Sermon for: Advent IV B _ Dec 21, 2008
St. Benedict’s, Los Osos, CA
[The Rev] Brian McHugh
This, then, is the fullness of time: When the Son of Man is begotten in us.”
These are the words of the 13th C. mystic known as Meister Eckhart (1260-1328). He expands and illuminates for us, in this season of Hope and Longing, the message and the Mystery of the Annunciation that is our Gospel reading this morning, on this last Sunday of Advent, by the simple use of the word “us”.
Advent has been full of longing and hope: for God’s rule, for the Kingdom of Peace and Justice, for the Messiah of God, for renewal of our lives through repentance and God’s mercy and love. And for the strengthening of that great Mystery we call Hope. I have an icon of Harvey Milk (show icon), the Gay San Francisco Supervisor who was murdered in 1978. The words that accompany it are Harvey’s: “The important thing is not that we can live on hope alone, but that life is not worth living without it.” What did he mean? I think Harvey’s meaning is pointed to by Meister Eckhart seven centuries earlier.
Hope is not a desire for the impossible, but for the possible. So, we humans need to see results nowe and then, need to see possibilities coming to fruition. Harvey Milk is acknowledged as the first openly Gay man elected to public office. For those who understood his election as a fulfillment of a hope for justice and for understanding, both Straight and Gay, Hope came alive and real.
The story we call the Annunciation is a brilliant jewel about the Hope for God’s loving, just, merciful, kind presence in human life. I read once that every woman in ancient Israel longed to be the mother of the one who would represent God, to be the mother of the Messiah. The archangel Gabriel tells Mary that she will bear God’s Son. Her name means bitter, and bitterness will remain in Mary's life; but the bitterness will be tempered with a deeper joy that she said Yes to God, Yes to bringing God into the World. Our celebration of the Incarnation four days hence will be the fulfillment of that Hope.
But Meister Eckhart reminds us, teaches us, the deeper meaning of the Hope for God - and the deeper, universal meaning of Jesus’ birth to Mary through the action of God’s Holy Spirit - by that little word “us”. "This, then, is the fullness of time: When the Son of Man is begotten in us.” Listen to what he says before this sentence: “We are all meant to be mothers of God. What good is it to me if this eternal birth of the divine Son takes place unceasingly, but does not take place within myself? And, what good is it to me if Mary is full of grace if I am not also full of grace? What good is it to me for the Creator to give birth to his Son if I do not also give birth to him in my time and my culture?
St. Bernard, abbot of Clairvaux (1090-1153) in the 12th C, beautifully captures the importance of Mary saying Yes to God. He is addressing Her directly: This is what the whole earth waits for, prostrate at your feet. It is right in doing so, for on your word depends comfort for the wretched, ransom for the captive, freedom for the condemned, indeed salvation for all the children of Adam, the whole of your race. Answer quickly, O Virgin. Reply in haste to the angel, or rather through the angel to the Lord. Answer with a word, receive the word of God. Speak your own word, conceive the divine word. Breathe a passing word, embrace the eternal word.
The Annunciation, and Mary’s “Yes”, and the resulting dwelling of God in human flesh, is the pattern for the full glory of our lives, and a pattern for our calling and ministries for God in the World. The “Yes” is critical, because the God we know does not force Himself on any of us against our will. God seeks a home in us, with us. In the reading from Samuel, God reminds King David that He does not want to live in a “cedar house”. Rather, God will live among His people, bring them safety and abundance and a home, through a descendant of David, whose throne will last forever.
This last Sunday of Advent reminds us that we are all “mothers of God”, destined to bring Christ into the world; reminds us that this is what all our religious life is training us to be. Scripture reminds us that we who have said “Yes” to God through our baptismal vows are all sisters and brothers of Christ.
The founder of the Catholic Worker movement, Dorothy Day, beautifully expresses the Mystery of the Annunciation to Mary and of the “motherhood” of Mary as it describes our lives: Christ is always with us, always asking for room in our hearts. But now it is with the voice of our contemporaries that he speak; with the eyes of store clerks, factory workers, and children that he gazes; with the hands of office workers, slum dwellers, and suburban housewives that he gives. It is with the feet of ….. tramps that he walks, and with the heart of anyone in need that he longs for shelter. And giving shelter or food to anyone who asks for it, or needs it, is giving it to Christ. . This is how God is present in the World – through the “us” of whom Meister Eckhart spoke.
Dorothy wisely reminds us not to be too hard on ourselves as we try to give birth to God in the World: “It would be foolish to pretend that it is always easy to remember this. If everyone were holy and handsome, with “alter Christus” shining in neon lighting from them, it would be easy to see Christ in everyone. If Mary had appeared in Bethlehem clothed, as St. John says, with the sun, a crown of twelve stars on her heard, and the moon under her feet, then people would have fought to make room for her. But that was not God’s way for her, nor is it Christ’s way for himself, now when he is disguised under every type of humanity that treads the earth.”[1]
Here at the end of Advent, and looking forward to the Eternal Word that will leap down from God’s royal throne, we hope for our love to grow for God and all Creation. It is always about Love, as my colleague Suzanne Guthrie says in her book "Grace’s Window”: Love waits behind the silence of prayer for my yes to a deepening capacity to love. Every love informs a greater love. Every lesser love is a forerunner of the great Love, sensed but never seen, to whom Mary once said yes.[2]
In Advent, we have been drawing courage to say “Yes” to God’s desire to live in us and be present in the World through us. We never give up Hope that this is possible! As Harvey Milk said, “Life is not worth living without it”. And God’s Spirit never rests, both to strengthen Hope, and to show us results in our lives and in our World.
