Out of Fear and Into Love

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4th Sunday of Easter:  Psalm 23, John 10:22-30

"The dread of evil is a much more forcible principle of human actions than the prospect of good ... What worries you masters you."

-- John Locke

Today we gather together in this nave, seeking to know God.  We yearn for answers to the questions that are posed by the ills in our society.   Geologist and theologian Thomas Berry reminds us that spiritual traditions emerge out of a confrontation with terror.[1]  We seek God because we have been confronted with chaos, with incoherence, and with the absurd.  When we experience events like the bombings on Monday, the explosion in Texas, or the mayhem that ensued in Boston, it is as if a veil has been lifted from the earth that exposes the dark cosmic forces at work in our world.  The events of Newtown and Boston make us more aware of the deep disorder that cannot be explained which is present in our society.  It is completely incomprehensible.  I can hardly do more than shake my fist and shed my tears.  And pray.  We live in fear. 

God, where are you in the disorder of our universe?  God, where are you in the chaos of our lives?  Where are you in the hearts and minds of our elected officials?  We search and we pray. 

This morning, we hear the words that have brought so many so much comfort in times of sorrow and grief.  “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.”  We seek the Good Shepherd.    

Yet this morning, we are also gathering together to celebrate. This morning we will formally welcome four new people into the Christian faith through the waters of Holy Baptism.   We celebrate because it is through death that they have new life.  It is the most difficult paradox of the Christian faith for us to comprehend.  The words, which capture our theology, should be especially striking for each of us as we pray.  Today is the single most important day in their lives, just as our own baptisms were for each of us.  It was the day that that we were marked as Christ’s own forever, brought into the fold by the Good Shepherd.    

But just what in the world does that really mean?  We certainly do not feel any less confused by the actions of others.  We still search for meaning in the loss.  We seek to be people of resurrection through pain and suffering.  We seek to understand this paradox of the Christian faith, more than ever. 

And just as the metaphor of Jesus as Good Shepherd is comforting, the passage we heard from today can be somewhat challenging to understand.  In the story, people want to know if Jesus is the Messiah.  His response is confusing because he says, “I have told you, and you do not believe.”  Yet we know from looking back in the Gospel that the only that Jesus has shared this secret with is the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4).  And the people who are questioning “do not belong” to Christ’s sheep.  

Yet this tension has a purpose, and that is because John wants us to know that it is God who seeks us out long before we know to seek God.  Do we seek God, or does God seek us?  John is claiming that it is God who initiates and brings us into God’s grace.  This takes the responsibility of finding God out of our hands.  It means by nature of our baptism, being marked as Christ’s own forever, God has made us his sheep. 

Two of the children being baptized today began singing in the choir a few months ago.  If you have experienced a baptism at St. George’s any time since last November, you might recall the children’s choir singing a refrain after each person is baptized.  The song says, “You have put on Christ, you have been baptized. Alleluia, Alleluia.”  After singing this refrain a few times, Amanda and Zach decided that they would like to be baptized. 

“My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.”

God has led these five to the waters of baptism, drawing each in by initiating grace.  God, the Good Shepherd has sought them out, and God has sought us all out.  “He leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul.  He leads me in right path for his name’s sake.”

It is rather remarkable how spot on our lectionary can be.  The Psalmist and the Good Shepherd are so important today, because they remind all of us, that God’s mercy and grace is seeking us out in the depths of our fear and sorrow. God’s love moves through the cosmos of the world to find each of us and draw us in.  It leads us, it guides, it comforts us.  We could spend the rest of our lives seeking to find God in the midst of tragedy.  The reality is, as our Gospel passage reminds us, not to seek in order to find but that God has already reached out like a shepherd bringing us out of fear and into the fold of grace. 

In a moment, we will answer the call of the Good Shepherd.  We will join with those who are making their baptismal vows.  We will all answer, I will with God’s help, to five questions.  Where we cannot explain, rationalize or deconstruct the horror we experienced this week,

We can ask for help to answer the following questions.  We can ask for help in resisting evil.  We can ask for help in striving for justice and peace, and respecting the dignity of all human beings.  We can ask for help to seek and serve all persons, loving our neighbor as ourselves.  We can ask for help in proclaiming the Good News of God in Christ.  And we can ask for help in breaking bread, following the apostles’ teachings, and praying.   And by doing this we are asking for help to bring us out of a place of fear and into a place of love. 

This is a tall order.  One that we will recommit to shortly, and one that some will make for the first time.  It is the only rebuttal we can muster up in response to the world today.  It is the only response we can sing because we have heard and we know the Shepherd’s voice.  He leads me by still water…  He leads me out of fear.  He restores my soul.

