Intimates with God (First Christmas C RCL)

Intimates with God
Homily delivered First Sunday of Christmas (Year C RCL TEC)
27th December 2009: 8:00am Said and 10:15am Sung Eucharist
Parish Church of St. John the Baptist, Seattle Washington
Readings: 1 Samuel 2:18-26, 26; Psalm 148; Colossians 3:12-17; Luke 2:41-52

God, let us not accept the judgment that this is all we are. . . . Take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

Today’s gospel is a story of terror for any parent—losing your child in a crowded, huge place with little hope of finding him again. Mary and Joseph discover to their horror that their twelve year old son Jesus has disappeared. They search for days only to find him in one of the Temple Courts taking an impromptu course in religious law. The Blessed Virgin greets him pointedly: “Child, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been looking for you for three days.” He answers sharply, “Why did you look all over town for me? Surely you must have known, Mother, that I would be in my Father’s House.” His barbed use of the word “Father” to mean God here corrects his mother’s loose use of the word to refer to her husband, Joseph. The reply has an edge that parents who have raised adolescent children will recognize. Mary, like many such parents, doesn’t get her teen-ager’s joke. Rather, she takes it in with puzzlement, and ponders it all. The story concludes with the family’s return home and, “He was obedient to them.”

The story presents the glories and the incongruities of the incarnation, the taking on of human flesh by God in Jesus. God in human form speaks, but as a twelve-year-old boy explaining his behavior to a distraught mother. It sums up the incarnation’s scope: in the words of the Book of Hebrews, Christ shared all our limitations and trials, but was sinless nonetheless.

The incarnation marks a radical continuity between our human lives and God’s, and that implies a sacredness in all it means to be human, including adolescence. We often miss the point, wrongly thinking that somehow God came among us without truly being one of us. This “God incognito” paid for our sins and somehow made it possible for us to be more like God, and less like human beings.

That is a total warping of the meaning of the incarnation. God became truly human in all ways (except in resisting God), and that means it’s O.K. to be fully human. In fact, it means God calls us to be fully human, and to do that he calls us to follow his example when he was among us, and not resist God so much. It is only thus that we can find our true and full humanity.

We often hear this time of year calls to “put Christ back in Christmas.” People complain about commercialization, too much partying, and not enough praying. This phrasing of the question gets the issues all wrong. It separates the partying and celebration from spirituality. Granted, some people see the holiday solely as a consumer or marketing event. The holiday is thus diminished, often becoming a source of stress and depression. The problem, however, is not too much celebration, but too little. “I will greatly rejoice in the LORD, my whole being shall exult in my God” says Isaiah. It is not just “the spiritual side” of us that should rejoice. To want to turn Christmas into a sectarian prayer meeting rather than the public, boisterous, and commonly shared party that it currently is—regardless of beliefs—stems from bad theology. It stems from an unhealthy sense of Guilt and Shame, of feeling dirty and unworthy. It carries with it a self-loathing, an alienation from self.

A healthy shame or guilt is focused—regret and embarrassment at our deliberate misdoings. It leads to a desire to make restitution, to make amendment of life. But generalized, fuzzy Guilt and Shame, an overall and unremitting sense of “I’m not worthy, I’m not worthy,” is unhealthy. It leads not to repentance, but to alienation, indifference, and despair.

It is easy to see why we feel at times so alienated. God creates the world, and the resulting creation by definition is not creator, is not God, unlimited, all sufficient, all powerful. We creatures are painfully limited, wholly needy, and pitiably weak. We seem to have a built-in tendency to want our own way, to resist others, and this includes a tendency to resist God. And so the good, the true, and the beautiful world God intends to create, including the us God intends, seems at times to be merely a Shining, Distant, yet Impassible City in the distance, ever-receding.

Limitation, however, is not rebellion. The Church Fathers often distinguish between two different kinds of evil. One is found the systemic gaps in the ambient Goodness of God in creation—the evil that is simply the “absence” of God due to the differentiation of creature from creator. The other is willful resistance to God’s intention. One is natural evil, normally associated with the limitations, pain, and occasional seeming senselessness of nature imposed by the very fact of being created and contingent. The other is moral evil, the result of rebellion and willful resistance. Some Fathers call the tendency toward alienation and rebellion common to all human beings “original sin,” because it seems to be inborn, from our origins, not because it is all that creative, or ‘original.’



God incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth shared all our limitations, weakness, and silly quirks. He was subject to natural evil like the rest of us. The most obvious example is his unjust death by torture at the hands of the Roman Empire. But despite this, he never resisted God. Though a typical adolescent in some ways in today’s story, he is unusual in his openness to God.

Theologians describe the incarnation from the outside by saying that God in taking on flesh accepted its limits, or in technical jargon, the willed the “occultation of his divinity.” An early hymn in Philippians (2: 6-8) describes it as Christ “emptying himself.”

But we need another image to describe it from the inside. One is the Celtic spirituality’s idea of “thin places,” geographic spots where the veil between the ordinary world and the spirit world seem particularly thin, like the island of Iona. These are places where the Distant, Shining City does not seem so far away, where it seems easier to commune with God. There are also some people in whom the image of God does not seem so distorted, whose life shows the presence of God shining through. The man Jesus is the ultimate example of a person as a “thin place,” in fact, the thinnest of places.

This implies a great deal about our lives, both as individual Christians and as a community within the larger world. William Stringfellow wrote,

“Jesus Christ means that God cares extremely, decisively, inclusively, immediately, for the ordinary, transient, proud, wonderful, besetting, frivolous, hectic, lusty things of human life. The reconciliation of God and the world in Jesus Christ means that in Christ there is a radical and integral relationship of all human beings and of all things. In Christ all things are held together (Col. 1:17b).

“The church as the Body of Christ in the world has, shares, manifests, and represents the same radical integrity. All who are in Christ—all members of Christ’s Body in the world—know and live in the same integrity in their personal relationships with every other creature in their own, specific personal histories. . . . [T]he reconciliation of the world with God in Jesus Christ establishes a person in unity with both God and the whole world. The singular life of the Christian is a sacrament—a recall, a representation, an enactment, a communication—of that given, actual unity, whether in the gathering of the congregation now and then or whether in the scattering of the members within the daily affairs of the world. . . . [I]t is careless and misleading to speak of the action of God in the world in Christ in terms of “making the gospel relevant” to the secular. The Body of Christ lives in the world in the unity of God and the world wrought in Christ, and, in a sense, the Body of Christ lives in the world as the unity of God and the world in Christ.” (William Stringfellow, A Public and Private Faith, 1962, 40-44).

In Jesus, we see that limitation or weakness do not equal rebellion or resistance. In Jesus, we see that God made us, intends us to be very good, but that God is not yet finished creating us. Jesus calls, “Let God finish.”

Just as Jesus accepted who he was and the tasks God had for him, we must accept who we are—gifts, and strengths, disabilities and ugly deficiencies and all. We must accept who others are as well. We must be gentle both on them and ourselves. Seeking to let God finish his creative work in us, trying to amend our lives, both personally and communally, requires an open-ended listening, a total trust that in God’s good intentions for us, in Lady Julian of Norwich’s words, “all is well, and all manner of things shall be well.”