These are hard times for Hope. Everything seems collapsing around us. But Hope is the Art of the Possible. And – with the appropriate theological investigation – I do believe at some basic level that “With God all things are possible”. I need to learn again not to look for the “bad” but to look for the “good”. There is much of it, even if we have to look down the long road or at the broad picture. “Taking the long view” is a hard lesson for me, but I’m trying.
The Anglican poet John Donne (1572-1631) wrote these words about the Annunciation and Mary’s Yes:
Salvation to all that will is nigh ;
That All, which always is all everywhere …..
Lo ! faithful Virgin, yields Himself to lie
In prison, in thy womb ; and though He there
Can take no sin, nor thou give, yet He'll wear,
Taken from thence, flesh, which death's force may try.
Ere by the spheres time was created thou
Wast in His mind, who is thy Son, and Brother ;
Whom thou conceivest, conceived ; yea, thou art now
Thy Maker's maker, and thy Father's mother,
Thou hast light in dark, and shutt'st in little room
Immensity, cloister'd in thy dear womb.
Like Mary, we are all “in Christ’s mind”, all our Maker’s “maker” and our Father’s “mother”. God is “cloister’d” in our hearts. So let us, in the words of the Christmas carol, sing out together with Hope: “O holy Child of Bethlehem / Descend to us, we pray / Cast out our sin and enter in / Be born to us today / We hear the Christmas angels / The great glad tidings tell / O come to us, abide with us / Our Lord Emmanuel .
[1] From Dorothy Day: Selected Writings, edited by Robert Ellsberg (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1992).
[2] (The Rev.) Suzanne Guthrie, Grace’s Window, pg. 17
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Sermon for: Nov 23, 2008 (St. Peter’s, Santa Maria CA) Brian H.O.A. McHugh, priest
Season: Proper 29A_RCL_Last Pentecost_Reign of Christ
Are we fools, we Christians, or what?? Here we stand, poised in hope, at the end of our liturgical year, on the last Sunday of the long season of Pentecost, claiming God is in charge of everything. In the blinding light of the Mystery of the Resurrection, for 28 weeks, we have pondered what the Spirit of God has attempted to show us, in the Eternal Present in which we live, about Life, about the Creation, about humanity, about the core Reality of Love. The question is always the same: How can, may, shall we be faithful manifestations of the Shepherd God in the World?
Today is sometimes called The Feast of Christ the King, or Of the Reign of Christ. Many of us keep it in the Episcopal Church, though it is not “official” in the Calendar. Our Collect, referring to the Christ as King of Kings and Lord of Lords is a “somewhat free”[1] translation of the Latin collect from the Roman Missal. The Roman Church has kept the feast since 1925, and it is included in the Lutheran Calendar.
Let’s look at the Collect for a minute. It speaks of God’s will to “restore all things” in God’s” well-beloved Son”, especially “the peoples of the Earth, divided and enslaved by sin”. I buy that. I believe the Gospel and the Hebrew Scriptures indeed speak to a deep desire for all of humanity to be one in God’s unconditional and abiding Love. The real question for me, after 40 years pondering and preaching about the Gospel, is, How? And, What does “brought together under His most gracious rule” mean?? Many Christians over the last 2000 years have interpreted it as meaning that God wants everyone to be a Christian, to be part of the Christian Church, broadly defined. With respect, I disagree.
Now, it may be that my concept of God’s Time is impoverished. But, looking back over 2000 years, I think I have adequate basis for thinking metaphorically rather than literally. Jesus is, to my mind, essentially, in the lovely phrase from the hymn, the King of Love, and our Shepherd. The human community does not show, in all recorded history, a tendency towards unity under one temporal, religious, or spiritual “ruler”. We human beings have free will, will not be coerced or subjugated (as history surely shows), and unity only comes through Choice. Unity cannot be imposed for long. It is like Love. Love can only be given or received freely, and is the only way that true Unity can be achieved. As that other lovely hymn says, Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est - Where is found compassion and love, there is God. In other words, God’s purpose can only be achieved when Love reigns as “King” ….. or “Queen”.
In preaching two Sundays ago about the nature of “The Kingdom of God” I said I based my core understanding on three sayings of Jesus: First, Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand; Second, My Kingdom is not of this world; and, Third, The Kingdom of God is within you.
At hand means that that the Kingdom is a kind of parallel universe – and it can break through in what are called these days “thin” spots - holy places, or people, or events. The Church is meant to be such a “thin” place. By my observation, we are failing widely. We have made the institutional church and the Bible “golden calves”, often worshipping them than the Living God.
Not of this World means that the Church can’t be a kind of spiritualized replacement of the United Nations with some religious leader at the top, Pope, Imam, llama, avatar, or whomever. The Kingdom is not of bricks and mortar, and in Gethsemane Jesus would not allow Peter to act as if it were. The Kingdom of God is a vision of the heart, mind, and spirit. It transcends all boundaries of power, control, and inequality. Love is the only “sword” that can be wielded in it’s construction or defense.
