Christmas: Change is here to stay

Christmas Eve 2008
Isaiah 9:2-7
Ps. 96
Titus 2:11-14
Luke 2:1-20

Christmas Eve is a time to tell old stories --- to thrill at the hearing of the things we know and have heard many times, to recreate in our imagination the trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem, the last-minute accommodations in the stable, the ordinary birth as miraculous as all ordinary births, the angels, the shepherds, the wise men from the east. In my mind, no matter what translation is read, the pictures are the same ones I formed as a child -- the dark, cold night, the brightness of the star, the shepherds on a hill illuminated by the glow of the angels, the little barn full of straw and animals.

The Gospel of Luke is precise in what is described; it seems almost like fact. “In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled. This was the first enrollment, when Quirinius was governor of Syria….” Are we not reading a history text here?

Well, yes and no. Scholars tell us there is “no evidence of one census under Augustus that covered the whole Empire, nor of a …requirement that people be registered in their own cities….” But Caesar Augustus was the emperor, and we do know that the empire wanted its taxes, and to get an accurate accounting for tax purposes, these people had to be counted. If we were hearing this story 2000 years ago, we’d know that that part of the story is true.

I also love this part: “In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night.” We know what they angel says – aren’t we amazed that this great good news comes first to the poorest of the poor, the hard-working shepherds who never get a day off?

“And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host …” “The heavenly host.” If we were hearing this in its original language, we would have heard it like this: “And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly army …” Just what kind of a history are we reading here? This isn’t just a sweet, romantic story; it’s a story told with power – a story of how God acts in history, on behalf of poor people like shepherds, a story of how God takes on big, oppressive political powers like the Roman Empire, how God’s army swoops down among us bringing real peace, real good tidings, real good news for all people – not just the people who would benefit from those taxes levied on the people being counted in that census.

The Christian story is rooted in the life of the body. Christmas is a celebration of the Incarnation of Jesus as God made human, and so this story of God’s interaction with us is inseparable from all of the joyful, painful, and even political experiences of human life.

The truth of this story is found in the ordinary and extraordinary birth of a baby boy, and in these miraculous appearances of angels and shepherds and wise men from the East. No matter how or how often we tell it, the truth lies in trusting the body: For God has trusted the cosmic disclosure of God’s self to a mere human form; with the birth of this babe, the human condition IS God’s condition. And so if God has “trusted the body” to that extent, so may we – trust in the body of the faithful that the stories we continue to tell to each other about God are true. Tonight we tell the true story of the Coming Day of Peace. We tell the true story that Jesus, true God and true man is born. We who are fully aware of what it means to be human, in all or our weakness and vulnerability, hear this story of ultimate vulnerability and weakness in the birth of the Savior, this little babe, who is Christ the Lord.

Christmas 2-B
January 4, 2009
Isaiah 61:10-62:3
Psalm 84:1-8
Ephesians 1:3-6, 15-19a
Luke 2:41-52

Did you read the story in yesterday’s Enterprise? “New survey reveals changes in churches.” It was on page 15, the first page of the “Lifestyle” section.

Just about all of us could read that article and say, hah. So what’s the new news here? We know churches have been changing dramatically over our lifetimes.

How many of you were raised in a different church than this one – than St. Paul’s Church? How many of you were raised in a church different from the Episcopal Church? Or, were you raised in the Anglican Communion but in another country? Were you raised learning the Lord’s Prayer in a language other than English? How many of you, when you were 10 years old, knew that women could be ministers?

That article in yesterday’s Enterprise talked about some of those changes. Religion, one of those things we thought were unchanging, seems to have thrown all the pieces on the game board up in the air, and I don’t think we know exactly where they will be coming down – or if they will ever come down again to anything resembling the stability and security we think “religion” ought to have.

