All Things New (Easter 5C)

 

“All Things New”
Easter 5C
28 April 2013 8:00 a.m. Said and 10 a.m. Sung Mass

Parish Church of Trinity, Ashland (Oregon)

Acts 11:1-18; Psalm 148; Revelation 21:1-6; John 13:31-35

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

Fifty years ago this year, on August 28, 1963, a group of demonstrators gathered at the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall in what was called the “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.”  They were demanding the passage of national civil rights and voting right acts to end legal discrimination on the basis of race or color.  Fifty years ago today, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a young Baptist minister from Atlanta advocating non-violent vigorous resistance to oppression, delivered one of the great speeches of American political and social history.  

In all of about 15 minutes King took up great themes and rhetorical tropes: 100 years gone by since the Emancipation Proclamation, and still no freedom; America’s default on the promissory note of liberty it had signed in its Declaration of Independence; we will not be satisfied until freedom is truly and authentically enjoyed by all; have hope that suffering is redemptive; and “I have a dream today.”

I remember as a young boy watching the speech on television and being deeply moved.  I had never before heard the preaching of the black Church.  Even my dear father, who thought King was a hypocrite and a Communist to boot, was moved by King’s vision of a country where we all said, “let freedom ring.” 

Today, 50 years on, we see progress.  The Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act were passed.  Explicit racial prejudice is now generally, if not universally, condemned in our society, where it was still a socially acceptable point of discussion in many quarters when King gave the speech.    

But fifty years on, we are still far, far, from the dream Dr. King described, a dream where we all share equally in our common life, where we are all brothers and sisters, not defined by external classifications.

 

Dr. King was one of the spiritual and political leaders of the last 100 years who exerted profound influence to help their people not through skillful management of force or manipulation of interest group politics but through their self-sacrificing dedication to truth, to the common heritage and values of all humanity, and their non-violent use of what Mohandas K. Gandhi called Satyagraha—truth force.  These include Gandhi himself, King, Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, Aung San Suu Kyi, and H.H. the Dalai Lama, among many, many others.   

Thomas Merton, O.C.R.,  and H.H. the XIV Dalai Lama

People often have misunderstood the reasons and rationale for non-violent  resistance to oppression. Trappist monk Thomas Merton wrote the following:  

It would be a serious mistake to regard … nonviolence simply as a novel tactic which is at once efficacious and even edifying, and which enables the sensitive person to participate in the struggles of the world without being dirtied with blood. Nonviolence is not simply a way of proving one’s point and getting what one wants without being involved in behavior that one considers ugly and evil.…  Nonviolence is perhaps the most exacting of all forms of struggle, not only because it demands first of all that one be ready to suffer evil and even face the threat of death without violent retaliation, but because it excludes mere transient self-interest from its considerations. In a very real sense, those who practice nonviolent resistance must commit themselves not to the defense of their own interests or even those of a particular group: they must commit themselves to the defense of objective truth and right and … all … human beings. Their aim is then not simply to “prevail” or to prove that they are right and the adversary wrong, or to make the adversary give in and yield what is demanded of him.

…[N]onviolence is not built on a presupposed division, but on the basic unity of humankind. It is not out for the conversion of the wicked to the ideas of the good, but for healing and reconciliation. ("Blessed are the Meek: The Roots of Christian Non-Violence," 1967)

King’s “I have a Dream” vision is one of united humanity, not divided races.  It is a world where all are reconciled rather than one where one group, previously oppressed, has simply prevailed, turned the tables, and become oppressors in turn.

Today’s story from Acts tells of the breaking down of barriers, the overcoming of human divisions, and the sacrificial, transforming, love that comes from our faith.  The inclusion of the Gentiles is a great theme of the Book of Acts, and is seen there as the direct consequence of Jesus’ resurrection.    It is very appropriate on this anniversary.

