10 February 2016 -- Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday   — 10 February 2016

Trinity, Iowa City – 12:15 & 7:00 pm

Joel 2:1-2,12-17 or Isaiah 58:1-12  |  Psalm 103 or 103:8-14  | 
2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10  |  Matthew 6:1-6,16-21

I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self‑examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self‑denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.

We hear the reading from the sixth chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel every year on Ash Wednesday.  It has to do with what the Church would later refer to as the major spiritual disciples for Lent:  Almsgiving, Prayer, and Fasting.  

In this Gospel reading Jesus addresses these disciplines, which were common in Jewish spirituality; and we note that Jesus does not say “if” you do these things, but “when” you do them!  

And the point Jesus is making here, as seems pretty obvious, is “when you do these things, do not be like the hypocrites!”  I suspect we’ve always pretty much assumed that the folks Jesus was talking about were the Pharisees, and perhaps he was, at least some of them, but it’s a mistake to think that the objects of Jesus’ criticism are necessarily “them.”  “Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them…”  As Pogo might say, “We have seen the hypocrites and they is us.”  Out of the depths of our nation’s political life we are hearing folks who talk about how religious they are and in the next breath advocate carpet-bombing of villages, deportation of immigrants, and cutting back assistance for the poor, many of whom are, in the recurring Biblical phrase, “orphans and widows.”  I’m not sure just what Bible these folks are getting their “Biblical Values” from.  You can attach any names you want to this stuff.  There are plenty to go around.

So how do we respond to our Lord’s admonitions?  In our charitable giving, do we really need not to let our left hand know what our right hand is doing?  I don’t think so.  (We may need to let the IRS know what our right hand is doing!)  I think we know the difference between “Look at me!  See how pious I am!” and being listed among several hundred other people in a charitable organization’s annual newsletter, by which we may simply be saying, “We think this organization’s work is valuable and we encourage you to join us in supporting them.”

Do we really need to pray only shut up in our rooms?  No, I don’t think so.  But I think we know the difference between “Look at me!  See how devout I am!” and offering prayer and praise to God together with other people, sometimes even in public, though not ostentatiously.  I have mixed feelings about praying on a loudspeaker over NASCAR races, though quietly and fervently is probably appropriate.

Fasting, by its very nature, is not usually too public, unless we consciously make a big deal of it.  Here, of course, the issue comes up about this thing we do with the ashes today.  Context is all!  The imposition of ashes goes back only to the ninth century or so, at which time presumably everyone in the village was wearing ashes on Ash Wednesday and so it was not a big deal.  In that context, not to wear ashes and to strut around saying “Jesus said wash your face Matthew 6:17 nyah nyah nyah!” probably puts you on the wrong side of Jesus’ admonition.  I don’t know how the recent custom of “Ashes to Go” on the city streets is doing this year.  Some people find this meaningful, although it’s not always clear what that meaning is.  As I said, context is all.

A couple of days ago there was an article in the Washington Post by Elizabeth King, a writer in Chicago, entitled “I’m an atheist.  So why can’t I shake God?”  An interesting article, which mostly has to do with the opinion that evolution has neurologically wired us in favor of religion.  But I don’t want to go there just now.  I was simply struck by her opening remarks in which she told how she was raised a “born again” Christian but as a teenager began to have questions which her church leaders could not or would not answer.  They smugly told her that her questions were her own problem and she just needed to “have faith.”  To the surprise of very few of us, including God, she decided, “Well, nuts to that.”

And I suspect that this kind of thing – all too common in the churches, yes, including our own – is what is really behind the admonitions that Jesus gives us in this Gospel for Ash Wednesday.  We need to understand that our spiritual lives – including the disciplines of almsgiving, prayer, and fasting – are not about us!  Their point is not so we can pull out our thumb and say “What a good boy am I!”  (And also “what a less-than-good boy or girl are you!”)  And yet all too often that’s what we are like, or at least are perceived as being like.  This is not the Kingdom of God.

Lent is preparation for Easter.  And Easter is the foretaste of our own eternal destiny as God’s children.  It is newness of life.  It is not about piety.  It is not about how devout we are.  It is about how we love one another.  It is about doing justice for one another.  

And so I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent.

