Advent 4-C Dec. 20, 2009 Micah 5:2-5a Canticle 15: The Magnificat Hebrews 10:5-10 Luke 1:39-55
People of faith are viewed by many people in this society as kind of kooky. People of faith are just not realistic. “Religious do-gooders” as one of our elected representatives said, dismissively, of us here at St. Paul’s and of our faith and hope that we can make this neighborhood a better place to live and work. People of faith are just not rational, some people would say. They just don’t have their feet on the ground.
Mary and Elizabeth must be seen as the ultimate kooky “people of faith.” What could be less realistic than the words Mary sings when she meets up with her cousin, Elizabeth? Casting mighty from their seats of power? She, a pregnant, poor, unmarried girl? Filling the hungry with good things? Her cousin Elizabeth is elderly, and is now pregnant for the first time in her life. These are just ordinary people, not miracle workers; how much more delusional can they be?
These two women, and the two baby boys they carry in their wombs, come to us today in the line of prophets. Mary and Elizabeth came from people who read their Bibles carefully. They lived on the fringes of society, where they could see the things that were wrong, where they could see how poor and powerless people were treated. They knew their Bibles well enough to know that God promised that the world would be a better place. They stood in a long ling of prophets who listened carefully to God, and who looked carefully at the world around them, and said, Wait a minute here. There are things going on in this world that are not what God intends. When Mary and Elizabeth listened for God, they heard the great and powerful swooshing sounds of angels’ wings, the Holy Spirit coming upon them, overshadowing and empowering them to see the world as God sees it, and to speak and to act.
And all the world is grateful that these two kooky women, these people of faith, and hope, these attentive listeners to God, said yes.
Meister Eckhart, a popular and mystical teacher of the Middle Ages, said this about Mary: “We are all meant to be mothers of God.” To be mothers of God in the sense of being a kooky person of faith like she was. To be a person who listens closely for the swoosh of those mighty Holy Spirit wings, and who looks closely at the world around her. We are all meant to be mothers of God when we say yes to the promises God has in store for us, and for the world God has created. We are meant to be mothers of God when we open ourselves to be changed by what God has in store for us, when we do indeed go forward in faith, not exactly sure that what God would have us do is reasonable, or socially acceptable, but we do it nonetheless. To be a mother of God is to be willing to be a kooky person of faith.
There is something curious about this song that Mary sings, that we will soon say together. It is in the words of a young woman, talking about the promises God has made or the world, but it is spoken from the point of view of something that has already happened. God has already overthrown the mighty and given the hungry enough to eat. God has already pulled the downtrodden up and sent away the rich people, who were not willing to participate in this way that God would have the world work.
This kooky person of faith seems to think that all those things have already happened, and that the birth of the son she carries is part of this ongoing process of healing the world, of bringing it back to the world God created it to be.
What a kooky imagination this Mary has, to listen to the swooshing, swooping powerful wings of the Holy Spirit, and to begin to see the world as God sees it – to take it on faith, as it were, and to begin to live her life, now, in the real world here and now, believing it to be true.
“We are all meant to be mothers of God.” Kooky. Hopeful. Knowing that the world could be, and is, a better place, and saying yes to God, when God shows us how this could be so.
The news this week has been filled with horrific images of the effects of global warming: melting icebergs, flooded deltas, thousands of displaced people in places like Bangladesh which are only give us a hint of the millions who will be washed out of their homes as the planet warms and the water levels rise. The leaders of the nations now meeting in Copenhagen seem at a stalemate: the bottom line vs. the lives of millions? What then should we do?
Pick an issue, any issue. It seems like nearly everything we face in the world is overwhelming. Global warming. This neighborhood, how messy and blighted it is. This church, how many leaks it continually seems to spring. Household bills, how can we ever make ends meet. Poverty. Hunger. Homelessness. Drug addiction. Gang violence. Yow. Let’s just hunker down and forget it all, because, really, what can we do? What can we possibly do?
I think we need John the Baptist. How lucky then we get him this Advent for two weeks in a row.
John was a powerful preacher, whose bold words attracted many people around him. The message at first read seems harsh: Repent, you brood of vipers! That does not exactly sound like a sermon that would pack them in, yet …
The power of John’s message is that he described the world as it was: it is a world turned upside down. The world of 1st century Palestine was ruled by corrupt and brutal leaders at the top, and put-upon peasants at the bottom. John preached a message that began to allow the people to “unforget” the promises of God, to “unforget” that the world is God’s, and that God rules with justice and compassion and mercy, to “unforget” that even poor people and old people and disabled people have dignity. The people at the top definitely want the people to forget those kinds of messages, to forget that religious faith in God has something to do with life in the here and now and not only in the by and by, that the beneficiaries of the abundance of God’s creation are the people of God, not just the fatcats at the top.
