Proper 17b 2021

Proper 17b

August 29, 2021 St. Paul's, Monroe lectionary

(For a different take on a similar subject, this oped was published in the NY Times on the same day I delivered this sermon.

Opening

When my mother died my brother and I pretty well knew what of her things each of us siblings expected to "inherit". There wasn't anything of particular value that I expected or wanted. A few sentimental things.

Among them were several books that ended up on my bookshelves. One was the 1st ed. Jerusalem Bible I had given my mother back in ca. 1970. The other was a collection of small books of poetry that I knew to be among my step-father's favorite writings. Excerpts were read at his wedding to my mother and also at his funeral almost 40 years later.

The poetry was by James Kavanaugh. It's a name that might mean something to some of you, but I mention it because he was a poet, but also an ex-priest who wrote about the church and by extension theology.

Today we have heard from the Song of Songs (or "Solomon") in the only passage that appears in the Sunday lectionary. It is so lyrical. So poetic. It is in fact an extended love poem.

What do we make of this love poetry showing up in the Word of God?

Instead of a solemn, pious "word of God" we have:

The voice of my beloved! Look, he comes,

leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills.

Instead of marching orders, fit for the God of the angel armies, we hear of seduction:

My beloved speaks and says to me:

"Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away;

for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone.

Indeed, what are we to make of it? The rabbis of the early centuries of the common era fought over whether this was really the "Word of the Lord." The Church fathers of the same time period didn't know what to do with it.

I think that the passionate argument over the inclusion of the Song of Solomon in the Bible only calmed down when a consensus emerged that it needed to be interpreted allegorically.

The voices, the lover and beloved in the poem, could be understood to be a stand-in for God and God's people, or for Christ and the Church, or for the divine "up there" and the "soul" in here.

To interpret it allegorically made it safe. But here's the thing. From my perspective, my 70 year journey with God has felt more like a love affair than a tour with the military. Both of those metaphors have been employed throughout the centuries. But for me the metaphor that has been most effective and descriptive has been "love affair".

Scripture should be read metaphorically

The Hound of Heaven by Francis Thompson has seemed an evocative description of how God finds me even when I am hiding from God.

I fled Him down the nights and down the days
I fled Him down the arches of the years
I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind, and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter...

We heard in last week's reading the metaphor of the "armor of God", and I do understand that. But for myself, God has seemed more a lover than a warrior.

Scripture is appropriately read, in my view, more in the manner of reading poetry than of a manual for fighting the enemy.

Both poetry and making war require discipline and practice. And it might be argued that "Grace" is required for both. Both sometimes employ deception. But in making war there are winners and losers. In poetry there are those who get it and those who don't.

I have not experienced God as one who picks winners and losers. I have come to believe that God weeps over those who don't "get it."

Our second reading today is a surprising and evocative illustration of that. There are those down through the centuries who have argued that the Letter of James was not worthy of being included in the Bible. Luther famously argued that it should be discarded as a "straw" gospel.

James 1: illustrating the need for figurative reading

The Letter of James provides an example of how one reads the Bible when looking for winners and losers rather than looking deeper for what God intends.

The opening of the letter, as we hear today, is in fact evocative like poetry.

Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.

It speaks of generosity of Spirit. That is a description of God's activity if ever there was one.

God is described as the "Father of lights". Unchanging. Source of light and life. That is an evocation of God to be sure.

And there are those beloved and lover figures again: "You must understand this, my beloved:"

And the requirement of behavior that so often seems like the opposite of what religious folk do:

Be more ready to listen than to speak ...

Be slow to anger but quick to be compassionate ...

Welcome all the life-giving truth you can find and fast from that which gets in the way of life ...

Don't just talk a good line, but do what you say, be what you proclaim.

God speaks the truth to your inner being. Pay attention to it. Don't let the alluring attractions of the counterfeit distract you.

Care for the poor, the outcast, and those who have less than yourself. Don't prance and preen like the "important ones". God has eyes to see. See with God's eyes.

These don't sound like a "straw gospel" that needs to be discarded but like the incisive truth of what God speaks to us -- in his poetry of love.

But isn't it strange that these two works in the Bible: the Song of Solomon and the Letter of James, these two works that we hear from today are precisely works that some have wanted to cast out of the Bible?