7 February 2016 -- Last Sunday after Epiphany

Last Sunday after Epiphany  — 7 February 2016

Christ Church, Burlington – 10:00 am

Exodus 34:29-35  |    Psalm 99 |    2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2  |    Luke 9:28-43a

Suddenly [the disciples] saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to [Jesus]. They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.

Every year on the Last Sunday after Epiphany, the Sunday before Lent begins on Ash Wednesday (that’s this coming Wednesday; it always manages to sneak up on us, doesn’t it?  Especially in a year when Easter is early!) – every year on this Sunday the Gospel reading is the account of what we call the Transfiguration of Christ.  All three synoptic Gospels include this narrative, and we rotate through them year by year; this year it’s from St. Luke.  (We also celebrate the Transfiguration every year on August 6, but that’s six months away!)

One of the questions that occurred to me not long ago – and I’m not sure why it took me so long for this question to occur to me; after all, I’ve been reading and hearing this Gospel account for sixty-some years! – but then, that’s one reason why we should never say, regarding the Scriptures, “Oh, I’ve read that one already, I don’t have to read it again!”  Oh yes!  It’s only after the second or third or sixtieth or five hundredth reading that the good questions start to occur to you!  -- anyway, one of the questions that occurred to me was, “How did Peter and John and James know it was Moses and Elijah that were talking with Jesus?”  It isn’t like they grew up with copies of Hurlbut’s Story of the Bible, with full-color illustrations, like I did.  (Did any of you grow up with Hurlbut’s?)  Moses and Elijah didn’t have Facebook pages.  I’m sure they weren’t wearing name tags.  The disciples had never seen Raphael’s great painting of the Transfiguration.  How did they recognize Moses and Elijah?  I guess we just don’t know!  But there must have been something about them that made it obvious who they were.  They were, after all, the great heroic figures of Jewish history and identity – Moses the liberator from slavery, and God’s lawgiver, and Elijah the prophet, who stood up for faithfulness to God against the infidelity and wickedness of Israelite kings.  Both of whom, in Jewish tradition and legend, had been taken by God into heaven.  And here are these great figures – historical and heavenly figures – talking with Our Jesus!  Blows the mind, it does!  And so Peter, never at a loss for words even when he’s at a loss for thought, shouts out, “Let’s build tabernacles – shrines!”

One of the advantages of our worship tradition in the Episcopal Church, and in many other mainline liturgical churches, is that every Sunday there is substantial reading from the Scriptures, and in a very comprehensive way.  I’m not saying this is something we should be proud of, because we aren’t the ones who set this up, but we can be grateful for it.  The Book of Common Prayer is richer in Scriptural quotation and allusion than any other tradition, I think.  I’ve found it kind of interesting in my very limited experience attending worship in evangelical churches that although they may talk a lot about the Bible and frequently quote snippets of it, they don’t seem very often to read it aloud in church!  Oh well.  

The downside of our tradition, of course, is that although we read a lot of Scripture, we do it mostly in discrete chunks.  But the Scriptural books are not for the most part written in chunks.  The Gospels are not just a random collection of Jesus stories – they are carefully crafted and sequenced narratives.  This is particularly obvious with John, but it’s also very much true with Mark, and with Matthew and Luke.  And so when we hear a narrative like today’s, about the Transfiguration of Jesus, we tend to have forgotten what happened a few verses earlier, and sometimes what happens shortly thereafter.

Shortly before the episode in today’s Gospel, Jesus has been alone with his disciples, and he asks them (you know this story), “Who do people say I am?”  And the disciples repeat some of the pious speculation that’s floating around, and then Peter says, “You are the Messiah!”  (And to borrow a phrase from today’s Gospel, “not knowing what he said”!)  And Jesus responds by telling them that he must be rejected and suffer and be put to death – not anything at all like everyone assumed about the Messiah – and then be raised from the dead.  And that they too must take up their crosses and follow him.  You may also recall that in St. Matthew’s Gospel Peter reacts to this by crying out, “God forbid it!  This must never happen to you!”  [Matt 16:22]  And Jesus responds, “Get behind me, Satan!  That’s the line the devil tried on me in the wilderness!”