The mists of history make it easy for us in 2009 to forget that the world of John the Baptist was so messy. It was so long ago that we forget that politics and war and economics and all those things that consume our 24-7 news cycle were the ever-present realities for the people who came to listen to what John had to say. The rose-colored glasses we often put on when we read the Bible make us think that words like “repent” have to do only with personal sins. The powers-that-be in our world certainly benefit if we, too, forget that the promises of God mean that there IS enough to go around, that the world CAN be a peaceful and beautiful place, that EVERYONE is entitled, by virtue of being a child of God, to a home to live in and food to eat and a life of dignity and meaning and worth.
Once you get to thinking about it, it is overwhelming. What then should we do?
When the people asked John that question, his response was direct, and simple. Share. Be honest. Be content with what you have. God promises us abundance and life and enough to go around: start living every day as though you believed it. It’s kind of like the old proverb that says if your house is messy, then this is where you start, here, at your feet, and clean this area that you can reach. If the world is overwhelming, and out of control, and we have no power to change those big things, then start where we are: if we have two coats, we share one. If we have enough food for our family, then share with a family who has none. John acknowledges that the people who come to hear his message live in the world: they are not just “do-gooders” but tax collectors, soldiers – people not known for being honest or generous, people caught on the bottom rungs of that upside down world of violence and greed. Be content, John says to those people. Be honest. Don’t cheat. Don’t steal from people who have less than you do. John’s big, grand, global message comes down to these simple instructions. The kingdom of heaven is coming – and this is how we should start to live, now.
What then should WE do? How would John the Baptist answer that question for you, today?
Advent 2-C Dec. 6, 2009 Baruch 5:1-9 Luke 1: 1:68-79 Philippians 1:3-11 Luke 3:1-6
“The Word of God came to a nothing son of a nobody in a god-forsaken place.” *
That is really what St. Luke means in this passage about John the Baptist. The first few sentences of our gospel passage for today are all about the rich and famous people of the day, the important and powerful people, the beautiful people, people with a lot to lose. It is important to Luke to place this story of John the Baptist, and what he says about the coming of Jesus, in the political and social context of the day. John the Baptist and Jesus lived in a particular time and place, with particular people in charge – a place of empire and military domination and of a powerful religious ruling class: John the Baptist and Jesus lived lives that were subject to these forces and these powerful actors. AND they were nobodies: “The Word of God came to a nothing son of a nobody in a god-forsaken place.”
The Word of God came to this nothing son of a nobody because the “somebodies” could not be trusted with this Good News. The “somebodies” like the Emperor Tiberias and Pontius Pilate and Herod and Philip and Lysanias and Annas and Caiaphas all had a lot to lose if this Word of God entrusted to this unknown wilderness-wanderer ever got out. In this world of “Haves”, the Word of God came to the “Have-Nots.”
The verses we read today in place of the psalm are the verses that John’s father sings when the boy is born. It is a song of hope: it comes from the past, and looks to the future. It comes from the past, because it is full of the imagery of the Jewish people. It is full of how they understand how God acts in the world, in human history, and what God has promised to the people. For the Jewish people, the world is turned upside down. Instead of a world ruled by God’s justice, we live in a world ruled by corrupt or at best flawed leaders. Instead of living the lives God wants us to live – lives of honesty, compassion, prayer, service – we live lives far from God, lives of fear, addiction, selfishness, anger. The world God created, and the world God wants, is turned upside down. As Zechariah’s little baby boy John would eventually say, “Repent! Turn around! Leave those stupid, wicked, death-dealing ways of life behind.”
Zechariah’s song is also a song of the future: “You, my child, shall be called the prophet of the Most High.” That upside-down world is about to be righted. John, this little baby boy now in his father’s arms, will lead the way.
There is a Hebrew word that is very important here: Tikkun. It means “repair,” and it is often used in the phrase, Tikkun olam, to repair the world. Now this Tikkun is a religious concept, a theological word, but it not something that God alone does: it is something in which we participate with God. This upside-down world is in desperate need of repair, and John the Baptist calls out to us from the wilderness that our repentance is the first step to take in that repair. Our repentance – our turning away from things we do that hurt ourselves, or the people we love, or the neighbors we live near, or the city we live in, or the planet we live on – our repentance from all those things that are dark and painful and destructive is the first step toward preparing the Way of the Lord, preparing for the coming of God with us, Emmanuel. Now, I don’t want to imply that Jews are just “closet Christians,” but so much of what we Christians know to be true is right there, embedded in those Hebrew words: Emmanuel means “God with us.” Get ready, John the Baptist says. God is coming to be with us. The world as we know it will be turned upside down: valleys filled, mountains brought down, crooked, bumpy, pot-hole-strewn paths will be made straight and true, and nobodies like you and me will walk in peace on our King’s Highways.