You know, we were wrong in the ‘60s when we thought that it was just the young people, or the Jesus freaks, drifting away from church – that the cultural changes would shake out and when all those hippies and evangelicals would “get it out of their system” and come back to church once they got married and had children. I think any of us who moved from one culture to another, from a different continent or island to this great, huge United States would know how wrong that idea is. Once a culture changes, it changes; in many profound ways, none of us can go home again. Believe me: no matter what kind of church – or no church – you grew up in, no matter where in the world, or in the U.S., you grew up, this church here today is very different from the church or 30, or 20, or even 10 years ago. Check out the article during coffee hour. As a former teacher of mine, who in her young adulthood fled Nazi Germany, said, “Change is here to stay.” Imagine, then, what impact the visit of the young Jesus to the Temple had on … his parents? On the Temple leaders and teachers? On the people who first heard this story, this biographical snippet from the young life of the man people had come to know as Teacher, as Leader, as the Crucified one, as the Risen Lord?

On every score, what Jesus does in this story upsets the status quo. This little story, coming at the end of Chapter 2 in the Gospel of Luke, is the last of the “infancy narratives” –the last bit of evidence that Luke puts out that this Jesus, this baby boy born in a stable to a poor mother, whose birth was announced by an army of angels to poor shepherds in the fields that he would be the true king, the true bringer of peace, the true one to ensure the prosperity of humankind, was the real thing. His birth heralded the new age, the new world order, the end of the empire of violence and military might and over-taxed exploitation.

This little story is also the first time we read of Jesus’ public ministry. He is a teacher, a proclaimer of the true word of God. Even at age 12 – he is the one who knows that he is to do what God would have him do – that he is both a profound and complete break with the past as well as the fulfillment of what God has been trying to get across to humanity since the beginning of time. When he leaves the Temple with his parents, he will not return until a few days before his death on the cross, when he denounces the Temple leaders for their corrupt rule and the cruel taxes the poor cannot pay.

We might want religion to be something comfortable and stable and never-changing. We might want choirs of angels to lull us to sleep. But a fierce, hot wind is blowing, like the one that blew Jesus from Nazareth to Jerusalem thousands of years ago. The wind is that Spirit of God, restless and powerful, blowing in this new world, forcing us to pay attention to what God is calling us to be and to do now, here, in this place, with these people. “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” Jesus asked his bewildered parents. Don’t we sympathize with them? How can things change so quickly?

For the people who first read the Gospel of Luke, that change was long overdue. At the beginning of Chapter 2, this boy was born under the thumb of the brutal Roman Empire, yet heralded by an army mightier than all their legions. Now, here, at the end of the same chapter, he is wise enough to tell the teachers in the Temple what the ancient texts mean. At the end of these two chapters, in which Luke tells us just where this Jesus came from, it’s like he is saying to us, hold on to your seats. The best is yet to come. Change is here to stay.

Advent - at last!

Advent 1-B/Nov. 30, 2008

Isaiah 64:1-9

Psalm 80

1 Corinthians 1:1-9

Mark 13:24-37

Fear.

If popular culture is any measure, we love to indulge in fear.

How many of you ever watch those ghastly made-for-TV dramas about child murderers and avenging mothers, or those real-life video drug busts, or any number of those truly psychotic and violent fantasies that can be found on network television on any night of the week? Apparently a lot of us do, or TV networks wouldn't be able to sell advertising time to air them.

We spin a web of fear around us, and in so doing we create monsters. We become like Frankenstein: we have created something out of the imagination and skill and power of our own culture that terrifies us, and we cannot pull ourselves out of that terror.

We fear what we cannot control; ultimately, of course, we fear death: as the Gospel for today says, we do not know when the time will come. We do not know what to expect or when to expect it. When we fear death, we fear everything that reminds us of it: we fear loss and clutch at the familiar for security; we fear change and throw all our energy into keeping things the same.

Our thoughts in Advent are guided by lessons from the Bible that focus on the End Times. Today’s lessons are full of scary thoughts about the End of Days. A thousand years ago, at the end of the first millennium, as well as just a few years ago, at the end of the second millennium, the air was full of such talk.

As the year 200 approached, people flocked to Jerusalem convinced that they were characters from the Bible, and that God had called them there to witness these End Times. Even in normal times, like this year, there may be 150 cases a year of what is called the Jerusalem syndrome. Some tourists arrive mentally disturbed and become convinced that they are biblical figures, King David, or Jesus, or John the Baptist or the Virgin Mary. They might think they are in a living version of the “Jesse Tree” that is depicted on our leaflet – that they themselves are related to this holy family of Jesse, David, Mary and Jesus. Others come to Jerusalem with visions of the end of the world. Not all the victims of this identified syndrome arrive in a disturbed state but they feel compelled to don bed sheets from their hotels and take to the street to preach rambling sermons. Word has it that Jerusalem is bracing in this season of Advent for a “Sudden surge of Saviors. “ ‘Tis the season of anticipation, the season of fear, change is ever upon us.