It is in the Gospel passage that I see something of an answer to that question.

Accusations against Jesus

As we return this week to Mark's gospel, after a month of hearing from John, we see Jesus in a most familiar engagement.

We hardly ever see Jesus acting in a military fashion. And though we sometimes see Jesus picking winners and losers, it is much more common for Jesus to lose patience with hypocrites. And when he is accused -- as he is in today's reading -- with associating with the "losers" of society, Jesus is ready to raise his hand and say, "Yup. Convicted!"

Jesus is accused of not doing what good religious folks are supposed to do. If fact those things have been prescribed and practiced for long enough that they have become a formal thing: "the tradition of the elders." Maybe something like what ended up in the Talmud some centuries later, Pirke Aborth, the Sayings of the Fathers.

Like the poem of the Song of Solomon and the letter of James, Jesus himself is accused of being not appropriately religious, not doing things the way they always were done.

That's when Jesus shows his colors. What upsets him is not the whole set of stuff we identify with religion; rather, it is the hypocrisy of imagining that outward acts are sufficient to set one right with God and neighbor.

Jesus is in the camp that declares that what is going on inside a person is even more important than outward acts or social approval.

Closing

Here we have the gospel, then. The good news in a world over-run with bad news.

God is not in the business of picking winners and losers, who's in and who's out. God acts like a lover of souls, writing poetry and singing songs, a regular Romeo at the balcony of our Juliet. Like an intimate, God sees through the outward disheveled appearance and sees the inner beauty, polished by repeated buffing strokes.

Our church has chosen in recent years the motto: Becoming Beloved Community. ¹

My sense is that the motto and the program that accompanies it emphasize the way in which we live in a community built on love and relationships -- not on battle and victors and vanquished. It emphasizes that we are not where we want to be, but we are on the journey together.

But there is an important truth that is missed in the title: "becoming beloved community." "Becoming beloved" seems to imply that we are slowly becoming more and more worthy of God's love. That misses the truth that we are already loved, right here and right now, just the way we are, loved more than we can possibly imagine.

We are the beloved community. We're not becoming beloved. We already are. And that's the most important thing there is. Thanks be to God, the poet lover God, the God who scandalizes as new and unusual ways to show love are revealed to us. Let us then give abundant thanks to the God who loves us.

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1. https://www.episcopalchurch.org/beloved-community/↩

Proper 16b -- 2021

Proper 16b

Christ Church, Lancaster
August 22, 2021

Gathering

lectionary In the collect today, we pray that God would provide power to the church gathered in unity of spirit. This is one of those times when I think, "What if God is listening to us?" I mean who do we think we are? And what presumption to think that we are in unity of spirit? And what would that even look like?

Church gathered together

This might be one of those times that's kind of a "one off" -- a turn of phrase to get the liturgy started. And yet, it is a powerful and evocative phrase when we pause to consider it.

I feel distressed with my fellow clergy when they begin the liturgy with "Good Morning."

I apologize if your favorite priest does that.

But speaking for myself only, that everyday greeting, the thing the grocery clerk might say, takes away from the sacred nature of the gathering of the church. The church -- in Greek it is "those who are called out" -- needs to be gathered after being called out.

That is in fact something that seems powerful about the "muezzin" in Islam -- calling the people to prayer. The "gathering" is spread throughout the community.

It's a solemn thing when we call the people together. We shouldn't take it lightly.

Such a commonplace thing, and yet doing it is not as easy or simple as you might think. Sometimes it's straight forward. Sometimes it feels like Herding cats. In the last year and a half we have realized that gathering is a luxury that we took for granted. It's a part of the passion for the people, seeking a return to a time when we could gather.

In addition, we live in a time when the very meaning, the experience itself, of "gathering" is shifting. While some feel the inadequacy of gathering digitally, Zoom meetings and the like -- others find a special significance in the digital communities that are out there.

Some that I know have redefined what it means to "pray together" as they experience community stretched across thousands of miles. So we live in that time when the Gathering of the people is not something to take for granted.

