after Jesus, spreading that news cost people their lives. Salvation is offered freely to anyone who will receive it, but it came at a great price.
Memorial Day and D-Day raise a question in me. Why do people fight? Why have so many people been killed? What was the potential of the young theologian Dietrich Bonheoffer, executed in a Nazi prison just before the fall of Berlin in 1945, or my own uncle Joe, or the young men and women we name in our prayers each week? How many others were lost who had within them the possibilities of great and creative things that never came to pass? And why do people in families fight? Why are management and labor always at war? Why young and old? Why do Christians fight so much? I don't pretend to know the answer, but this much I can say: People fight because they are aggressive by nature, some much more so than others. We must be aggressive up to a certain point. When we see something we want, we go after it. The complication is that two people often see the same thing. You see it happen among children. Two children want the same toy, so they fight over it. Two business firms want the same contract and fight to get it, because they feel that their future depends on closing that deal.
Competition adds fuel to the aggressive instinct. On a still greater scale, two countries want the same land, the same natural resources, the same oil fields or water, or the same prestige; and they fight for it. They fight, and history makes it clear that one fight leads to another. The war to end all wars was not the last fight. The treaties that followed, according to some historians, made World War II inevitable. To make things more vicious, when one person does something wrong, innocent people suffer the consequences. Life would be much simpler if that were not true. I don't know why God allows that to be. I don't think God planned it so. All I know is that evil is contagious.
The question all this raises on such a weekend is: Must this go on forever? Are we doomed to live in a world like this for the rest of our lives, and are our children to face a world like this? Aggressive people, aggressive nations. One fight leading to another. The innocent suffering as well as the guilty. This much we can say - the cost of life will continue. Aggressive instincts will not disappear from human nature. Conflict of interests will always be a factor in situations and relationships. But fighting need not continue. Peace is possible. We can learn to disagree with opponents and help them learn to disagree with us without destroying one another. We can learn to handle hostility, and keep it under control in our relationships.
The authors of several gospels saw the truth more clearly than we often do. They used a language we don't easily understand; it is the language of the spirit of God. They said, “You can’t serve two masters.” They didn't have to fight people because they didn't have to fight God. Through their relationship with Jesus they were able to tell us that God's love dwells among us, and because of that, peace is possible. Peace on earth, good will among people - that is God's will.
For those who have seen war and felt the power of death, D-Day and Memorial Day are more than an outing. For those of us who have felt God's saving grace, this sacrament is more than a picnic. It is a sacrificial prayer we make in the name of Jesus who died that we might live; who gave his body and his blood as a sign of God's endless love for us. In doing so, he gave us the peace that passes understanding.
Let us pray:
Loving Lord
Let your love be here
Fill us with your peace
Let your joy be here
Fill us with your grace
Let your light be here
Fill us with your power
Let us know that you are here
Fill us with your presence
Today and every day.
Amen.
Monday, May 24, 2010
May 23, 2010, The Day of Pentecost
SERMON preached on May 23, 2010 -Pentecost - Ted Berktold
Church of the Resurrection, Eugene
When a volcano erupts, what happens on the surface is a result of unseen things happening underneath. Heat and pressure from gases and molten rock build up. They cause the ground to bulge and quake and then, amidst fire and flooding mud and flowing lava, a volcano is born. What happens under the earth’s crust happens to people. The People of Israel, God's Chosen People, once spiritually powerful and influential, lay dormant despite so much potential force, talk of a messiah, and the promise of God's power. Some Jews thought that the eruption had come with Jesus, the carpenter from Nazareth. But it blew up in their faces. Dreams of glory were buried under fear and death, and their hopes were turned to ashes. The disciples, however, did not disband and go fishing. They did as the Lord instructed; they waited. The Lord of all creation, of all the past and all the present, had claimed to be the Lord of the future as well. So they waited.