So that’s the context of today’s Gospel about the Transfiguration.  This vision is God’s testimony that, yes, indeed, what Jesus said is exactly what must happen to him.  The appearance of Jesus in glory – the Greek word doxa here has the sense of the late Hebrew word shekinah, which designates the dwelling of the Lord God, present in an overshadowing cloud  – and thus is a clear sign that this Our Jesus is not just some itinerant preacher but is indeed Immanuel, God-With-Us.  And the attendance upon Jesus by Moses and Elijah testify to the continuity of Jesus with the whole covenant history of Israel.  

But it’s more than just continuity with the Israelite past.  The disciples hear a voice from the cloud (who would that be?!):  “This is my Son!  This is my beloved and chosen one!  Listen to him!”  And then Jesus is found alone:  the cloud is gone, Moses and Elijah are gone; now it’s just Jesus.  So listen to him!

And what has Jesus just said?  “The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected…, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.…If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.”

So much for being the Messianic King who would drive out the Romans and restore the Kingdom to Israel.  So much for being the kind of Christ that we were imagining and expecting.  

We read about this vision on the Sunday before we begin the observance of Lent.  And Lent is a season of spiritual preparation to enter more deeply into the mystery of Christ’s suffering and death, that we will contemplate in Holy Week.  And his resurrection on the third day, indeed; but first the Cross.  The Gospel of the Kingdom of God is not about power, despite the fact that the Church over much of her history has tried to make it so, and still does yet today.  Or if power, then only the power of love.  This Jesus, seen in glory on the mountain, raised high upon the Cross, “is my Son, my Chosen.  listen to him!”

22 March 2015 -- 5th Sunday of Lent

5^th Sunday of Lent  — 22 March 2015

St. Paul’s, Durant – 9:00 am

Jeremiah 31:31-34  |  Psalm 51:1-13  |  Hebrews 5:5-10  |  John 12:20-33

“And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”

I’m assuming that most of you are aware of some things about the reading of Scripture:  The Gospels, and the rest of the New Testament, and the Bible as a whole.  (The “as a whole” is important!)  These are not simple newspaper articles.  They require some sophistication.  I don’t mean you have to get all academic and scholarly with the Bible; it’s often useful to do that, but sometimes it may also get in the way of hearing the Word of God.  What I am talking about is being careful to read the text.  Read the text.  And to be aware that the Gospel narratives, particularly, were not written by CNN reporters who were present onsite with cameras and sound recorders.  The Gospels were written, in the form we have them now, by Christians, followers of Jesus, some 35 to 65 years after the events, based not only upon their communities’ authentic memories, but also upon their own prayerful reflection on the meaning of those memories of the events.  I’m assuming that Mother Alice and other clergy have discussed and taught and preached about these kinds of things with you over the years.

One of the things you also will have noticed is that the four Gospels are not four identical, or even similar, books; they are not like birds on a wire.  Well, the first three Gospels are obviously related.  Each is distinctive, with material of its own, but obviously related.  They can easily be compared, or looked at side-by-side.  Which in Greek is to say “synoptic.”  But you know that, and the details are for another time.  The fourth Gospel, that “according to John” (although the author nowhere names himself – or herself!) covers a lot of the same material about the ministry of Jesus, but with a very different perspective.

For instance:  as we all recall, most of the accounts of Jesus’ ministry in the first three Gospels are brief straightforward stories.  (They’re not simple, and we keep discovering new dimensions in them all our lives, but they are generally short and to the point.)  Jesus tells a parable.  Jesus heals someone who is sick or disabled.  Jesus gives some short pithy instructions about life.  Jesus gives little pictures of the Kingdom of God.  In the Fourth Gospel, on the other hand, Jesus heals someone, or feeds the multitude – there’s not much parable-telling in this Gospel – and then follows that up with a long discourse on the meaning of it all.  And even after many many years of reading the Fourth Gospel over and over, I still find myself saying “What is he talking about?”