 

Peter has included the Gentiles because of his experience of God—despite everything he knows about clean and unclean, proper and improper, holy and profane from the Holy Scriptures of his day.  This causes people in the Church to question him.  He intentionally goes to them, takes time and explains, “step by step.”  He simply says what has happened to him to help him change his mind from where he once was and where those criticizing him still are.  He is careful to include the details of the dream vision: “Lord, I can’t eat that stuff because it’s against your commandments and I’ve tried since I was little to keep them.  I can’t eat it because it’s disgusting.”   “But then the voice of God said, ‘call nothing unclean that I have made clean and nothing profane that I have made holy.’”  And Peter then actually gets to know some of these believing Gentiles and sees in their lives the signs that God has been active in their lives, just as much as in the lives of Jewish believers.  This for him is the sign that God has indeed made these Gentiles holy, without benefit of following the Scriptural Law that Peter knows. 

The Resurrection of Jesus changed the world for his followers.  All things were made new.  Jesus in his life had proclaimed the arrival of God’s Reign; God raising Jesus from the dead showed that the Reign had indeed come.  As so we have to live as if the Reign of God is already here.  This includes God’s great banquet for all peoples at the end of time.  This includes all people being priests and prophets.    Jesus’ disciples re-evaluated everything in light of the Resurrection. Their contemplation of Beauty that raises the dead made them quickly see the universality of God’s grace, and the impermanence of human barriers. 

“Call nothing profane that I have made holy!”  “Call nothing unclean that I have made clean!”  “All things are being made new!” 

If we are to follow God’s call, we must stand ready to witness to the truth of God’s action in our lives and the lives of others, especially those different from us.  With Peter, we must reach out and get to know the unfamiliar.  We must “go” with them and learn to see the hand of God in their lives.  Then we must go to those who criticize, and explain, “step by step,” what has led us to see God’s hand at work in our fellow human beings. 

In his Second Inaugural Address in January, President Obama made a passing reference to Dr. King’s speech by also mentioning the Declaration of Independence’s vision of human equality and dignity.  He explicitly expanded the reference beyond race: “We, the people, declare today the most evident of truths--that all of us are created equal--is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall.”  The president was talking about three great historic moments in the fight for equality for all Americans: the Seneca Falls convention in New York in 1848, which launched the women’s suffrage movement; the marches in Selma and other cities in Alabama in 1965 that Dr. King helped organize; and the spontaneous demonstrations in New York City in 1969 by members of the gay community after a gratuitous and brutal police raid on a bar called the Stonewall Inn.

The issue of the full inclusion of first women as priests and bishops and then gays and lesbians fully in the common and sacramental life of the Episcopal Church has caused a lot of controversy in the Church and the Anglican Communion in the last 20 years.  Like the devout Jewish Christians in today’s story, some have criticized inclusion, pointed to Scripture (at least Scripture as they understand it, and asked how we can do such a thing. 

All things made new! The Gospel calls us to break these barriers too.  In Christ, there is no white or black, slave or free, male or female, Jew or Gentile, or gay or straight.  Our reading of Holy Scripture, our reflection on tradition, and our reason tells us that we are seeing clear evidence of God intending women to be church leaders, and redeeming, transforming grace at work in the lives of Gay, Lesbian, and transgender people of faith.  This has led us to discern, to be led by the Spirit if you will, that we must open these ministries and sacraments to all, including people previously marginalized and condemned due to impediment of gender or what had been seen as the moral failing and disorder of same sex attraction and love.  Call nothing profane that God has declared holy! 

The resurrection of Jesus from the dead is what calls us, just as it did Peter. 

Many members of this congregation over the years have been great examples of working for the ordination and episcopal consecration of women, and full inclusion in the sacraments and life of the Church of Gays, Lesbians, and transgendered persons.  These Trinitarians are models for us all.

All the blessings of full inclusion have been obvious, not just for those now newly included, but for us all, who have been graced by the gifts and contributions they make in our common life.   

