SS. Peter and Paul, Westminster Towers

 

Message: Ss. Peter and Paul 2021

Thank you for welcoming me and my wife Mary Pat today. We have driven by your home so many times in the last 7 years that I couldn't begin to count them. But I've never been inside.

The feast day today is very ancient. Saints Peter and Paul.

The feast is particularly important for the church in Rome in as much as both of these pillars of the church were martyred in Rome -- at about the same time.

I can remember a time when what I knew about the two of them was not very much. It was approximately this:

• Peter had tried to walk on water, following his teacher, Jesus. He didn't have sufficient faith and required saving by Jesus. I used to dream that I would follow Peter. I wanted to have sufficient faith to walk on water. Sometimes I thought I was almost there.
• Paul had been zapped and blinded while he was on the road to Damascus. That's an account that Luke told about Paul, and, of course, Paul wrote a considerable amount of the New Testament in the form of letters.

When I first began to get serious about trying to be a Christian, one of the things that I tried to do was read -- and understand! -- the Bible. I made a common mistake for beginners. I started at the beginning and plowed myself through the whole thing. One book after another.

It was exceedingly perplexing and left me bewildered. But I persisted. I attended a course for interested lay people and was first exposed to Paul's writing. I quickly found out that there was a whole lot more than meets the eye at first glance.

I'm still learning -- almost 50 years later.

Along the way I've come to realize how these two ancient founders of the Christian church and faith are two sides of the same coin.

They are so different in some striking ways, they're almost like Republicans and Democrats in our country today. The way I think of them it's a little bit like Peter represents Catholics and Paul represents Protestants.

But that's not what interests me about them is, as the old saying goes: "it takes two to tango." And sometimes one of them tangos like you've never seen before. And sometimes they tango like I would tango. You don't want to see that.

Each of them, Peter and Paul, is flawed. It's not just that Peter sank on the water. At the end of Jesus' life Peter denied even knowing him. He was a traitor. And yet one of the central pillars of the church.

Paul was quite explicit about how he had a character flaw that he prayed over and over again to be rid of -- but it never left him. He is the most eloquent and powerful defender of the proposition that all life is Grace!

What ends up being wonderful and important about these two saints, celebrated on the 29th of June, is that the church is built on the foundation of people who are a lot like you and me. They are flawed. They are courageous. They sincerely want to follow Jesus. They often are more aware of the ways they fall short. God, however, has shown awesome favor on these two.

God has shown us awesome favor. We wouldn't be here if it were not so.

Thanks be to God.

 

Proper 8b 2021

June 27, 2021
St. Paul's, Monroe [^1](http://lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Pentecost/BProp8_RCL.html)

Opening

I had occasion this past week to think of my father. Or rather to think about my relationship with my father. My earliest memories of him were that he was god-like. I was named after him. I accepted that I would be a physician just like him and his father before him.

And then it changed. Some of you may know the kind of thing I'm referring to. This is not the place to unpack all of that -- except for one thing. At a certain point in high school I knew that I was not going to be a physician.

From the beginning, the rationale I gave was that I didn't like biology in my sophomore year. I think I got an adequate grade, but it just didn't seem right. Only in more recent times have I realized that there was no doubt a lot more to it than that.

But I had made the decision that I would not be a physician. At some point after ordination I came to the realization that I had decided not to be that kind of healer but with God's help I had found my way to being a different kind of healer.

Today's scripture

In today’s gospel reading we hear Jesus engaged in the practice of healing. The gospel itself seems to tell us to look at healing, examine some of the dimensions, roll it around in our mind, ask questions.

The scene is poignant and vivid for me. Jesus is approached by an upstanding and important person in the community. He pleads with Jesus to drop what he's doing and come to heal his young daughter. I have daughters and they were young once. I can feel the anxiety and apprehension of that father. The need is very great. When my oldest child contracted a cold or something at about 6 months and he didn't wake up for his normal every 3 hours nursing, I was so anxious that I called my mother, an RN, who lived an hour and a half away. When we described the situation, she laughed, and told us to relax and get some extra sleep that we hadn't had in 6 months.

Sandwiched in the middle of that story is another. 30 years ago when this reading was added to the experimental "Common lectionary" it seemed almost shocking. It was a woman intruding on Jesus' space. There was blood. There was a kind of air about it, like, "Is this suitable for children to hear?" We've come a long ways in 30 years.