Such openness is the difference between true humility and its cheap counterfeit, the pride that demands that we either be the best of all or the worst of all.

A pretty good sign that we are not following Jesus in this is alienation: alienation from our selves; alienation from our bodies; alienation from our conscience. Alienation between people is a sign of this on a social level. All these are signs of not accepting who it is God made us to be. They appear when we try to tough it out, and bulldoze ourselves into the better us that we have in mind, rather than following Jesus by emptying ourselves, to let go and let God.

A pretty good sign that we are getting closer to God in this is that regardless of the limitations and hardships we face, we still have a sense of one-ness. Teillard de Chardin wrote, “The surest sign of God’s presence is joy.” This is why one of the key questions asked in any spiritual direction and discernment process is “What puts a smile on your face?” It is a pretty good indication of where your treasure is, and with it, your heart.

Ambrose of Milan, who taught and converted Augustine of Hippo in the mid fourth century, wrote dozens of hymns that made available to common people the basic teachings of Christianity. Both Ambrose and Augustine were very flawed people, but ones who persevered in open-ended listening to God. That’s why we call them saints—not because they lacked flaws, but because they persevered despite them. One of Ambrose’s hymns praises the enfleshment of Christ in these words:

O equal to Thy Father, Thou!
Gird on thy fleshly mantle now;
the weakness of our mortal state
with deathless might invigorate.

As God became truly human in Jesus, let us accept our own humanity, with all its limitations and failings. And and as Jesus accepted the Father's will in all things, let us open ourselves to listen to God and follow where Jesus leads us.

In the Name of God, Amen.

Collect for Advent

A Note on Advent Prayer

Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer wrote this collect and placed it in the first English Book of Common Prayer (1549) for the first Sunday of Advent. From 1662 on, prayer books have given the instruction that it be said daily throughout the entire Advent Season, It is based on the epistle for the First Sunday of Advent, Romans 13:8-14 (my translation):

⁸Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for those who love others have fulfilled the law. ⁹The commandments, "Do not commit adultery," "Do not murder," "Do not steal," "Do not covet," and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: "Love your neighbor as yourself." ¹⁰Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. ¹¹And do this, because you recognize what time it is in which we live. The hour has come for you to wake up from your sleep, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first came to faith. ¹²The night is nearly over; day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. ¹³Let us conduct ourselves properly as in the day, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in promiscuity and licentiousness, not in rivalry and jealousy.¹⁴Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and stop worrying about how to gratify the raging desires of the you that resists God.

Invocation at 234th Marine Corps Ball (Beijing China)

Invocation Offered at the Beijing China Marine Corps Ball

On the Occasion of the 234th Anniversary of the Corps

China World Hotel, Beijing, November 21, 2009

Almighty God, you have given us our good country, the United States, for our heritage: We humbly pray you that we may always prove ourselves a people mindful of your favor and glad to do your will. Bless our land with honorable industry, sound learning, and pure manners. Save us from violence, discord, and confusion; from pride and arrogance, and from every evil way. Defend our liberties, and fashion into one united people the multitudes brought together there out of many kindreds and tongues.

Judge of the nations, endow with the spirit of wisdom those to whom in your Name we entrust the authority of government, that there may be justice and peace at home, and that, through following law and conscience, we may become and continue to be a sign of hope and occasion for joy for all the nations of the earth. We pray that you sustain and support especially Barack, our President, and Jon, his personal representative here in China. At this time of peril due to worldwide economic woes, bless the leaders of all peoples to discern how best to restore and create effective means of providing for the needs to the world’s people. In the time of prosperity, fill our hearts with thankfulness, and in the day of trouble, do not let our trust in you fail.

Lord of hosts, we commend to your gracious care and keeping all the men and women of our armed forces at home and abroad. Defend them day by day with your heavenly grace; strengthen them in their trials and temptations; give them courage to face the perils which beset them; and grant them a sense of your abiding presence wherever they may be. As we prepare to celebrate the traditions and fellowship of the United States Marine Corps this evening, we pray especially for each Marine here present and throughout the world.

Give us grateful hearts, our Father, for all your gifts, and make us mindful of the needs of others. All this we ask for your tender mercy’s sake. Amen.

One and Only

The Wedding in Cana

Make, Don't Find, Your One and Only
Homily Delivered at Wedding of Kenny Lee and Lilian Yu
Twin Villas, 976 Huaihai Road, Shanghai, China
October 11, 2009

Reading: 1 Corinthians 13:1-13 (translation by the homilist)

What is love? When you love someone, you are patient and kind with that person. You are not jealous of those you love, and you don't try to show them up. You don't talk down to them or act rudely toward them. You don't try to have your own way at their expense, nor do you get annoyed or resentful at them. You don't get pleasure at any injustice done to them or by them, but rather you rejoice when truth prevails. When you love someone, you put up with whatever they do, you trust whatever they say, you hold every hope for them, and you are willing to endure anything for them. When you love, you never stop loving. Not so with prophecies, languages, or knowledge--these will all cease one day. For our knowledge and our prophecy are partial only. And when wholeness arrives, partial things will come to an end. When I was a child, I used to talk, think, and reason as a child does. When I became an adult, I put aside a child's ways of doing things. At present, we see things indistinctly, as if through a clouded mirror, but then it will be face to face. At present, I know things only in part, but then, I shall have a knowledge of others just as I also will have been fully known. But as matters are now, only these three things really last-- faith, hope, and love. And of these, the greatest is love.

God, take away our hearts of stone, and give us hearts of flesh. Amen

In Chinese, when we talk about someone who is a soul-mate, a true friend—we say we share yuanfen. The idea is that we have a link that goes back to some kind of previous life, back to a whole set of good deeds we may have done one another from before we remember. In Western romantic literature, this idea is expressed by the phrase, finding your “one and only” true love. It certainly describes the kind of love my parents had—they met in second grade, were best friends, and fell in love as soon as they were in high school. They secretly married when they were seventeen years old, much to the chagrin of their parents. But they remained faithful and true to each other for sixty-some years, until they died.

I never saw them argue, though I often saw them work out differences between themselves.

I once asked my father how it was that you could tell if you had found your one true love, your “one and only.” He looked pained at the question, as if I had missed the point. He said, “it doesn’t really matter if you think you have found your one and only. Many people think they have their one true love, only to discover as they age and change that it was a short-lived emotion, a passing attraction. And their marriages didn’t last. So you shouldn’t ask whether you have found your one and only. You should ask what you need to do today to make the one you love your one and only. Because you don’t find a true soul-mate—you make one through actions each day.”

I thought my father was being terribly un-romantic. But I knew he was deeply and hopelessly in love with my mother. And that, after nearly fifty years.

I have come to realize that he was describing the only kind of romance that lasts-- one that is strengthened and renewed each day, through thick and thin, by the actions that show and built mutual respect, love, and passion.



Today Lilian and Kenny you are making each other promises in the presence of family, friends, and colleagues. Be sure to take time each day to listen to each other. Be sure to allow each other space. And most of all, be sure to be honest with each other and be willing to admit fault and forgive it.

In the name of God, Amen.