What goes on in far-off Jerusalem may not seem relevant to us here, but think of

this: we saw splashed across our televisions this week the most horrific scenes and sounds coming from Mumbai, India. Terrorists broke into hotels and killed people who were Americans or Westerners or rich or Jewish. This was a terrible version of the end of times – only this time with no righteous ruler came down from the heavens. Something terrible, but something far away.

What brought the fear home to me was the image of a two-year-old boy, in the arms of his caregiver, fleeing his home where his parents, a Jewish rabbi and his wife, were being held hostage. The child is now in Jerusalem, with his grandparents. The terrible scene from the other side of the world was brought home to them, the fear of the end times made immediate. In this world of instant communication, of pictures sent round the world in a flash, we are never far from images that disturb or frighten us. The world is moving too fast.

Change is profoundly difficult to deal with. We are caught off guard, and confronted with the possibility of loss and even death, and that is where Advent comes in. Jesus in today's gospel talks about the most horrible things: about the explosion of the universe, about suffering, about anxiety and sleeplessness. The community to whom Mark addressed these words of Jesus was a community who saw their friends and families persecuted and killed by Roman authorities. Paul's letter to the Corinthians was addressed to people who were struggling with the cost of what it meant to be Christian, with giving up the pleasures and conveniences of pagan society to be ostracized and possibly killed for this new gospel.

Advent is about not putting faith in the things we have created, no matter how beautiful or comforting or technologically superior. Advent is not about security in this world. Advent is about putting faith in the one thing that will never change: God.

During Advent we focus on Emmanuel, God with us. God has been with us throughout history, throughout times of more disturbing and violent change than even this one.

God is with us today, speaking to us through the things that challenge us and discomfort us.

God is with us as the poor, the hungry, the imprisoned, the sick, as last week's gospel told us.

And God is with us into the future, giving us hope that even these things which we fear the most are in God's hands.

O come, Emmanuel.

Visit us during this season of deepening darkness,

and shed enough light to scatter our fears.

Advent 2-B/Dec. 7, 2008

Isaiah 40:1-11

Psalm 85

2 Peter 3 : 8-15a,18

Mark 1:1-8

We wait for a new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home.

I’m going to take a risk here, to talk about something we all may not share: parenthood. I’m hoping, though, that even if you are not a mother or a father, that you can resonate with the hopes I had – that I think many parents have – at the birth of their children.

The hopes I had were hopes that the world my child would grow up in would be a wonderful place. I hoped my child would not be terrified by war, famine or disaster. I hoped my child could run and play in green fields and breathe clean air. I hoped for a world where there was enough of everything to go around. On a more mundane level, I hoped for a world free from junk food and commercial television. Whatever I hoped for – and I imagine you have a list of your own hopes, as well – it was a version of the new heavens and the new earth. And in a way, the experience of life now, in the world as it is, is the experience of the exile. With my hopes for that new heavens and that new earth, living in this earth seems kind of like a displacement. There is a loss, when life does not turn out the way I thought it would.

The prophet Isaiah was speaking to people in exile – the people of Israel living in captivity in Babylon. How could they worship God in that foreign land? How could they know who they were as God’s people when the Babylonian powers defined them as slaves, as captives, as homeless, as poor, as non-citizens, as “less than”? So look at what the prophet Isaiah says to these displaced, grieving persons. The prophet Isaiah speaks God’s words of comfort to them in the middle of their deep dis-comfort. In their current experience of wilderness, God reminds them of their first highway in the wilderness, when God led them out of Egypt into the Promised Land, the journey of God’s chosen people. God agrees with them that the reality of life may not change – “the people are grass, the grass withers, the flower fades” – but God brings something more: a herald of hope. The exiles are defined not by the Babylonians who bad-mouth them, but by God who stands up for them, God who rules with a mighty arm – but who then embraces them like a tender shepherd.