Okay, here’s what I think.  This is what I think, and you may disagree with me, and that’s all right, and Mother Alice may disagree with me, and that would be all right.  But I think that the Fourth Gospel is up to something quite different from what we see in the first three Gospels.  In the first three we see, basically, the writing down of stories passed along in the “Jesus Tradition.”  They may undergo some editing in the writing down of the Gospels, particularly as the local communities’ circumstances change over a generation or two – particularly after the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple by the Romans – but these are basically traditional stories.  The Fourth Gospel, on the other hand, apparently knows all those traditional stories – I would say from the tradition itself; I don’t see any indication that the author knows any of the written Gospels.  But the Fourth Evangelist starts with one of the traditional stories, and then goes on to compose a long discourse, placed in the mouth of Jesus, about what those stories and events mean.  And I’m certainly not saying his interpretation is not right – but it’s the result of his, and his community’s, reflections on the meaning of the stories of the Jesus tradition.

Okay, so finally now we come to the Gospel reading today.  Jesus has just arrived in Jerusalem (following the so-called “Triumphal Entry” that we will celebrate next Sunday) and he’s in the Temple, and some “Greeks” approach him.  In this case, the Evangelist probably means people who were ethnically Gentiles – not necessarily from Greece but Greek-speaking – and may have been proselytes, that is, religious converts to Judaism, which explains why they were in Jerusalem for Passover.  (A slightly different word is used for Greek-speaking ethnic Jews who lived in the Diaspora outside of Judea and Galilee.)  Or perhaps these Greeks were “God-fearers,” Gentiles drawn to the moral and theological power of Judaism but unwilling to accept the full obligations of the Torah, the Jewish Law.  They approach Philip (who, being from Bethsaida, a mixed Gentile-Jewish town, probably speaks Greek, and he has a Greek name) and they tell him that they “wish to see Jesus.”  Not just look at him, but meet him, talk with him.  But also, in the Fourth Gospel, “to see” often connotes “to believe in,” and I can’t help but think the Evangelist has that in the back of his mind.

Anyway, we don’t know what happened with the Greeks after that; the Evangelist apparently doesn’t really care about them; he moves right on to the point he wants to make:  Jesus says, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.”  All along throughout this Gospel Jesus has been saying, “My hour has not yet come.”  But with the coming of the Gentiles – the “other sheep that do not belong to this fold” but whom Jesus must now bring in [John 10:16] – with the coming of the Gentiles the  time for his glorification – that is, his crucifixion and resurrection – has now arrived.  (As the Pharisees had just said:  “Look, the world has gone after him!”  [John 12:19])

The Evangelist then goes on to draw on some sayings from the Jesus tradition that we already know and have seen in the other Gospels, though slightly differently phrased:  only if you give up your life will you gain your life;  if you would follow me, deny yourself and take up your cross.  Following Jesus means following Jesus where he goes, and where he goes is by way of Golgotha.  And then, reflecting similar words which Jesus prays in the Garden of Gethsemane – an incident which the Fourth Gospel does not include in the Passion narrative – “Now my soul is troubled – I am deeply grieved, even to death.  Father, shall I ask you to save me from this hour that has now come?  But not my will but yours be done.  Father, glorify your name!” [Cf. Mark 14:34-36 & ||s.] 

And then the Evangelist shows us Jesus speaking in words which we and the tradition have known, or should have known, all along:  “Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out.”  Well, yes, of course!  That’s exactly what we all thought the victory parade into the city was about!  God’s reign is being restored, the Romans are about to be driven out, and the Messiah is to be crowned as King!  But no:  Jesus goes on:   “‘I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.’ He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.”  Hoisted up from the earth on a Roman cross.  The judgment of this world, and the fulfilling of God’s Kingdom, turns out to be very different from what we had in mind.

The Gospel reading today I think in some ways foreshadows the two Gospel readings for next Sunday, Palm Sunday.  As you know, and perhaps anticipate with some dread! next Sunday’s service is longer than usual, and involves a radical and abrupt change in mood and tone, from the apparent triumph of the Entry into Jerusalem to the stark and somber account of the Crucifixion.  To quote as I often do a colleague from many years ago [the Rev. Charles Peek],  “It begins with a defeat that looks for all the world like a victory, and moves on to a victory that appears to everyone to be a defeat.” As we move toward the conclusion of Lent, through our Lord’s death (and ours) to his (and our) resurrection, may we renew our commitment to the good news of God’s Kingdom, a realm which is not about the love of power but the power of love. “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”