Boundaries or Horizons

For Zion's sake I will not keep silent,            
and for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest,            
until her vindication shines out like the dawn,            
and her salvation like a burning torch.     Is 62:1           

The way we are formed as Christians in America, we tend to emphasize the personal aspects of the Christ event. The meaning of Jesus “saving us” by his suffering and death on the cross is enhanced by the idea that Jesus did not suffer without love.

    Because Jesus suffered in love, then it is all the more important to realize that Jesus was not A savior or even THE savior. In our American understanding for the “Reason for the Season,”
we want to understand Jesus as being MY savior -- that he died for MY sins. Jesus is thought of in many evangelical circles as a “personal” Lord and Savior.

    After all, the logic goes, if sin is personal, then grace is personal. And after all, if there’s something wrong or not working in that dynamic, it has to be MY fault, because the love of Jesus is perfect.

In this same context, the favorite hymn of many of us is, “Amazing Grace.” While written by an Englishman, John Newton, in the mid-eighteenth century, it carries that sentiment of being personally saved, “a wretch, like me.”

Most of us have come to expect a lone piper playing, Amazing Grace, at the commendation of a fallen police or fire officer, yet Amazing Grace was probably never played on bagpipes before the Black Watch Regimental Pipes first recorded it in 1976.

Dare I say, FIFTY Years ago, when the liturgy in the Roman Church was incorporating what were hitherto thought of as Protestant hymns into the liturgy, the lyrics of some hymns were changed in the pew missalettes because of differing sensitivities and theologies, notions of political correctness, and in some cases perhaps, to avoid copyright violations.  Amazing Grace, while in the public domain, in that context, had a brief change in its second line from “that saved a wretch like me” to “that came and set US free.” 

But Amazing Grace had become one of America’s own hymns, and as such, was not to be tampered with any more than the pledge of Allegiance. The original words were quickly restored, but unfortunately, the notion it tried to convey was roundly missed -- a notion that tries to surface in today’s Hebrew scripture. God is not edified merely by saving individuals from the jaws of sin and death. God is edified when those individuals, once saved, see themselves as complete by becoming a community of faith -- as the body of Christ:

For Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest,

until her vindication shines out like the dawn,

  and her salvation like a burning torch.     Is 62:1b

The Gospel of John today tries to illustrate this another way:

To all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become (my emphasis) children of God....                Jn 1:12

For me, it seems, the miracle of this season is not merely the power of one life, the Babe in the manger, destined to be the Savior of the world, though that is by no means a small matter.

The miracle is the call that comes in Communion.

---

We tend to be intimidated by the semantics of the first chapter of the Gospel of John,

(e.g. What is the meaning of Logos, [the Word.]?  

Who or What is “the Light” that Darkness cannot overcome?

What is the World that knows him not? What am I in relation to that World?)

With our curiosity, pre-occupation, or for some, our obsession with these questions and others like these, we miss our vocational call to discern the power we have been given to become children of God.

Without true Eucharist (or Thanksgiving), without taking the full measure offered us as we share the blessing cup, we are just showing up at some arbitrary finish line in a race of our own limited imagination and counting heads.

(“I made it. You made it. She made it. He made it.”)  Who cares? For most of us here today, THAT’S NOT ENOUGH!! 

In Romans, Chapter 5, we read

6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. 8 But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.    Rom 5:6-8

We share a great prize, but our children will never have that passed on to them, if they can’t understand why we struggle, (or whether we even want to struggle) with Life’s persistent questions) while other well-intentioned people seem quite satisfied with the mission of their own choosing -- not the Mission of God’s calling.

And finally from verse 14 in today’s Psalm 147:

He has strengthened the bars of your gates; *

    he has blessed your children within you. 

How are our children, either those of our upbringing or those we hold in stewardship in these parish walls being blessed by our strength and example?

Let our hearts be lifted up by these words from Ken Sehested for this New Year past

Benedicere

By Ken Sehested (adapted)

May your home always be too small

to hold all your friends.

May your heart remain ever supple,

Fearless in the face of threat,

Jubilant in the grip of grace.

May your hands remain open,

Caressing, never clinched,

Save to pound the doors

Of all who barter justice

To the highest bidder.

May your heroes be earthy

Dusty-shoed and rumpled,

Hallowed but unhaloed,

Guiding you through seasons of tremor and travail,

Apprenticed to the godly art of giggling

Amid haggard news

And portentous circumstance.