Solomon

In our first reading today, we continue our journey with the emerging people and nation of Israel. We've been reading the outline throughout the summer in the books of Samuel and Kings, we hear of the solemn occasion of gathering the people by Solomon as he processes with them his conviction about how to proceed with his desire to build a "house for the God" of the people -- a temple that would become "Solomon's Temple."

It was to house the ark of the covenant.

Some background might be in order on what Solomon is wrestling with. From the time of Moses, the covenant had been embodied in tablets -- like many tablets unearthed by archaeologists from that era and that part of the world. The 10 commandments, yes, but really much more than that. The covenant was a contract made with God whereby the people agree that God (Yahweh) will be their God and God agrees that they will be his people. A contract written in stone. Not to be taken lightly. Various "rights and privileges" as well as "duties and responsibilities" were spelled out. The ark housed that covenant.

From the beginning, as the people traveled away from slavery in Egypt and God appeared to them to make the covenant, the ark had been carried -- in caravan as the people traveled from here to there.

The people have traveled with those tablets, carried in an ark, with 2 handles to be carried by specially chosen people. They have traveled into Canaan and for several generations have settled in the land. Eventually, as we have heard, they badger Samuel to let them have a king "like all the other nations."

Now, after the death of David and the rise of his son Solomon, the king has decided that it is time to stop camping, stop traveling by caravan, and time to settle down. The ark is to no longer moving from camp to camp and is to have a home. Not such an unusual impulse. I began to feel it in my 40's and 50's. I feel it now.

Like we did when we opened this liturgy, Solomon had the brazen courage to talk to God as if God was listening. He said, "When foreigners come to this house, they will hear of the LORD, they will hear of you, GOD."

This a form of: "If you build it they will come". I first heard that phrase, I think, in the context of the movie, Field of Drea.ms . In the movie, an Iowa farmer named Ray Kinsella has fallen on hard times, but while standing in his corn field one day, he sees a vision of a baseball field in his cornfield, and a voice tells him, “If you build it, he will come”, referring to Shoeless Joe Jackson, a long-dead baseball player.

Proverbially the phrase has come to mean building something that might seem far-fetched -- and trusting that people will come to enjoy the thing. Major league baseball seems to have encouraged that thinking as they staged a game on that very Iowan cornfield from the movie on August 12th this year. Chicago White Sox and the New York Yankees.

King Solomon might have been there. Praying to God, "If people from far and wide see this thing, surely they will say, God is alive and well." In Iowa. In Jerusalem. It is so powerful for me when figures from across the ages, so remote from me, end up sounding like me when I wake up in the morning.

Solomon was concerned that the children who come after him will know that God is real and God dwells in our midst. It's all about the children isn't it? Passing it on. Whether literally our children or figuratively. As true for the young families with children as it is for those like me who look back on the time of my children's childhood.

We gather the people so they will see the awesome power of God.

Gather the people

Solomon is aware of the need for Holy places. Places that may not be in and of themselves anything special, but when set aside they become sacred spaces. During this time of wandering during our pandemic, we have been especially aware of the "holy places" that we couldn't fill as we formerly did.

Here at Christ Church you've been gathering in the sanctuary longer than many Episcopal Churches.

When I brainstorm with students the whole concept of "holy place", they just get it. It's almost a human need, I think.

- It's often tied to the connections we feel with those who have gone before.
- Equally important when directed toward those who will come after.

It is truly "God's house", a sacred place to father the people who have wandered, sometimes far, sometimes near.

A bishop of mine, Frank Gray, told a personal story about the church as a wandering people of God. It was his story, but is so powerful I have often shared it. His grandfather, Campbell Gray, had been bishop of the diocese where I served and his cathedral had been the church where I was living at the time. During the 2nd world war, Frank Gray's father was a priest and missionary in the Philippines when the Japanese captured the islands. They put all of the Americans into interment camps where young Frank Gray effectively came of age. Following the end of the war, Frank and his family sailed to San Francisco, took a train to Chicago and then to South Bend, and went directly to the church where his grandfather was bishop. He told this story inside that very church. He said, "When I walked through those doors -- pointing to the very doors -- I experienced church as a building for the first time. Before then the church had always been the people gathered wherever they could in the interment camp in the jungles of the Philippines."