I know that we often operate by the rule: to get along, don’t talk religion or politics with people, especially if they disagree with you.  But far from avoiding the difficult conversations with those who question or disagree with us here, we need to learn to commend the faith that is in us.  Like Peter, we need to go to them, and explain these things step-by-step.  And we need to do this because we see in them also the children of God.  Truth force dictates that we may learn new things from them as well, and we must be open to this if we are truly to practice contemplation and satyagraha. 

Sometime today or tomorrow, I want us all to sit down and read, watch, or listen to Dr. King’s “I have a dream” speech.   Listen to it, and think of what your dream is today.  Think about how the resurrection makes all things new and breaks down all barriers.  Think about the barriers that we still need to break down.  Think about finding God in your opponents. 

Here are links to a video and the text of Dr. King's speech:  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRIF4_WzU1w

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/17/i-have-a-dream-speech-text_n_809993.html

In the name of Christ, Amen. 

Abundant God (Mid-week Message)

 

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

Abundant God

April 23, 2013

 

It is important to remember when we talk about our faith that there is a difference between an espoused theology (what we say we believe) and an operational one (how we enact our day-to-day relationship with God, ourselves, and others).  We may say we believe that God is all-powerful, all-knowing, benevolent, ever-present, and all good.  But do we actually feel and act as if this is the case?  If we try to hide things from others, ourselves, or God, our actions belie our stated beliefs.  Remember the collect for purity at the beginning of mass:  “O God, to you all hearts are open and from you no secrets are hid.”

 

Likewise, in our feelings toward God, we often act as if God is a peevish, snoopy control freak ready to yell “Gotcha!” at our slightest failings, just rubbing his hands and waiting for us to mess up. 

 

But this is not the God Jesus tells us about, the one who is like a shameless but loving father of the prodigal younger and older priggish sons, the God who sends blessings of rain and sunshine on good and evil alike; who counts hairs on the head and sparrows in their fall; the one who would rather hear a “bad” person say “I’m sorry, and I’ll do better,” than a “good” person say “thank you for making me so much better than all the others.”  This is not the God Jesus describes when he suggests that the one thing God really gets upset about is the cruelty and hardness we show toward each other, especially toward those who are vulnerable and in need.  

 

Our God is a God of abundance and love, not one of scarcity and condemnation or contempt.

 

Is your practical theology one where God loves us, is crazy about us, accepts us and wishes us all blessing and good?   Or is the God you hold in your heart a stingy, nasty piece of work? 

 

Grace and peace,

 

Fr. Tony+

Sara Miles on Resurrection (Mid-week Message)

Fr. Tony’s Mid-week Message

April 17, 2013

Sara Miles on Resurrection

Here is a short snippet from Sara Miles’ fine book, Take this Bread.  She describes her feelings after the return of a friend, Martin, who she thought had died but instead had surprisingly recovered from a deadly illness.    

“I didn’t believe in miracles.  And yet I had begun to believe in healing.  I saw you could be changed, opened to experiencing your life differently, made more whole, even as your body was falling apart.  That you could be healed from fear by touch, even when you remained sick.

“And I had begun to believe in resurrection.  I didn’t mean, by resurrection, having Martin stand up alive from the operating table and walk: I saw no cause and effect between our prayers together and his improbable recovery.  Resurrection didn’t mean what I still yearned for in my loneliest moments: to see my best friend, Douglas; … or my beloved father materialize again, even for just a moment, next to me.  I actually couldn’t imagine that I would see them again, in the flesh, in a drift of pink clouds in a place called heaven.  Resurrection, to me, was mysterious and true in a way I could glimpse only for a second, before my mind refused to stretch that far.  It passed, as the Bible said, human understanding.  But I sensed that it had to do with time, like the time Marshall lay in my lap and we were both present and connected.  It was about eternity available in a fully lived instant” (p. 231). 