During Jesus’ time on earth, the disciples got to know him as they walked together and talked together, felt his healing touch, and heard his words of comfort and truth. They began to respect and love him, and place their hope in him before his arrest, but “He was crucified, died, and was buried,” says the Creed. Then something tremendous happened within the earth; so tremendous it still brings a shout of “alleluia” to our lips two thousand years later. Inside the earth itself, God gave life to the crucified one. The stone was rolled back; the Holy One of God arose to rejoin those who had followed him faithfully. Although they had no hope of ever looking into his eyes again or hearing his voice or touching him, they found themselves doing all those things. Now their relationship with Jesus changed. He was still who he had been before the cross, but they made it clear that now he was more, much more. They could touch the holes made by the nails and the spear. They recognized him in the breaking of bread. He came through closed doors. He had become, to use the words we know so well, the risen Christ.
But this, too, had an end. Christians have always regarded the Ascension of our Lord as the ending of Jesus’ presence among us in a special, personal way that will only begin again in the kingdom of God, after this phase of our life has ended. The early Church would need half a century to absorb his departure and speak about his return. The phrase that comes into my mind when I think of the Ascension is “Parting is such sweet sorrow.” In his account of the Ascension, Luke says that the disciples and Mary went home with joy after Jesus ascended into heaven. I know that we must read the lines of scripture before we read between the lines, but I can’t help feeling that their joy was mixed with sadness on the day Jesus departed. I'm not surprised that scripture mentions only joy, for joy and sadness are opposite ends of the same line, and are often intermingled. So they waited, because he told them to. On the Jewish feast of Pentecost, 50 days after Passover, when Jews commemorate the giving of the Law to Moses on Mount Sinai, the waiting stopped. We read in the Acts of the Apostles: “And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit.” (Acts 2: 2)
We live in the area of active volcanoes. But we know that the power of a volcano is nothing compared with the power of God; nothing. The disciples poured out of that room on fire with the Holy Spirit. Like volcanic ash, they began to choke the world, and its powers. They drifted toward Spain and Africa, Rome and Corinth. Those original followers, many who had never left their tiny homeland, covered the known world. They preached love, forgiveness. They preached Jesus Christ. They baptized; they immersed others in the Spirit of God which was poured out in them, the same Spirit which is poured out into us in baptism. “In each of us the Spirit is manifested in a particular way; wise speech, healing, ecstatic utterance, or ability to interpret it,” said Paul. He expanded the list in the 12th chapter of Romans. The gift of the Spirit can be administration, teaching, giving to charity, leading. Paul gave no definitive list. The Spirit blows where it will, he said. We do not know where the Spirit of God will be tomorrow.
According to Paul, the gifts of God are given for the building up of the church, Christ’s visible, tangible presence on earth. They are not for the elite few, these gifts. Each member of the church has his or her particular character, from the youngest to the eldest. There is no Christian who does not have one or more of the gifts of the Spirit, and no individual has them all; not even the bishop. So the question for Paul was not: “What is biggest, best gift for a Christian to have?” but rather, “What gifts has the Spirit given to me?” and “How can I use those gifts?” How can the Church discern the gifts of each person, recognize those gifts, and celebrate them? Some gifts are extraordinary, miraculous, sensational. Some are quiet and ordinary, as modest as a welcoming smile to a newcomer on Sunday morning. At bottom, all the gifts are one gift. There is one Lord, one Spirit, who gives the gift of eternal life. “Almighty God, on this day you opened the way to eternal life to every race and nation by the promised gift of your Holy Spirit,” says the collect for today. That life begins today when we live the love of Christ. Love is our experience of eternal life now.
As their relationship with the risen Christ ended when he ascended, the disciples realized that the love they had come to expect from Jesus would now have to come from among themselves. Chapters 13 -17 of John’s Gospel, the portion of the Gospel we have been reading since I came at the beginning of May, are known as the Farewell Discourses because, in them, Jesus was saying goodbye and handing on his work to those who were to continue his mission. Today’s Gospel (John 14: 8-17) is a key section of that farewell speech. The test of their love for him, he said, is that they continue to practice all he taught them. At the end of the Discourses, at the 2Oth verse of Chapter 17, Jesus prayed not only for the disciples among whom he had lived and ministered, but also for “those who believe in me through their word.” Jesus was praying for us; inviting us to inherit the gifts and become divine love in our own day. He knew people would no longer run into him at the marketplace; they would run into us. They would see and hear us, and he knew that through us, they might eventually come to know him. Over the centuries, by way of water and Word, bread and wine, that first Christian community has become us and we have become them. Like the disciples, we may feel tempted to look back nostalgically to the times when Christ was there for us, and not realize he wanted us to be here for him.