So today we pray.  We mourn.  And we give thanks.  And with God’s help, we follow the Good Shepherd’s voice.  

Preached at St. George's Arlington

April 21, 2013

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[1] Thomas Berry, “Spiritual Traditions and the Human Community”, The Christian Future and the Fate of the Earth, ed. Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim, (Mary Knoll, New York: Orbis Books 2009).

Moving off the Mountain

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5th Sunday of Epiphany:  Luke 5:1-11

“They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.”

I am not sure if it is a product of our culture or of how I have been raised, but I live my life very goal oriented.   And my gut tells me that this is much of way most of us live.  I tend to look at life like there are a series of mountains to climb.   In 6th grade, I looked up to the eighth graders in Middle School.  I vividly remember not only how much taller and older everyone looked, but I could not wait until I reached that age.  In high school, the mountain was achieving certain scores on the SAT and certain grades so that I could freely choose to attend school were I wanted.  Now it is finishing school, getting a job, paying off the house, finding a place to live next year, finding the right childcare.  And it might just be where I am in life, in this particularly transitory place, but I feel I am especially focused on what is to come next. 

Yet, is it ever any different?  We worry about meeting the right person in hopes of finding a companion to set goals together with, or finding the perfect career, and then when we do find the a path we believe in, our focus shifts to getting the promotion or moving to a better firm or company.  Or we worry about getting enough money saved in a college fund to support our children, or enough of a nest egg to retire.  Life becomes a series of mountains to climb, of goals to accomplish.  We create bucket lists, benchmarks, and even realistic long-term dreams.

And from time to time, we reach those peaks.  For a brief moment in our lives we find ourselves on top of the mountain.  And even if just for a short while, it feels really good.  We can look back at all the hard work it took to get there.   The 30 years or 360 mortgage payments that it took to get there….  The years of studying and hard work it took…

Does this ultimately lead to satisfaction?   Do we ever sit back and say I have done all I was supposed to do?  I have lived my life to the fullest and now my work is done and I am just going to retire?  Or have I prayed enough that I am as holy as I want to be?  I have helped enough people in this world that I’m sure that in some way, I have made God proud?  When we start to move from self-centered goals to self-sacrificial goals the flaw of mountaintop living is exposed.  Maybe this is why we have mountaintop experiences and shortly there after we find ourselves back in the valleys, our eyes set on new goals, feeling that satisfaction will only happen when those new peaks are reached. 

Today we hear of three of the most well known apostles: Peter, James, and John.  They find themselves lead up to the mountaintop by Jesus witnessing what I cannot even begin to fathom.  They witness the transfiguration of Jesus, they witness the radiant glory of God.  And Peter thinks he has it all figured out.  “Master, it is good for us to be here.” And darkness fills the day, a voice cries out in what sounds like anger.   Peter, James, and John had once again missed the big picture.  They are expelled off of the mountain into a faithless community that has also failed to understand the glory of God. 

Deep down, the story of Peter, James, and John is a story that resonates with our soul.  We want nothing more in life than to know God in all of God’s glory.  In our humanity we realize that it is less important to explain God, yet essential for our being to know God.  Deep down, we know that to experience the love of God is so much more important that anything else we can accomplish or accumulate.   This is our human story, a quest to know and be known by God.

Last Monday, I spent some time with a few St. Georgians, studying how this story of the transfiguration is in dialogue with the famous artist Raphael’s painting of the transfiguration.   In his painting, he portrays the sleeping apostles atop a hill while a crowd is bellowing dealing with the pain of a suffering child.  In his painting, there is a clear division between those on top of the hill and those below.  The painting shows the crowd, reaching up from the depths of the valley with their eyes to the sky to see the transfigured Jesus.   But Luke’s Gospel gives as a slightly different account.  Although Raphael depicts the people looking up, it is into the crowd of people and off the mountain that Jesus moves.     

Luke’s Gospel reminds us that on top of the mountain is not where we are supposed to be.  For Luke, the glory of God can only be understood in light of the suffering that takes place on the cross.  In our suffering and our care for those who are suffering we come to know and experience God. 

I think we all are far too aware that mainline Christianity is declining at a rate that makes us all too uncomfortable. And I have to wonder if there is a correlation between the decline of our faith and society becoming increasingly more uncomfortable with suffering.  Think of modern medicine’s approach to death.  We have moved it out of our homes and into the hospital, away from our comfort zones.  We want nothing to do with pain, suffering, and grief.   In some sense our attempt to climb mountains is a direct result of trying to distance us from pain and suffering.  If we can just get that better job, we can live a more comfortable life.  If we can just save enough money for college, we won’t worry about our children.  