Faith is a gradual, partial thing.  Faithfulness is living out and responding to the small glimpses of the true, the beautiful, and the health-giving life behind our lives that God graces us with from time to time.  If you cannot believe in God hearing and answering prayers, or in the resurrection of Jesus, or in a general resurrection of the dead, then trust the calming effect of prayer on your worries, and the glimpses of God’s grace and of resurrection you see in your lives.  Do not try to work up a condition of belief; such efforts are doomed to fail or produce contrived and inauthentic results.  True faith comes naturally as a gift from God, sometimes in a massive and life changing flash of insight, sometimes in bits and pieces, the small dim glimpses in the world we see about us of the bright unseen world. 

Grace and Peace,

Fr. Tony+

As Good as it Gets (Easter 3C)

“As Good as It Gets”
Easter 3C
14 April 2013 8:00 a.m. Said and 10 a.m. Sung Eucharist

Parish Church of Trinity, Ashland (Oregon)

Acts 9:1-6, (7-20) ; Psalm 30; Revelation 5:11-14; John 21:1-19

Dear God, let us not accept that judgment, that this is all we are. 

Enlighten our minds; inflame our hearts

with the desire to change—with the hope and faith that we all can change.

Take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

(Dorothy Day)

The story is told of an early Zen Buddhist master in China:  seeking enlightenment, he fled to solitude in the mountains, where he sat in silence for years, meditating, cultivating his Buddha nature, and waiting for the moment of wu, the moment of emptying one’s mind and achieving bliss, what the Japanese would call satori.   After years of disappointment, he finally decides he has had enough and gives up.   He comes back down into society, into the local village.   It is a market day, a raucous and lively scene of people haggling over prices, and trying to get the advantage of each other.  A butcher (not a particularly praiseworthy figure in Buddhist ethical systems) is having problems keeping up with the demands of the crowd.  One woman calls out “the trotters, I want the trotters!’  Another, “the pork loin for me.”  Another, “the ribs, the ribs!”  The monk notices that one woman stands silent, watching the butcher intently as he occasionally discreetly palms bits of less attractive flesh into the masses he weighs and passes to the consumers. 

Suddenly she calls out, “The good bits.  I want the good bits.” 

The crowd falls silent at the implied accusation the woman has rudely made:  he is selling bad stuff as if it were good.  

The butcher, without missing a beat, chimes up, with an affable shrug to his accuser as if she were an old friend, “Hey lady, all we got here is good.” 

The crowd, including the accuser, breaks into laughter.  The monk laughs heartily with them all.  And at that moment, the story says, the monk finds enlightenment. 

The point of the story is this: the monk finds a sudden release of control in laughter, embracing the absurd idea that, indeed, what we see before us is all good, no matter how bad—that this is as good as it gets—and that’s okay.  And this is how in an instant he reaches Nirvana.

“Is this as good as it gets?”  Usually for us in the West, the question is a complaint, an expression of dissatisfaction.  The idea is that things ought to be better than this, and we ought to be enjoying things more than we are.  Not accepting how things are, not being reconciled to the status quo, is here understood as a necessary prelude to needed change, reform, or improvement. 

Many of the spiritualities of Asia believe that acceptance is a core character trait, something you need for serenity and peace in yourself and in society.   

Some Western wags criticize the Asian values that cultivate acceptance and detachment by pointing to the endemic poverty, injustice, corruption, and abuse of political authority in many of those societies and saying a culture needs some dissatisfaction, because “when it comes to societies, you get as much bad as you are willing to accept.” 

But many Western spiritualties also teach that we must cultivate acceptance to have serenity and peace.  Reinhold Niebuhr, the great progressive American Protestant theologian of the mid-20^th century, wrote the original prayer that sought to reconcile these differences, which in shortened form has become a classic in 12-step recovery spirituality: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, and the Wisdom to know the difference.” 