But there we are. A woman -- so convinced of Jesus' power to heal, that she just wanted to get near him. To touch his cloak. And then we get one of those exchanges with Jesus that I just love. It's so real. I can hear the voice.

Jesus calls out in a crowd, "Who touched me?" And his entourage responded, "What? Are you kidding?" But Jesus knew -- didn't he. And the woman knew. And she was healed.

I think of my father, the physician, one kind of healer. My mother,a nurse, --another kind of healer. And I promise you couldn't find two people more different. I wonder to myself how they could both be healers in their different ways.

Healing

Today I'm thinking about healing. How it takes on different forms and colors, different approaches and styles. Enough that I'm inclined to wonder what is healing, anyway? It's not the first time I've thought about this -- in fact in many ways I've been thinking about it most of my life.

My experiences with

My parents talked about my healing from sickness as far back as I can remember. It was said that I had pneumonia before I was 1 year old. My mother repeated -- so that I would remember it -- that my lungs were weakened because of that illness. Was penicillin the healer in that case? Was it the one who nursed me?

My second son had an inherited condition that required surgery when he was 2 weeks old for a condition called pyloric stenosis. The surgery is simple by today's standards but a century ago babies died from it. I guess it was surgeons who were the healers. Or was it his parents who badgered the pediatrician into testing for pyloric stenosis?

After seminary and while I was at Graduate school at Notre Dame, my family and I attended the Cathedral, which included members of a charismatic community. Among the things that the community was focused on was healing. As I was learning during that time, healing was an important part of communities throughout the charismatic movement. In no small measure that was because of the awareness of the importance of our following Jesus by doing what Jesus did.

There was then sponsored at the Cathedral a weekend of healing renewal. The weekend culminated in a healing service where people were invited to come forward for the laying on of hands for healing.

That particular weekend one of my dear friends was convinced that I was in need of healing. I didn't agree. I didn’t go forward. My friend was later if not angry then at least disappointed that I had not gone forward. What is the healing I needed at the time something to be found outside of myself? Or was it something that needed to occur within me?

As I was trying to sort out some of these issues, I initiated a conversation with my bishop at the time. He was a prominent figure in the Episcopal Charismatic Movement. I told him that I had perceived a number of thoughts and behaviors in the charismatic community that seemed, if not unchristian, at least not reflective of what a faithful follower of Jesus should be and do. He told me to think about hospitals. With a doctor and a nurse for parents I had some awareness of hospitals and I had been present for the birth of two children at that point, both of them in hospitals.

He said to me that hospitals are places filled with sick people, sick people in need of healing. That’s why they came to hospitals. For healing. He said churches are like that. Filled with people in need of healing.

Now a part of what is significant about that for me is the combination of two things. On the one hand I have never forgotten what he said and believe it to be true. At the same time I disagreed with much of what that bishop stood for.

Healing turns out did not need to be connected with whether you agree with someone, whether they are on your side or somebody else’s side, what you think about them.

Learnings

What are some of the things I believe I am learning about healing?

About 15 years ago I injured my shoulder, probably my rotator cuff. I was in pain and then the pain became a stiffness and I was losing mobility. It got bad enough that I went to my doctor. Sometimes I really have to be pushed. My doctor referred me to physical therapy.

I have counseled people for many years about the importance of physical therapy but I had never experienced it myself. I had told others that there was pain and frustration involved in therapy but I never encountered it quite so literally as I did for those months in physical therapy. My therapist repeated over and over again the phrase, no pain no gain. I learned then that one of the things physical therapists do is intentionally cause pain. But it is because they know that the path to healing is often through the pain.

Almost as a byproduct of that time for me was the discovery that this therapist who seemed so thoroughly Hawaiian to me -- and very much not like me -- had actually grown up with his aunt in the town where I grew up in Colorado. Moreover his aunt lived 3 1/2 blocks from where I lived and I had passed his house many times on my bicycle.

Healing it turns out brings with it many things we do not expect and a confirmation of my conviction that God is in the business of surprising us.

I have experienced much healing in my own life through counselors and spiritual directors. What I am referring to when I describe someone as a spiritual Director is something that is called in the Celtic tradition a soul friend.