What can we learn from these people in their long-ago exile? We who may feel a little displaced and out of step in the world we live in?

We can know that this ragged space of our lives is where God meets us. Here. Now. The world may not make sense at times, but that craziness does not define us; God does. Because we know we are God’s, we can resist the things that make us mad, things that we know are out of whack, things that are unjust and cruel and crazy.

Because we know we are God’s and we know that God meets us here, in this place, we know that whatever we do to make this world a better place, the place we know God would want it to be, will not be in vain. Jeremiah, the other prophet of Israel’s exile, put it this way: “Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile … for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” Here. Now. In this world that does not live up to our expectations. In this place where we feel out of place. This is where God speaks to us, and this is where God expects us to flourish.

When Mark the gospeller told this story of John the Baptist, he knew these themes would resonate with his audience. He knew that they would understand what it meant to be called by God out of the wilderness. He knew they would be familiar with the strange messages prophets would bring. He knew they were people who felt out of place in their own world, people who knew the world was out of whack and unjust, people longing for a new heavens and a new earth. John the Baptist came out of the wilderness to people who felt exiled in their own countryside and said, like Isaiah, Here is your God!

What do we make of John the Baptist? Does that wilderness from which he hails make any sense to us today? I think John’s message, which is unsettling and disconcerting, may not make sense to people who are satisfied with the status quo of this world. It may not be a message of hope to people who like the world the way it is. But to those of us who have higher hopes, who seek a new heavens and a new earth, this stranger with his rough clothes and his peculiar diet, brings very good news indeed.

Jesus' bottom line

Proper 29-A;Nov. 23, 2008

St. Paul’s

Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24;Psalm 95:1-7a

Ephesians 1:15-23; Matthew 25:31-46

Next Sunday is the First Sunday in Advent. This is Thanksgiving week. Christmas decorations are being hawked – rather frenetically – in the stores. No matter how old we are or how many times we pass through the seasons, it is always a surprise and a mark of how time itself seems to accelerate year by year. We close down yet another year in the church cycle. This is the Sunday of Christ the King. This is a Sunday of apocalypse, of mystery, of judgment.

Jesus completes his big trilogy today. Two weeks ago, with the story of the wise and foolish bridesmaids, we were warned to be ready, to keep alert, to keep our wicks trimmed and our lamps full. Last week we were warned to invest – that the master would come to us demanding an accounting of what we had done with what we had been given. Both of those stories took us off guard a bit – ready for what? Invest – how? What an appropriate story last week’s was for today’s economic market: just what is a prudent investment in volatile times? Just what does the master expect from us? Today we find out.

Today we complete our year’s readings of the Gospel of Matthew and Jesus tells of the final judgment. This is Jesus’ last teaching story before he is crucified. This is the story of the King, Christ the King returning to earth. This Shepherd divides the sheep from the goats, the ones who got it from the ones who didn’t, the ones who invested wisely from the ones who just buried their treasure, and their hearts and their heads, in the sand. This is Jesus’ story of the Last Judgment, and we are held accountable.

So what is it that Jesus wants us, his followers, to do? Are we supposed to say the Lord's Prayer every morning when we get up? Read the Bible cover to cover every three years? Go to church every week, take communion, teach, preach, evangelize? Bring people to church? Increase our faith or increase our pledge? What does it mean to act like Jesus? To set ourselves up as the judge of what is Christian and what is not Christian for other people?

I was told a story about a group of Christians who had come to the final judgment, they were gathered as a great crowd outside the gates of Heaven. They were joyful in their praise of the mighty God they serve. The air was full of loud alleluias, shouts of praise, Praise the Lord! The joy was intoxicating and growing louder and louder as the gatekeeper came down to the gate directed by the King of Heaven himself, King Jesus. As the Gate keeper approached in one direction a group of known sinners came in from behind and were first to come through the gate and then the shouts of joy suddenly and joltingly stopped and from somewhere within the crowd of the joyous good and pious alleluia-shouting people came a loud protest. "Who do they think they are? Coming in here like that!" The Gate of Heaven slammed shut with a mighty crash leaving the crowd on the outside.

That is what this last and final story that Jesus tells is about. Have you fed the hungry? Have you given water to the thirsty? Have you given shelter to the homeless, clothing to the needy? Have you visited the sick? the prisoner? Just what have you done?