Within you means that the seeds of Kingdom-building rest within each human being. The seed is divine Love, the presence of the Holy One. There is only one way in which that seed can grow, as Jesus taught in a parable. The seed must be buried and die in order to produce abundant fruit. We must rise to the consciousness that we are matter infused by spirit. We are a manifestation of God – and are called to live accordingly.
“Becoming Christ” is fundamentally what our religious practice is all about. Baptism unites our material nature, signified by the water, with the life-giving Spirit, signified by the Dove, and sets us on the path to full humanity. The Body and Blood of the Christ – our spiritual food and drink - nourishes the Christ Within. All our personal and communal piety – and, critically, the physical structures and organization of the church in the World – have only one central aim: to awaken us to the presence of God incarnate within us. When the Christ is alive within us, the Kingdom manifests itself in the Earth.
The writer to the church in Ephesus understood this. He says of the Church, The church is Christ's body, in which he speaks and acts, by which he fills everything with his presence. But, he warns, the Church is dead unless the Church’s members be “intelligent and discerning in knowing him personally, your eyes focused and clear, so that you can see exactly what it is he is calling you to do, grasp the immensity of this glorious way of life he has for Christians, oh, the utter extravagance of his work in us who trust him—endless energy, boundless strength!”.
The Reign of Christ is not established by Worldly might. Nor, I have come to realize, by some final allegiance by all to some one or another institutional Church or Faith, especially those which resort to coercion or fear. Nor by the fundamentalist’s vain delusion that God will override our free will to choose, and intervene to impose Her will. The Reign of Christ only becomes a reality in the World when Divine Love pours out of us. This is God’s message to all human beings, and certainly to those of us called to witness to this truth by “taking up the Cross”. Here is the meaning of the parable of the separation of the Sheep and the Goats: Either you see God in human beings or you don’t. God reigns only as human beings love God and each other and the whole Creation as God loves us. If we remember nothing else from the Gospel, Jesus drove the message home in His Great Commandment: Love one another as I have loved you. As 1 John reminds us, Anyone who says he love God but hates his “neighbour” is a lair.
Are we Christians fools? Today, we end our liturgical year expressing our hope that the Kingdom of Divine Love, headed by a Shepherd King, is possible. Next Sunday, we will begin our new liturgical year in the same way. We will immerse ourselves in the truth and hope that the Kingdom is at hand, that it transcends this physical World, that it is within us and every human being. At the Christ-mass, we will rejoice that the Christ is born in us and every person. Then we will set out once again to give Life to the hope of the unity and freedom of all the peoples of the Earth, “divided and enslaved by sin”. Each will do what we can, in Love.
Fools? Yes we are. Can we know and liberate the God-in-Us; give ourselves to Love; care for Mother Earth; see every human being as our sister, our brother; have compassion for the poor; defend the oppressed and the victims of false witness, including our Gay and Lesbian brothers and sisters; choose Love over defending institutions of power, both secular and religious?
As a man just elected to be President of the United States calmly says: Yes we can.
[1] Marion Hatchett, Commentary on the American Prayer Book
Season: Proper 29A_RCL_Last Pentecost_Reign of Christ
Are we fools, we Christians, or what?? Here we stand, poised in hope, at the end of our liturgical year, on the last Sunday of the long season of Pentecost, claiming God is in charge of everything. In the blinding light of the Mystery of the Resurrection, for 28 weeks, we have pondered what the Spirit of God has attempted to show us, in the Eternal Present in which we live, about Life, about the Creation, about humanity, about the core Reality of Love. The question is always the same: How can, may, shall we be faithful manifestations of the Shepherd God in the World?
Today is sometimes called The Feast of Christ the King, or Of the Reign of Christ. Many of us keep it in the Episcopal Church, though it is not “official” in the Calendar. Our Collect, referring to the Christ as King of Kings and Lord of Lords is a “somewhat free”[1] translation of the Latin collect from the Roman Missal. The Roman Church has kept the feast since 1925, and it is included in the Lutheran Calendar.
Let’s look at the Collect for a minute. It speaks of God’s will to “restore all things” in God’s” well-beloved Son”, especially “the peoples of the Earth, divided and enslaved by sin”. I buy that. I believe the Gospel and the Hebrew Scriptures indeed speak to a deep desire for all of humanity to be one in God’s unconditional and abiding Love. The real question for me, after 40 years pondering and preaching about the Gospel, is, How? And, What does “brought together under His most gracious rule” mean?? Many Christians over the last 2000 years have interpreted it as meaning that God wants everyone to be a Christian, to be part of the Christian Church, broadly defined. With respect, I disagree.
Now, it may be that my concept of God’s Time is impoverished. But, looking back over 2000 years, I think I have adequate basis for thinking metaphorically rather than literally. Jesus is, to my mind, essentially, in the lovely phrase from the hymn, the King of Love, and our Shepherd. The human community does not show, in all recorded history, a tendency towards unity under one temporal, religious, or spiritual “ruler”. We human beings have free will, will not be coerced or subjugated (as history surely shows), and unity only comes through Choice. Unity cannot be imposed for long. It is like Love. Love can only be given or received freely, and is the only way that true Unity can be achieved. As that other lovely hymn says, Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est - Where is found compassion and love, there is God. In other words, God’s purpose can only be achieved when Love reigns as “King” ….. or “Queen”.