I first learned about that tradition from a visiting theologian in seminary. His name was Kenneth Leech. ¹ I remember sitting at his feet with about 15 or 20 of us soaking up every word he said. His words seemed mysterious and yet accessible to us. He seemed a little like a wizard or poet. But he also was someone who was willing to fight and sacrifice for social justice.

Spiritual direction requires an abundance of trust, and a commitment to seeking ever greater levels of honesty, first with another human being and then with oneself.

I keep learning over and over again that healing has to do with humility and the willingness to share the journey of life with others. Healing has to do with knowing and being known. Many would call that a description of love. Others have found in it a description of the mission of the church that claims Jesus as his head.

One thing in particular stands out in my own experience of healing. Not only is it the case that it is possible to experience healing from people with whom I disagree and perhaps dislike, I have experienced healing most often from those who I at first resist.

I believe deeply that we need a community made up of people who are not like us, who don’t look like us, who don’t think like us, and even who don’t pray like us.

Closing

In many ways I have concluded over all these years that it is the human condition to seek healing. We crave a relief from pain and from insoluble as well solvable problems. We long for resolution in a world filled with conflict that seems utterly intractable.

We seek and long for healing, but most of the time we avoid the very people that have the capacity to offer healing. Women were considered sources of uncleanness at the time of Jesus, but Jesus embraced them.

Healing requires honesty and we are more inclined to rest on the surface than to risk and trust in going deep or high. Healing can be dangerous even as it promises peace.

Doctors are healers -- at least many are. But even more important are the nurses, both professional and otherwise. Therapists can be healers but so can the neighbor who at first sight grates on us. Healers come in all shapes and sizes, but I am convinced that in most cases our most important healer looks like us because the healer is within us.

The journey of healing is a wonder-filled journey that looks out just beyond the horizon. We can look back with some understanding, but the journey takes us forward into the unknown.

In words that speak to me of healing and grace, Thomas Merton put it this way:

“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.” ― Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude

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1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Leech↩

Proper 7b 2021

Proper7B

June 20, 2021 Church of Our Saviour

Intro

I wasn't drawn to the ordained ministry because I relished standing in front of people and speaking.

In fact, after ordination, when I quickly realized that the whole future trajectory of my life was going to be involved in just such activity, I could readily sympathize with the data that someone told me at the time, that 80-90% of the population would rather die than speak in public.

In the light of that, I have often said through the years that my goal in preaching was to speak in complete sentences. It was intended as a ludicrously low bar overcome.

I do, of course, recognize that the technique of effective public speaking does not depend on complete sentences the way, say, a middle school English teacher might.

I suppose that what I really mean is that rather than complete sentences, my goal is to be cogent. Not to speak nonsense or an unintelligible jumble. That is, in fact, challenge enough. Still a fairly low bar.

In the years since that beginning, I have added a couple of other basic rules.

One of them is to seek to never ever say something that I don't believe. Or in another sense to be as honest as I know how to be.

I have often experienced sermons that I felt were saying what was somehow supposed to be said. I have regularly thought of the advertising slogan of the 90's that went: "Church is too often a place where you are expected to turn off your brain." From the beginning, Jesus famously railed against hypocrites. I have thought if I can just be honest, that's a good start.

In the last 20 years I learned another principle that guides my prayer every time I preach. I learned it from a famous preacher, the late Peter Gomes, chaplain at Harvard.

He came to Honolulu and presented a workshop for the clergy of the diocese. Here was somebody at the time lauded as one of the "great preachers of our generation" and he said to us gathered around the table that he had one prayer that he prayed every time he preached. It was taken from the ancient Hippocratic oath. It was that "he do no harm."

Perhaps because of my advancing years there is another layer. In addition to:

1. Speak in complete sentences
2. Never lie
3. Do no harm

I have tended to add a 4th:

4. If not now, when?

Hillel

Part of the inspiration comes from a rabbi who lived about 100 years before Jesus. His name was Hillel. His influence on Rabbinic Judaism was very large. It's possible to conclude that he even influenced Jesus, as he is probably best known for having taught an inversion of what we call the Golden Rule

Once there was a gentile who came before Shammai, and said to him: "Convert me on the condition that you teach me the whole Torah while I stand on one foot. Shammai pushed him aside with the measuring stick he was holding. The same fellow came before Hillel, and Hillel converted him, saying: That which is despicable to you, do not do to your fellow, this is the whole Torah, and the rest is commentary, go and learn it." - Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 31a

At least in part what Hillel clearly appreciated was the infinite importance of the present for our lives. There is no time like the present. He said, e.g.