May your hankering

Be in rhythm with heaven’s

Whose covenant vows

A dusty intersection with your own:

When creation’s hope and history rhyme.

May Hosannas lilt from your lungs:

Creation is not done

Creation is not yet done.

All flesh,

I am told,

will behold

Will surely behold…

http://bit.ly/WRZ2mJ

 

Benedicere (“to bless, to praise”) is based on a prayer by Ken Sehested, author of “In the Land of the Living: Prayers Personal and Public.”

Concept: David Felten & Scott Greissel

Edit: Scott Greissel

Cameras: Gregg Brekke, Scott Greissel, Jeff Procter-Murphy & Edwin Serrano

Copyright (c) 2012 livingthequestions.com

Christ in the Contradictions (Proper 6B: 06/17/2012)

 One of the images used today by Jesus to describe the kingdom is the growth of a plant -- a progression from the seed to the plant, and ultimately to the grain, fruit, or vegetable the plant supports. 

  

Mk 4:26 ‘The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, 27and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. 28The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. 29 But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.’ 

But in this imaging, it's hard to distinguish whether the image of the kingdom is captured in one or ALL of the images: the Sower/Harvester, the plant, and the sleeping and the rising.  

Is the Sower/Harvester Jesus? God Creator/Father? Are you and I the Sower/Harvester, in that we find ourselves as the hired hands called at different times to a harvest, 

MT 9:37 Then he said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; 38 therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.’  

We are told that whoever the harvester is, he doesn't know how it is that seed progresses from seed, to plant, and to yield. 

Is the grain faithful souls ready for God?  

  

I think that's hard to say  from what the parable tells us. One thing about grain is that beside the unknown marvel that brings about the head or the kernel is the relatively certain technology that requires  almost all grains to be transformed somehow before it is useful. (Even corn has to be at least boiled, steamed, or grilled before it can be consumed by humans.) 

And if you think about it, grain growth is terribly inefficient. Most of the plant that sustains growth is usually destroyed. 

Think about the Church. If the Church is part of the plant, part of the kingdom, what part is it? 

If the Church is the dwelling place of faithful souls, most would say the Church is the grain. 

Then what does that imply? What is the destiny of faithful souls in the kingdom if they are grain? Are they destined to be beaten, crushed, pulverized, made into a dough or a whiskey mash so that something useful can come of them?  

(You know, I'm just sayin'.) 

Jn 12:24 Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. 25 Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.  

Does Paul in Second Corinthians speak only for the members of the church or for the church itself, when he says today, 

II Cor 5:6 So we are always confident; even though we know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord— 7 for we walk by faith, not by sight. 

Is the Church simply the grain and fruit that is gathered and both practically and mystically transformed? 

That is an important part of our image as a Eucharistic people. The bread is a symbol of grain gathered and made into something new as bread, as Christ brings us together to become One with Him as a new, nurturing, and life-giving Creation.  So too the wine, which in the Roman Missal, 3rd edition, it says,

   

Blessed are You, Lord God of all creation, for through your goodness we have received the wine we offer you: fruit of the vine and work of human hands, it will become our spiritual drink. 

Grain and fruit that is gathered and transformed. Wonderful image! 

But might it just be that at least as far as this pericope or vignette from today's Gospel from Mark is concerned, the Church may not be the "product" of the harvest but its sustenance.  The Church, rather, might be the stalk and the "head"  protecting the grain that gets the full brunt of the harvester's sickle and is left on the threshing floor. As with our own bodies, I believe we become comfortable with the creaturely form that is the Church, and that's when, sometimes, the tension becomes the greatest for the Church. 

We refer to the Church in our postcommunion prayer, Rite I, as 

very members incorporate in the mystical body of thy Son, the blessed company of all faithful people; and are also heirs, through hope, of thy everlasting kingdom. 

That image, then creates a paradox, that is very difficult for priests and other ministers to deal with. As ministers, we have a certain degree of responsibility to be good stewards of the people and assets with which we have been entrusted. Yet we find ourselves always needing to choose between the stewardship of the bricks and mortar that comprise our parishes, with the nagging admonition of Wm Temple, a mid-twentieth century Abp of Canterbury, who said 

The Church is the only society that exists for the benefit of those who are not its members. 

 

But our tendency is to want to look good, so that by looking good, we may appear good and valuable to those around us, thus perpetuating our Church community as "members incorporate in the mystical body of (Jesus)"  by attracting new members. Evangelization is not about looking good. Evangelization is about proclaiming the good news to everyone, even, and perhaps especially when because of that good news we may not look good  to the world around us, which doesn't deal well with complicated stuff. 

