Waiting for the Spirit (Easter 7B)

Waiting for the Spirit
Seventh Sunday of Easter (Year B)
20th May 2012
Homily Preached at Trinity Episcopal Church

Ashland, Oregon
8:00 a.m. Spoken Eucharist; 10:00 a.m. Sung Eucharist
Acts 1:15-17, 21-26; Psalm 1; 1 John 5:9-13; John 17:6-19

In those days Peter stood up among the believers (together the crowd numbered about one hundred twenty persons) and said, "Friends, the scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit through David foretold concerning Judas, who became a guide for those who arrested Jesus-- for he was numbered among us and was allotted his share in this ministry. So one of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us-- one of these must become a witness with us to his resurrection." So they proposed two, Joseph called Barsabbas, who was also known as Justus, and Matthias. Then they prayed and said, "Lord, you know everyone's heart. Show us which one of these two you have chosen to take the place in this ministry and apostleship from which Judas turned aside to go to his own place." And they cast lots for them, and the lot fell on Matthias; and he was added to the eleven apostles. (Acts 1:15-17, 21-26)

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

I think all of us have memories of long car trips either as children or with children.  Questions abound.  “Are we there yet?”  “How much longer?”  “When are we stopping for a potty break?”  “Are we there yet?” “When do we cross over into the next state?”  “Where will we be eating dinner?  What will we eat?”  “Are we there yet?”  “Oh, Look--an amusement park!  Can we stop, can we?”  “ARE WE THERE YET?”  Sometimes, the tiresome questions can annoy, and nerves can fray.  “Mom, tell NN to stop it!”  “Kids, don’t make we have to come back there!” 

Waiting is something our modern American culture does not value or particularly equip us for.    We value action, measurable results—the quicker the better, and taking charge.  For many of us, the single image that most summarizes a failure of government is a long line in a state’s—any state’s—Department  of Motor Vehicles office where you have to wait to get to see the person at the service window.  One of the most frequently seen occasions for arguments between a married couple is where one of them through inattentiveness makes the other one wait. 

But not all cultures share this loathing of waiting.  No one likes to wait, and “waste one’s time.”  But in many cultures, especially Asian ones, the ability to gracefully manage oneself during wait times, patience, is highly valued, and time when you have to wait is seen as an opportunity to develop this virtue.    And when we Americans live in such cultures, we often react to such values by believing that the local people are only getting what they deserve when they have to put up with unreasonably long wastes of time on a daily basis.  “You get in a society what you are willing to tolerate,” they say.  

In today’s reading from the Book of Acts, the disciples are in an in-between time where they need to wait for something.  Jesus, after his death and bodily reappearance, has been visiting and appearing to them on a regular basis.  After forty days, he departs definitively by ascending into the skies, with the clouds and the brilliant light hiding him from the eyes of the disciples.  He leaves with a command and a promise: he orders them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there until they are “clothed with power from on high” (Luke 24:49) in a promised outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and as he ascends angels declare that he will come again and descend in a like manner (Acts 1:1-11). 

So the disciples in today’s story are in waiting mode, or at least should be in waiting mode. 

But they are unhappy.  They know that Jesus called twelve of them to be special witnesses to the arrival of the Reign of God, that number being symbolic of a newly constituted and restored people of Israel, with its ancient twelve tribes.  The tribes haven’t been around for several hundred years; most of them were wiped out and lost at the time of the Assyrian conquest of Israel in 720-740 B.C.E.   During the Last Supper, Jesus had promised the Twelve that they would sit on twelve thrones and judge the tribes of Israel (Luke 22:29).   But now one of those twelve chosen special symbols of the newly restored Kingdom of God, Judas Iscariot, has defected and helped Jesus’ enemies capture him and put him to death. 