Well now, some people might think. If God is so all-powerful, how come we still have to read about prophecy? How come the descendants of those power-brokers like the Emperor Tiberias, or Pontius Pilate, or Herod, are still making our lives miserable?
You might also ask, why then do we sin? We do we keep getting angry and doing stupid things, or fall off the various wagons of discipline we try to follow in our lives? Probably because sin and greed and fear are as much a part of what it means to be human as is love and generosity and courage. No matter how hard we try, we seem to spend a good chunk of our time in the wilderness.
I think that is what the wilderness symbolizes in the bible, the wilderness as the place that is rough, and hard to live in, the place of struggle and deprivation, the place of testing – and yet also the place where the people of Israel heard the Word of God, drank the water from the rock, ate the manna from heaven, followed the pillar of light in the darkness that led them to the promised land. From the wilderness came that nothing son of a nobody, bringing to us who dwell in darkness this precious Good News: God’s tender compassion will break on us like the dawn, and the world, indeed, will be turned upside down. Come. You will see.
Sunday, December 19 at 4:00 p.m. St. Paul's Church
The Rt. Rev. Roy Cederholm, presiding and preaching
Advent
-- Kate Huey
St. Paul's WIndows
Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died!
The reactions I get when I tell people of the decision to close St. Paul's Church begin with shock, move into sadness, and then go different places.
Some people shake there heads in recognition that the this has been hard work we have been doing. Others feel the sadness come back from years ago, when other crises brought the congregation to a similar time of decision. Some feel relieved, others deeply disappointed, still others hopeful, that without the burden of maintenance and upkeep that comes with the blessing of a big, beautiful build, the Episcopal Church can thrive in new ways in this city.
The curious wisdom that is the lectionary of scripture readings for the church year has led us this fall to many weeks of Jeremiah, the theologian of the exile. In the 6th century before Christ, the holy city of Jerusalem was invaded, the temple destroyed, and the chosen people of God carried off into exile in Babylon. Jeremiah's task was to help them come to grips with what this devastating experience meant to the people who had defined themselves in relationship to a God who had promised always to be with them. Where was God now? Now that they were left in a colossal lurch?
So this fall, as the people of St. Paul's Church contemplate for us to go into our own kind of exile, Jeremiah has been our companion along the way. He is not always an easy companion to walk beside, but he offers guideposts. He can help us interpret what it means to be forced to leave home, to imagine what it might mean to sing God's song in the strange land of a new church or community.
Try as we might, our plans, our hopes and dreams for a revitalized St. Paul's Church, in a revitalized neighborhood, could not be realized.
We operate, however, as Christians, who know that resurrection comes only after death. Mary and Martha knew death was final, as they mourned the death of their brother, Lazarus. Dear friends of Jesus, they were angry and so disappointed that their beloved friend could not get there in time to heal Lazarus before he took his final breath. When they saw Jesus walking into their village -- too late!! -- they did not know what we know. They did not know the end of the story.
We do not yet know the end of the story of St. Paul's Church. We are grateful if you walk along with us over these next few months, pray with us and listen to us as we tell our stories.
Most important, stay tuned! God is still speaking ...
St. Paul's Table is always looking for volunteers!
It doesn't look like this any more! The corner has been cleared!
Here's the door ...
... come see me!
... in Brockton's Green and Pleasant Land
JERUSALEM (from 'Milton')
by: William Blake (1757-1827)
AND did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?
And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic Mills?
Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!
I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land.
Are we all the woman with her waterjar?
O Jesus, Image of the invisible God, Word made flesh, tired stranger, waiting in the noonday lull at Jacob’s well.
Are we all the woman with her waterjar, bent on the chore of the moment, angry memories in our bones, our thirst for God hidden in the business of the day?
Do you meet us gently too, hardly recognized, quietly leading our thoughts towards the deeper waters, where our souls find rest?
Probing too, uncovering secrets we would rather forget. “Lord, you have probed me, You know when I sit and when I stand, You know my thoughts from afar.”
Is the woman, sure and strong, our reflection: sure but unsure, strong but so weak, seeking but afraid to find our Savior so close by?
by Victor Hoagland
The Sisters of St. Margaret need our help
The sisters have provided needed services and education in Haiti since 1927. The earthquake of January 12 destroyed their convent, and many of their buildings. Click on this image to go to the website of the Society of St. Margaret, to find out how you can help
Can the Episcopal Church make good on its call to fight poverty in the U.S.?
Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefforts Schori's bold words give hope to us in the trenches.