Salted with Fire, Living Peace (Proper 21 B RCL)

Salted with Fire; Living Peace

17th After Pentecost (Proper 21 B RCL)
27th September 2009
Congregation of the Good Shepherd, Beijing China
10:00 a.m. Liturgy of the Word without Communion
Psalm 124; James 5:13-20; Mark 9:38-50

God, breathe into us a desire to change— take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

In today’s Gospel in Mark 9, Jesus is having a bad day. The disciples have just argued about who was most important (Mark 9:33–37). Just after this story, they will start to argue again when James and John ask Jesus for promotions (10:35–45). In the middle of all this, John comes to Jesus and complains about an otherwise unnamed healer who is casting out demons in Jesus' name.

"He is not one of us," the disciples whine, "so we told him to stop." They presumably want Jesus to tell the man to stop, and maybe punish him in some way. After all, he is using the name Jesus to perform the healings.

Why are they so concerned about this stranger doing unauthorized healings? It is clear that Jesus’ uncanny ability to heal was what attracted the large crowds to him to hear his message of the arrival of the kingdom of God. Healing was part and parcel of his proclamation. “If by the spirit of God I cast out demons” and illness, he says, “then the kingdom of God has come within your midst” (Matt 12:28, Luke 11:30). When he gives instructions to the twelve he has chosen to send out to spread his joyous proclamation wider, he gives healing the sick and casting out demons as their principal work (Mark 6:6-13).

The disciples thus see themselves as defending the integrity of Jesus’ core ministry. In modern commercial terms, they are complaining about this strange exorcist because he is encroaching on their market niche by infringing on their trademark. They are worried about brand integrity and don’t want anyone claiming credit for deeds of power done in Jesus’ name without a proper connection to them. They see themselves as Jesus’ exclusive agents, the sole proprietors of the franchise.

Mark portrays their complaint somewhat ironically: the disciples have just failed to drive out an evil spirit from a boy afflicted since childhood (Mark 9: 14-28), but this interloper seems to be succeeding just fine.

Many of us recognize the dynamics of the scene instantly. When Elena and I were raising our four kids, we often had one or another of them coming to us indignant, complaining of some misdeed by a sibling, with the outraged and sometimes tearful demand, “Punish him.”

Most of us who are managers of workers have had the experience of being mediators between quarreling employees, trying to get people to make nice with each other, to restore the calmness of the group, if not its peace, so it can get back to productive work.

You would think that Jesus would see the logic of the complaint.

But no, says Jesus, don't stop this man. Don’t stop interlopers at all. Just using Jesus’ name might bring the stranger closer to the announced kingdom. “Whoever is not against us is for us,” he says, adding, “after using my name and successfully driving out the evil spirit, the stranger certainly won’t speak ill of us.”

This inclusive attitude of Jesus clearly did not find universal welcome among his followers. Some probably thought it was altogether too naïve. The early source of Jesus sayings used by Matthew and Luke (Q), for instance, has Jesus actually saying the opposite: “whoever is not with me is against me” (Matt 12:30; Luke 11:23). To his credit, Luke also includes Mark’s story of the strange exorcist together with its version of the saying (Luke 9:49-50), while Matthew drops the whole story as inconsistent with what he believed Jesus would have said.

The story as told in the Gospels of Mark and Luke, however, preserves what almost certainly was Jesus’ position: “Whoever is not against us is for us.”

Mark’s version of the story places these words in the context of several other sayings of Jesus that Matthew and Luke put in other contexts or delete. In Mark, Jesus comments on the strange exorcist and adds that even a simple kindness like giving someone a sip of water advances the kingdom. And petty nastiness, sticking out your leg to trip up any of Jesus’ “little ones” will lead to worse things than being drowned in the ocean.

The Greek word used for “place a stumbling block before” here is skandalizo or “scandalize.” In Matthew’s separate use of the same saying, it refers to non-believers tripping up Jesus’ disciples (Matt. 18:6). Here in Mark’s context, it refers to the offense caused by Jesus’ own over-zealous disciples running roughshod over the feelings and sensitivities of people like the unnamed healer and the people he has successfully healed.

And then comes one of the so-called “hard sayings” of Jesus. None of these are more macabre than the command to pluck out one's eye, or cut off a hand or foot (Matt 18:8-9; Mark 9:42-48). The image is so grotesque that Matthew, who normally follows Mark when he uses material from that Gospel, reduces it from Mark's seven verses to two, while gentle Saint Luke omits it altogether (cf. Luke 17:1-4).

Origen (but not St. Origen)

The saying is often misread as if it were a pronouncement of ethical law, a misreading promoted by the fact that Matthew places it in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5:27-37). But read this way, it is a very troubling and sick pronouncement. Taken literally, it actually led third century Church father Origen to severely mutilate himself in an effort to obtain chastity. This rash and extreme act led both the Eastern and Western Churches to never consider Origen—one of the age’s best preachers and scholars of scripture—as a saint or a doctor of the Church.

But the context in which Mark places this harsh command gives a clue to its most likely meaning on the lips of the historical Jesus. This answer about cutting members off is indeed cutting: an ironic and overstated argument that if you want to call for punishment, then you must remember that all deserve to be punished, including you.

“Bad people?” says Jesus, “You want me to punish them, to cut them off?” “Well, then, if it’s punishment you want, it’s punishment you’ll get. And not just of those for whom you ask it. Cut those people off? You might as well cut your own body parts off.”

Remember that even when the saying appears in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is arguing for a moral law far beyond the human norm, as if to underscore the point that it is only with God’s help that we can live as we should, and that there is little hope for any of us if “Rules are rules, law is supreme; no exceptions, mercy, or grace allowed.”

Jesus wraps up the little speech here in Mark with the curious expression, “"For everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good; but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another."

This image, so puzzling at first glance, draws on commonplaces well known to the people in Jesus’ culture.

Salt and fire were powerful images, both related to the idea of change and stability. Another powerful image in this complex of ideas was that of yeast, or leaven.


Any of us who have made bread know how amazing yeast is. If you don’t add the right amount and give it adequate time and sugar for food, your bread will come out flat, heavy, and ruined. Without any yeast at all, it will simply be a hard, inedible clump of baked dough. Spread out thin that way, it might make crispy crackers; but unleavened bread is not really what most people call bread. Too much yeast, or too long a rising time, makes the dough sour and turn bad. Adding salt for a tastier bread slows down the yeast; if you add too much salt, it kills the yeast altogether.

The whole process seemed somewhat mysterious to the early Hebrews, and this almost magical agent of change was early on identified with the processes of change and resistance to change that they saw as evidence of their God’s ongoing creative work in the world. It was akin to the mysterious difference between a living animal and a dead carcass, that so quickly would turn bad and rot.

Matzos (unleavened bread) and Wine

This sense of awe and wonder at change versus stability, decay versus life, fermentation or leavening versus stillness and preservation, lies at the heart of many of the distinctions between the ritually pure and impure in the Law of Moses, particularly the Levitical Code. Little details jump out at you when you read these codes with this in mind. No yeast is allowed during the Passover—God’s covenant time should not be corrupted by change. Wine, fermented though it is, has reached a stasis and the alcohol in it preserves it from further rapid decay. It is used at Passover, and indeed is a symbol for the covenant, making hearts glad and being an important part of celebration.