In preaching two Sundays ago about the nature of “The Kingdom of God” I said I based my core understanding on three sayings of Jesus: First, Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand; Second, My Kingdom is not of this world; and, Third, The Kingdom of God is within you.
At hand means that that the Kingdom is a kind of parallel universe – and it can break through in what are called these days “thin” spots - holy places, or people, or events. The Church is meant to be such a “thin” place. By my observation, we are failing widely. We have made the institutional church and the Bible “golden calves”, often worshipping them than the Living God.
Not of this World means that the Church can’t be a kind of spiritualized replacement of the United Nations with some religious leader at the top, Pope, Imam, llama, avatar, or whomever. The Kingdom is not of bricks and mortar, and in Gethsemane Jesus would not allow Peter to act as if it were. The Kingdom of God is a vision of the heart, mind, and spirit. It transcends all boundaries of power, control, and inequality. Love is the only “sword” that can be wielded in it’s construction or defense.
Within you means that the seeds of Kingdom-building rest within each human being. The seed is divine Love, the presence of the Holy One. There is only one way in which that seed can grow, as Jesus taught in a parable. The seed must be buried and die in order to produce abundant fruit. We must rise to the consciousness that we are matter infused by spirit. We are a manifestation of God – and are called to live accordingly.
“Becoming Christ” is fundamentally what our religious practice is all about. Baptism unites our material nature, signified by the water, with the life-giving Spirit, signified by the Dove, and sets us on the path to full humanity. The Body and Blood of the Christ – our spiritual food and drink - nourishes the Christ Within. All our personal and communal piety – and, critically, the physical structures and organization of the church in the World – have only one central aim: to awaken us to the presence of God incarnate within us. When the Christ is alive within us, the Kingdom manifests itself in the Earth.
The writer to the church in Ephesus understood this. He says of the Church, The church is Christ's body, in which he speaks and acts, by which he fills everything with his presence. But, he warns, the Church is dead unless the Church’s members be “intelligent and discerning in knowing him personally, your eyes focused and clear, so that you can see exactly what it is he is calling you to do, grasp the immensity of this glorious way of life he has for Christians, oh, the utter extravagance of his work in us who trust him—endless energy, boundless strength!”.
The Reign of Christ is not established by Worldly might. Nor, I have come to realize, by some final allegiance by all to some one or another institutional Church or Faith, especially those which resort to coercion or fear. Nor by the fundamentalist’s vain delusion that God will override our free will to choose, and intervene to impose Her will. The Reign of Christ only becomes a reality in the World when Divine Love pours out of us. This is God’s message to all human beings, and certainly to those of us called to witness to this truth by “taking up the Cross”. Here is the meaning of the parable of the separation of the Sheep and the Goats: Either you see God in human beings or you don’t. God reigns only as human beings love God and each other and the whole Creation as God loves us. If we remember nothing else from the Gospel, Jesus drove the message home in His Great Commandment: Love one another as I have loved you. As 1 John reminds us, Anyone who says he love God but hates his “neighbour” is a lair.
Are we Christians fools? Today, we end our liturgical year expressing our hope that the Kingdom of Divine Love, headed by a Shepherd King, is possible. Next Sunday, we will begin our new liturgical year in the same way. We will immerse ourselves in the truth and hope that the Kingdom is at hand, that it transcends this physical World, that it is within us and every human being. At the Christ-mass, we will rejoice that the Christ is born in us and every person. Then we will set out once again to give Life to the hope of the unity and freedom of all the peoples of the Earth, “divided and enslaved by sin”. Each will do what we can, in Love.
Fools? Yes we are. Can we know and liberate the God-in-Us; give ourselves to Love; care for Mother Earth; see every human being as our sister, our brother; have compassion for the poor; defend the oppressed and the victims of false witness, including our Gay and Lesbian brothers and sisters; choose Love over defending institutions of power, both secular and religious?
As a man just elected to be President of the United States calmly says: Yes we can.
[1] Marion Hatchett, Commentary on the American Prayer Book
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Sermon for: Nov 9, 2008 (Good Shepherd, Salinas CA)
Brian H.O.A. McHugh, priest
Season: Proper 27A_RCL_Pentecost XXVI
Basileia tou Theou, in the Greek. The Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of Heaven. The Reign of God. The phrase, in its various English forms, appears in the Gospels and the Christian Testament over 100 times. It is a strong theme in Judaism, as the hope that God will restore the nation of Israel to the land. In Islam, it refers to the absolute reign of Allah over all things or Creation; or, to a possible earthly entity, sometimes referred to as the caliphate or imamate, where Allah’s laws are embraced and adhered to, bringing peace and unity to the devout [Islamic scholars have used Matt 13: 13ff to support their position]; or to a spiritual entity revealed after the Day of Judgment, inhabited by those who have gone to Heaven. We find all these various aspects of the nature of the Kingdom in the history of Christianity. Why? I believe, because somewhere inside, we all want Peace, Justice, Compassion, and Joy as the context for Life. Essentially, human beings are creatures of Hope, which Barack Obama tapped into.
