Sermons: September 2009

Pentecost 14 (Proper 18; RCL: B)

September 6, 2009

Grace Episcopal Church 

Isaiah 35:4-7a    James 2:1-10, (11-13), 14-17 
Psalm 146      Mark 7:24-37 

In her opening address to General Convention this past July, our Presiding Bishop spoke of the "great Western heresy" of individualism. 1  

Those fightin’ words sparked a firestorm of outrage and protest. So much so that in this month’s  Episcopal Life Bishop Katharine jumps on the fire engine and rushes out the water hoses.2  

In our Epistle for today, James also sharply critiques individualism. So does Paul in his letters. So Bishop Katharine is standing on solid biblical ground. Maybe we should nuance things a bit, however, and say that Paul and James and Bishop Katharine are criticizing hyper-individualism. 

Each of us is an individual. So perhaps the question really is: What kind of individual will we be? 

We can be like the Borg in Star Trek. In that terrifying collective there are no individuals, only assimilated units.  

Or, think of George Orwell’s  1984.  

Or, we can use that quintessential American invention, the automobile, and think of ourselves as bumper cars at the county fair: each of us an isolate entity trying to crash and bam others out of our way. 

I saw a terrifying example of this the other day. A woman confined to a wheel chair at a town hall meeting was desperately trying to explain that her insurance company wouldn’t cover treatment for two progressive and debilitating diseases. A man in the back kept trying to shout her down. Afterwards he spat out these chilling words: “So now a person in a wheel chair has more rights than me?” 

Some of you may remember the film version of Charlotte’s Web. The mantra of the rat in that film, memorably voiced by Paul Lynde, is “What’s in it for me?” 

Unlike that rat, however, and the man at the town hall meeting, we can be individuals looking out for others, caring about one another, caring for each other: in church each Sunday, on the Bishop’s Committee, helping to build a house for Habitat, visiting the sick, preparing or serving at the altar, working at the homeless shelter, doing prison ministry, and much more. 

I’m no fan of the doctrine of original sin as articulated by St. Augustine, John Calvin, and others. But maybe hyper-individualism is our original sin.  

In Genesis 3, after Adam and Eve have fallen, God thunders

     Cursed is the ground because of you;  
       through painful toil you will eat of it  
       all the days of your life.    

     It will produce thorns and thistles for you,  
       and you will eat the plants of the field.

That’s an agricultural curse for an agricultural people. Since most of us in the West no longer till the soil, maybe we should—with apologies to God—rephrase the LORD’s imprecation: 

Cursed is your society because of you;

your whole desire your whole life

will be to grasp and horde, ignoring others. 

Your motto, oath, and code of conduct shall be

“I’ve got mine. To hell with you.”

  

I don’t know if it’s comforting, or terrifying, to realize that the first Christians were no different from us with regard to fundamental human behavior. 

It takes real courage to rappel into the darkness and scattered sanctuaries of light that make up our interior being. Descending into the depths, how daunting it is for us to see on a subterranean cliff face a painting of the first Christians, our founding mothers and fathers in the faith.  

But they’re so small. As close as they were to Jesus, shouldn’t they somehow be larger than life, superhuman? 

There they are, a mere thirty years after the death and resurrection of Christ, an event that has shaken and reshaped the world, there they are—exactly like us.  

And there’s James, speaking to them:  

My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ? Someone with gold rings on his fingers and wearing fine clothes comes into your assembly. Big deal. But you immediately give him all your attention and obsequiously say, “Please, sir, have a seat here.”  

But if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, you dismissively order, “Stand there”  or, even worse, “Sit at my feet.” Have you not made distinctions among yourselves? Are you not with evil thoughts passing judgement on others? 

Passages like this haunt my dreams and waking footsteps; they give the lie to my somnolent fantasies that my supine conscience needs no repair. My Christian soul is purring along quite nicely, thank you, a sleek new Hummer in a television ad, motoring happily through a verdant and edenic countryside.