Animals being sacrificed in the Temple must be killed quickly in ritually prescribed ways that of themselves delay the process of decay. Salt, that great preservative and inhibitor of decay, is added to all meat sacrifices. They are to be put into the fire almost immediately, and the parts of the sacrifice that are not to be burnt up wholly are to be eaten by the priests and Levites quickly after the rite.


Fire itself—able to change things totally by reducing them to ashes—is also seen as purifying, since it seemed mysteriously to inhibit change and decay after it had touched an object. (Obviously, after Louis Pasteur, we recognize that many of these qualities of yeast, salt, and fire seen by ancient Jews as mysterious relate to the encouragement or inhibition of microbial activity.) But for the people who wrote the Levitical Code, fire meant purification either through radical change (things burnt to ashes) or through its ability, like salt, to preserve against change seen in the process of fermentation and rot.


Salt, seen also as purifying, was seen as a symbol of steadiness and unchanging stability. So sharing it at table was the ultimate sign of friendship and hospitality. Often a ritual sharing of salt sealed covenants and promises.

The ancient Jews realized, to be sure, that not all change was bad or in the direction of decay. They also liked their leavened bread and wine. It was in this spirit that Jesus compared the Kingdom of God to a little lump of yeast in a large mass of flour dough—only a little bit would make the whole loaf rise (Matt. 13:33; Luke 13:20-21). But those welcoming the Kingdom were for Jesus also the salt of the earth—what would make it tasty and pleasant, but also what would preserve it from overall rottenness (Matt. 5:13). But leaven for Jesus could be bad also, as when he told his followers to beware of the “leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod” (Mark 8:15).

Saint Paul also used the image of yeast in both ways—good leading to nice bread and bad leading to rottenness—when he advised the Corinthians to discipline a notorious sinner in their midst whom he saw as likely to corrupt the Church (1 Cor 5:1-8). Using the image of cleaning out leaven from the house before the Jewish celebration of the Passover, he wrote, “Do you not know that a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough? Clean out the old yeast so that you may be a new batch . . . Christ, our Passover Lamb, has been sacrificed for us. Therefore, let us celebrate the feast, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”

Valley of Hinnom

Again, change is what yeast is all about as a symbol—change for good or for bad. Salt is a symbol for inhibiting bad change, for steadiness, unchanging stability, and purity. Fire similarly is about eradicating bad change, whether through destruction or through purification and inhibition of bad change. The great garbage dump just outside of ancient Jerusalem’s city walls in the Valley of Hinnom (in Aramaic, Geihenna) was marked by the continually burning fires there for reducing to ashes and disinfecting the foul detritus of the city. These fires became of symbol for the purifying burning of the Day of Judgment or the eternal punishments of the damned. Gehenna is the Greek word translated as “hell” in today's Gospel. The quotation in today's Gospel from second Isaiah about "their worm never dies, their fires never cease" is used by Jesus to describe the state of those who refuse God's call. It is vivid image of continued corruption and rottenness despite ongoing purification and disinfection.

So when Jesus in Mark says, “Everyone will be salted with fire, therefore live in peace,” he is saying this: We need to live in peace with each other, and not constantly go about seeking the punishment or correction of others who may seem to differ from us or not meet the standard we think God has set. And why? Because purification is a serious business that must touch all of us, and eventually will touch all of us, regardless of who we are or what group we now appear to belong to. Purification will come to all, either through preservation or destruction, either through saving change for the good or damning change for the bad.

As C.S. Lewis said, in the end, there will only be two groups: those who say to God “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God finally must say, “Alright, then, have it your own way.”

Why is that a warrant for living in peace? Is this just another way of saying “Do not say to your neighbor ‘you have a speck in your eye’ while you ignore the log stuck in your own eye” (Matt. 7:3)? No, there is more to it than that.

Jesus’ demand that the disciples accept marginal believers or even possible competitors is rooted in his understanding of God.

God is not a mere tribal deity. God is not a petty partisan. God makes the sun rise on ands sends the clouds to rain on both the righteous and the wicked (Matt. 5:45). He is Israel’s God, to be sure, but only so that Israel can be a city on a hill, a light on a candlestick (Matt. 5:14-16). As the unshakable Rock, this God provides the reliable unmoving ground for pathetic creatures caught up in the confusion, decline, and suffering they see about them. And that, not just for Israel, but for all. Not just for Jews, not just for Jesus’ authorized franchise-holders, but for all. Because we are all in God’s hand, we must be tolerant of difference.

That ultimately is what the parable of the wheat and the tares (or the wheat and the weeds) is all about—don’t worry about which plants are good or bad, because by pulling up the bad you’ll surely kill good ones as well. Wait until the harvest comes, and God and his angels will sort it out (Matt. 13: 24-30).

Jesus recognizes our common stance as God’s creatures in a world where we can say, in the words of the hymn, “change and decay in all around I see.” Jesus recognizes that God is creator and parent to all, and that we are all beggars before God. Though he sees his announcement of the arrival of Kingdom as addressed to Israel, this is so Israel can be a light to all.

All are invited to God’s great feast. All of God’s creatures are called to respond to the Kingdom’s arrival. So Jesus urges solidarity among all God’s creatures. That’s why even unbelievers’ offers of glasses of water build the Kingdom. That’s why Jesus in Mark talks about the strange exorcist as if he were one of his own “little ones” in need of protection from being tripped up.

We all have our buttons that people can push that really set us off, that make us want to go running and demand “punish him.” Even the most sterling “righteous” anger in most of us is mixed with self-interest and fear. Think about it carefully. In this messed up world, why is it that only some things cause us to lose our serenity and calm?

In my office this week, I became outraged when I saw a colleague behaving in a way that I thought was deliberately petty and hurtful toward a subordinate. This totally pushed one of my buttons. I was flummoxed and undone. I wanted bureaucratic vengeance, I wanted to beat the person into submission so he would learn to play well with others. I wanted to humiliate and make an example. I realized that this had truly upset me, and unreasonably so. I have learned as part of my spiritual discipline to identify things that throw me off as opportunities to learn about what is going on in my heart. I had a long talk with a close friend. My friend confessed that where I had a “hurtful behavior” button, he had a “that’s not fair” button. Instead of asking what was wrong in what the colleague had done (I had no problem coming up with a list for that), I asked what was it about me that made it so easy for me to lose my composure about this. Probably fear of losing my own sense of self-worth at work: I suspected that I had not adequately moved work along in a timely fashion and this had placed my subordinate in an untenable position vis-à-vis the badly behaving colleague. It was easier to get totally angry and blame the bad behavior than to realize that what motivated my emotions actually was fear rooted in my own sense of not measuring up.

But this saying of Jesus isn’t just about overcoming the buttons we have that people can push. It is about how we deal with true evil as well.

It is really hard to be magnanimous to people we know are doing evil, especially when the evil is patently hurtful to others. Our hearts rightly cry out “punish them.” Ignoring evil or making nice with it can be a subtle form of enabling such evil, and helping perpetuate and compound the harm.

With even such, Jesus says, “live in Peace.”