A Call to Action: the Episcopal Church and Domestic Povery Alleviation
What is it about Anglicans and murder? I was given a spicy mystery novel recently: "Criminal Intent" by William Bernhardt. THe RECTOR of a church in Oklahoma CIty is accused of murdering his warden -- a woman. Sex scandals and politics, along with vengence-determined right-to-lifers, abound.
"Black Narcissus" by Rumer Godden: I got this book in a discard pile. It's about an order of Anglican nuns, with slight allusions to the Society of St. Margaret, who have taken up residence as missionaries in the Himalayas, I think on the Indian side. It is a meditation on the shortcomings of first-world missionary endeavors amid cultures who have vibrant cultures of their own. A dusty book but terrifically written and up to date in its observations of the collision of worldviews between "we who know it all" and people who know very well who they are.
"The Forties" by Edmund Wilson: a couple of years ago we made a pilgrimage to Wilson's family house in upstate New York -- the place he lived "Upstate," as his journals of that period are called. We were very impressed that he learned that the Iroquois had been had by the State of New York in its massive landgrab, which began after the Revolution and extended even into the 20th century. Here, these journal from the 1940s, Wilson expresses ambivalence, at best, at the results of the air war over Europe. "It may be that one thing which is responsible for the war is simply the desire to use aviation destructively. It must be a temptation to humanity to blow up whole cities from the air without getting hit or burnt oneself, and while soaring serenely above them. ... It is the thrill of the liberation of some impulse to wreck and to kill on a gigantic scale without caring and while remaining invulnerable oneself. Boy with a slingshot shooting birds -- can't help trying it out."
The First Christmas, by Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan: very rich Advent and Christmas reading
The Percy Jackson series: Simon has gotten me hooked on a series of books he is madly reading -- books about the children of the Greek gods, children who live in the U.S. and have all sorts of adventures based on the characters and themes of the Greek myths. All these adventures are set here, for Mt. Olympus is located at the center of power in the Western World (above the Empire State Building -- a location with which I thoroughly concur!) and Hades (where the hero is in the first book chasing something on a quest) is located in Los Angeles. I like LA, too, so I'm not entirely in favor of that as location of ultimate darkness, but I get the point. So check out the novels of RICK RIORDAN.
A Passage to India by E.M. Forster: spectacular! I am chagrined I have not read this poignant novel of all kinds of people caught in the maw of colonialism and desire.
Morgan: the biography, written about 10 years ago, of J. Pierpont Morgan. Yes, even I who never finished that course in microeconomics, is slogging through -- and understanding a little!! -- tales of robber baron deal-making and financial restructuring. Helpful, really, in our current climate. Plus, every other chapter details Morgan's romantic exploints, and how much he spent, oh so discretely, on these women. The author also takes seriously the influence of religious faith, and the Episcopal Church, on Morgan, his life, his actions -- his infidelity? Hmmm ... the record is silent.
Sermons in Stone ... is a lovely little book that tells the story of New York and New England in terms of its landscapes and stone walls.
Rabble-Rouser for Peace: the authorized biography of Desmond Tutu, by John Allen -- this is a wonderful read about the beloved Desmond. It's a social history of Africa in the late 20th century, of the end of colonialism and the power of the Christian faith in a place where it was not supposed to incite a revolution.
Doing Theology in Altab Ali Park -- by Ken Leech. I'm reading it carefully and taking notes. It really is an excellent reflection on the work we can do here in Brockton.
RevGalBlogPals - a conversation among women pastors
On the day after the election, after one of the guests at The Table said grace, giving thanks for the meal and getting through another day, ended by raising her hand in the air and saying, "And thank you for the first Black President of the United States!" All of us, 50 hungry and poor people, white, black, immigrant, disabled or unemployed or none of the above -- all of us applauded and cheered. The First Day of the New World.
autumn altar
Bill the Cat
... likes to dress up
The Negro Speaks of Rivers by Langston Hughes
I've known rivers: I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers. I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young. I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it. I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
Advent 4-C Dec. 20, 2009
These two women, and the two baby boys they carry in their wombs, come to us today in the line of prophets. Mary and Elizabeth came from people who read their Bibles carefully. They lived on the fringes of society, where they could see the things that were wrong, where they could see how poor and powerless people were treated. They knew their Bibles well enough to know that God promised that the world would be a better place. They stood in a long ling of prophets who listened carefully to God, and who looked carefully at the world around them, and said, Wait a minute here. There are things going on in this world that are not what God intends. When Mary and Elizabeth listened for God, they heard the great and powerful swooshing sounds of angels’ wings, the Holy Spirit coming upon them, overshadowing and empowering them to see the world as God sees it, and to speak and to act.
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