“Do not say: ‘When I have leisure I shall study,’ perhaps you will never have leisure.”

The reason I thought of him today was because of the one saying I have most identified with him. It is from a part of the Talmud.

“If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, then what am I? And if not now, when ?”

Two things that I honestly know:

So today, with those guiding principles, I am particularly aware of 2 things that I hear from today's scripture readings. Two things I honestly know.

1. God has a special preference for the underdog.
2. There is no time like the present.

Preference for the underdog

Sports metaphor

Several weeks ago when I first noticed that our reading from Samuel featured the story of David and Goliath I remembered something I hadn't thought about in many years.

When I was a pre-teen, I spent several summers living with my grandmother, my father's mother, in the small Mississippi river town where he had grown up. I remembered seeing something in my grandmother's home that took me by surprise.

There was an advertisement, a flyer, that had accompanied something that my father had purchased from an ad at the back of a comic book or magazine.

Charles Atlas ad comicbook 1949

It featured Charles Atlas and was promoting some kind of weight/strength program that was "guaranteed" to turn you from a scrawny kid on the beach to a dominating handsome, dashing ... well, a "Charles Atlas."

The thing that impressed me at the time when I was 10 or 12 years old, was that my father must have felt the same kind of things that I felt. I felt like the scrawny kid at the beach, wanting to be like all the strong handsome types. And my father, who at that age still seemed like a virtual god to me, once upon a time felt that too? Who would have thought.¹

Numerous surveys have shown that most people root for the underdog.

David and Goliath

Most of us, it turns out are rooting for David in this iconic combat between the underdog and the Philistine, Goliath by name.

Rooting for David, the underdog scrawny kid at the beach, seems to run deep in the human condition.

It seems amazing to me that the narrative has resonated through the ages, right up to the very present day with headlines involving Israel and the Palestinians.

Perhaps a principle embedded for mediating the middle-east conflict -- one of the touchiest and difficult places in the world today. We could simply ask, "Which party is the underdog?" and then we would root for that side.

The difficulty, it seems, is that both Palestine and Israel appear as underdogs, depending on the frame of reference. Looking at the past few years it's apparent one side is the skinny kid getting sand kicked in their face at the beach. From the perspective of 70 years or 1,000 years one sees it differently.

It's even richer when we consider that rooting for the underdog is a trait of God's very self. Underdogs like:

• the 2nd born in many of the Old Testament narratives
• Ruth and Naomi
• Gideon
• Moses compared to his more talented brother Aaron
• the concern for widows and orphans, prisoners, and the sick and needy of every kind that is prominent in ancient Jewish law as well as millenia of Christian practice

Really I could go on and on. But if we're all underdogs when looked at from the right perspective, what are we to do?

And that brings me to the 2nd thing that I honestly know.

Urgency of Now

Holy men and women through the ages have known the truth that the present moment is what matters in life. It is not a measure of irresponsibility but the exact opposite.

Sr. Joan Chittister wrote a book a couple of years ago with the title: The Time is Now: a call to uncommon courage. One reviewer said of it:

Joan Chittister offers a compelling vision for readers to combat complacency and to propel ourselves toward creating a world of justice, freedom, peace, and empowerment. For the weary, the cranky, and the fearful, Sister Joan's energizing message invites us to participate in a vision for a world greater than the one we find ourselves in today.

Paul, writing to the Corinthians as we heard read today, appreciates the intensity of living the faith that we proclaim, precisely in the context of the life we are living today.

See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!

What is God speaking to us here?

David was chosen over all the other more obvious choices. The rightness of his being chosen by God is illustrated by his surprising victory of Goliath.

David receives a covenant from God, in fact, and it is the very model of the covenant that is seen as fulfilled in Jesus, born in the City of David.

But David is not a Charles Atlas kind of hero. He is not a hero riding in on a stallion. He is deeply flawed -- as we learn later in the text.

David is for us the flawed chosen one, charged with doing what needs to be done. So are we. Now is the time.

Jesus is chosen

Jesus is chosen by God. Today we hear of him so calm in the face of storms that he is sleeping. It is his disciples who are anxious and fearful, thinking of what might have been and what might yet become. The storm is all around their awareness. "Teacher don't you care that we are perishing?" they cry out.