It has been argued that the theme of the Kingdom is the core, central heart of Jesus’ message in the synoptic Gospels. The theologian Tom Harpur, a Canadian Anglican priest, has put it succinctly: “Jesus did not come to save us from our sins; He came to usher us into the Kingdom of God” (paraphrased). Certainly most of the Gospel parables speak to the nature of the Kingdom of God. We have one today – the Wise and Foolish Virgins.
We could argue all day about the nature of the Kingdom – and scholars have. Every one of them uses Scripture to support their view. Personally, I have centered my thinking on three of the sayings ascribed to Jesus: First, Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand; Second, My Kingdom is not of this world; and, Third, The Kingdom of God is within you. This morning, I want to share some thoughts about the Kingdom, and for us to look at what the parable we have today says about that Kingdom and about how we become a citizen of it.
In the history of Christianity, various attempts have been made, both in the East and the West, to merge the temporal and spiritual realms. In the East, it was Byzantium, where from Constantine on, the church and the empire were seen as one, and the Church’s Liturgy reflected the splendor of the Oriental court. In the West, it was the rise of the Roman Catholic Church as a temporal power, using spiritual power and the fear it held to control politics and wealth. The Medieval period implied that church and state were one. This collapsed in the 16th C with the Reformation, though vestiges still remain, for example in Vatican State, English establishment, and the Islamic Ulema. In my opinion, reading over history, the attempt to associate the Kingdom of God with an Earthly Kingdom has both never worked, and has missed Christ’s message. It hasn’t worked because we have failed to understand the meaning of the Incarnate Christ, and therefore failed to see what must lie at the heart of the manifestation of the Kingdom.
I use “truth-story” for “myth” so that we understand that “myth” indeed expresses truth and not falsehood or fantasy. Over the decades, I have come to understand that the truth-stories/myths of all faiths and religions attempt to answer two central and related questions: What is the nature of Existence?, and Who are we as human beings? In the Christian tradition, though I disagree with some interpretations, the Genesis Creation stories answer the first question: All Existence is a manifestation of the Divine.
The second question is powerfully answered by the Cross on which, in the Christian myth, the Christ died. The cross in some form has existed in many religions, including Egyptian and Buddhist. It has always been a symbol of Life. This is why Protestantism rejected the crucifix, which had come to represent suffering more than Life in popular understanding. The Cross represents, by it’s horizontal arm, matter/flesh; by it’s vertical arm, spirit. This is who we are as human beings: matter enlivened by Divine spirit. The story of the birth of God to Mary by the “coming upon her” of the Spirit tells us this. Other religions and their myths have made the same point. As one example, note the story of the birth of the Egyptian god Horus, son of Osiris, to Isis. The meaning is the same: What animates us, what makes us a unified living human “soul” is the indwelling of the Divine. In essence, this is what we mean by "Christ died that we might live”.
Here I think lies the meaning of the Kingdom, and it’s manifestation. The Kingdom of God cannot manifest itself until each one of us realizes that God lives at our core, in our heart. We are a part of the Divine energy that created and creates the Universe. Tom Harpur puts it this way: …the story of Jesus is the story of each of us in allegorical form. As spirit-gifted animals, we are crucified on the cross of matter; we are bearers of the Christ within, and will one day be resurrected to a glorious destiny with God.[1]
The Kingdom is God is within you, Jesus said. To me, this means that it can’t appear until the light of Christ flares up in us and flows out from us. It is not going to be imposed at the end of some eschatological Age, or after some last, destructive Judgment. The Kingdom of God is at hand, Jesus said, for there He stood among them, mirroring the Divine within them. Which means that we must stand in the World as Christ. My Kingdom is not of this World, Jesus said ….. implying that the Kingdom cannot come through worldly power or Peter’s sword or might, but only by the light of the Divine shining out of each of us, giving light to the World. The Gospel is clear that the greatest sign of the Kingdom breaking through is Love.
And so, what does the parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins tell us? Here’s my take. I understand the home to which the Bridegroom arrives to be each of our hearts. He is coming to marry His divinity with our flesh, to make us a whole human being. But in reality, the Divine Bridegroom is always there, or we would not be alive. So the issue is, are we prepared to Welcome Him? All of us have lamps: our bodies, our hearts, our minds, our senses, our intellects. But do these lamps have adequate fuel? Worship is a fuel: How do we worship? The Eucharist is the heart of our worship for a reason. It sacramentally fuels us with the Body and Blood of the Christ, teaching us to feed on God. Reading is a fuel: What do we read, or watch, or study? Do they shed light to help us recognize the Bridegroom? Relationships are a fuel: Do our relationships glow with the love, justice, kindness of God? Self-love is a fuel: Do we love ourselves as God loves us, or mistreat ourselves? How we love God and ourselves determines how we love others. Charity is a fuel: How do we give of ourselves to sustain others?
The parable tells us that the Bridegroom comes at moments we don’t anticipate. Our work this week is to ponder the ways we keep our lamps burning. God is always here, bidden or unbidden. It is a darkened heart that obscures God’s Presence. Our work is to keep as many lamps as possible well fueled and burning brightly, creating a welcome for Holy Wisdom, like a plane honing in on a runway at night. As our reading says, and it is Good News: Wisdom .. hastens to make herself known to those who desire her .. she goes about seeking those worthy of her, and she graciously appears to them in their paths, and meets them in every thought. When Holy Wisdom leads us to the Christ Within, the Kingdom makes its appearance. Only then can the World be transformed.