But when I turn off the TV and open my eyes to the Gospel, I know there’s a snake somewhere in that bucolic landscape—maybe it’s even me—and I know that my car belches smoke, runs over people, and lays waste the environment.

I’m pretty used to dealing with the heartache I cause myself. When I realize that I’ve just swallowed a self-made stupid pill, or a whole handful of stupid pills, a little recollection—or a kick in the butt—will usually help me to see my mistake and hurry to the medicine cabinet for an antidote. 

But I just can’t get used to the heartache at Grace.  

I hope I never get used to it. If I do, all I’ll have done is exchange fire for ice.  

So, what’s the solution when our innate individualism and the hyper-individualism of American culture join unholy forces, even at church, and we become the rich man of Jesus’  parable?  

Starving Lazarus lies in rags and filth, asking only for a crust of bread that falls on the floor from the prosperous man’s table. The rich man, dressed in purple and fine linen, who feasts sumptuously every day, gives Lazarus nothing.3 

Yes, this parable does teach us the importance of responsible wealth. It also, in absentia, teaches about the importance of compassion: the haute cuisine glutton stuffing himself apparently has none. 

But I think the parable teaches even more about the sin of individualism, the gross sin of hyper-individualism that bloats itself while starving others. 

What’s the solution? 

You know, forty years after Woodstock it’s easy to mock—and it’s even easier to sentimentalize—the hippie-speak of the Beatles’ message “All You Need is Love.”4 

But isn’t that precisely what James says today?

You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."

Jesus says it, too. It’s right up there with loving God with everything you have. Love everyone else like that, too.

Love is all you need.

Actually, it isn’t.

James goes on to say:

What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have [love] but do not have works? Can [love] save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says, "Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill," and yet you do not supply that person’s bodily needs, what is the good of that? So [love] by itself, if it has no works, is dead.5 

So, we have our work cut out for us.  

Yes, we need to clothe and feed the poor—and get them decent health care. But, to paraphrase what James says elsewhere, we first need to bridle our individualism.6 

Despite what some—even, horribly, some Christians—like to bleat and bellow, poverty is much more the result of our unbridled individualism than it is the poor’s laziness. 

While we’re looking for bridles in the attic or basement, let’s also get out the saddles. Let’s throw them on our hyper-individualism, and cinch them securely. Let’s tame that unruly beast—rather than letting it ride roughshod over us.  

Amen.

Sermon, September 13, 2009

Pentecost 15, Proper 19

Grace Episcopal Church, Bakersfield

The Rev’d Vern Hill 

Isaiah 50:4-9a  Psalm 116:1-8

James 3:1-12  Mark 8:27-38 
 

On Wednesdays I usually meet my Model RR buddies.  There are five of us and we meet at one of the fellow’s homes to talk, work on models or work on his rather large HO layout.  I look forward to the contact though our host usually has the radio set to Rush Limbaugh, causing me to limit my visitation time to about 30 minutes.  At Noon we head down to Lake Isabella and Burger King for lunch.  A week ago Wednesday I’m not sure what was going on, but the order line was out the door so we decided to move down the road to McDonalds – a radical breaking of new ground.  We settled into a corner window area.   

I didn’t see them at first, just a vague awareness that a couple of guys were passing by outside.  But then one did catch my attention long enough to realize that he was somewhat dysfunctional – a sort of slow ambling irregular walk, his clothing unkempt and soiled.  One of the group commented that we get some really strange looking people “up here.”  A chuckle or two.  But another of my friends said with a voice now breaking into total laughter, “that guy just found lunch out of the trash can – lunch to go, take out.”  More laughter from around the table.  Then he added with more than just a hint of contempt and anger – “must be too stupid or lazy to find decent work.”  

One of the great social myths among Americans is the notion that we have a set of shared core values and a common morality and ethics.  As we watch the exponential growth of divisiveness fragment the social matrix, this piece of social mythology has pretty much lost any standing today.  While trying to cling to simplistic models of the good guys vs the bad guys, the fragmentation goes well beyond red states vs blue, wealthy vs poor, educated vs illiterate, employed vs unemployed or any of the other myriad either/ors and this’s/that’s you can put together.  There is no national community, no common village, no “us” in the largest sense.  Our population is schizoid. 