Pilgrim people

We are a pilgrim people and there are times when we need to be gathered together. In sacred spaces when possible. In recent times the wider church has become conscious of being a pilgrim people, not lodged in one place, but sometimes homeless, sometimes displaced, sometimes in a foreign land. It is a powerful image for the church.

I hope we don't lose that awareness. I fear the prospect of losing that image.

The image of the church as -- e.g. Noah's ark. A people who have been chosen, marked as God's own. A people chosen but not yet arrived at the destination.

We are, in effect, on pilgrimage. A pilgrimage like:

• Santiago de Santiago ( I have known a few) The El Camino Spain -- followed since the 9th century
• A priest friend from Hawai'i was determined to walk the Appalachian Trail
• I would sometimes go to a place in Wisconsin known as "Holy Hill". Wisconsin is very flat. North of Milwaukee there was a little mound or hill and on top of it sat a church, dedicated to Mary. For a century or more pilgrims had traveled there, seeking healing or peace. I would go there seeking a quiet place that was also sacred.
• When I was a teenager I visited Lourdes. I was young enough not to make too much of it. When my daughter visited there many years later, the holy water she brought was a precious gift.

These are "holy places" that one goes to as a pilgrim, not as a resident. It is in the journey that God's power is revealed.

May show forth your power

As a "pilgrim" people, even Solomon knew that we are more empowered to show God's power and mercy than as residents. As Paul knew centuries later, it is as a pilgrim people that we can "Put on the whole armor of God" to "withstand the evil of the day".

As a pilgrim people we are conscious of the dangers that lie about us all the time. Dangers of storm and pestilence. Dangers from those who wish us harm. Dangers from those who are indifferent.

What does this all mean? Is it just evocative language? How literal are we to take it? Is it just poetry?

It was that same Bp. Gray who gave his clergy a book by Eugene Peterson, The Contemplative Pastor. In it Peterson describes what he perceives to be the necessary poetic component of pastoring in the church. His translation of the Bible makes clear that God himself is evocative the way poetry is evocative.

Being a "pilgrim church" may be poetry -- but it is sacred poetry.

Conclusion

With today's Gospel reading, we conclude the "Bread of life" sermon from the Gospel of John. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Here Jesus embodies a part of what a pilgrim people need to sustain themselves. Two things are essential: shelter and food. Solomon has called out to God that he be allowed to build a shelter for the people -- God's house, as it were -- but providing the shelter of God's presence, God's armor for the people. That presence and that armor has sustained the people for 3,000 years and more.

But the people also need sustenance. "I am the bread of life" Jesus said. And he is, and nourishes us, even to the present day.

75 years ago a British scholar, Gregory Dix, published landmark study of the Eucharist. You've probably heard about it or from it before. Like the liturgy itself, it bears saying over and over again.

Jesus said, "Do this in memory of me." About the Eucharist Dix said:

Was ever another command so obeyed? For century after century, spreading slowly to every continent and country and among every race on earth, this action has been done, in every conceivable human circumstance, for every conceivable human need from infancy and before it to extreme old age and after it, from the pinnacle of earthly greatness to the refuge of fugitives in the caves and dens of the earth. Men have found no better thing than this to do for kings at their crowning and for criminals going to the scaffold; for armies in triumph or for a bride and bridegroom in a little country church; for the proclamation of a dogma or for a good crop of wheat; for the wisdom of the Parliament of a mighty nation or for a sick old woman afraid to die; ...

for a schoolboy sitting an examination or for Columbus setting out to discover America; for the famine of whole provinces or for the soul of a dead lover; in thankfulness because my father did not die of pneumonia; for a village headman much tempted to return to fetich because the yams had failed; because the Turk was at the gates of Vienna; for the repentance of Margaret; for the settlement of a strike; for a son for a barren woman; for Captain so-and-so wounded and prisoner of war; while the lions roared in the nearby amphitheatre; on the beach at Dunkirk; while the hiss of scythes in the thick June grass came faintly through the windows of the church;

tremulously, by an old monk on the fiftieth anniversary of his vows; furtively, by an exiled bishop who had hewn timber all day in a prison camp near Murmansk; gorgeously, for the canonisation of S. Joan of Arc—one could fill many pages with the reasons why men have done this, and not tell a hundredth part of them. And best of all, week by week and month by month, on a hundred thousand successive Sundays, faithfully, unfailingly, across all the parishes of Christendom, the pastors have done this just to make the plebs sancta Dei—the holy common people of God.