The good news to be proclaimed is that God glories in contradictions. The good news to be proclaimed is that good things sometimes happen in dangerous  and courageous situations. 

It was bad enough that Samuel went out in the face of Saul to find a new king for the people of Israel. Samuel also had to contend with the prejudices of Jesse, who was convinced that God would work through the strongest, the smartest, and the bravest of his sons, and not through his youngest and most naïve. 

The good news for us is  that God wills to work in the face of our doubts and in spite of our "sure-knowledge." 

While study and discernment are vital to the life of the Church, study and discernment must not stand in the way of God's contradictions. 

Like the sower, who does not know precisely how seed sprouts and grows as it does,  there are ways and means God chooses to glorify himself and also build us up that defy explanation or logic. Only then will be able to fully discern the challenge of our time and stewardship -- that we can see the perils all around us, close our eyes, and walk by faith.    

How is It? Pentecost Yr B

How is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs–in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?”

Among the different things that may or may not be happening in this moment, there are likely both supernatural occurrences as well as explainable phenomena about how people of good will dispose themselves to truth. Part of, “How is it,” is explained for us in the context of Peter’s proclamation.

Peter is proclaiming to the Diaspora, the Parthians, Medes, etc. who might come to Jerusalem for the Festival of Shavuot, known also as Pentecost to Greek Jews, as it was fifty days after Passover. Shavout celebrated God giving the Torah to the Israelites and the offering of first fruits at the Temple. (As it happens, this year Shavuot will run from sunset tomorrow May 26 - nightfall May 28.)

During this time, dairy products are traditionally consumed and, oddly, the Book of Ruth is studied. (Odd, because Ruth is not a book in the core of the Torah, “the Law,” but a story of relationship and outreach of the gentile, Ruth and her Mother-in-Law, Naomi.)

The Diaspora, even then were both honored and scorned. They were honored as important parts of all the towns where they were throughout the Mediterranean, the African interior, and the Arabian Peninsula. By law or design, they frequently lived within their own ghettos, but their synagogues were open focal points of learning, art, science, and ethical reflection.

Many Gentiles who came to listen, and in some cases participate in the rabbinic discussions were considered “gated” proselytes whether in Judea, Galilee, or in their own cities. They weren’t expected to become observant Jewish converts. These Gentiles only had to observe the seven minimum tenets of the Noahide Law, the ancient rule from the time of Noah:

·         do not worship idols,

·         do not blaspheme God's name,

·         do not murder,

·         do not commit immoral sexual acts,

·         do not steal,

·         do not tear the limb from a living animal, and

·         do not fail to establish courts of justice.

So these Jews visiting Jerusalem and foreigners who might be in Jerusalem for study or trade would have a general understanding of some of the languages of the region around Jerusalem. You’ve probably heard it said that Jesus and the Apostles, being from Galilee, would usually speak a language known as Aramaic, with Hebrew as the language of the Torah and worship.

And it’s not the Diaspora and the Proselytes who doubted what’s going on.  The sneering cynics whom Peter is addressing were the Judeans and those living in Jerusalem, who were jealous or generally bitter toward such outsiders – Galileans, the Diaspora, “Gated Proselytes.”

Now return to the first question:  “How is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language?”

We can presume some supernatural dimension, that Peter was speaking in some sort of Hebrew or Galilean Aramaic, and the Diaspora and foreign proselytes were hearing in their home languages.  But perhaps Peter was speaking in a language that the Diaspora could understand if they were open to hear it, again by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. The Diaspora and proselytes would otherwise hear only the din of the big city.

An example today would be rock music and rap music. I can’t hear the words – I don’t hear the words – I won’t hear the words of such songs, partly because I am convinced those lyrics have no meaning for me.

The Diaspora knew the Jewish scripture not because it justified their existence, but because they saw the universality of their scripture and tradition partly by the way the gentiles around them were attracted to it.

As Episcopalians in contemporary Chelan and Douglas County, and in contemporary America for that matter, we are sometimes embarrassed by the way many Christians appear to scorn our “cafeteria Christianity.” What is not so clear to us is the fact that there are those within our community and country who admire the courage of our Church, as we stand shoulder to arm with people scorned in our community, our society, and our country – aliens, the poor, addicts, visionaries, advocates for justice, and others deemed “Pariah” and “Leeches” to our way of living.