Yet it is not on top of the mountain that we are supposed to be.  It is in the crowd below that Jesus calls us.  It is on the road to Jerusalem we are to travel to be with Christ. 

A few weeks ago Bishop Johnston stood right here and looked out, and he said, “I don’t know what ‘It’ is, but whatever ‘it’ is, you have it.”  I have to say I think he is right.  We have it going on right now.   In an age of religious decline, I kind of think we look like a transfigured church.   We have a building that is occupied seven days a week.  We have a church with new faces visiting every Sunday. 

And maybe this is the result of us becoming a little more comfortable with our own suffering and the suffering of our brothers and sisters.  Luke reminds us that we come to know the glory of God when we experience the pain and grief in the world.  When we give of ourselves, when we give of ourselves so much that it hurts, then we journey with Jesus to Jerusalem. 

When we open our doors five days a week for lunch through the food pantry, when we offer meals to the homeless and poor through our HOST program, or when we sit down to have pancake supper with those in pain we come off the mountain.  When we hold the hand of a loved one as they say goodbye to our earthly world, or when forgive our spouse for the words that cut just a little too deeply.  When we give up our Sunday evenings to serve at the local shelter, or break bread with the Sunrise community or the homebound, we experience God.  Or when we advocate for affordable housing through listening to the stories of the agony of our neighbors… Or when we offer the box of chocolates or the bouquet of flowers to say not only I love you, but I am deeply sorry, and this pain that we are experiencing is not what either of us intended.  When we sit with a friend, or a stranger, and give of ourselves we come to know the suffering servant that Luke shares with us today. 

When we strive only for the mountaintops we will always be brought up short, because deep down our soul longs for nothing more than to know and be know to God.  When we place our hands in the wounds those who suffer, we feel the wounds of Jesus Christ, and we come to know God in a deep and transcendent way. 

And this God is calling us off of the mountain, to journey through our own pain and the pain of others.  It is scary task at hand, but we don’t walk it alone.  God calls us off the mountain, to join him in the journey to Jerusalem.  It can be tough at times, but it is more beautiful than we can ever imagine.  And in this journey we can come to see the glory of God.  

Preached at St. George's, Arlington 
February 10, 2013 

Stripping Away our Self-Righteousness

3rd Sunday in Lent: Luke 13:1-9

Flannery O’Connor, the esteemed Southern writer of the 1940s and 50s, wrote a short story titled Revelation about a rather rude old lady named Mrs. Turpin.  The story is set a doctor’s office where Mrs. Turpin finds herself among a few others which gives her a chance to reflect upon her life.  She enters, with no place to sit, and from her point of view because a dirty nasty child is taking up too much room on the sofa.  Mrs. Turpin is not a particularly pleasant woman, but she sure does love Jesus.   Mrs. Turpin seems to spend a lot of time looking at others in pity and disdain.  She sings the song, “When I looked up and He looked down, And wona these days I know I we-eara crown.”[1] 

Often, at night Mrs. Turpin would imagine herself before Jesus, being forced to be someone she wouldn’t want to be.  “Oh thank you Jesus that I am not white-trash.”  Every imagination makes her only more self-righteous, more thankful she is the person she is, not common, not even just a homeowner, but a home-and-land owner.  She thanks Jesus that she is not ugly.  

Mrs. Turpin begins to engage in conversations with the people in the doctor’s office.  Each person she engages with she sees as where they rank in the different classes in society and finds ways of smugly putting each person down.  Finally the conversation turns to a mother with her young child of 18 or 19 years old, named Mary Grace, who is reading a book titled “Human Development.”  The young girl has no interest in a conversation with Mrs. Turpin and her mother points out how ungrateful the girl is and of course Mrs. Turpin responds by letting everyone know just how fortunate in life she has always been.  At that point she yells, “Thank you, Jesus, for making everything the way it is!”

Mary Grace picks up the book and hurls it across the room smacking Mrs. Turpin directly over her right eye.  As the room settles down, Mrs. Turpin responds, “What you got to say to me?” and O’ Connor writes, “she asked hoarsely and held and held her breath, waiting, as for a revelation.  The girl raised her head.  Her gaze locked with Mrs. Turpin’s. ‘Go back to hell where you came from, you old wart hog.” 