Today, as so often through my life, I think to myself, "Do we have any idea of what we say and do here?" Sometimes we do. And then it is fitting to just say, "Thanks be to God."

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Proper 14b - August 8, 2021

Proper 14b

August 8, 2021 St. Paul's, Monroe ¹

Introduction

It's been an interesting week

Exhausting in many ways for me. Physically. Shifted at mid-week from one chaotic house filled with boxes to another one filled with boxes.

A group of 5 "college hunks" did the heavy lifting to get us here. That's right. We hired a moving company called "College Hunks Hauling Junk." What they left us to do was -- well all the details. We'll probably be working on it for months.

Wednesday

We moved. Well that was a really big deal for us. Big in the sense that it wore us out. Not so big in the sense that both Mary Pat and I have been easily confident that beginning our ministry here in Monroe has been in harmony with God's plan for us.

Friday was an important day

It was one of the major feast days of the year , the Feast of the Transfiguration. I have been drawn from a long ways back in my life the to the narrative of the mystical vision of the three disciples looking on as Jesus himself was mysteriously and gloriously transfigured before them.

It was also Hiroshima Day. I continue to believe that it is a God-thing that the first use of an atomic bomb as a weapon occurred on Transfiguration. It has been an occasion for solemn reflection for me for my entire adult life.

Then there's the anniversary that's not so clearly on other people's minds. Pope Paul VI died on the Feast of the Transfiguration.

I can remember vividly that day because of where I was. I was visiting my cousin in Salem Oregon. I think it was the last time I saw my cousin before he died from cancer some years later. But I remember so vividly picking up the Sunday paper with the huge headline that the pope had died.

I had high hopes in those days that the Catholic Church would lead a widespread renewal in Christianity. I placed many of those hopes on Paul VI's successor, John Paul I. He himself died just 33 days after his election.

It's all a reminder that God is working in ways that are quite beyond our imagining to say nothing of managing.

Another event occurred this past week. I don't know whether it's particularly momentous. But I made my first decision as your interim priest in charge. It's not a decision that most of you will experience as disruptive, but it is I think in the larger scheme of things a potentially important one.

I asked that we follow what is known as Track 1 rather than Track 2 in the lectionary.

Explain Common Lectionary rationale

The OT is as far as I know the only sacred scripture that is sacred to two different religions. That puts a special responsibility on the use and interpretation of this text. It matters that Jesus himself was Jewish and the first Christians were Jewish. And I believe that the Christian complicity in anti-semitic actions through the centuries makes it imperative that we begin to discover new ways to interpret the Old Testament.

Old lectionary model, used in the prayer books that are sitting in your pew in front of you, chose Old Testament readings on the basis of its connection with the Gospel reading of the day. Perhaps it echoed it, perhaps it was an anticipation of it or a pre-figuring.

The new lectionary model, formally adopted by the Episcopal Church in the early 2000's, uses different criteria for choosing the 1st reading from the Old Testament. As a general rule it tries to read the OT "in course". Rather than picking and choosing each reading, it tries to follow particular books in the Old Testament, following the flow of the text for weeks or months at a time.

Let me give an example.

Consider our reading today from John's gospel:

We will be reading from the 6th chapter of John for 4 weeks in August. It is the "Bread of life" chapter. This is the 2nd of those weeks. It's an extended "sermon" if you will that Jesus gives containing an extended metaphor about Jesus as the bread of life. Today we hear:

• I am the bread of life
• Jews complained about him
• Whoever believes has eternal life

That is reading John "in course." Generally speaking we do the same thing with the 2nd reading. In recent weeks we have been working our way through the letter to the Ephesians.

The lectionary model we will be using follows that same pattern of "in course" reading from the Old Testament.

It means there will be an opportunity to hear passages that are not so obviously linked to Jesus's ministry, but are nonetheless well known and important for the overall message of the OT.

There are I believe many and deep reasons that Christians must learn to read the OT on its own terms and not simply in its relationship to the New Testament.