[1] The Pagan Christ, Tom Harpur, pg. 147
Brian H.O.A. McHugh, priest
Season: Proper 27A_RCL_Pentecost XXVI
Basileia tou Theou, in the Greek. The Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of Heaven. The Reign of God. The phrase, in its various English forms, appears in the Gospels and the Christian Testament over 100 times. It is a strong theme in Judaism, as the hope that God will restore the nation of Israel to the land. In Islam, it refers to the absolute reign of Allah over all things or Creation; or, to a possible earthly entity, sometimes referred to as the caliphate or imamate, where Allah’s laws are embraced and adhered to, bringing peace and unity to the devout [Islamic scholars have used Matt 13: 13ff to support their position]; or to a spiritual entity revealed after the Day of Judgment, inhabited by those who have gone to Heaven. We find all these various aspects of the nature of the Kingdom in the history of Christianity. Why? I believe, because somewhere inside, we all want Peace, Justice, Compassion, and Joy as the context for Life. Essentially, human beings are creatures of Hope, which Barack Obama tapped into.
It has been argued that the theme of the Kingdom is the core, central heart of Jesus’ message in the synoptic Gospels. The theologian Tom Harpur, a Canadian Anglican priest, has put it succinctly: “Jesus did not come to save us from our sins; He came to usher us into the Kingdom of God” (paraphrased). Certainly most of the Gospel parables speak to the nature of the Kingdom of God. We have one today – the Wise and Foolish Virgins.
We could argue all day about the nature of the Kingdom – and scholars have. Every one of them uses Scripture to support their view. Personally, I have centered my thinking on three of the sayings ascribed to Jesus: First, Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand; Second, My Kingdom is not of this world; and, Third, The Kingdom of God is within you. This morning, I want to share some thoughts about the Kingdom, and for us to look at what the parable we have today says about that Kingdom and about how we become a citizen of it.
In the history of Christianity, various attempts have been made, both in the East and the West, to merge the temporal and spiritual realms. In the East, it was Byzantium, where from Constantine on, the church and the empire were seen as one, and the Church’s Liturgy reflected the splendor of the Oriental court. In the West, it was the rise of the Roman Catholic Church as a temporal power, using spiritual power and the fear it held to control politics and wealth. The Medieval period implied that church and state were one. This collapsed in the 16th C with the Reformation, though vestiges still remain, for example in Vatican State, English establishment, and the Islamic Ulema. In my opinion, reading over history, the attempt to associate the Kingdom of God with an Earthly Kingdom has both never worked, and has missed Christ’s message. It hasn’t worked because we have failed to understand the meaning of the Incarnate Christ, and therefore failed to see what must lie at the heart of the manifestation of the Kingdom.
I use “truth-story” for “myth” so that we understand that “myth” indeed expresses truth and not falsehood or fantasy. Over the decades, I have come to understand that the truth-stories/myths of all faiths and religions attempt to answer two central and related questions: What is the nature of Existence?, and Who are we as human beings? In the Christian tradition, though I disagree with some interpretations, the Genesis Creation stories answer the first question: All Existence is a manifestation of the Divine.
The second question is powerfully answered by the Cross on which, in the Christian myth, the Christ died. The cross in some form has existed in many religions, including Egyptian and Buddhist. It has always been a symbol of Life. This is why Protestantism rejected the crucifix, which had come to represent suffering more than Life in popular understanding. The Cross represents, by it’s horizontal arm, matter/flesh; by it’s vertical arm, spirit. This is who we are as human beings: matter enlivened by Divine spirit. The story of the birth of God to Mary by the “coming upon her” of the Spirit tells us this. Other religions and their myths have made the same point. As one example, note the story of the birth of the Egyptian god Horus, son of Osiris, to Isis. The meaning is the same: What animates us, what makes us a unified living human “soul” is the indwelling of the Divine. In essence, this is what we mean by "Christ died that we might live”.
Here I think lies the meaning of the Kingdom, and it’s manifestation. The Kingdom of God cannot manifest itself until each one of us realizes that God lives at our core, in our heart. We are a part of the Divine energy that created and creates the Universe. Tom Harpur puts it this way: …the story of Jesus is the story of each of us in allegorical form. As spirit-gifted animals, we are crucified on the cross of matter; we are bearers of the Christ within, and will one day be resurrected to a glorious destiny with God.[1]
The Kingdom is God is within you, Jesus said. To me, this means that it can’t appear until the light of Christ flares up in us and flows out from us. It is not going to be imposed at the end of some eschatological Age, or after some last, destructive Judgment. The Kingdom of God is at hand, Jesus said, for there He stood among them, mirroring the Divine within them. Which means that we must stand in the World as Christ. My Kingdom is not of this World, Jesus said ….. implying that the Kingdom cannot come through worldly power or Peter’s sword or might, but only by the light of the Divine shining out of each of us, giving light to the World. The Gospel is clear that the greatest sign of the Kingdom breaking through is Love.