Conversion of St. Paul

Today’s scripture readings all touch on acceptance and desire for change in some way, and do so with rich, rich images.  In the Acts passage, we hear Jesus’ question, “Why do you persecute me?” Saul’s reply, “and who, sir, are you?” receives the shocking and surprising answer that turns Saul’s world upside down,  “”I am Jesus of Nazareth whom you persecute.”  With Saul, we hear the call to retire in our blindness to a “Street Called Straight” where new friends can direct us and help heal us. 

The Gospel story, an add-on after the end of John’s Gospel, tells of Peter fleeing the scene after Jesus’ death and reappearance.   “I’m going fishing,” he says, apparently seeking refuge in habit and the details of work.  He wants to get away from the shame of reconnecting with the man he has betrayed three times but now has come back from the dead in a surprising and unprecedented form.  Jesus seeks him out and when he finds him, Peter is so befuddled that he puts his clothes on before jumping into the water to swim to him. 

The resurrected Jesus’ question, “Peter, do you love me?” repeated three times, seems to “undo” the threefold denial of Jesus by Peter during the Passion story.  Jesus makes Peter his disciple again by giving him as many chances to reaffirm his love and friendship as he had denied it.

Most translations of the story miss a major element in the drama of how it is told in Greek.  Jesus, pointing to the abandoned fishing tackle, asks, “Peter, do you love me more than these things?”  But Peter replies with another verb for love, a word that is primarily about the affection of friendship rather than the usual word for love itself that Jesus has used.  “Of course I like you.”  Jesus replies: “Then feed me sheep.”  Jesus asks a second time, “Peter, do you love me?” Again, Peter replies, “I like you, Jesus.”  Jesus says again, “Then feed my sheep.”  And then, as if Jesus has gotten tired of Peter misunderstanding Jesus’ question and the nature of their relationship, Jesus softens his question, adopting Peter’s verb for love: “Well then, Peter, do you like me?”  Peter:  “I really do like you,” is the reply.  And again, “Feed my sheep.” 

Jesus here accepts Peter for who he is and where he is.  Even if Peter’s love is not quite what Jesus has in mind, it is enough.  And this acceptance is what brings Peter back into the circle of love and fellowship, undoing the harm of his betrayal and denial. 
Are there ways that we, like Saul, persecute Jesus?  Do we scapegoat others, label them as insufficient, decline to seriously take to heart what they are saying, but rather transfer our hurts, guilts and fears onto them and try to make ourselves feel better about ourselves by labeling them, isolating them, gossiping about them, working them harm, and or outright persecuting them?  And do we do this, like Saul, for what we think as the best of reasons, the noblest of causes? 

Are there ways that we, like Peter,  deny even knowing Jesus even as we proclaim that we will never forsake him?  Do we say we believe in Jesus, but then not act as if he lives and reigns?  Have we failed to live up to the values we profess: openness, hospitality, diversity, welcome, and reverence”?  Are we negligent in prayer and worship, and fail to commend the faith that is in us?  Are we deaf to Christ’s call to serve others as Christ served us?  Have we instead sought to comfort ourselves and reduce or cloak our guilt by avoiding Jesus, burying ourselves in tasks, returning to routine and habit, and not letting ourselves be challenged and changed by the new situations and people that God has put in our lives? 

Sisters and brothers here at Trinity:  we all fall short of the mark, and in some ways we are all Saul or Peter.  But know that it is okay.  Jesus loves us regardless.  He accepts us and the way we are.  He expects us to accept our weakness and brokenness, the way we are, even as he accepts this.  But he also promises to heal us and change us.  He regularly seeks us out and lets us know in startling and shocking ways, like he let Saul know, how we have gotten things wrong.  And then he calls us to go to our sisters and brothers who live on a Street Called Straight so they can help us heal and be better.   
When Jesus asks us, “do you love me,” and we reply “I like you,” he keeps asking us the question.  When we persist in a multitude of ways to say “love is maybe way too much for me right now, how about ‘like’,” he keeps at it, but ultimately says, “Like is good enough for now, my friend. Love will come tomorrow.” 