So Peter proposes that they fill the place left by Judas.  Now, the truth be told, if you asked me, it seems that the best person to take this place among the special twelve witnesses to Jesus would have been Mary Magdalene, since according to many of the stories, it was she who first saw the Risen Lord.  But the society at that time being what it was, and Peter being who he was, Peter restricts the opening to men.  In Luke’s story, Peter gives several criteria for the replacement—he must be a man, he must have been a companion of Jesus from the start, and he must have been a witness of the reappearance of the Risen Lord after his death. 

So far so good.  The eleven realize that two men, Matthias and Joseph Barsabbas, meet the criteria.  But they cannot decide who it should be.  So they use the ancient method of determining which animal would be the sacrificial offering from a group—they draw lots.  And so Matthias it is.

Despite the fact the pre-Christian Dead Seas Scrolls community had a governing body of Twelve elders, there is absolutely nothing in the Acts text that suggests that Peter’s intention was that the Twelve would become a permanent fixture in a permanent Church governance.  He and the disciples at this time fully expected that Jesus would come again quite soon, and the need to find a replacement for Judas was with the express goal of having the Twelve as a group ready for that moment, so they could sit on those twelve thrones as judges, presumably when Jesus returned in glory.

Other than the fact that he clearly wants to restrict the use of the word “apostle” to just the Twelve, it is not clear what Luke’s attitude to all this is.  He simply recounts the story in Acts without commentary.  But interestingly, this is the last we ever hear of Matthias.  Later on, it is another person, Paul, who ends up being, along with Peter, as the great witness to Jesus. 

I think that the lesson to be learned is this.  Jesus in ascending had told them to return to Jerusalem and wait there to receive power from on high.  Ten days later, on the great Feast of Shavuot, or Pentecost, the promised outpouring of the Spirit would occur.   But in the meantime, the disciples have neither the direct guidance of the Risen Lord, who has now gone up out of their sight, nor the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, which has not yet been poured out upon them. 

But they are impatient and must act.  And this is a good thing, and they are trying to do God’s will.  But instead of just waiting, as Jesus commanded, they reconstitute the Twelve.  But they are reduced to throwing dice to actually make the pick.  And their action seems not to have had much effect of the course of the Church thereafter. 

It is normal and natural to be impatient, and to want to take action, especially when it seems that things are coming to a critical moment.  That was clearly the position of Peter and the Eleven here.  And it is not necessarily a bad thing to actually take the steps that we think are placed before us even when we appear to be in a place where we need to wait. 

But we must not let fear or discouragement make us impatient and act out of turn, or intemperately.  God’s time is not our own, as much as we would like that to be so. 
In the Hebrew Scriptures, there is a key idea—the need we have to be patient and let God do his work in his own good time.  Sometimes this means simply trying to get out of the way of God.  The Psalmist says, “Wait for the Lord: be brave and strong-hearted, but wait for the Lord” (Psalm 27:14).  

Second Isaiah, speaking to the exiles of Judah after they had lost their nation, their temple, and many had lost their trust in Yahweh, said this:  “But those who wait upon the Lord will take new strength; they shall soar as on eagles’ wings; when they run, they will not be weary; and when they walk, they will not faint” (Isaiah 40:31). 

Sometimes we find ourselves in over our heads. And like the eleven in this story, direction from God might not come right away.  Our path may not be clearly set before us.  Our natural inclination is to try to dig ourselves out.  Sometimes, that may be simply taking the one or two simple actions that appear to be within our reach and tend toward what God intends.  Like eating chicken soup for a cold, it may not necessarily help, “but it couldn’t hoit.”  

When we find ourselves alone and without direction or comfort, we must not be like those guys in Waiting for Godot, simply repeating nonsense lines and distracting ourselves from the fact that the anticipated one does not appear to ever be coming.  God has promised to help, and to guide and direct us.  And he will.  But, like people in a DMV line, we mustn’t give up because we don’t like the discomfort of waiting. 

Sometimes we find that there’s no right way to proceed. We can keep trying to dig ourselves out... or we can wait patiently for God to help us.

Next week, we will be celebrating the coming of the Holy Spirit to the Church on the Feast of Pentecost.  That’s because God does act and send his direction and comfort.  He did it then, and he does it now. 