If we at St. Paul's had been following it at the beginning of the summer we would have started with 1 Samuel and would have worked our way up to today. The death of Absalom.

Absalom

Absalom, Absalom the novel

I have wanted to focus on Absalom in a sermon for years, and as far as I know I never have. Not unlike the way in which I have wanted to read Faulkner's novel Absalom, Absalom for many years but haven't yet.

Perhaps with my move to Monroe, NC it is time I did that.

William Faulkner Wikipedia

The title of the novel obviously refers to the Biblical story of Absalom, David's son, who rebelled against his father and was killed by David's general Joab in violation of David's order to deal gently with his son. As we hear today the whole thing caused heartbreak to David.

Like other Faulkner novels, Absalom, Absalom! allegorizes Southern history.

In the novel, the history of Thomas Sutpen mirrors the rise and fall of Southern plantation culture. Sutpen's failures necessarily reflect the weaknesses of an idealistic South. Rigidly committed to his "design", Sutpen proves unwilling to honor his marriage to a part-black woman, setting in motion his own destruction.

Discussing Absalom, Absalom!, Faulkner stated that the curse under which the South labors is slavery, and that Thomas Sutpen's personal curse, or flaw, was his belief that he was too strong to need to be a part of the human family.

... In 2009, a panel of judges called _Absalom, Absalom!_ the best Southern novel of all time.

In the biblical text there are several things that catch my attention.

The first is the simple detail that David wept -- like the proverbial "shortest verse in the Bible" (John's gospel when Jesus hears that his friend Lazarus has died: "Jesus wept.") David's vulnerability and sorrow parallels his larger-than-life characteristics. It makes him someone I can identify with.

It is a story of Fathers and Sons. Partly because I am a father with sons, I have paid attention over the years as to how the father/son relationship is portrayed in media of all kinds. My relationship with my own father has not always been an easy one. I recognize it when I tell people that my oldest son is a lot like me -- which is to say he has invested a lot of energy into not being like his father.

My father has been gone for over 35 years -- yet I am vividly aware of the impact he still has on my life.

David's impact on the church -- almost 3,000 years later is still vividly felt in a similar way.

Today's passage is a little piece of the larger story that is highlighted throughout the books of Samuel and Kings. It all starts with David's son, battling for control of the family Dynasty.

Always, it seems, there are power struggles. It reminds me of my church history teachers' mantra: "Wherever 2 or 3 are gathered together -- there you have politics."

A central part of reading and interpreting the OT is the narrative that traces the emergence of a people -- Israel -- out of Egypt and into Canaan. The development of a nation (like all the other nations of the world) notably unified by David.

We will hear some of the rest of that narrative as a first reading until August 31st when we make a shift to other writings of the OT.

Let me summarize the narrative this way:

• Passover/Exodus from Egypt
• Entry into Canaan
• Becoming a nation
• Being torn apart from within and finally overrun by foreign powers
• Figuring out how to be a people in exile.

In that frame of reference, Absalom is like a symbol of the way in which the son seeks to claim the inheritance of the father. But it inevitably leads to revolt and division.

The Absalom Saga reveals a dynamic that is too common in our lives.

It speaks to the way we live our lives. The same patterns get lived out over and over again -- in spite of our intention to do it differently this time.

I think of a saying I read regularly in my devotions:

Our lives are long enough to learn what we need to learn, but not long enough to change anything. That is our flaw. Each age must learn everything afresh. Such waste! Such waster -- making all the mistakes once and again, each generation making the same mistakes, fumbling in ignorance and darkness. ... (Stephen Lawhead, quoted in Celtic Daily Prayer: Book Two)

Where is the congregation?

These lessons seem to me to be very pertinent to the recent history of this congregation. Changes are coming. There really is no going back to the way things used to be. That can be sad. But it is also an opportunity for us to make good decisions.

It frees us to ask what it is that God wants us to be doing as an Episcopal Church in the city of Monroe North Carolina. We can pay attention to our own particular needs and desires, but keep in mind the perspective that God sees a far bigger picture than we.

Change has been in overdrive these past few years. It's perfectly natural for us to say, enough already. We can resist the change with all our strength and will. That's an option. I suggest a different approach.