Well, no, says Jesus. There is no time like the present to rest in God's glory and wonder. It brings peace and calm. That's really all there is.

But I see your anxiety. And sure I'll calm the wind and still the water. There.

And they ask:

“Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

But as Elijah knew many centuries before, God was not in the wind or the fire or the earthquake. God was in the still, small voice.

Peace! Be still!

Be still and know that I am the Lord.

Jesus is not the chosen one because he is powerful enough to still the waves and wind. He is not chosen of God because he is mighty.

Quite the opposite. He is chosen because he represents the lowly. His disciples do not yet know with the urgency of their lives that Jesus is Lord not because of his miracle works but because he knows the "Peace of God that passes all understanding" even in the midst of storms.

Let us -- today -- lift up and praise:

• the forgotten
• the unlikely
• the unexpected
• the ones left behind
• the ones regarded as "not good enough"
• the ones we have ignored

Today is the only time we have to act. Now is the time. It's sufficient. Today is the acceptable time.

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1. bcm and vox ...↩

Proper 6B 6/13/2021

Proper 6B

June 13, 2021 Church of Our Saviour ¹

Introduction

I start off this week where I left off last week. I wasn't here, I was at Lancaster, but it's a continuation of the same narrative. There's a prophet named Samuel. The people complain and want to be like everybody else. They get their wish to have a king. It doesn't go well. There's another prophet like no other prophet before named Jesus. The people imagine he's a prophet like all the others. He confounds them. And then, of course, there's God. He is still in the story.

And we pick up this week amid the wreckage of getting their wish to have a king like everybody else. Samuel is still at work, though he's kind of worn out from a lifetime of being a prophet. He sets out to choose the 2nd king. God is still guiding his hand. And God does not disappoint. He does not choose what was expected.

It wasn't the oldest. It wasn't the most experienced. It really was the least obvious choice. God keeps doing that.

And Jesus. Remember that as we moved past Pentecost, we begin a cycle of readings from the Gospel that take us through the narrative of Jesus' ministry. We're just beginning that long cycle, lasting until Thanksgiving time, and so we hear, today, from near the opening of Mark's gospel.

Jesus is working his way into being a prophet like no other prophet before. Really truly like the longed for prophet, the Messiah.

But we're beginning to anticipate, aren't we, that though he's long expected, he's not going to be what was expected. Today we hear how he is above all else, a story-teller.

God loves stories

The late writer Elie Wiesel is widely known, though when he was rescued from Auschwitz he was utterly unknown. Wiesel wrote once, "G-d made man because He loves stories."

I got to see and hear Elie Wiesel. Twice. It was one of the great privileges of my life. One occasion was at Notre Dame with the then University President, Ted Hesburgh, a great man in his own right. Wiesel had given a passionate and enthralling talk and ended with reference to the exiled scientist and activist Andrei Sakharov. He turned and gestured to the head of Notre Dame University and said, "Fr. Hesburgh we have to do something. Come." And I had the distinct sensation that there was so much power in the moment that immediately Sakharov would be freed from exile in Siberia. It actually came a little later.

The next time was at a synagogue in Michigan City. I would later become rector of a church in that city and have as a guest at one of my annual seder meals a matron of that synagogue. It was at that talk that I first heard Wiesel relate the story of the group of prisoners at Auschwitz who put God on Trial for having betrayed his covenant with his people.

God continues to be the main character in the narrative. There's just no shaking him.

We have heard today 2 of Jesus' stories:

The Kingdom of God, he says, is like a farmer sowing seed in his field. It grows amazingly. First the tiny sprout, the shoots like we see out there right now. With good weather -- an increasingly problematic "if" -- we'll have mature corn by July 4th. Then the harvest and production brings it all back to the table.

I can picture well enough the corn or wheat. But how is that like the Kingdom of God? In fact, what does he mean by the "Kingdom of God"?

But Jesus doesn't leave it at that. He says it is like a mustard seed. Amazingly it grows, from the tiniest thing to a mighty home for the birds.

What is this, "Kingdom of God"?