And so, what does the parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins tell us? Here’s my take. I understand the home to which the Bridegroom arrives to be each of our hearts. He is coming to marry His divinity with our flesh, to make us a whole human being. But in reality, the Divine Bridegroom is always there, or we would not be alive. So the issue is, are we prepared to Welcome Him? All of us have lamps: our bodies, our hearts, our minds, our senses, our intellects. But do these lamps have adequate fuel? Worship is a fuel: How do we worship? The Eucharist is the heart of our worship for a reason. It sacramentally fuels us with the Body and Blood of the Christ, teaching us to feed on God. Reading is a fuel: What do we read, or watch, or study? Do they shed light to help us recognize the Bridegroom? Relationships are a fuel: Do our relationships glow with the love, justice, kindness of God? Self-love is a fuel: Do we love ourselves as God loves us, or mistreat ourselves? How we love God and ourselves determines how we love others. Charity is a fuel: How do we give of ourselves to sustain others?
The parable tells us that the Bridegroom comes at moments we don’t anticipate. Our work this week is to ponder the ways we keep our lamps burning. God is always here, bidden or unbidden. It is a darkened heart that obscures God’s Presence. Our work is to keep as many lamps as possible well fueled and burning brightly, creating a welcome for Holy Wisdom, like a plane honing in on a runway at night. As our reading says, and it is Good News: Wisdom .. hastens to make herself known to those who desire her .. she goes about seeking those worthy of her, and she graciously appears to them in their paths, and meets them in every thought. When Holy Wisdom leads us to the Christ Within, the Kingdom makes its appearance. Only then can the World be transformed.
[1] The Pagan Christ, Tom Harpur, pg. 147
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Sermon for: All Saints Day [Nov 2, 2008]
Season: St. Benedict’s, Los Osos, CA
From the Letter to the Church at Ephesus:
"Now, in Christ Jesus, you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For He is our Peace..In His flesh He has made (all) into one...reconciling (all) to God, in one Body, through the cross. So then, you are no longer strangers or aliens, but you are citizens with the saints, and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundations of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself as the cornerstone. In Him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in Whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God."
Every year we give ourselves a party, a party that includes us, all who have gone before, and all who will follow us. Our celebration of the Feast of All Saints is a rejoicing that you and I are fellow citizens with all those who have walked the Gospel path before us - from Stephen the Deacon to the last who passed on among us. We claim our place in the Communion of Saints - not with a bunch of perfect goody, goodies, but with the whole bunch of fallible human beings who opened their hearts to the transforming power of God’s grace.
Being disciples of Jesus is not easy! Nor, despite the somewhat sanitized picture we tend to have of the great saints and their great deeds, was it easy for them. They, like us, were human, and we all share propensities both for good and for evil. Polycarp and Benedict and Thomas Gallaudet and Sojourner Truth and Martin Luther King were flawed human beings, capable of great courage and love as well as human weakness. We are no different. In our humanness, we can speak carelessly, act thoughtlessly; we can judge each other harshly or in ignorance; we can disappoint each other. It is all too easy for us to forget why God has brought us together. Yet each one of us, by virtue of our baptism, has been drawn here to come into an intimate relationship with our God. As promised, Christ’s yoke is easy, and His burden light.
We Present-Day "Saints" – the Mormons don’t have a patent on the name - seek to live according to a vision, because we know that "without vision, the people perish". What is that vision? It is this:
· that we are deeply, deeply beloved.
· that the God Who makes us whole and free has made our flesh Her home.
· that in listening to Jesus, His teachings, His values, and by letting go of false priorities, we will find joy and fierce energy and freedom for the living of our lives, by loving Self and others as God loves us.
· that in service to others we will find our true Selves, and true greatness. Jesus said, "those who seek their lives will lose them, but those who give their lives for My sake and the Gospel will find them".
· that by Truth-seeking and repentance, we will by Grace live our humanity in a Christ-like way.
The Beatitudes are always the Gospel reading for this Feast. They hold the heart of what, in the end, makes any of us a member of the Communion of Saints. On this All Saints Day, let’s take a few moments to meditate on them (the text is from The Message, by Dr. Eugene Peterson)
· "You're blessed when you're at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and God’s rule.
· "You're blessed when you feel you've lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you.
· "You're blessed when you're content with just who you are—no more, no less. That's the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can't be bought.
· "You're blessed when you've worked up a good appetite for God. He's food and drink in the best meal you'll ever eat.
· "You're blessed when you care. At the moment of being 'care-full,' you find yourselves cared for.
· "You're blessed when you get your inside world—your mind and heart—put right. Then you can see God in the outside world.
· "You're blessed when you can show people how to cooperate instead of compete or fight. That's when you discover who you really are, and your place in God's family.
· "You're blessed when your commitment to God provokes persecution. The persecution drives you even deeper into God's kingdom. Not only that—count yourselves blessed every time people put you down or throw you out or speak lies about you to discredit me. What it means is that the truth is too close for comfort and they are uncomfortable.
Do you know the song Earthen Vessels? [ Behold a treasure / not made of gold / in earthern vessels, wealth untold / One treasure only / the Lord, the Christ / in earthen vessels ] The Beatitudes are a basic map for finding the treasure “not made of gold” which we hold within ourselves as earthen vessels. They are the path to wholeness and authentic humanity. We are earthen vessels filled with the compassion, justice, mercy, and peace which defines the Holy One, and defines us as Christ-filled beings. Rightly, the First Letter of John says: “What marvelous love the Father has extended to us! … we're called children of God! That's who we really are” ….. What our baptism calls us to become more deeply every day.