Melinda and I went up to Peppermint Creek near Ponderosa on the Western Divide the other day.  The creek was the site of a wonderful old forest service campground, a place for good fishing and quiet relaxation.  I’ve been going into the area since 1967.  Today the creek area looks like a war zone – tire tracks everywhere, beat up tables, evidence that large weekend groups tear the place apart with noise, dust, and soiled diapers left along the stream. It now appears to be a great place to party hard and get drunk.  Whatever values Smokey the Bear once tried to maintain are long forgotten.  A cultural and environmental collision of purpose in the wreckage among the still quaking aspen leaves shaking in the breeze. 

On Wednesday night in the midst of an address before a joint session of Congress,  Representative Joe Wilson of South Carolina interrupted the President’s speech, shouting out the words – “You Lie.”  For this a segment of the country’s population has offered their congratulations.   

Keeping with this Presidential theme, a car parked on the blvd in Wofford Heights has written on it “Obama is a phony.”  Then, demonstrating that the artist paid attention to his English teacher, he has painted on it the acronym from the President’s name –“One Big Ass Mistake America,”  punctuated with an American flag on the car’s radio antenna. 

That experiences such as this are happening to the nation’s first President of color is not lost on other Americans with a clear memory of Montgomery, and Freedom Rides and bombed churches and burning crosses. 

Now before I try to take all of this anywhere, let me share one more vignette of information.    Americans insist that they believe in God and a large percentage claim a belief in Jesus as well.  Yet a majority of Americans have no real relationship with a church community, meaning they have not attended a service in recent months.  Elsewhere, in Europe about 25% of the population in England attends church, Germany, 14% and the Scandinavian countries between 4-5%.  Between 1961 and 2001 the Anglican Church of Canada lost 53% of its membership.  The reasons given for leaving  by 2/3 Roman Catholics and about ½ of Protestants is that they stopped believing in its teachings, another 40% say they do not believe in God any longer. 

For those still within Christianity the social/moral/ethical fragmentation out there has been very much at work.  There is no Christianity.  There are Christianities with unbelievable differences in what they understand to be the mission of the church or the meaning and message of Jesus.   

For most of us here at Grace or within the Episcopal Church the idea of having a special service where members bring their guns to celebrate their “God-given 2nd Amendment Rights” is a bit uncomfortable no matter how you might feel about actual gun ownership.  Jesus with a lamb in one hand and an AK-47 in the other is an odd picture for the Son of God.  Or the news Stephanie shared the other day – a pastor telling his congregation that it is OK to wish President Obama dead as long as it is of natural causes.  OK for God to get him because he’s evil. 

I have shared all of this because of the funny little question Jesus asks Peter in today’s Gospel reading.  The disciples are on the road with Jesus and he puts this to them – “Who do the people say I am?”   To this retired teacher, it seems like a pop quiz.  The answers were somewhat predictable – a returning John the Baptist or Elijah or one of the Prophets.  Jesus pushes a bit – but who do YOU say I am?  And Peter replies – “You are the Christ.”  Ah, The right answer – well, not quite.  Jesus begins to explain to them the many things which may happen, all things which directly contradict the hopes and expectations contained within the Jewish vocabulary, the Greek word “Christ”, Messiah, the anointed one.  And so Peter rightfully objects to what Jesus describes.  Then we have a really interesting thing said by Jesus – “You are thinking not as God thinks, but as human beings do.” 