Let us accept where we are now, our present circumstances and conditions. And then ask, "What does God want of us? Why is the Episcopal Church important to Monroe, NC? How can I let God be God?" Such questions may help us figure out the next step: "What do we do now?"

It seems perfectly natural to me for all of us to look forward to just making a decision about the choices in front of us. Then we will adjust as we go along.

As we go forward, I want us to keep in mind and heart the vision of the church we hear in the letter to the Ephesians.

Ephesians

Putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another.

Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, ... Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear.

And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption. Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice,

and be kind to one another,tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.

Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

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1. Lectionary↩

Proper 13b: Christ Church, Lancaster. Aug 1, 2021

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author:

• Dale Hathaway
  date: 'Tue, 27 Jul 2021 16:32:21 -0400'
  title: 'proper-13b'
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Sermons: Proper 13

Introduction: Conversion

When I was around 20 years old I made an important life decision. I was
prodded by the considerable range of directions that my colleagues in
college were taking with their own life choices. One of my friends in particular
I remember vividly. She stood up in the middle of the student center
announced for all to hear that she had decided to become an
existentialist.

I decided at the time that I had been raised in a Christian faith and
that I already understood that there was a deep spirituality in the
tradition of Christianity, even though the popular versions were for me
not very attractive. It was the mystical and contemplative traditions in
Christianity that interested me, and I decided I would try to mine them
for what I could get out of them before I moved on to other traditions
and philosophies. I suspected even then that it would take a lifetime to
sort all that out. And I wasn't wrong.

In my 20's, having pursued the decision to commit myself to the
Christian faith, I began to understand that there was at the heart of
the faith, an experience of conversion.

Metanoia

Metanoia is the Greek word used in the NT translated as
repentance. It is very closely related to the concept of conversion.
Repentance or conversion, seems to be all over the New
Testament. In Mark chapter 1 Jesus announces the kingdom of God and
calls for repentance. In classical Greek the word meant to change one's
mind about someone or something. I have had a number of experiences of
that sort when I have had first impressions of someone as being
unpleasant or obnoxious. Only later, after getting to know the person,
did I discover that we had deep and important connections, human
connections; and we became good friends.

I had something of that kind of experience with the very phrase
conversion and repentance. I associated the concept with a certain
kind of Christian, and even at that time I wasn't sure I liked them
very much. Now I was still finding my way around the Bible, but I was
well aware of Paul's conversion experience on the road to Damascus. I
thought at the time that if such an experience was required to be a
Christian, I guess I couldn't do it, because I hadn't experienced that
sort of visceral life changing experience.

Something happened somewhere on my journey. I'm not sure what it was.
It had something to do with my own experience of fallibility and
inadequacy. I experienced myself as falling short of what I expected of
myself, to say nothing of what God might've expected of me at the time.
It was hearing other people's stories of being lost and then found, of
being blind and then being able to see. It was feeling the
responsibility of being called as a healer, but knowing that at best
I was a wounded healer.

Variations in conversion

By my 30's I had become convinced that not all conversions had to look
or feel like Paul's. And I suspected that the obsessive interest in
conversion on the part of some Christians was too narrow an
understanding of what conversion was all about. I began to believe and
to share with others a conviction that in any encounter with the risen
Lord some kind of change had to happen. If it didn't then we had missed
it.

David's story

I am especially interested in the whole episode from David's life
involving Bathsheba, her husband Uriah, David's obscene responses to his
attraction to her, the prophet Nathan and his use of parable long before
Jesus perfected the practice. I love the episode because it is so vivid
and shows us a person, David, who experienced conversion. He makes
wretched choices and is confronted by someone he trusts, Nathan. Nathan
tells him a story and David responds with indignant
self-righteousness.Then Nathan tells him directly you are the man. David
respond with a "c'est moi?" Letting us know that he can't imagine
something so terrible about himself.

And then it hits him. He encounters the living God. And he is changed
forever.

Is it not the case that most of us need to be hit upside the head? In
order to really get it, that, "hey God is really talking to me."

In the years since I came to that conclusion about the centrality of
conversion for our faith I haven't changed my mind. I continue to
appreciate the tremendous variety of experiences of Metanoia.
Repentance and conversion can take infinitely different forms.