We need to get to know this term: "Kingdom of God." It will be repeated over and over again as we listen to the stories week by week. And I have a thought that it's not really something Jesus intends for us to figure out. It's something he wants us to do. He doesn't want us to think about it. He wants us to change. He's not speaking to each of us for our own individual benefit. He's trying to reach each of us so that he can enlist as many as possible in the project of changing the world.

Stories change the world

Stories are deeply personal. They touch us deep inside. When they do it is as if they were told just for us.

Yet stories also create and nourish, sustain and continually re-create communities.² Stories change the world.

Wendell Berry ³ or his work may be familiar to some of you. He is not easy to pigeon-hole into one thing or another. He's a farmer. He's a philosopher and poet. He's also a story-teller. He tells a story about a bucket.⁴:

FOR MANY YEARS MY WALKS HAVE TAKEN ME down an old fencerow in a wooded hollow on what was once my grandfather's farm. A battered galvanized bucket is hanging on a fence post near the head of the hollow, and I never go by it without stopping to look inside. For what is going on in that bucket is the most momentous thing I know, the greatest miracle that I have ever heard of: it is making earth. The old bucket has hung there through many autumns, and the leaves have fallen around it and some have fallen into it. Rain and snow have fallen into it, and the fallen leaves have held the moisture and so have rotted. Nuts have fallen into it, or been carried into it by squirrels; mice and squirrels have eaten the meat of the nuts and left the shells; they and other animals have left their droppings; insects have flown into the bucket and died and decayed; birds have scratched in it and left their droppings or perhaps a feather or two. This slow work of growth and death, gravity and decay, which is the chief work of the world, has by now produced in the bottom of the bucket several inches of black humus. I look into that bucket with fascination because I am a farmer of sorts and an artist of sorts, and I recognize there an artistry and a farming far superior to mine, or to that of any human. ...

However small a landmark the old bucket is, it is not trivial. It is one of the signs by which I know my country and myself. And to me it is irresistibly suggestive in the way it collects leaves and other woodland sheddings as they fall through time. It collects stories too as they fall through time. It is irresistibly metaphorical. It is doing in a passive way what a human community must do actively and thoughtfully. A human community too must collect leaves and stories, and turn them into an account. It must build soil, and build that memory of itself—in lore and story and song—which will be its culture. And these two kinds of accumulation, of local soil and local culture, are intimately related.

...

A human community, then, if it is to last long, must exert a sort of centripetal force, holding local soil and local memory in place. Practically speaking, human society has no work more important than this.

...

It's vital that we never become complacent. It's essential that we never lean on what is familiar or the ways the rest of the world expects. Annie Dillard writes in a vivid way about the power and the impact of these sacred stories.

“The higher Christian churches--where, if anywhere, I belong--come at God with an unwarranted air of professionalism, with authority and pomp, as though they knew what they were doing, as though people in themselves were an appropriate set of creatures to have dealings with God. I often think of the set pieces of liturgy as certain words which people have successfully addressed to God without their getting killed. In the high churches they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a strand of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect that in any minute. This is the beginning of wisdom.”

― Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

God is at work changing the world in unexpected ways and using the stories we tell.

Wiesel told stories, as rabbis for millenia before him had done, that changed lives and changed the world. They were fertilizer, intended to ferment and percolate in order to produce far more than could be imagined.

Wendell Barry tells stories like that and reminds us that that's how stories have worked, stretching back as far as time itself. God's stories are our stories, and they are more important than we can know or imagine.

We must be careful about the stories we repeat. We must bend our expectations in unexpected ways.

Samuel didn't choose the obvious son. He chose David.

Jesus didn't come riding in victorious on a stallion or Sherman tank. He arrived telling stories.

And they weren't fashionable stories that would play well on the late night TV shows or most popular blogs on Facebook. They were about seeds in the hand. Sprouts that broke through the dark soil.

And they were like -- "The Kingdom of God".

We're still asking 2 millenia later, "What does that mean? What is it like?"

The tradition of storytelling is long and far more varied than even the interesting variety we see before us today. It has consistently lifted up the least among us, the out of favor, the unexpected, the unheralded.

Perhaps it is enough to paint the picture this way:

From the Beatitudes of the Gospel of Matthew, The Common English Version, 5:3-10.

God blesses those people who depend only on him. They belong to the kingdom of heaven!

God blesses those people who grieve. They will find comfort!

God blesses those people who are humble. The earth will belong to them!

God blesses those people who want to obey him more than to eat or drink. They will be given what they want!