“You are thinking as human beings do.”  What thinking is Jesus talking about?  What we have here is a misunderstanding brought on by how personal identity was constructed in the first century.  People of cultures around the Mediterranean in the first century had what anthropologists call a “dyadic identity,” in which a person's sense of identity – the answer to that question, “Who am I?” is NOT the kind of individualistic and internalized product we Westerners experience or hold fast to.  Identity in first century culture is essentially the sum of others' perceptions fed back to them, what others say, do and think about them.  It is received.  Who I am is the sum of the expectations of my family, my relatives, those around me, and the historical/religious story of my community.  I am the product of a conversation with a community of others.  To be fully human is to embrace this input, to receive and live out the expectations of these others.  To be fully human is to fulfill these expectations.

It is in this context that on this walking road trip Jesus is gathering information – who do the People say that I am?  

This dyadic identity is why two weeks ago I pointed out that the controversy Jesus had with the Pharisees over the ritual cleanliness laws and dietary laws was a controversy among brothers, a family difference.  These laws were part of the expectations that inform a person’s dyadic identity in first century Palestine.    The ritual of washing one’s hands was symbolic for the holiness of living, faithfulness to what was expected, an outward sign of faithfulness to Torah and the Will of God.  What Jesus offers in the dispute was a holiness in living that moved beyond simply washing hands, a holiness given birth from what God really wants of us, found in the call to walk humbly with a God of mercy and compassion, in doing justice and loving mercy.     

Here this interesting phrase from Mark 8:33 provides a way into reshaping the source for identity - “You are thinking not as God thinks.”  In Jesus’ dyadic thinking it is not others’ thinking that matters so much as what God is thinking, what God expects of us, that is at the core of  identity – God represents the communal center.  Torah – the mind of God, the thinking of God about what it is to be made in the divine image - is the sum total of the expectations which make a person fully human.  It is this that the prophets, Amos, Isaiah and Hosea understood.  For you and I as believing Christians that Torah became flesh and lived and continues to live among us in Jesus.  So that in him is the taproot of who we are. 

This exchange of the disciples and Jesus is framed by the writer, Mark, on both sides by those things which God expects of those “in Christ.”   Before the exchange comes the healing of the little girl, the feeding of the hungry crowd and attention given to the forgotten blind man at Bethsaida.  After this exchange Mark continues - children are welcomed by Jesus, the casual, lawful setting aside of women in divorce challenged, the difficulties of wealth and compassion measured, and the marginalized blind man of Jericho welcomed. 

These actions are the expectations to be received for those who truly wish to find themselves in God.  This is the work of the community of believers.  You see, words are just words until they become alive, breathing, energized in a context.  Even the word “Christ” means little until Jesus helps Peter, the disciples and you and I understand that its meaning is found among the least of these, among those rejected, those found outside the gate, among the voiceless, the hungry, the sick, and in final rejection on the cross.  A Christianity that is simply built on Peter’s confessional words is blasphemy, a charade, a skeleton without fleshy content.  What frames those words is how those in Christ are to be known and found.  These stories gathered along this walking journey are the fleshy content informing us of the divine identity God calls us to. 

I said that there are many Christianities today.  That is in part because in our world we begin with the individual.  An energy commercial portrays a laborer asking: “All I want to know is what’s in it for me.”  A Christianity built around the self-centered confirmation of what I already believe will never find its way to the Kingdom of God.  There are multiple Christianities also because of confusion brought about in how people want to use Jesus rather than how we allow Jesus to use us.  Belief in Jesus is not belief about Jesus, a ritual praising of him. Belief in Jesus is belief in what Jesus continues to be about.  The irony of the question addressed to Peter is that the answer to the query – “Who do you say I am?” is not really regarding Jesus’ identity at all.  It is about ours.  What do each of us say about Jesus by our own living, by what we do as we become part of this walking journey of redemption and grace that continues today?  To become part of this walking journey in Christ is to become a member among others in holy community.  It is to seek after the living God expects of us.  St. Francis reminds – “it is in giving that we receive and it is in pardoning that we are pardoned.” This is the Body of Christ as we are not unconnected from one another, but bound deeply to one another in the life of God that we have been gifted in Jesus Christ.   Amen. 