Pentecost redirects our vision from ascending Lord to empowering presence; from sky to earth; from far-away God to Christ in our midst. Pentecost is the mission statement of the Church. Celebrating it with you today is a privilege and a joy. Within us burns the flame of Pentecost. Embowered by the Spirit of the Living God, may we always be Christ to each other. Thank you for being Christ to me today.
Let us pray:
May the Spirit’s fire be in our thoughts
Making them true, good and just
May it protect us from the evil one.
May the Spirit’s fire be in our eyes
May it open our eyes to what is good in life and
protect us from what is not.
May the Spirit’s fire be on our lips, so that we may speak the truth in kindness
That we may serve and encourage others and
Be protected from speaking evil.
May the Spirit’s fire be in our ears
that we may hear with a deep, deep listening
and all may know that we respect them.
May the Spirit’s fire be in our arms and hands
So that we may be of service and build up love.
May the Spirit’s fire be in our whole being; in our legs and feet
Enabling us to walk the earth with care
So that we may walk ways of goodness and truth. Amen.
Church of the Resurrection, Eugene
When a volcano erupts, what happens on the surface is a result of unseen things happening underneath. Heat and pressure from gases and molten rock build up. They cause the ground to bulge and quake and then, amidst fire and flooding mud and flowing lava, a volcano is born. What happens under the earth’s crust happens to people. The People of Israel, God's Chosen People, once spiritually powerful and influential, lay dormant despite so much potential force, talk of a messiah, and the promise of God's power. Some Jews thought that the eruption had come with Jesus, the carpenter from Nazareth. But it blew up in their faces. Dreams of glory were buried under fear and death, and their hopes were turned to ashes. The disciples, however, did not disband and go fishing. They did as the Lord instructed; they waited. The Lord of all creation, of all the past and all the present, had claimed to be the Lord of the future as well. So they waited.
During Jesus’ time on earth, the disciples got to know him as they walked together and talked together, felt his healing touch, and heard his words of comfort and truth. They began to respect and love him, and place their hope in him before his arrest, but “He was crucified, died, and was buried,” says the Creed. Then something tremendous happened within the earth; so tremendous it still brings a shout of “alleluia” to our lips two thousand years later. Inside the earth itself, God gave life to the crucified one. The stone was rolled back; the Holy One of God arose to rejoin those who had followed him faithfully. Although they had no hope of ever looking into his eyes again or hearing his voice or touching him, they found themselves doing all those things. Now their relationship with Jesus changed. He was still who he had been before the cross, but they made it clear that now he was more, much more. They could touch the holes made by the nails and the spear. They recognized him in the breaking of bread. He came through closed doors. He had become, to use the words we know so well, the risen Christ.