This is what the story of the bridesmaids is pointing to – we are supposed to be ready when someone comes to us needing something important. This is how we are to invest – and not merely to invest in a modest way – giving a little here, a little there, skimming off the top so our own pot is not diminished. The master expects us to take all the abundance we have been given and to take big risks: to give profusely, abundantly, extravagantly to those in need.

The king who comes on this day isn’t interested in the niceties of social behavior, is not interested in how well we provide for ourselves, take care of ourselves, feel sorry for ourselves. The king cares only about the bottom line, and this is it: the hungry, the thirsty, the needy, the imprisoned, the sick. What have we done for them, with what we have been given?

Look: God has been good to us. We have blessings in abundance, and at the last judgment we will be called to account for how we have invested these blessings. Were you ready, Jesus will ask. What risks have you taken?

Risk-taking in; prudence out

Proper 28 A; Nov. 16, 2008

St. Paul’s

Judges 4:1-7; Psalm 123

1 Thessalonians 5:1-11; Matthew 25:14-30

Times are bad.

Times are bad in ancient Israel. The people are living in the Promised Land, delivered there by Moses and Joshua, brought there by God, but the people are not living up to the promise. They can’t get it together. Enemies are attacking. Leaders falter and fail. The people live in hardship and difficulty.

Sound familiar? Times are bad these days, too, even for us living in our own nation blessed with abundant resources – our own “Promised Land.” With mortgages failing, banks closing, jobs ending, drug deals and shootings outside our homes – times are bad. We have elected leaders, who we hope will get us out of this morass – I was thrilled to hear the cheer go up in the dining room the day after the election. By all measures, everyone who comes to eat at St. Paul’s Table is at the bottom of society, working hard in a difficult world just to make ends meet, and for the cheer to erupt there – terrific! That is a sign of real hope.

But you know what? Times are still bad. When will they ever end? What is the way out?

I’m going to let you in on a secret: God has other ideas about how the world is supposed to work. That is a secret, because it gets so covered up by so much other stuff: by greed, violence, power, exploitation, lies, jealousy, selfishness. Deep down in yourself, you know this secret, and you know what covers it up in your life, too. You know what darkness prevents you from seeing what God intends for you and for our world.

Paul does not have to remind the people in Thessalonica that times are bad. “You do not need to have anything written to you,” he writes. The people in Thessalonica know the precariousness of existence, how they delude themselves that they live in peace and security, when the all too real fear is of sudden destruction, of a thief in the night, of no escape. The people of Thessalonica know that the world they live in is dark indeed.

So what do we make of this parable from the 25th chapter of Matthew? This strange and difficult parable where God seems to be playing the part of a cruel and dictatorial tyrant, seemingly as unforgiving of poor financial management as any banker coming down hard on someone who cannot pay her mortgage?

As we try to make sense of this complicated and weird story, let us remember that the gospels, although accounts of the life of Jesus, were written down by people some time after Jesus’ death and resurrection. They were written down by people living in the joy and knowledge and reality of Easter – they are people of the resurrection, for sure. But they were living in bad times. The community who put together the Gospel of Matthew were city dwellers, probably from Antioch, a densely populated city, full of poor people; a cosmopolitan and diverse city, full of people from across the world – people of different cultures and languages, people crowded into a city where there is not enough good housing, not enough work to keep enough food on the table. The current reality of the world does NOT work for them. Why, then, do they still believe in Jesus? In the resurrection? In the Good News? Why do the people Paul writes to in Thessalonica, whom he rightly describes as knowing they have darkness all around them, believe him when he calls them children of the light, children of the day, people who are encouraged and hopeful and alert?

The Bible is written by and for people for whom times are as bad as can be imagined; why, then, are they people of hope?

The Bible is written by and for people who know that if they play the game by the rules the world sets down, they will lose, big time. That’s what this strange parable is about. The slaves do the bidding of the master, and they invest his money by the ways of the world. Some of the slaves are better investors than others; one is extraordinarily prudent, and just buries the money, keeps it just safe enough to return it to the master in tact. This cautious slave even has the courage to confront the master, to call this cruel system for the harsh and fear-mongering system it is. Yet the prudent slave, the one we think did safe thing with the master’s money, the one who took no risks, is called worthless and thrown into the outer darkness. What did the prudent slave forget? What did the prudent slave do wrong?