Sermon, September 27, 2009

Pentecost 17, Proper 21

Grace Episcopal Church, Bakersfield

The Rev’d Vern Hill 
 

Numbers 11:4-6, 10-16, 24-29 Psalm 19:7-14 James 5:13-20   Mark 9:38-50 
 

Noted for being the first American to be awarded a Nobel Prize in Literature, the 20th Century writer Sinclair Lewis once observed - “when Fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross,”  a sobering sound bite from someone who was the conscience of his generation.  I mention this because the “cross carriers” continue to be busy in the political arena with Christianity and morality and values.  It really helps to pay attention. 

Last weekend if you were indeed paying attention you learned that homosexuality is learned behavior and that viewing porn makes you gay.  No joke!  No, not just gay porn, but regular old straight porn.  You are MADE gay by looking at pictures.  You too could have learned this if you saw a video bit from the Values Voter Summit held in Washington.  Sen. Tom Coburn’s (OK) chief of staff, Michael Schwartz spoke at a workshop making the case saying to the rap attentive crowd - “All pornography is homosexual pornography because all pornography turns your sexual drive inwards.”  He went on to say, if you tell 11 year old boys this they won’t want to read Playboy and won’t become gay.  Hmmm, that should work well.  Actually what the 11 year old will learn is either something that will mess him up sexually for a long time, or he will decide right away that you are an idiot. 

Of course what was most troubling was watching the audience “believe” this stupidity.  It answered a troubling question; confirmed their deepest suspicions and appeared rational, allowing them to continue, in the isolation (and isolation is a key component, stay within the closeted tribe, them against us) . . . the isolation of “the community of the similarly fearful” to embrace a culture of hate, distrust and prejudice in the name of Christian values AND to get to feel good about it. 

Now there is also some good news.  Last week Melinda, my chief researcher, found something in the Californian which indicates a possible redemptive path out of the terrible, destructive  darkness of this self-righteous, religious fundamentalism, something that serves as a teaching moment for us all.  

Valerie Schultz, a regular Californian columnist and a person who would never be accused of liberal tendencies, wrote a piece about attending a wedding over Labor Day that she titled “A wedding without God?” The wedding was for her daughter’s best friend and Valerie’s husband was asked to perform the ceremony.  What troubled Valerie was that the bride and groom had asked her husband to choose wording so that it did not mention God.  They were not religious and wanted a wedding that reflected their values rather than “some canned church routine.”

A wedding without God?  This deeply troubled her, but this trouble was also the beginning of a redemptive moment, a jog in that road of religious certainty.  Because here she was face to face, out of the tribal closet, among real people, different people.  Let me use her words of discovery: 

“I was bothered that they hadn't chosen words that I deemed appropriately life-giving. As it turned out, the wedding ceremony was moving beyond words. The act of two young adults promising to intertwine their lives together for the rest of their days is a sacred one. At the moment of their union, they stand on holy ground. It's just that sometimes we call the same values different names.”   

And she went on with even more learning -

“The bride and groom are both people of whom we can be proud. They honor their parents, respect others, support their friends, rescue cats, stick up for the underdog, take care of the planet, and love each other like crazy: all things that religious people are supposed to do. They spoke their vows seriously, which were poetic and downright spiritual in giving voice to the marrying of their souls.” 

Today I am supposed to preach a stewardship sermon.  If stewardship means being faithful - being a good caretaker of something you have been given, then the most essential stewardship is faithfulness to what we have been given about ourselves - a fundamental stewardship question about what is given to us in our birth on this planet, among others, even strangers, toward building a common future.  The essential stewardship question is not the life stuff of breathing and existing; but is found in our doing, in our relationships, in our contributions to build up the community we have with one another.  Are we good caretakers of this task? 

Religiously, that question simply stated is -  What does God want of us in our birth and living, a creature made in divine image?  Our answer is developed within our behavior with each other and with those in the untold number of villages on this planet with which we are joined in mutual responsibility.  It is not a matter of whose name we confess or whose side we are on in the religious cafeteria or what is the truth or error of the intricate slogans of belief we concoct.  Both the reading from Numbers and the Gospel reading speak to this and the hazards that can cause the well-intentioned, those most committed to faithfulness, to badly miss what God truly wants and finds pleasing. 