Peter proclaims a day when the Spirit will be poured out upon the most despicable – Slaves, both Men and Women.

On the Great and Glorious Day of the Lord, somehow, Everyone who calls on the Name of the Lord shall be saved.

In Romans, Paul speaks of a Spirit present, even in our own day, which can help us in our own weakness.  And what is the great weakness of our own day?  Is it promiscuity?  Greed?  Addiction? Genocidal and Internecine hate and War?  Maybe.

But I think the great weaknesses of our own day is that our “sons and … daughters (do not) prophesy, (our) your young … have been made so cynical that they dare not see visions, because our old (no longer value) dream[ing] dreams.”

Dreams are seen in our time as things that will let you down. And it is in THAT void all the rest rushes in.

Why isn’t $10 billion enough for the likes of Bernie Madoff that he must grasp $20, $30, $50 billion? Madoff and the rest of the 1% believe more in lies than dreams.  The 1% of our nation and world have to stockpile behind their false security of gated communities and possessions to live forever. Dreamers, on the other hand, can’t get rid of it fast enough, because a lot is never enough. The Dreamer doesn’t have to dream alone..

The true Dreamer CAN’T dream alone.

He or she must entrust their dreams to others with the strength, hope, and stamina to carry them forward. 

My dream can’t be a $200,000 RV.  My dream has to be the journey.

My hope cannot be a world without snow. My hope has to be the generosity of strangers, who will help push my car out of the rut.

My security cannot be my 70 rental properties in Wenatchee, East Wenatchee, and Monitor. My security must be my sense of safety in neighborhoods where residents have a vested interest – where sons and daughters are not left to fend for themselves in the midst of dangers they cannot figure out for themselves – the dangers of idle time, cars, drugs, sex, booze, and guns.

In today’s gospel, Jesus says

But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your hearts. Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.

Simply put, the Spirit cannot and will not be let in where it is perceived as neither wanted nor needed.

Many love the concept of Self-Reliance but few have studied it like Ralph Waldo Emerson, who said,

Your isolation must not be mechanical, but spiritual, that is, must be elevation. At times the whole world seems to be in conspiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles. Friend, client, child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all knock at once at thy closet door and say,—'Come out unto us.' But keep thy state; come not into their confusion. The power men possess to annoy me I give them by a weak curiosity. No man can come near me but through my act. "What we love that we have, but by desire we bereave ourselves of the love."

Emerson says it little better than the Beloved Disciple.

We possess only that which we are able to love. It doesn’t work the other way around. We are tempted to believe that possessions create an environment within which we are then able to love.

Jesus says,  “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear it now.”

In this time of reflection on the mission of the Church, I ask you to meditate this week on what you cannot bear the Lord to say to you in these days. Not WHETHER, but WHAT.  If you don’t come up with anything – Try HARDER. Nothing in the Gospel is just for the other guy.

Listen for that Spirit in your heart, as it sighs too deep for words.  Those sighs will carry with it

·                     patience in the midst of the mob,

·                     strength in weakness, and

·                     hope in our unknowing.

For All the Saints / Easter B7

Chapter 17 of the Gospel of John sets the intimacy and immanence Jesus has with the Father as the relationship he wills for his followers to the Father. Jesus sets this desire further as not only a good wish, but almost as a necessity.

The followers of Jesus have to become rooted somewhere or to someone else, because they are no longer of this World.

I think you feel this.  You try to find affinity through your civil and civic connections and associations – through political parties, benevolent associations, garden clubs, and the like.

Even your choice of Church membership, while fulfilling on some level, might carry with it a degree of baggage that is foreign to you.  But you put up with it for what you consider a greater good.  Some cynics, though I wouldn’t know any of them personally, would agree that the Church is other-worldly, but the other world is, “La-La Land.”

In both the Nicene and the Apostles’ Creeds we profess our belief in the four marks of the Church as One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic.  All these characteristics can be seen and easily understood in the person of Christ himself.

Jesus is One person with two natures: human and divine. 

Jesus is One in the Godhead with the Father and the Holy Spirit.

Jesus is of course holy – fully integrated not only to the Godhead but to the purposes of God’s creation reflecting God’s Glory and of God’s creation rendering that Glory and praise to God.

Jesus is universal in that his call, purpose, and mission is to reunite all humanity to the mind and will of the Creator. 

Some might even understand that sense of universality to extend to all creation itself. (The reuniting of all creation introduces a lot of controversy, yet also expands on the very idea of redemption itself – a subject too complex to consider here today.)