But living in peace doesn’t mean making nice, papering over evil, or thickening our conscience with an amoral detachment. Ask any marriage or family counselor, any labor mediator, or any mediator or negotiator in international or inter-ethnic conflict. They’ll all tell you that truly seeking peace is not easy, and not harmonious. It is not a false “let’s all forget about the past and try to make up.”

It is about honestly addressing real problems and real differences. It is about doing so in a spirit of shared endeavor, a sense of being in a common plight, of mutual desire and effort to let common desires and aspirations force us to listen carefully to our own story and the story told by the other party.

Jesus teaches us, “Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you.” Wish well for those who spitefully use you. (Matt. 5:44)
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Police photograph of Solzhenitsyn, 1953.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, in the Gulag Archipelago, talks about the moment during his decades in Stalin’s prison camps that he recovered his Christian faith, and began to heal even while in prison. In the chapter, “Resurrection,” he notes that he realized that no matter how tightly his interrogators pressured him, he still had some choice, however limited, however constrained. While tortured, he was always forced to tell his tormentors what they wanted, but he still could do this willingly or unwillingly, hatefully, or with empathy. This led him to realize that even his interrogators themselves were constrained. They too enjoyed, even within the constraints placed on them by their roles, small choices between good and evil.

He realized that it wasn’t an issue of good people versus bad people. The line between good and evil did not lay between interrogator and prisoner, between political parties, between economic classes, countries, or religions. It did not lay between any groups of people, however defined. It lay in that small space of choice, no matter how tightly constrained, in each person.

He writes, “If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

Solzhenitsyn understood the principle behind Jesus’ statements here in Mark. We are all God’s creatures and all bear God’s image, no matter how we may have distorted and twisted it. We are all in this together. And that is so regardless of what we think of each other, regardless of how right or wrong we may be in our judgments of each other.

Jesus proclaimed the coming of God’s rule. Through his perfect submission to God, he showed the way for the kingdom to fully come.

He continues today to call us to be good yeast leavening the loaf of the world, bright lanterns of fire enlightening the world. He calls us to be salt for the world, effectively enriching and preserving its good. He does not call us to demonize, exclude, or ostracize. These things are bad leaven that leads to rottenness and decay. He calls us to include, reach out, and leaven the whole loaf.

God himself will bring this world right. We will be rubbed through and through with God’s salt. We will be put through God’s fire. And because of this, we simply must live humbly, pray for each other, including our enemies, seek to help each other, work for justice, and live in peace. Pray God that we may do this.

In the name of God, Amen.

10 Things I have Learned since Ordination

10 Things I have Learned

in the Year since My Ordination

I have moved to Beijing and have started assisting at the (expatriate) Congregation of the Good Shepherd there. It has been a year since I was ordained a deacon, and I am preparing for being priested on Sept. 19 (back in Hong Kong). Part of the preparation is reflection over the last year. As part of that exercise, the Diocese asked me to assemble a short article for the Chinese Language Diocesan newsletter, the Echo on things I have learned since ordination. I wrote the following in response:

1. Take the opportunities to serve that present themselves. Stretch yourself.

Given my status as a transitional deacon at St. John’s Cathedral, the Dean and several of the more experienced chaplains and members of the cathedral staff mentored me. Clergy members in other parishes, dioceses, and provinces did as well. On several occasions, they asked me to do things I would not have done on my own because I thought I knew myself and believed I was not suited for them. Among these were an anointing and prayer ministry for the ill and afflicted, as well as some alternative youth-oriented liturgies. By pushing beyond my comfort zone, I learned new areas of service and new things about myself. I grew quite a bit and realized I had skills and interests (and gifts) I was unaware of.

2. Listen, listen, listen. Talk only when necessary. Closely related to this is St. Francis’ dictum: Preach the Gospel at all times and in all places, only occasionally opening your mouth to do so.
I have seen many scenes where people misunderstand people and situations around them because they were too quick to comment, compare, make suggestions, or criticize. Often the misunderstanding was mine. The more experienced and effective of my mentors always listened more than they talked.



3. Don’t assume anything about anyone. When it comes to individual human beings and individual families, there is no such thing as “normal.”

A lesson underscored by many surprises in the course of the year: you never know what people are going home to, and what hopes and fears they harbor in their hearts. Similarly, with a community as diverse as the people who attend St. John’s as their parish church, don’t make assumptions based on looks or demographics.

As people shared various things about themselves with me in my capacity as a chaplain, I realized that many of us are burdened by the shame and fear of feeling that we are different from others or worse than them, or dread falling short of their expectations for us. But surprisingly, these feelings are shared by many of the same people who provoke those fears in others. Christians have the great relief of casting such burdens on the One who can carry them, and can thus be liberated from the tyranny of the ‘normal.’ We are all unique, but we all share many of the same failings and fears. So we tend to isolate ourselves and cut ourselves off from others (this is true especially in men, I find). I have seen in case after case that the cure for isolation is taking to heart the assurance that we don’t have to be alone any more. Sharing our burdens--as embarrassing and unseemly as it might seem, is a far easier path than suffering on in isolation.

"Christ in the House of Mary and Martha," Jan Vermeer, c. 1654-1655; National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh

4. Try to get the liturgy as right as possible by prior planning and reflection. But don’t worry about it once the introit bell sounds. Then it is time to worship, not worry.

The importance of proper attention to liturgical details before a service as a way of reducing stress and distractions during the worship itself has been underscored for me again and again. I think maybe this one of the things the story of Mary and Martha is about (Luke 10:38-42).

"The Sleeping Congregation" (1728; William Hogarth;Minneapolis Institute of Arts)

5. The ears can only hear and the heart can only absorb what the bottom can endure.

Homilies should be short and to the point. A sermon’s effectiveness decreases with each minute over 12. The ideal is about 8-10. You usually can make only one point, or at best two. Anything more will be lost or confusing. Coming from an academic background, this has been a hard one for me to learn. But thanks to my wife’s repeated kind litany of “too long” and the gentle prodding of the other chaplains (who had to endure my early longer sermons), I think I have finally learned to keep it short. One of the great blessings of not having air conditioning at St. John’s is that when you are wearing an alb with stole covered with a large embroidered thick brocade Dalmatic or Tunicle (or, for the priests, a Chasuble), you have a great built-in incentive to not be overly-long in either the Ministry of the Word or the Ministry of the Table. It is even more so in the case of Morning or Evening Prayer—the woolen cassock (even tropical weight!) and long cotton surplice are even hotter than the linen Alb and silk Dalmatic.

6. Dress the part.

Wearing clericals (including collar) is a sign that God’s Kingdom is open for business; wear them if appropriate whenever doing Church work. But overdoing it is a bit ridiculous. Good-hearted jokes in the vestry teasing the higher-than-the-himalayas Anglo-catholics on their sartorial tastes showed for me that were was a real "laugh test" here: a chaplain returning from a pilgrimage to Rome at one point brought a gift to one of our staff people as a gag-- a beautiful new biretta, complete with pom-pom.

7. The “authority thing” can work for or against your ministry. The trick in effective outreach is recognizing early which dynamic is at work.

Early on, I was wearing a clergy shirt on the way to a Thursday staff meeting. On the street, several complete strangers asked me for directions. (People never ask me for directions when I’m in a business suit.) I realized people felt comfortable asking a minister for directions. Several weeks later on a bus, I had the opposite experience—the clericals I was wearing elicited sullen stares from a couple who obviously had some issue with the Church.