From Numbers we have this wondrously humorous conversation between Moses and the Lord God which begins with the complaint of the desert wandering Israelites -  "If only we had meat to eat! We remember the fish we used to eat in Egypt for nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic (those wonderful days of slavery); but now our strength is dried up, and there is nothing at all but this manna to look at." 

Moses begins his own complaint chorus against God, asking why did you dump this worthless group on me; I didn’t create them - “Did I conceive all this people? Did I give birth to them, that you should say to me, 'Carry them in your bosom, as a nurse carries a sucking child,' to the land that you promised on oath to their ancestors?”   

God’s solution was to have Moses select 70 elders to share the leadership, to receive the Spirit.  And this happens in a great tent where the Spirit is given with much prophesying.  But the story goes on - we find that two persons who were not part of this tent ordination of the 70 were out among the people also “prophesying.”  Joshua, one of the chosen, complains to Moses that he should stop them. And Moses responds - oy vey, would that all the people were prophets.  Now let’s leave the story there and jump to the Gospel account which is on a parallel coarse. 

John comes to Jesus complaining that the disciples had seen someone casting out demons in Jesus name and that they had tried to stop him because he was not following us  (had not been in the tent).  And Jesus says something to the effect - Are you kidding me?  Here is someone doing a righteous act, an act of charity and goodness and you want him stopped because he isn’t one of you “Jesus People.”  Are you nuts?  “Whoever is not against us is for us.” 

The point is the righteous act of healing, of throwing aside the demonic evils which deny people their place at the Table, that takes from them their God gifted humanity is what God wants of us, not whose tent you happened to be in or whose group you happened to be traveling with.  The issue is always redemption (stupid).  That person who heals in Jesus’ name is curing others, doing what Jesus was doing - following the discipline of compassion and mercy.  He was being a faithful steward, gifting life within the greater village.   

The writer Mark goes on to develop more fully what is required of those who live in this discipline of compassion and mercy.  “If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea.”   “Little ones” is not specifically about children as in the song “Jesus loves me.”  The word for “little ones” is mikros (micro) which means small or short.  In Greek writing practice of the period, it was used to name persons of lowly status - widows, orphans, those in poverty and those whose status in other ways shut them out from what they might otherwise receive.  Of course children are included for when food, clean water and medicine are in short supply, they are usually the first to die from being orphaned or abandoned.  

Jesus also speaks of a cup of water.  The act of sharing the cup of water is a messianic symbol.  It is a welcoming symbol - inclusive,  the gathering of servants, slaves, the little ones, the least people without power or place andgiving them recognition, quenching their thirst.  Too often Christians fail to notice that Jesus doesn’t divide people into believers and atheists; he divides people among those who serve the least of these, the little ones or not.  Those who show hospitality to the needy, to the weak and overlooked, understand the meaning of God’s Kingdom and their vocation of discipleship within it.  All are welcome to work wonders.  All are welcome to cast out the demons which seek to destroy the life gifted to us in creation.  This is the stewardship of our true humanity. 

A welcoming ministry is an act we Episcopalians seek to demonstrate in our worship and congregational life.  We understand our life vocation in that life story gifted to each of us in Jesus.  We gather at his Table in community, meeting face to face with others, to celebrate what we have received in him.  And we seek to be faithful stewards in the many ministries we engage in as a People of his Table.  But all, outwardly religious or not, who show hospitality share in what God seeks from us and are our brothers and sisters in the greater community of creation. 

Let me close with a final learning from Valerie - “People who believe in God do not hold a patent on what is right and good and true. We may think we do, but in doing so, we imitate the Pharisees. We set ourselves above our fellow humans. Most of all, we forget that we are not in charge of the universe.”  And so it is.  Amen.