But this, too, had an end. Christians have always regarded the Ascension of our Lord as the ending of Jesus’ presence among us in a special, personal way that will only begin again in the kingdom of God, after this phase of our life has ended. The early Church would need half a century to absorb his departure and speak about his return. The phrase that comes into my mind when I think of the Ascension is “Parting is such sweet sorrow.” In his account of the Ascension, Luke says that the disciples and Mary went home with joy after Jesus ascended into heaven. I know that we must read the lines of scripture before we read between the lines, but I can’t help feeling that their joy was mixed with sadness on the day Jesus departed. I'm not surprised that scripture mentions only joy, for joy and sadness are opposite ends of the same line, and are often intermingled. So they waited, because he told them to. On the Jewish feast of Pentecost, 50 days after Passover, when Jews commemorate the giving of the Law to Moses on Mount Sinai, the waiting stopped. We read in the Acts of the Apostles: “And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit.” (Acts 2: 2)
We live in the area of active volcanoes. But we know that the power of a volcano is nothing compared with the power of God; nothing. The disciples poured out of that room on fire with the Holy Spirit. Like volcanic ash, they began to choke the world, and its powers. They drifted toward Spain and Africa, Rome and Corinth. Those original followers, many who had never left their tiny homeland, covered the known world. They preached love, forgiveness. They preached Jesus Christ. They baptized; they immersed others in the Spirit of God which was poured out in them, the same Spirit which is poured out into us in baptism. “In each of us the Spirit is manifested in a particular way; wise speech, healing, ecstatic utterance, or ability to interpret it,” said Paul. He expanded the list in the 12th chapter of Romans. The gift of the Spirit can be administration, teaching, giving to charity, leading. Paul gave no definitive list. The Spirit blows where it will, he said. We do not know where the Spirit of God will be tomorrow.
According to Paul, the gifts of God are given for the building up of the church, Christ’s visible, tangible presence on earth. They are not for the elite few, these gifts. Each member of the church has his or her particular character, from the youngest to the eldest. There is no Christian who does not have one or more of the gifts of the Spirit, and no individual has them all; not even the bishop. So the question for Paul was not: “What is biggest, best gift for a Christian to have?” but rather, “What gifts has the Spirit given to me?” and “How can I use those gifts?” How can the Church discern the gifts of each person, recognize those gifts, and celebrate them? Some gifts are extraordinary, miraculous, sensational. Some are quiet and ordinary, as modest as a welcoming smile to a newcomer on Sunday morning. At bottom, all the gifts are one gift. There is one Lord, one Spirit, who gives the gift of eternal life. “Almighty God, on this day you opened the way to eternal life to every race and nation by the promised gift of your Holy Spirit,” says the collect for today. That life begins today when we live the love of Christ. Love is our experience of eternal life now.
As their relationship with the risen Christ ended when he ascended, the disciples realized that the love they had come to expect from Jesus would now have to come from among themselves. Chapters 13 -17 of John’s Gospel, the portion of the Gospel we have been reading since I came at the beginning of May, are known as the Farewell Discourses because, in them, Jesus was saying goodbye and handing on his work to those who were to continue his mission. Today’s Gospel (John 14: 8-17) is a key section of that farewell speech. The test of their love for him, he said, is that they continue to practice all he taught them. At the end of the Discourses, at the 2Oth verse of Chapter 17, Jesus prayed not only for the disciples among whom he had lived and ministered, but also for “those who believe in me through their word.” Jesus was praying for us; inviting us to inherit the gifts and become divine love in our own day. He knew people would no longer run into him at the marketplace; they would run into us. They would see and hear us, and he knew that through us, they might eventually come to know him. Over the centuries, by way of water and Word, bread and wine, that first Christian community has become us and we have become them. Like the disciples, we may feel tempted to look back nostalgically to the times when Christ was there for us, and not realize he wanted us to be here for him.
Pentecost redirects our vision from ascending Lord to empowering presence; from sky to earth; from far-away God to Christ in our midst. Pentecost is the mission statement of the Church. Celebrating it with you today is a privilege and a joy. Within us burns the flame of Pentecost. Embowered by the Spirit of the Living God, may we always be Christ to each other. Thank you for being Christ to me today.
Let us pray:
May the Spirit’s fire be in our thoughts
Making them true, good and just
May it protect us from the evil one.
May the Spirit’s fire be in our eyes
May it open our eyes to what is good in life and
protect us from what is not.
May the Spirit’s fire be on our lips, so that we may speak the truth in kindness
That we may serve and encourage others and
Be protected from speaking evil.
May the Spirit’s fire be in our ears
that we may hear with a deep, deep listening
and all may know that we respect them.
May the Spirit’s fire be in our arms and hands
So that we may be of service and build up love.
May the Spirit’s fire be in our whole being; in our legs and feet
Enabling us to walk the earth with care
So that we may walk ways of goodness and truth. Amen.
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