This week in our prayers, let’s take more time to listen.  In our daily life, let’s take more time to be patient.  Because patience is a virtue, and a gift from God, one of the signs of Love’s presence in our lives.   

In the name of Christ, Amen. 

Comfort, Comfort My People (Advent 2B)

Comfort, Comfort My People

Second Sunday of Advent (Year B)

 Isaiah 40:1-11; Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13; 2 Peter 3:8-15a; Mark 1:1-8
Homily delivered at the Congregation of the Good Shepherd

Beijing China
4th December 2011: 10:00 Holy Eucharist

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

The year 2011 has been hard on many of us here in the Congregation of the Good Shepherd.  While our multi-national, multi-denominational composition is a point of joy for us—we have Americans, Canadians, New Zealanders, Australians, British, Bahamians, Fijians, Guyanians, Japanese, Chinese, and many more—it does make us a bit vulnerable as a group when bad things happen over the globe.  In March there was the horrible Christchurch New Zealand earthquake and its aftershocks.  Right after that, there was the horrendous earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear reactor crisis in Sendai Japan.   In August, we had major rioting, looting, and burning in London, Bristol, Birmingham, and Liverpool. 

In addition to these catastrophic disasters, we as a group faced other problems.  Several members of the congregation were diagnosed with major illnesses.  The political process of China seems to be hunkering down in reaction to the popular uprisings in the Middle East and in preparation for changes in the top Chinese leadership next year.  As a result, in the cooperation projects and business for which many of us are here for, it has become hard to move things forward. The entire world continues to suffer from a depressed global economy, and some of our congregants have had to split up their families on a temporary basis in order to pursue their livings in separate locations where the work is. In November, people from the United States sorrowfully commemorated the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, and in so doing were brought face to face with the cost of how the American public and it political leaders reacted to that attack:  two seemingly unending wars on foreign soils have produced such deficits that the nation seems unable to respond to the economic crisis.  The American political process has become paralyzed, the constitutional government of the land seemingly moribund due to entrenched ideologies and an unwillingness to cooperate or compromise with anyone of differing opinions.   The Tea Party demonstrated on the Right and was met with hoots of derision from the Center; Occupy Wall Street demonstrated on the Left and was met with beatings, arrests, and pepper spray. 

Despite the occasional moments of grace and blessing we also have experienced, all told, I think that we can agree that 2011 has indeed been an annus horribilis, a year to make one's skin crawl, if only for the catastrophes we saw.  

In 587 BCE, a great catastrophe befell the people of the tiny kingdom of Judah.  One of the world’s first trans-national Empires, Babylon, after a decade of dealing patiently, in their lights, with the fanatic and ultra-nationalistic people of Judah, came down hard. After killing all insurgent combatants and activists, they deported the entire ruling class of the nation, letting them off with their lives but placing them far away in secure and safe provinces in Mesopotamia far from where they could do any damage by stirring up opposition to the Imperial rule. They blinded the king they had put on the throne of Judah only ten years before, only to be rewarded by his treachery and disloyalty. They placed another puppet, this time non-royal and hopefully compliant, in the role of governor of the now newly-named province of Judah.  They burned the capital city, Jerusalem, and leveled to its foundation the symbol of the obstinate, uncompromising national religion that had in some ways been the driving force in the rebellion of the district, the Temple of the Jews’ God, Yahweh.  No stone was left standing on another stone. 

This was a disaster of overwhelming and unfathomable proportions.  They had believed that Yahweh had promised to protect his people them and keep them from harm.  He had promised, they thought, to protect and preserve the line of the kings descended from David and protect their rule.  Now all that was gone. 

They had tried to keep God’s commandments, and in the very doing of this had provoked the wrath of the Babylonians.  Judah had ceased to exist.  All that was left was a small group of exiles in Babylon and a large mass of “the people of the land” living under foreign domination and rapidly accommodating and assimilating to ways of the occupiers in order to get by.   The Jewish way of worship had ceased; the Temple was a mere memory.  Almost all families had lost members, if not been wiped out entirely. 