God blesses those people who are merciful. They will be treated with mercy!

God blesses those people whose hearts are pure. They will see him!

God blesses those people who make peace. They will be called his children!

God blesses those people who are treated badly for doing right.

May God bless you. In the stories you tell that they become God's stories. In the community you build through the stories you tell, may they move you and transform you into God's likeness. May you be blessed among God's story-tellers.

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Notes

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1. cf. http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Pentecost/BProp6_RCL.html↩

2. A good community is a good local economy. It depends upon itself for many of its essential needs and is thus shaped, so to speak, from the inside. --Wendell Berry**↩

3. Wendell Erdman Berry (born August 5, 1934) is an American novelist, poet, essayist, environmental activist, cultural critic, and farmer. cf. "Wendell E. Berry biography". National Endowment for the Humanities. Retrieved April 26, 2015.↩

4. The Work of Local Culture --by Wendell Berry, syndicated from centerforneweconomics.org, Mar 04, 2014 cf. https://www.dailygood.org/story/576/the-work-of-local-culture-wendell-berry/↩

Proper 5 - 2021, Lancaster

 

Proper 5, year B

Christ Church, Lancaster June 6, 2021

Introduce myself

Opening

From practically the beginning of our life here in South Carolina 7 years ago I have met with the local clergy, which included your priest Gordon. It makes it feel like I know you as a faith community, but in fact this really is the first we have met.

So now begins a new chapter in your life together. You deserve to know something about me since I do know something about you.

Raised in west

I was born in Arizona and raised in Colorado. I've spent stretches of time in Wisconsin, Indiana and Hawaii.

I was ordained in 1982. From before I went to seminary I had conceived of my ministry as being a combination of pastoral work with small congregations or neglected groups. I remember telling my bishop at the time that I imagined paying for that sort of ministry by having some other outside employment, most likely teaching. For the most part I have pursued that through the course of 40 years.

I retired from parish ministry in 2013. Mary Pat and I have 7 children who are scattered across the U.S. from coast to coast. We have a grandchild who expects to graduate from college next year. And we have a grandchild who just started kindergarten this year. I have been enormously blessed in my life.

Hawaii

One of the greatest privileges was being asked to do ministry in Hawaii. I had never imagined such a thing, and at best had a very shallow stereotyped image of what Hawaii was and is. Unless you have lived there my guess is that that’s about your impression also.

About two months after I arrived in Hawaii I looked out the window one day to see the ocean to one side and mountains to the other, and deep inside I had a sense that I had found my home. That sense was based not only on the awesome beauty of the place but even more especially on the people. It sounds a little like the opening chapter of the acts of the apostles when I say that the people of Hawaii include: native Hawaiians, Japanese, Caucasians, Chinese, Filipinos, Pacific islanders and more. None of those groups is a majority.

At first sight it might seem strange that Hawai'i felt so much like home to me, since many of the values were unlike any that I had grown up with.

The history of Hawaiians goes back many centuries before there were any Caucasians to "discover" them. In the larger history of Hawai'i, Christianity is quite recent. The Anglican Church was introduced by the King and Queen in the late 1800's, in part to try to counter the acquisitiveness of the U.S.

Though significant effort was made to suppress Hawaiian values, there has been a growing effort in the last 50 years or so to bring new life to them. For example, the Episcopal bishop wrote a few years ago that: "ministry here must seek to care for others, creation and all that God has given us (mālama), to live righteously and in respect one for another (pono), and to find the holy (mana)that comes from God in all creation and all of God’s children."

That might give you a sense of what I found amongst the people of Hawaii. What at first seemed strange, came to be home in a deeper sense. For various reasons, in 2014 Mary Pat and I made the decision to move to the mainland. She was a professor of Mathematics at Winthrop University until she retired in 2019. I have been an adjunct in the Philosophy / Religion department.

The terms: mana, malama, pono may have a strange ring to you. Something unfamiliar. Something unlike home to you. But for me there is a recognition that is deeper than the surface foreign-ness. They call me to a home deeper than any home I've known. ¹

Ordinary time

In the church, we begin a cycle today that lasts until Thanksgiving and the next advent season.² In the Catholic church it is called "ordinary time." It is also referred to as the year of Mark because of its focus on the Gospel of Mark, although that hasn’t been as apparent for several months now, with extensive readings from the gospel of John.