To return to the metaphor of the Church as the mystical Body of Christ, Jesus is Apostolic in the sense that his mission, strictly speaking, is not his own. The mission for which Jesus is sent is the mission of the Father, who sent him. In John 6:46, the Evangelist further establishes Jesus’ authority as One sent not merely by discerning the Father, but by having seen him.

Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father.

In the time between the Ascension and Pentecost, the birthday of the Church, it is fitting to remember that to which we are called.

The Church is called to be One. Just as the natures of Jesus co-existed without annihilating neither his humanity nor his divinity, there are natures of the members and Churches comprising the Body of Christ which cannot exist at the expense of others.

1 Corinthians 12:16-18 tells us

And if the ear were to say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body’, that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose.

As members of the Body of Christ, we are called to be Holy – not sanctimonious. It is not enough to be holy to the degree we fulfill our expectations of what it means to be holy, but to seek the uncomfortability of Jesus’ union with His Cross, tackling the comfort zones set up by our various Church traditions and our own petty limitations and boundaries. It has always been useful to me to interchange the words “holy” and “whole.”

Am I fully One with Christ, or is there part of the puzzle that is me that I want to hold back? Is there something about the Church I’m ready to let slide as a necessary evil for the Church’s greater good or for its comfort? For Episcopalians particularly, we sometimes confuse our valuing of reason with rationalizing.

But concluding with the principle of unity within and among the Christian Church, the sin that is disunity is usually fostered by the sacred cows in our own spiritual corrals. (One of my favorite book titles is Robert Kriegel’s and David Brandt’s book, Sacred Cows Make the Best Burgers: Developing Change-Driving People and Organizations,  Warner Books, Inc, 1997. Dewey: 658.4’063.  ISBN-13: 978-0446672603. Kriegel is also author of, If it Ain't Broke...Break It!: And Other Unconventional Wisdom for a Changing Business World  ISBN-13: 978-0446393591)

Set this against our call to also be Catholic or Universal, the tension particularly for Episcopalians becomes even greater.

We say to one another, “Well, we’re almost Catholic anyhow, aren’t we?” And THERE’S the rub! It seems that the largest Church in the Christian world survives and thrives by requiring its members to ascribe to what appears to be certain nonnegotiable, universal truths.  What I think is lost to those who are not Catholic and increasingly to Catholics in its highest echelons is the vitality derived from a commitment to universal truths without being controlled by universal definitions. The ordinary teaching magisterium of the Catholic Church used to be far more collegial – far more committed to consensus than conformity.

“Conformity” is mentioned only a few times in the New Testament, twice in Romans

Romans 8:29-30  ²⁹For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family. ³⁰And those whom he predestined, he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified.

If you notice, we don’t do the conforming.  We are conformed by God to the Image of His Son.

 Again in (Rm 12:2) 

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what the will of God— what is is good and acceptable and perfect.

There is a difference between assent and conformance.  Assent can only truly and freely happen with the renewing of our minds.

More than a few of you heard me say that I became an Episcopalian, so I could remain Catholic – inclusive, inquiring, and unfortunately – very uncomfortable. 

Any Anglican that isn’t at least a little uncomfortable being one sent by Christ, an Apostle, is missing something that I think is essential to Anglicanism and certainly to true Christianity. Particularly in the context of the Holy Communion or Holy Eucharist, are we allowing ourselves to see the One sending us under the forms of bread and wine in ever newer and deeper ways? Or is Eucharist the thing we do once a month to stay on the Episcopalian Radar?

Similarly in the context of today’s gospel passage, we see and hear Jesus in a somewhat formal address to the Father, ruminating over his mission and pondering the time after his departure. Being Apostolic is recognizing our responsibility not only to pass on the faith authentically and faithfully as we have received it, but also to pass it on in the light of our specific and unique union with God.

Apostolic Faith is dynamic, not static.  

Jesus, the same yesterday, today, and forever.  This Jesus of the Apostles has been handed on to us from generation to generation through the experiences, trials, and glories of all those who have proceeded before us.

My cherishing of the Faith doesn’t come merely from the Apostles of yore, but from the unique (if not the quirky) perspectives of my Grandparents and parents, from my crazy neighbors, and from those people I come to know little-by-little, the saints of yesterday and today, so that, please God, I too might pass this faith on, forgiven for my liberties, yet remembered for the faithfulness of my own sincere heart – and yours.  Amen.