It is hard for us to understand how hopeless and desperate this situation was.  It was as if all of New Zealand had been leveled, or all of Honshu wiped off the face of the earth by a tsunami, or if the terrorists had exploded nuclear bombs instead of crashed airplanes over New York City and Washington DC.  Arguably, the disaster facing the Jews in 587 was greater than even that of 70 C.E. when the Romans leveled Jerusalem or in the 1940s when the Nazis systematically sought to exterminate all European Jewry, 

Such was the level of desperation and hopelessness.   The nation simply didn’t exist any more.  God had broken the covenant with his people.  Indeed, they were no more his people, no more even a people.  And he was no more their God.  How could one understand these events any other way? 

Among the exiles in Babylon was a prophet who wrote in the tradition of Isaiah, and whose oracles have been preserved in the latter part of that book.  In the midst of that national disaster, he wrote: 

Nahumu, nahamu 'ommi, “comfort, comfort my people.”

The Hebrew is a soft, lilting, lullaby.  It is a plural command—“you all go out and comfort them, comfort them, for they are still my people. I am still their God.”  Thus begins the Book of Consolation in the larger book of Isaiah.

The words are achingly beautiful and full of love.  “Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and call out to her.   She has served her time in prison; her penalty is paid.  Her suffering is so great that it cannot be the mere punishment for past sins—it is at least twice as worse as that.”  

This Second Isaiah then introduces several separate oracular pronouncements as the different voices giving this message of comfort. 

The first proclaims that as low as things have gotten, Yahweh is about to perform the ultimate turning of the tables by wondrously and unexpectedly bringing about the return of the exiles from Babylon to Judah.  God will do the seemingly impossible—he will turn the impassible barriers between Mesopotamia and Judah into the route of return. Metaphorically, the hill and canyon filled desert where Jordan, Syria, and western Iraq currently lie will be leveled into a smooth highway that will speed the exiles’ return.  And this will be a sign of God’s glory not just for Jews, but for all of humanity:

A voice cries out:

‘In the wilderness prepare Yahweh’s road,

make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

Every valley shall be lifted up,

and every mountain and hill be made low;

the uneven ground shall become level,

and the rough places a plain.

Then Yahweh’s glory shall be revealed,

and all people shall see it together,

for the mouth of Yahweh has said it.’

  The God who is to do this is no tribal deity, no special possession of the Jewish people.  A second voice of comfort takes up this theme of God’s universal nature, of the fact that all humanity stands in awe of God’s mystery, by surprisingly adding: 

‘All people are grass,

their constancy is like the flower of the field.

The grass withers, the flower fades,

when the breath of the LORD blows upon it;

surely people are grass.

The grass withers, the flower fades;

but the word of our God will stand forever.’

Note that Second Isaiah’s message is NOT: “ The national disaster was God’s just punishment on us and now he will restore us to our former state.  We will be his people and he will be our God, and all our enemies will now get their just deserts and it will be a great thing to be a Jew.”   

Rather, Second Isaiah’s message is: “Our suffering was beyond anything just.  It is a mystery, just as God is a mystery.  But our suffering is part of what it means to be human.  All of humanity suffers.  We are grass.  We are impermanent.  But God’s word remains, and that for all people.” 

It has always struck me as odd that Second Isaiah here thinks that a voice of joyful news would cry out, “All people are grass.  They wither in a day, and fade.”  What good news is there in such a saying? 

Accepting our common humanity and our facing square-on our limitations is actually a very liberating thing.  It is, in fact, good news.  It is the start of all authentic spiritual growth and health.  It is the thing that makes Socrates a wise man and the sophists around him foolish—he at least knows and accepts that he is ignorant while they go about in self-delusion.  It is the process that Buddhists call giving up desire, abandoning the expectations that enslave us, and the start of the process of enlightenment.  It is the start of what Muhammad called Islam, “submission” to God.  It is what the wisdom tradition in the Hebrew scripture calls the “beginning of all wisdom,” “awe or fear of the Lord.”   For those following Twelve-Step spirituality, it is the First Step, “we admitted we were powerless and that our lives had become unmanageable.”  It is what Jesus is describing when he says we must first lose our lives in order to find them. 