We will also be listening to a cycle of readings in the books of Samuel and Kings. Some of these passages will be familiar to us. Sometimes they may be more familiar because of how they have been portrayed in films and on TV more than from reading the Bible. In the course of my ministry I have found these readings especially accessible and evocative.

Samuel:

This opening reading from 1st Samuel is actually an exceedingly important passage for understanding the whole Old Testament and I don't think it's a stretch to say that the impact of it stretches all the way up to the present day, both in the state of Israel as well as in the U.S.

The religious elders have come to Samuel, a prophet and an intermediary between the people and God. They’ve come with a message and it is, we want to be just like all the other nations of the world and have a king to lead us. Samuel faithfully relates the cry of the people to God himself, who in turn responds by saying all right already you don’t want to be the people that I want you to be I’ll let you have a king. It turns out to be Saul, and then there is -- the rest of the story.

It's not much of a stretch, I think, to draw a line, crooked as it might be, from the people's demand of Saul to be "like all other nations", and the event in our gospel passage from Mark. A common thread is something, "We are comfortable with what is familiar. We don't like the foreign and unfamiliar. Let us be like all the other nations."

It's a 1,000 years and some very crooked lines, but here again we have the authorities of the people coming before Jesus with demands.

What a colorful and vivid set of images it is:

• scribes from Jerusalem,
• a home-type scene with Jesus' family,
• he is accused of having some strange thing named Beelzebul,
• a proverb about a house being divided against itself,
• looting
• something Jesus calls "blaspheming the holy spirit"
• Jesus' mother and brothers
• Jesus pointing to the crowds and saying "these are my mothers and brothers"

The authorities are accustomed to the familiar, and they look at Jesus' work and find it unfamiliar. They conclude it's diabolical -- "Beelzebul".

But Jesus is radically focused on what God is doing in their midst. He knows that God is doing a new thing and that the people of his home by and large can't recognize it.

Jesus' family is familiar with him and they're sure they know what's going on. But as he will do over and over in his ministry, he turns the tables on them.

It is as if he says, "You think you know what you know, but what is unfolding before you is unlike what is familiar to you. You must be prepared to enter into a new land, a new time, a new way of being. There is a new home awaiting you."

What is our true home?

From Samuel's time to Jesus' time and up to the present, we look for the familiar, we are comfortable with what we can see before us.

When I moved to Hawaii I experienced something like what I imagine Jesus' family felt, what the religious scribes felt. They spoke English in Hawaii, they drove cars on highways the way I was familiar with. There were so many things that suggested that it was like what I was familiar with.

But there was something different. There was a different kind of home from any I had known before. The values that permeated this new land were at the same time strange and exotic and somehow resonated deep within me. Mana. Malama. Pono. Those were unfamiliar words yet resonated within me. The idea of the sacred as all around us -- that I understood. Having respect for one another, even with our many differences -- that I understood. Care for all of God's creation -- I knew that.

Paul to Corinthians

Paul makes a distinction in today's passage from his letter to the Corinthians between our familiar "earthly tent" and the "eternal building" which is our true home.

He contrasts the outer nature of our lives -- the part that we can see and feel, the part that is familiar -- he contrasts that with our "inner nature." It is unfamiliar. It's not what we expected.

But that's our true home.

The word from God that I hear today calls us to recognize and embrace our true home.

I'm sure it was clear to you right away that I am not a boy raised in the Carolinas. We recognize right away the things that stand out. The unfamiliar.

Our impulse again and again is to want to have things "like everyone else has." That's what the elders said to Samuel. That's what they said to Jesus.

With a quiet authority Jesus responds: “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”

I urge you, then, my brothers and sisters (mothers?) (fathers?) to seek to do the will of God.

I am tempted to try to sing hymn #711 in the hymnal. Maybe I'll do it when I know you better.

Seek ye first the Kingdom of God And His righteousness And all these things shall be added unto you Allelu Alleluia

Ask and it shall be given unto you Seek and ye shall find Knock and it shall be opened unto you Allelu Alleluia

---

1. He lanakila ma ke keʻa. Holo i . Victory through the cross. The first step (journey?). First People of these islands – Ka lā hiki ola translates to “the dawning of a new day.”↩︎

2. http://www.lectionarypage.net↩︎