The prudent slave believed the world. The prudent slave believed he had to hide the money, to hoard it in darkness. The prudent slave believed there was no risk worth taking, that the best he could do was come out even. The prudent slave got caught up in the status quo; the prudent slave followed the rules of the world of scarcity and fear. The prudent slave forgot that God was the God of abundance. Like the bridesmaids in last week’s reading, who forgot to get the oil from the overflowing, never-ending source, the prudent slave thought there was only so much and no more. The prudent slave didn’t get the memo. Wake up. Come out of the darkness. Be alert.

This church, this tiny community, is a place of light. Just by being here we resist the darkness around us, protected, like St. Paul says, by the breastplate of faith and love. We wear our helmet of hope proudly. God has given us a treasure that we are investing boldly, in contrast to the rest of the world that tells us we should move. We should not be here, they say. We should forget the corner of Warren and Pleasant. We should have a church where the nice people live in a nice neighborhood.

But no: like the people who first heard the Gospel of Matthew, here we are, in the only place where that Gospel makes sense. It is only when we risk all that we have, when we invest all that we have, when we become who God truly wants us to be, that we know God’s abundance. This place, which the “powers that be” have abandoned and buried and forgotten, is where God’s light shines. Well done, God says, to us; well done. Now, do more.

Watching for the Word and Wisdom of God

Proper 27-A; Nov. 9, 2008
St. Paul’s
Wisdom of Solomon 6:12-16; Psalm 70
1 Thessalonians 4:13-18; Matthew 25:1-13

When Jesus tells us a parable, it is upsetting. When Jesus tells us a parable, he is shaking up the order of the story. We’re in the 25th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, for crying out loud. The real story is the Easter story, or rather the march to Jerusalem, the passion, the cross, the death, the resurrection. That is the Jesus story, the big narrative of Christianity. When Jesus throws us these curve balls of parables, it shakes us all up. Gets us off track, off balance, off message.

Unless.

Unless we’re not really paying attention to what the story is really about.

You have to admit that today’s parable of 10 bridesmaids is a little odd. It says nothing about wedding customs of 1st century Palestine, or of the ancient Near East – this is not a story drawn from fact.
Yet. This story does come from the end of Jesus’ ministry. This 25th chapter of Matthew contains three important, big stories. They are full of urgency – Jesus is pulling out all the stops to get our attention – to pull what he is doing down to our level. God is acting in history, yes – but God is also acting in history down here, among the ordinary people of this world.

So there are three important, career-topping parables Jesus tells – this one today, and the next two over the next two weeks – and the message for this one is … what?

Be prepared. Be watchful. Keep awake. Open your eyes. Figure out what is going on. Be wise.
Wisdom: it’s been around a long time – Wisdom was present at the creation. Wisdom is a characteristic of the Word of God, of the power of creation. The creation is full of Wisdom; it’s been there from the beginning. But we have to pay attention to find this Wisdom. We have to rise early. We have to be vigilant. We have to focus our minds and our hearts. That’s discernment. We have to be prepared, if we are to find the Wisdom of God.

There is a lot going on in the world, and it is easy to be distracted. Televisions, radios, Ipods, billboards, train whistles, sirens, telephones, chatter, bells, whistles – not to mention falling stock markets, collapsing housing values, foreclosures, jobs lost, bills unpaid – the whole litany of anxieties and worries. This is the world of business as usual, where the business of business tries to rule our lives. Where the dominant powers of greed and fear and violence try to fill our every waking hour.

It wasn’t all that different for the people Jesus was trying to reach, the people to whom Jesus first told this parable of the bridesmaids. Keep awake! He said. Be watchful. Be vigilant. The world will lull you to sleep, and now, right now, you need to pay attention to what is going on. You need to discern the movement of God in these times. You need to seek that ancient Wisdom of God, and it cannot be found if you doze off, or if you’re distracted by all this other stuff.