Let me conclude with the words of the full original prayer of Reinhold Niebuhr for Serenity, Courage, and Wisdom: 

God, give us grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.

Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
Taking, as Jesus did,
This sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it,
Trusting that You will make all things right,
If I surrender to Your will,
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with You forever in the next.  Amen.  

Meister Eckhart (Mid-week Message)

Fr. Tony’s Mid-week Message

Meister Eckhart

April 10, 2013

“Do exactly what you would do if you felt most secure.” 

“If you would be serene and pure, you need but one thing: detachment.” 

“You may call God love, you may call God goodness.  But the best name for God is Compassion.” 

--Meister Eckhart

Fear, striving for self, alienates us from who we are meant to be and how we are meant to act and interact with other.  Meister Eckhart, a Dominican monk, Medieval theologian and mystic, taught that the key to happiness is to lose oneself and desire, and overcome fear:  if we cannot actually get rid of fear, then we at least can act as if we do not have it. 

In one of his most famous sermons, he said that the highest virtue is disinterestedness or detachment, and that the heart of God is compassion.  This is because both detachment and compassion cast out fear.  The truth be told, he often sounds more Buddhist than Medieval Christian. 

Eckhart ran afoul of Franciscan academic competitors, who accused him of heresy.  He made a strong defense, but died before judgment was made in his case.  Dominicans honor him to this day, as do all who see in his writing an insight about desire, fear, and self rarely seen as clearly in Western theological or mystical texts. 

Grace and Peace,

Fr. Tony+ 

Frederick Buechner on the Resurrection (Mid-week Message)

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

April 3, 2012

Frederick Buechner on the Resurrection (from The Alphabet of Grace):

“We can say that the story of the Resurrection means simply that the teachings of Jesus are immortal like the plays of Shakespeare or the music of Beethoven and that their wisdom and truth will live on forever. Or we can say that the Resurrection means that the spirit of Jesus is undying, that he himself lives on among us, the way that Socrates does, for instance, in the good that he left behind him, in the lives of all who follow his great example. Or we can say that the language in which the Gospels describe the Resurrection of Jesus is the language of poetry and that, as such, it is not to be taken literally but as pointing to a truth more profound than the literal. Very often, I think, this is the way that the Bible is written, and I would point to some of the stories about the birth of Jesus, for instance, as examples; but in the case of the Resurrection, this simply does not apply because there really is no story about the Resurrection in the New Testament. Except in the most fragmentary way, it is not described at all. There is no poetry about it. Instead, it is simply proclaimed as a fact. Christ is risen! In fact, the very existence of the New Testament itself proclaims it. Unless something very real indeed took place on that strange, confused morning, there would be no New Testament, no Church, no Christianity.

“Yet we try to reduce it to poetry anyway: the coming of spring with the return of life to the dead earth, the rebirth of hope in the despairing soul. We try to suggest that these are the miracles that the Resurrection is all about, but they are not. In their way they are all miracles, but they are not this miracle, this central one to which the whole Christian faith points.

“Unlike the chief priests and the Pharisees, who tried with soldiers and a great stone to make themselves as secure as they could against the terrible possibility of Christ's really rising again from the dead, we are considerably more subtle. We tend in our age to say, "Of course, it was bound to happen. Nothing could stop it." But when we are pressed to say what it was that actually did happen, what we are apt to come out with is something pretty meager: this "miracle" of truth that never dies, the "miracle" of a life so beautiful that two thousand years have left the memory of it undimmed, the "miracle" of doubt turning into faith, fear into hope. If I believed that this or something like this was all that the Resurrection meant, then I would turn in my certificate of ordination and take up some other profession. Or at least I hope that I would have the courage to.”

Grace and Peace,

Fr. Tony+