Ephesians: cosmic Metanoia

In the reading today from the letter to the Ephesians, Paul also
appreciates the cosmic significance of Metanoia. He has himself
experienced another transformation of his lifestyle and the contents of
his life trajectory. He has become a prisoner, a prisoner in the Lord.
Being such a prisoner makes demands on his life:

To lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called,
with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one
another, and love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the
Spirit in the bond of peace.

Such a vision of a transformed life only comes when one has the courage
to face the living God and accept the transformation that is required.

Baptism

From the beginning of the Christian faith all of this is bound together
in the action of baptism. The opening words of the rite of baptism in
the prayer book reads: "One Lord, one Faith,one Baptism, one God and
Father of all who is above all and through all and in all."

The main thing that changed between the prayer book of 1928 -- or even
1662 -- and the one that came out in the 1970's, is precisely the
understanding of baptism. Many have argued that the most important
change in the church for centuries is in a new understanding of
baptism.

It drove our understanding of:

• prayer
• ministry
• church administration

I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy
of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and
gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making
every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

Paul says he's a prisoner ... how? Literally prisoner? Traditionally
taken that way. Prisoner because of the Lord I would have
anticipated, but here he is prisoner in Christ.

To be caught so you can't escape. To be so caught up in the calling
that it is perfectly natural that you would live in humility,
gentleness, patience, bearing with one another, maintaining the unity of
the Spirit, the bond of peace

That's a heck of a prison! But that's what Paul's talking about. And
he understands that to be a description of what Christians are called to
do and be. He understands that as a description of what it means to be
baptized.

Today's passage from the letter to the Ephesians, then, begins to flesh
out a fuller understanding of baptism that includes all of the
practicalities of one's life. The transformation of Metanoia bring
to bear a wide range of gifts, spiritual gifts, talent oriented gifts,
gifts intended for the building up of the body of Christ, gifts to equip
the Saints for the work of ministry. So it is that the readings we've
heard from scripture today point in the direction of a comprehensive
vision of what it means to be a Christian.

Gifts

"The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets,
some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for
the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of
us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of
God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ."

It turns out that this reading today from Ephesians is an absolutely
central text for understanding the new understanding of baptism. It
has to do with gifts, spiritual gifts, being given by God to the Body of
Christ for the purpose of building up the body.

Some of you are called to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists,
some pastors, and some teachers. Altar guild, warden, sexton, choir
member, -- all the things we think of the church doing. We should thik in terms of spiritual gifts, but we should also think in terms of practical gifts that are important for building up the body of Christ, things such as technology gurus, communication experts, healers and servants.

And it is all to be measured against a single over-riding purpose:
Building up the body.

12 steps

In John's Gospel, chapter 6, we've heard Jesus respond to those who seek
to follow him with the words, "this is the work of God, that you
believe in him whom he has sent."

What Jesus means here is that when we come face-to-face with the living
God, and our lives are turned around through repentance, we put our
whole trust in God to do the work.

I once heard a rephrasing of the 12 steps first articulated by
Alcoholics Anonymous. I came to believe in the 1980's, when I was a
substance abuse counselor, that the 12 steps of AA were in fact a fair
representation of the Christian faith. One teacher suggested that the 12
steps can be reduced to three:

1. I can't
2. God can
3. I think I'll let him

That's really a perfect description of Metanoia, repentance,
conversion.

You'll notice that those three steps are a picture of turning one's life
around. Heading in one direction and finding that there is no way
forward.

Then a second step one encounters God in one way or another, through
some kind of witness, verbal or otherwise. It is a God who is able to do
far more than we can possibly imagine.

And then a third step that requires us to let go in order to let God do
the work.

It here, in this context, that the other basic Christian sacrament,Eucharist, fits in. Having turned our lives around in Metanoia, we are nourished along the way of the journey. In Jesus words, the nourishment that feeds us on our journey is Eucharistic.

I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and
whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.

So it is that Baptism and Eucharist are the primary Christian sacraments.
Conversion and the exercise of gifts for the building up of the Body of
Christ. None of it possible except through the Grace of God. All of it
possible by the Grace of God. By the Grace of God we can do it. I think
I'll let him. Amen.