It takes a little while, but the words sink in.  She cries, and then she becomes consumed with rage.  But a woman as self-righteous as Mrs. Turpin has no other option but to see the words as a divine revelation.  She demands that God calls her a hog again, and at that moment she has a vision, one that ends with her seeing herself as the lowest of low, the last in a glorious procession behind all of the people she has been so grateful to not be. 

I sometimes feel like Lent is similar to being smacked upside the head with Mary Grace’s book, forcing us to face the realities of who we are at the core of our being, ultimately as a catalyst for growth. O’Connor’s character is a dramatic exaggeration of smaller truths that can be found in all human beings.  I read a cartoon not to long ago that forced me to reflect on how self-righteous I can be.  It is an internet cartoon titled Coffee with Jesus.[2]  

           

            Kevin:  “The car goes racing past me on the highway, swerving from lane to lane- and get this! It had a bumper sticker for the local Christian radio station!

            Jesus: “What a shame.”

            Kevin: “No joke! If you’re going to support that vapid station by displaying their sticker you should maybe drive with some courtesy.

            Jesus: “Sorry Kevin.  I meant it’s a shame that you spend your day looking for people to judge so you can feel better about yourself.

When we wander into the desert and really examine who we are, it can be a little bit scary.  Every Lent that I have been faithful in my own self-exploration, I have come to the realization that I have even more work to do.  I keep waiting to hit the threshold where the work becomes less and less, the journey easier, and easier.  I haven’t found it yet.  My gut tells me I may never find it.

Our passage from Luke today assumes two questions.  You can almost hear the Galileans, asking Jesus, of those others who have suffered and died.  They sound just like Mrs. Turpin.  “Thanks be to God nothing happened to us.  Thanks be to God we haven’t been such bad sinners as those others Galileans, or those who stood under the tower of Siloam.  Self-righteous anger fills air.  They remind Jesus of the blood Pilate has mingled with their sacrifices yet Jesus responds, “Do you really think they were worse than you?”  Jesus smacks the Galileans upside the head, “Repent!  You fools!  Nothing has happened to you, not out of your own merit. 

In the O’Connor story, Mrs. Turpin experiences grace through the actions of Mary Grace.  (Could she be a little more obvious with the name?) It is through the realization of who she is that she can experience the grace and freedom of being with God.  It is interesting, what keeps Mrs. Turpin away from truly seeing God is her own failure to recognize her own need for God’s grace.  She is so fortunate that she is better off than all others that she cannot even begin to fathom what life would be like otherwise, and if we are so much better off than others, then how in the world can we begin to understand how God’s grace can transform our own lives. 

My friend Fanny told me the other day “You can’t even begin to share God’s love if you don’t know how to receive it.”  Her simple, yet profound insight has begun to shape my Lent this year.  She in a much nicer way, picked a book chalked full of grace and smacked me right upside the head. 

I think the ultimate flaw of the self-righteousness of the Galileans is in their belief that their own merit has in someway contributed to their present circumstance.   Can I truly understand God’s love if I think there is any merit that has earned it?  Does self-righteousness inhibit me from recognizing God’s unabounding love? 

This Lent, we have moved into the desert.  We get rid of our comforts, we fast, we think, we explore, and we strip our lives down to the bare essentials.  If you are finding this season to be extremely reflective and challenging then you are right where you need to be.  If not, well you still have a good amount of time left before Easter.  When we wander into the wilderness, we can become aware of our own limitations and faults, seeing ourselves where we truly lie in God’s eyes, as beloved children, just as every single person in all of humanity is, not better off, not more blessed, not in a better position, but in desperate need of reconciliation, and God’s love.   If we look around and we truly believe that we need God’s grace just as much as our brothers and sisters, and not in some selfish, conceited way, (it has to be genuine) then we can move into a position and place to share God’s grace with others.   

Self-righteousness moves us away from being able to accept the grace of God because it distances ourselves away from others, inhibiting our ability to share grace with each other.  This Lent, our wilderness journey invites us into a place where we can strip down all of the excess.   Lent makes us take off all the facades, pretences, and fronts we place up and force us to see ourselves as we truly are.  It smacks us upside the head.  For me, it is not as pretty as I want you all to know.  But the hope is that, this self-realization moves me into a place where I can better receive God’s grace based on no merit of my own.  And if we all can move into a place of more truly knowing grace, we will all be in a better place to share it with each other.     

Preached at St. George's Arlington

March 3, 2013

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[1] Flannery O’Connor, “Revelation” The Complete Stories (New York:  Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1971)

[2] www.radiofreebabylon.com/Comics/CoffeeWithJesus.php