A clerical collar can make a person on the street or the MTR (subway) give you the cold shoulder, a bitter scowl, or treat you as a tool of oppression. But a collar can also help strangers open up, pour out their hearts to you, or smile and ask for help.

8. Life is a sacrament, and a priest’s life one that embodies grace in the Church.

A sacrament is a visible sign of an inward grace and power from God. Though there are only two sacraments instituted by the Lord in the Gospels (Baptism and Eucharist), the larger Church tradition of seven sacraments is rooted in the earliest Church practice. Orders is one of these, as is matrimony. All the baptized are “a royal priesthood” (1 Peter 2:19) and a “kingdom, priests to God” (Revelation 1:6). Their lives, rightly lived, are formed and structured by these gifts from God, and themselves become sacramental. I have seen and felt the expectation of others for priests to set the example. The lives of those specifically trained and set apart for the ministry of the word and table must be a beacon for grace, a sacrament showing God is always near.


9. The last should be first, and the first last.

Try to serve the marginalized and forgotten first. One of my mentors after hearing one of my early homilies casually remarked, “You know, some clergy here use the word ‘we' carelessly. They mean only people who are like them, who are of a similar social, economic, and educational background. When you say ‘we’ in talking about the congregation, look at the congregation and speak for everyone there. You have to include the non-native speakers of English, the domestic helpers, the prominent and the anonymous, the Council members and regular congregants as well as people who are visiting for the first time. Remember ‘we’ means everyone present.” This was his gentle way of chiding me for having used ‘we’ in too restricted a fashion. I have since tried hard to include everyone, especially those who might be “invisible” elsewhere in this very rank- and prestige-conscious city.

One of my mentors takes the phrase "last first, first last" literally when celebrating mass-- he serves the servers and as celebrant lets himself be served the bread and the wine only after the congregation has communed. This same priest also liturgically commissions and sends out lay teams with the eucharist for shut-ins at the end of each service, just before the blessing and the dismissal.


10. An open heart and mind trump a closed heart and mind, regardless of what one “believes” or “disbelieves.”

One of the priest’s major jobs is helping people get rid of “bad religion” in their lives and replace it with “good religion.” Sometimes those who doubt or openly disbelieve, or those who sin grievously, are closer to God than those who profess religion openly because they at least feel a need for change and for power beyond themselves. What matters is our openness, how willing we are to learn and change, and how we treat others. What is on our lips and what group we affiliate with—religious, political, economic, or otherwise—are not of first importance. In Jesus’ day, people tried to identify people who were on the right track by asking whether they kept God's rules--the Law of Moses. In our day, we tend to ask whether they keep moral laws and whether they "believe in God" or profess true religion. But Jesus said again and again that “religious people” might not be as close to God as “sinners” and “law-breakers” if their hearts were not in the right place. Whether you think you're a believer, an agnostic, or a down-right atheist matters less in the long run than whether you recognize your own limitations, are open to learning and changing your opinions, questioning your own motives and actions, and taking suggestions from others.

Mixing Metaphors (Proper 11 B) (Ps. 23)

Mixing Metaphors
Seventh after Pentecost (Proper 11 B)
19th July 2009
Parish Church of St. John the Baptist, Seattle, Washington
8:00 a.m. Eucharist, 10:15 a.m. Choral Eucharist
RCL B 2nd cycle: Jeremiah 23:1-6; Psalm 23; Ephesians 2:11-22; Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

God, let us not accept the judgment that this is all that we are. Breathe into us a desire to change and faith that we all can. Take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

Years ago, a friend of ours told us the story of how she grew up as a hearing child of two deaf parents. She was a gifted singer, and regularly sang in one of the state’s best high school choirs. Her parents attended every one of her performances. Once, other parents asked them why they came to all her concerts since they couldn’t hear her. “Oh,” they replied through an interpreter, “we don’t come to hear her sing. We come to see her sing. We are so proud of her.”

The image of our friend’s deaf parents admiringly going to see her sing tells me a great deal about love.

We are creatures of words and images. We tell stories, draw comparisons. We think and feel in metaphor and simile. We define ourselves in large part by the stories we choose to tell and not to tell, and by the images we choose to describe our world.

What images do you use to think of God?

A sovereign monarch, or a parent?

A supernatural being standing apart from the phenomenal universe, or the ground in which we live, and move, and have our being?

An intimate, or some abstract power?

A vindicator of the oppressed?

A law-giver and enforcer? Or a healer?

Is God for you a redundancy, a useless story that really doesn’t tell us anything about the world as it actually is?

Or does your God have the face of Jesus?

We need to reflect on the images we use to think and feel about God and the world. Are they useful? Are they healthy? Are they true?

We mustn’t take metaphors literally. That robs them of their ability to tell us what we need. “God as a parent” could mean a loving nurturer or an abusive domestic tyrant. We need to recognize the true point of a comparison or we risk being misled.

Today’s readings are rich in images. Jeremiah talks about the last kings of Judah as careless, harmful shepherds, and counters this with the assurance of an ideal future king who will safely shepherd his people.

The beloved 23rd Psalm describes God as a loving shepherd and a gracious host.


And Saint Mark in the Gospel says that Jesus, in a short foray into Gentile territory, looked at the crowds with pity, because they were “like sheep that had lost their shepherd,” and then he teaches and heals them.

Today’s epistle doesn’t use the image “shepherd” like the other passages. St. Paul describes the inclusion of Gentiles as well as Jews in the early Church by saying Christ is “our peace” who “broke down the wall dividing us.” Later, John’s Gospel would describe this same event by having Jesus say he is the Good Shepherd and add “Other sheep I have, which are not of this flock: them also I must bring, and they too shall hear my voice; and there shall be one flock, and one shepherd” (John 10:16).

Today’s passages together suggest that despite difficulty, hardship, or horror, we must trust God, in whose hand we all are. This trust must lead us to transcend ourselves, and reach out to others.

No metaphor is perfect, so we often end up mixing them to make the point of comparison clear.


Most people today have never seen a shepherd, and so they do not find Psalm 23’s image of a shepherd very helpful. But they understand its image of a gracious host. Think of a concrete example you know of a gracious host, and what that person does to make the guest comfortable. The Palmist says that’s what God is like.

An authentic image helps describe reality, not create a false picture in the place of it.

Jeremiah does not say that since God established the kings of Judah, they can do no wrong. He openly admits how rotten things are, and accuses those who attribute this to God’s will. He admits how wrong things are, but declares hope nonetheless, shifting it to a future ideal king.

Psalm 23 expresses trust in the here and now. The reason people find it so comforting in times of trouble is that even as it expresses trust and hope, it mentions things that cause doubt and fear. It takes seriously the dangers that are very much a part of life: the valley of the shadow of death; the enemies that surround, even at a banquet. Psalm 23 does not falsify the harsh reality of life but does not let hope get swallowed by it.

Contrast this with the common use made of the image of a God who hears and answers prayers, blesses the righteous, and punishes the wicked. Many seem to think that this describes how life is, period. Oh, if it were only that simple! The Book of Deuteronomy, the historical books of the Hebrew Bible, and Proverbs seem to teach this, but the Book of Job and Ecclesiastes clearly disagree.