It’s kind of easy to read these parables of Jesus as being about some far off distant time, about God coming to reign in the by-and-by. Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians describes the “rapture,” the archangels’ call, the sound of the trumpet, meeting the Lord in the clouds. Is that what we are to be prepared for? Something terrible and mighty, but something far, far off?

I think when Jesus tells a parable, he is talking about something right close to home, right close to the here and now. Be watchful, bridesmaids, not for some far off, distant event, but for something that is happening right now. Keep awake, right now, for God is doing a new thing, right now. The world you live in – the world of 1st century Palestine – might be bad, you might be suffering under the Roman Empire, taxes outrageous, work unending – you might think those rich and powerful guys have the upper hand in your life – but think again: God is working here and now. God is doing a new thing, here and now. This is how you’re supposed to live in the here and now, Jesus says. Be vigilant. Stay awake. Pay attention. You don’t want to miss it. God is coming. God is here.

Occasionally, even in the world of politics, big things break through. I think the drone of politics can lull us to sleep, and cause us to think nothing will ever change. But occasionally, a big thing breaks through even there, and the election of Barack Obama is such a big thing. And in the context of this big thing, this parable of Jesus’ is for us. It forces us to ask: what is going on here? Where can we find the Wisdom of God in this great movement of the body politic? Be awake. Be vigilant. Where can we find the Wisdom of God in the movement of our lives?

You can meet them in school, or in lanes, or at sea

Proper 26-A/All Saints

Nov. 2, 2008

St. Paul’s

Revelation 7:9-17; 1 Thessalonians 2:9-13; Matthew 23:1-12

Good morning, Saints!

Years ago, when Tim was sharing his church with a Pentecostal Holiness congregation, I was struck by the simplicity and directness of this way of greeting the congregation: Good morning, Saints!

It gets right to the point. And today, on this day when we remember All the Saints, we are making a new one: in a few minutes, Marilyn will be baptized.

All Saints Day is a time to look back: who are the saints in our lives? In our world? The first lesson asks, and answers that question for us:

"Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?" … "These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. For this reason they are before the throne of God, and worship him day and night within his temple, and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them. They will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat; for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes."

It is this great chain of being, Marilyn, that you enter today. Saints who witness, to God’s great glory, and to great human tragedy. Saints who struggle for justice and for the freedom and dignity of every human being. Saints who resist Satan and all the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God. Saints who sing and dance, who weep and mourn. Saints who trust and love, who follow and obey, who pray and serve. Welcome, Marilyn. All the saints of God rejoice that you are with us here today.

Marilyn lives here in Brockton, but she comes to us from Nigeria. And soon she will be going back to Nigeria, for a little while, for a great celebration: Marilyn is about to be married – to an Anglican pastor. During coffee hour you can find out more of Marilyn’s story. But the important thing is that today, we are standing here for all of Marilyn’s beloved family. We are standing here for all the saints in Nigeria, who are cheering her on, and waiting for her to come to their congregation.

Another phrase popped into my mind reading these lessons: Word. Have you heard young people say that? It’s another way of saying, Yes! Sure! Right! Right on! Ain’t that the truth! Word!

St. Paul, in his letter to the brothers and sisters in Thessalonica, talks about the Word, and gives the saints kind of a blueprint for what this Word means for Christian living.

“You received the Word of God,” Paul says. The Word is not something you have to work to get. It is the freely given gift of God. And, Paul says, “You heard it from us.” We receive that gift of God’s Word from the lips of other people, people who have heard it before we have, people who have come into our lives in all sorts of ways – people, like the hymn says, who come to us in school, or in lanes or at sea, or in church or on trains or in shops or at tea. The Word always comes to us from others, from people who have been saints to us, and Word! We are the ones to give it to those who need to hear it. That’s what Paul means when he says that God’s Word is at work in us believers. No matter who we are, or what work we do, or how far we travel, or how simply we lead our lives, the Word is at work through us.

But: the Word of God can work through us only if we let it. The Word of God can’t be heard by others unless we proclaim it. The Word of God can’t be seen by others if we keep our doors closed. The Word of God can’t be felt by others if we think we have to pick and choose who we will tell it to, or who we will invite in – or if we don’t invite anybody in.

Saints! We are the Word we have received. Now, let us act like we believe it.

How much can we do? How much do we need?