Acceptance of our condition as imperfect, limited, and very temporary people living in an imperfect and sometimes horrifying world is needed to break down the barriers between us and other people.  It is at the heart of the process of repentance, of regretting and turning aside from our misdoings, and performing amendment of life. 

I think that is why St. Mark in today’s Gospel says that John the Baptist’s preaching of repentance was the “Beginning of the Happy Message” of Jesus Christ.  Mark sees John as the “messenger sent before the Lord’s day,” borrowing from Malachi, and as, borrowing from today’s reading from Second Isaiah, the voice in wilderness crying “prepare the way.”   John, as dour and unsparing as we usually like to think him, is still a bringer of Good News, because he urges us to accept that we are helpless and hopeless, and this universally so, since all people for him needed his baptism, regardless of their heritage, religion, or family background. 

But acceptance is only the start.  In order to find the hope and help we lack, we need to turn our lives over to this God who breaks down barriers, smoothes down the barriers and fills up the gaps, makes the rough places plain, recreates the broken nation, and raises the dead to life. 

The third oracle in today’s Isaiah passage fairly sings in joy of what it means when we recognize God’s hand in these loving acts of restoring the exiles.  Second Isaiah personifies the City about to be rebuilt by the returning exiles, Jerusalem built on Mount Zion, itself as a herald of joyful news, the joyful news of God’s love:   

Get you up to a high mountain,

O Zion, herald of good tidings;

lift up your voice with strength,

O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings,

lift it up, do not fear;

say to the cities of Judah,

"Here is your God!"

See, Yahweh God comes with might,

and his arm rules for him;

his reward is with him,

and his recompense before him.

He will feed his flock like a shepherd;

he will gather the lambs in his arms,

and carry them in his bosom,

and gently lead the mother sheep.

Second Isaiah here takes the commonplace image used by the Hebrew prophets, the image of the coming day when Yahweh will set things right, by rewarding the righteous and punishing evil-doers, and changes it drastically.  No longer is this a day that burns.  No longer is it a great day of military conquest.  It is a day of gentle love.  It is a day that God as a loving shepherd feeds his flock, and carries the little lambs tenderly in his arms.  “Here is your God,” he says, implicitly saying “and not in those images of blood and fire.”  For Second Isaiah, God is a loving shepherd, not a warrior or executioner.

The season of Advent is a season of preparation and waiting.  We await and prepare for the inbreaking of God, for the coming of Christ, whether once long ago in Bethlehem, or soon in glory to finish setting things right.   The traditional prayer for the season is this:

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.

As we prepare, let us remember Second Isaiah’s message in today’s Hebrew Scripture reading:  we are all grass, and quickly fade.  But God loves us.  The coming of God to set things right is a moment of comfort, a moment of joyful news, not just for some, but for all.  It is a moment when God as a mother sings lullabies to us, her children, and when God, as a gentle shepherd, carries us in love, his lambs.

Sisters and brothers here at the Congregation of the Good Shepherd.  Elena and I have been blessed for the last 2 ½ years to be part of you, to sing and worship with you, and to serve you.   We are blessed to share the celebration of the first part of this Advent season with you.  We will be moving to Ashland Oregon in just a couple of weeks, for new ministry and new blessings.  I want to thank all of you for the great faith you have shared with us, and for the opportunities you gave us here to serve. 

May we all during the rest of this Advent season reflect on our limitations and failings, and be brutally honest about this with ourselves.  And may we see this, together with God’s offer to help us, as the gladdest of tidings, the best of good news.  And may we, in our lives and service, be heralds of this joyful message to all whom we meet. 

In the name of God, Amen.

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.