Rabbi Harold Kushner, author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People, says
the twenty-third Psalm is the answer to the question, “How do you live in a dangerous, unpredictable, frightening world?” Right after 9/11, many people asked him “How could God have let such a thing happen?” His answer was “God's promise was never that life would be fair. God's promise was, when it's your turn to confront the unfairness of life, no matter how hard it is, you'll be able to handle it, because He'll be on your side. He will give you the strength you need to find your way through. … “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me.” [does not mean], “I will fear no evil because evil only happens to people who deserve it.” [Rather,] “This is a scary, out-of-control world, but it doesn't scare me, because I know that God is on my side, not on the side of the . . . the terrible thing that [has] happened. And that's enough to give me the confidence.”

Trusting the living God despite our woes (or is it because of them?), we realize that we all are in God’s hand. And if we all are the people of God’s pasture and the sheep of God’s hand, then certainly we must reach out to all.

The surest way we can demonstrate our trust in this loving shepherd is by loving. The most direct way of showing our gratitude for our gracious host is by being gracious to others, especially those most unlike us.

George Herbert

Anglican Divine George Herbert developed the image of God as a gracious host in these words:

Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
If I lacked anything.
‘A guest,’ I answered, ‘worthy to be here’:
Love said, ‘You shall be he.’
‘I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee.’
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
‘Who made the eyes but I?’
‘Truth Lord, but I have marred them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.’
‘And know you not,’ says Love, ‘who bore the blame?
My dear, then I will serve.
You must sit down,’ says Love, ‘and taste my meat’:
So I did sit and eat.

---George Herbert, The Temple (1633) “Love (3)”


May we all so partake of the feast our host offers. And may we offer such care and love to our fellow guests.

In the name of God, Amen.

They Laughed at Him (Proper 8 B)

They Laughed at Him
Fourth after Pentecost (Proper 8 B)
28th June 2009
Cathedral Church of St. John the Evangelist, Hong Kong
Lamentations 3. 22 – 33; Psalm 30; 2 Corinthians 8. 7 – end; Mark 5. 21 - 43

God, breathe into us a desire to change— take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

Today’s gospel reading is a sandwich: the main story--the two pieces of bread--is about how Jesus was asked by the synagogue leader Jairus to heal his 12-year old daughter, and how Jesus did that. Embedded in the middle of the bread--the filling, as it were--is the story of Jesus and the woman with a long-standing hemorrhage.

Modern readers usually understand the basic drama of the combined story—Jesus is asked to heal the girl, but on the way is followed by crowds who press in on him. Among the crowd is the woman, desperate for healing after losing all she has to try to remedy her condition. She secretly touches Jesus’ robe and is instantly healed. He, however, notices that something has happened and turns to ask who touched him. After an exchange with the disciples and the woman, he returns on his way to Jairus’ house. But the time it has taken to sort things out in the crowd was too long—the girl has died. Jesus nevertheless proceeds and heals the girl.

There are, however, a couple of matters in the story that are not readily apparent to the modern reader, and these are key to understanding what the story is trying to tell us.

First of all-- the crowds around Jesus are like the crowds of any peasant culture (or any culture that is just one or two generations removed from the life of peasants). They are crowding around him because they want to see something interesting, something worth telling.

Having grown up in North America, I didn’t really understand what was going on in the story until I moved to China and saw crowd behavior there. The Chinese term coù rènao (pile on to the heat and the noise) aptly describes a phenomenon you often see in Mainland China, especially in the provinces. After every traffic accident, or minor altercation or disagreement between people, you see a crowd gather quickly to watch. They press in to get a better view. They start cheering on their favorite or making comments of their own. You see, these people haven’t seen anything interesting in a long time, and the incident provides entertainment and variety to their somewhat monotonous lives. A similar thing on a usually much reduced scale occurs in schools in North America when young students gather around two of their classmates in an argument and they begin chanting “fight, fight.” The people following Jesus are pressing in to get a better view, to get a better chance of hearing what he is saying. Once it becomes clear that he actually is healing people, the crowds increase—we read in Mark 6:56, “And wherever he went—into villages, towns or countryside—they placed the sick in the marketplaces. They begged him to let them touch even the edge of his cloak, and all who touched him were healed.”

So when the woman touches his clothes and he turns and asks who touched him, the disciples are understandably a bit perplexed at why he should even ask such a silly question.

Another item in the story that is more central to its meaning is this: the woman with the issue of blood won’t dare ask Jesus to help her because she is ritually impure. Under the religious laws of the day, she was unclean and conveyed that uncleanness to anyone who touched her or things she had had touched.

The rules to prevent ritual contamination were a central part of the religion that Jesus had been raised in, the varied Judaism of the period of the Second Temple. Just after the rules about dealing with women with unusual flows of blood, we read this in Leviticus 15: “You must keep the Israelites separate from things that make them unclean, so they will not die in their uncleanness for defiling my dwelling place, which is among them.”

The woman is an outcast because of her disability. She wonders how a religious teacher like Jesus could be expected to pay her any attention, let alone touch her to heal her. So she takes things into her own hands and secretly touches his robe. She is cured, but he feels that some power has gone out of him, and he asks who touched him.

It is the woman’s uncleanness that makes her reluctant to ask for help, or even expect a reply.


Similarly, when Jesus finally arrives at the house of Jairus, the question of ritual impurity again intrudes in this complicated sandwich of a story. Coming into close proximity to, or touching, a corpse also transmitted ritual uncleanness. When the crowd tells Jairus that his daughter is dead, Jesus persists in going to try to heal her, and tells him, “Don’t be afraid, just believe.”

He is not asking Jairus to sign on to a doctrinal program, or to intellectually assent to a set of propositions about the universe, morals, or society. He is asking Jairus to trust him. Remember that the Latin word credo, "I believe," from which we get the word "creed" originally came from cordem dare, "to give one's heart."

They leave the crowd behind, and come to the house, where professional mourners are already at work, ululating, weeping, and tearing their clothes. Their presence underscores the high social status enjoyed by Jairus. When Jesus announces that the girl is not dead, just asleep, and says he will go and wake her up, the crowd laughs at him.

Some probably laugh at what they see as Jesus’ stubbornness in not listening to their announcement that the girl is dead. Some laugh at his foolishness in thinking that he can 'heal' a dead person. Most are probably laughing, in typical Asian fashion, out of nervousness—this guy is not only going to cause a great scene involving a corpse, but is also going to break, right there in public, a great taboo.

For corpses, too, were a source of ritual contamination. By going to the corpse and touching it, he would become unclean, and then come out and transmit the ritual impurity to all present as well.

Despite the privileged position the little girl had in life as the daughter of a religious leader, in death she is just another corpse, just another source of ritual contamination, like the woman with the flow of blood earlier in the story.

After he puts the onlookers all out, he takes the child's father and mother and his accompanying disciples, and goes in to where the corpse is. He then takes her by the hand and says, “Little girl, get up!” (Talitha qumi! It is recorded in the words he probably actually used in his own native language, Aramaic.)