Proper 25-A Oct. 26, 2008

St. Paul’s Deuteronomy 34:1-12

Psalm 90 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8

Matthew 22:34-46

In these recent days, with unimaginable sums of money being discussed, bandied about, lost, traded, borrowed, given, pledged – 700 billion dollars here, 250 million dollars there – I find myself frequently turning to the person next to me and asking, what IS money after all? Where does all this money come from? Is money real? Or is it all a shell game? Who can keep your eye on the ball?

The newspapers are full of stories of the anxieties of the times. Pieces of this huge financial puzzle seem to be crashing down around us – people are being thrown out of their homes, even if they pay their rent, because the people who own the houses are too much in debt to pay for their upkeep, or their taxes, or their mortgages. Far too many people, it seems, thought they could play the angles, rob Peter to pay Paul, keep this plate spinning while putting several others in motion at the same time, and now it is all crashing down like those jugglers we used to see on TV – when I was young, on shows like Ed Sullivan or Captain Kangaroo, back in the dark ages when simple things like that on TV amused us for hours.

This multi-tasking culture seems to have gotten a little out of hand, and people are beginning to notice the toll it is taking on us as individuals, and on us as a society. I’ve noticed several times recently, in the press, mention of studies that say people just can’t do more than one thing at a time. There are those terrible stories of young people sending text messages – this requires using two hands to type and look at the words you are typing on a tiny phone keyboard – while driving – and then losing control of their cars and crashing. Yet even talking on the phone while driving is distracting and dangerous. How often do people answer e-mail while talking on the phone, or students do homework while watching TV, downloading music, checking multiple facebook pages? Really, the scientists are telling us, it cannot be done. With all this stuff, this stimulation, these constant demands and interruptions, we lose concentration. Our brains and our bodies are not designed to work well with this frenzy of speed and stress. The way we are made, we can only focus on one or two things at a time. Multi-tasking does not make us more efficient: just the opposite. We are fragmented and unable to do what we are doing well. “As our minds fill with noise,” one scientist wrote, “the brain gradually loses its capacity to attend fully and gradually to anything,” inducing in us “a constant low level of panic and guilt.”[i]

The big international financial managers feel this; we feel this, even in our ordinary daily lives. Multi-tasking and its discontents are in the air we breathe.

Today’s gospel is for us:

When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. "Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?"

That question cuts through all the noise, doesn’t it? In the face of all that is around us, Teacher, all the confusion and crashing that affects even us little people here, what does God want us to do?

The Gospels present us with the picture of a changing world. The old understanding of faith in God – follow all the many laws, listen to the authorities like scribes and Pharisees – the ones who symbolically sat in Moses’ seat – is being challenged by this one particular teacher, this Jesus, who seems to embody in his person all the hope and good news and promise of God, the God who has been made known through the law and the prophets. Whom do we follow? We can hear the concern in the voices of the people: if we follow Jesus, do we have to abandon everything we have known about God up to now?

From the midst of all these questions and confusions and options and interpretations, Jesus breaks through with remarkable simplicity:

"`You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: `You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."

What Jesus is saying is, Keep your faith where it has always been: with God. As he spars with those religious leaders trying to entrap him into making some big mistake, he makes it clear that his faith is with God, and with the essentials that God has always, always, always been trying to get across to us. This is the big thing that everything hangs from. This is the start, the first, the banner headline screaming across the top of the newspaper:

Love God.

Love your neighbor as yourself.

Everything starts with this. Anything else is distraction, multi-tasking with no result, mere interruptions that take us away from giving ourselves fully to the God who loves us and wants us to love back, and wants us to love all these other people whom God loves, too. In this ever-widening circle of care and concern lies our treasure, our heart, our true home.

The newspaper article I read on the high cost of multi-tasking ends with this:

So the next time the phone rings and a good friend is on the line, try this trick: Sit on the couch. Focus on the conversation. Don’t jump up, no matter how much you feel the need to clean the kitchen. It seems weird, but stick with it. You, too, can learn the art of single-tasking.[ii]

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. You, too, can learn the art of single-tasking.

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[i] “Multitasking can make you lose … um … focus” by Alina Tugend, The New York Times, Oct. 25, 2008, p. B7.

[ii] Ibid.