We read, “Immediately the girl stood up and walked around (she was twelve years old). At this they were completely astonished.”

You see, in both cases, the woman with the flow of blood and Jairus’ young daughter, compassion and service took precedence over a desire to remain pure.

This really marks just how radical Jesus was. The religion of the day declared, with the full authority of scripture literally cited and interpreted through authoritative tradition, that impurity was contagious. It spread from the unclean to the clean. People who want to please God must avoid it if at all possible, lest they commit sacrilege against the Temple of God. If impurity is inadvertently contracted, they need to purge it away through rituals.

As a Jew, Jesus respected the rituals. But he taught that goodness was different from purity, and far more important. In his view, moral goodness was spread to others by compassion and service. And the need for compassion and service trumped the need to avoid contamination at all times.

The theme is a subtext of almost all of Jesus’ public acts and teaching. He practiced open table fellowship with people that his religion labeled as the worst of the worst. And according to the Law, the table where one ate was one of the easiest places to contract impurity. He taught that it was what one said and did, rather than what one ate, that counted. He tended to discount ritual washings as a core issue and said they did not necessarily touch what really mattered—the heart. He told stories of religious men avoiding contamination with what they thought was a corpse in contrast to a heretic and illegitimate man (a Samaritan) who, despite the same religious rules about corpses, still showed compassion and thus made himself the fellow countryman ("the neighbor") of the man who was near death.

In so doing, Jesus was following the very best of the Jewish prophetic tradition, which itself had consistently criticized the religious establishment’s concern with purity rather than justice.

Ultimately, it would be Jesus’ uncompromising insistence on this that so alienated the religious authorities that they conspired to turn him over to the hated Roman occupiers.

We need never think that our uncleanness or impurity is a barrier keeping us from Jesus. We need not fear that a disability we may have can keep us from the love of Jesus. Jesus loves us regardless, and wants to heal us and help us understand that we are forgiven all.

What keeps us from Jesus is our fear itself. Our fear may make us so nervous that we , like the professional mourners outside Jairus' house, end up laughing at God. But the woman with the flow of blood was so desperate that she overcame her fear. Taking things into her own hands she reaches out to touch his robes. We too need to reach out to touch his robes.

When Jairus learns his daughter is dead, Jesus tells him "Don't be afraid, just trust in me."

Jesus is saying this today, to each of us, "Don't be afraid. Just trust in me."

In the name of God, Amen.

God of the Storm (Proper 7 B)

God of the Storm
Third Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 7)
21th June 2009
Morrison Chapel, Macau
10:00 a.m. Eucharist with reserved sacrament
Job 38:1-11, 16-18; Psalm 107:1-3, 23-32; 2 Corinthians 5:14-21; Mark 4:35-41

God, breathe into us a desire to change— take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

Thank you all for welcoming me once again to Morrison Chapel.

In the north transept of St. John’s cathedral in Hong Kong, there is a beautiful stained glass window of Jesus calming the seas, the story we read today in the Gospel. Beside the portrayal of Jesus in the small boat with his disciples in the middle of Lake Tiberias, you find other figures: on one side is an English seaman, complete with navy blue peacoat, dufflebag, and pipe, looking as if at a shipping vessel preparing to load at the dock. On the other is a Southern Chinese woman in traditional clothing and woven grass rain hat looking to mend nets for fishing. The point is clear—here along the South China coast where sea faring is such a part of the economy and where risking one’s life by plying one’s trade out on the waters is a part of many people’s daily life, Jesus as a savior who can calm rough waters is truly important.


The story of Jesus calming the storm is more than just a recitation of a miraculous act of Jesus that demonstrates his authority. It is a story underscoring that Jesus is compassionate, and wholly worthy of trust and being relied on when we are in trouble.


The writers of the Gospel stories about Jesus calming the storm probably had in mind the description of the God who calls the storms and then calms them which we chanted today from Psalm 107. In Churches and parishes in port towns and in military chaplaincies for the Navy, we often hear the section of this Psalm that we chanted today, the part about “those who go down to the sea in ships.”

But what is interesting to me is this—Psalm 107 is not just about sailors. It has several different sections describing people in many different extreme situations, where they need to rely on God. The whole Psalm could be entitled, “God, the Savior of People in Distress.”

Part (vv. 4-9) talks about people who get lost in the desert and run out of water. God there leads them back to an oasis.

Another part (vv. 10-16) describes prisoners in a dark dungeon. God leads them from darkness to light, from bondage to freedom.

Yet another (vv. 17-22) talks about people suffering from horrible illness, as the Psalmist says, “because of their wicked ways.” They are near the gates of death because they cannot eat food anymore, because it has become so distasteful to them in their illness. One wonders whether whether the Psalmist has venereal disease, alcoholism or drug addiction, or some other ailment in mind, but the bit about not wanting to eat any nourishing food brings all these to mind. In the Psalmist's era, people thought disease came as punishment from God rather than from infection microbes. God heals these people when they call on him.

Finally, we see the part about those who go out upon the sea and get caught in a storm (vv. 23-32). Again, God calms the storm when they call on him. The psalm ends (vv. 33-41) by saying that God can change a river into a desert, and rich springs into dusty and arid ground. He can turn fruitful land into a salt marsh, and a desert into pools of water. The point is that God is a reliable savior in any hardship.

So the next time we hear the story about Jesus calming the storm, let’s not just think about Jesus helping mariners only.

Think about the drug addicts and alcoholics who have been helped by Jesus when they call upon him and surrender to him. And that, whatever name they might use to call Jesus, or image they might have of their “higher power.”

Think about the physically ill who have found healing and comfort in Jesus.

Think about how his message can help those lost in mental illness, or harmful ego.

Think about the poor that Jesus calls us to serve and assist.

Think about how he helps those lost in sin and self-deception, ourselves included, and lost in exploitation and deception of others.

“Master, don’t you care that we are perishing?” the disciples in the boat cry when they find him sleeping in the storm.

Before replying, Jesus calms the storm. Then he asks, “Why are you terrified? Where’s your trust in God? Where’s your faith?”

When I heard this story as a young boy, I heard this line and thought that Jesus here was condemning the disciples. "Oh ye of little faith." "If only you had faith, Peter, you could not only walk on water but also calm the sea itself." "If you have faith the size of a tiny mustard seed, you could not only move mountains, but calm the oceans too." All this conspired to make me want to say, "I'm unworthy, unworthy."

But that is not what the story is trying to say. Remember that this is the Jesus who spent his days with drunkards and prostitutes, and when criticized for this replied, "sick people need a doctor, not healthy ones." It is the same Jesus who told the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector.

The point is this--if we are forced by our circumstances to think we need God, then we should realize that it is God that we are in need of. God is trustworthy. God, in the idea of the Psalm we chanted today, is the savior of all in distress. Relying on God leaves little room for fear. Regardless of how things turn out, we know that, in the words of the prayer, God "is doing for us more that we can ask or imagine."

That's why Jesus calms the sea before he asks his disciples why they were afraid. He sympathizes and understands them, but wants to turn their rough fear and general sense of needing into a directed desire for the help of the One who is wholly trustworthy.

Jesus cares, and can help. We need to trust him.

In the name of God, Amen.