The Beatitudes are the path to sainthood that so many have sought to walk. As Ecclesiasticus (44) reminds us, some were great and famous; of some there is no memory. Today we honour them, give thanks for them, especially those living and dead who have inspired us. We count ourselves among them as we stream towards the throne of God, made worthy to stand before God, scrubbed clean by the blood of the Lamb.
Our psalm [34] for today best expresses both our goal and our hope:
I bless God every chance I get; my lungs expand with his praise. 2 I live and breathe God … 4 God met me more than halfway, he freed me from my anxious fears. 5 Look at him; give him your warmest smile. Never hide your feelings from him.8 Open your mouth and taste, open your eyes and see— how good God is. Blessed are you who run to him. 9 Worship God if you want the best; worship opens doors to all [God’s] goodness. [The Message]
As the hymn says (293): For the saints of God are just folk like me / And I mean to be one too.
Season: St. Benedict’s, Los Osos, CA
From the Letter to the Church at Ephesus:
"Now, in Christ Jesus, you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For He is our Peace..In His flesh He has made (all) into one...reconciling (all) to God, in one Body, through the cross. So then, you are no longer strangers or aliens, but you are citizens with the saints, and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundations of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself as the cornerstone. In Him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in Whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God."
Every year we give ourselves a party, a party that includes us, all who have gone before, and all who will follow us. Our celebration of the Feast of All Saints is a rejoicing that you and I are fellow citizens with all those who have walked the Gospel path before us - from Stephen the Deacon to the last who passed on among us. We claim our place in the Communion of Saints - not with a bunch of perfect goody, goodies, but with the whole bunch of fallible human beings who opened their hearts to the transforming power of God’s grace.
Being disciples of Jesus is not easy! Nor, despite the somewhat sanitized picture we tend to have of the great saints and their great deeds, was it easy for them. They, like us, were human, and we all share propensities both for good and for evil. Polycarp and Benedict and Thomas Gallaudet and Sojourner Truth and Martin Luther King were flawed human beings, capable of great courage and love as well as human weakness. We are no different. In our humanness, we can speak carelessly, act thoughtlessly; we can judge each other harshly or in ignorance; we can disappoint each other. It is all too easy for us to forget why God has brought us together. Yet each one of us, by virtue of our baptism, has been drawn here to come into an intimate relationship with our God. As promised, Christ’s yoke is easy, and His burden light.
We Present-Day "Saints" – the Mormons don’t have a patent on the name - seek to live according to a vision, because we know that "without vision, the people perish". What is that vision? It is this:
· that we are deeply, deeply beloved.
· that the God Who makes us whole and free has made our flesh Her home.
· that in listening to Jesus, His teachings, His values, and by letting go of false priorities, we will find joy and fierce energy and freedom for the living of our lives, by loving Self and others as God loves us.
· that in service to others we will find our true Selves, and true greatness. Jesus said, "those who seek their lives will lose them, but those who give their lives for My sake and the Gospel will find them".
· that by Truth-seeking and repentance, we will by Grace live our humanity in a Christ-like way.
The Beatitudes are always the Gospel reading for this Feast. They hold the heart of what, in the end, makes any of us a member of the Communion of Saints. On this All Saints Day, let’s take a few moments to meditate on them (the text is from The Message, by Dr. Eugene Peterson)
· "You're blessed when you're at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and God’s rule.
· "You're blessed when you feel you've lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you.
· "You're blessed when you're content with just who you are—no more, no less. That's the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can't be bought.
· "You're blessed when you've worked up a good appetite for God. He's food and drink in the best meal you'll ever eat.
· "You're blessed when you care. At the moment of being 'care-full,' you find yourselves cared for.
· "You're blessed when you get your inside world—your mind and heart—put right. Then you can see God in the outside world.
· "You're blessed when you can show people how to cooperate instead of compete or fight. That's when you discover who you really are, and your place in God's family.
· "You're blessed when your commitment to God provokes persecution. The persecution drives you even deeper into God's kingdom. Not only that—count yourselves blessed every time people put you down or throw you out or speak lies about you to discredit me. What it means is that the truth is too close for comfort and they are uncomfortable.
Do you know the song Earthen Vessels? [ Behold a treasure / not made of gold / in earthern vessels, wealth untold / One treasure only / the Lord, the Christ / in earthen vessels ] The Beatitudes are a basic map for finding the treasure “not made of gold” which we hold within ourselves as earthen vessels. They are the path to wholeness and authentic humanity. We are earthen vessels filled with the compassion, justice, mercy, and peace which defines the Holy One, and defines us as Christ-filled beings. Rightly, the First Letter of John says: “What marvelous love the Father has extended to us! … we're called children of God! That's who we really are” ….. What our baptism calls us to become more deeply every day.
The Beatitudes are the path to sainthood that so many have sought to walk. As Ecclesiasticus (44) reminds us, some were great and famous; of some there is no memory. Today we honour them, give thanks for them, especially those living and dead who have inspired us. We count ourselves among them as we stream towards the throne of God, made worthy to stand before God, scrubbed clean by the blood of the Lamb.
Our psalm [34] for today best expresses both our goal and our hope:
I bless God every chance I get; my lungs expand with his praise. 2 I live and breathe God … 4 God met me more than halfway, he freed me from my anxious fears. 5 Look at him; give him your warmest smile. Never hide your feelings from him.8 Open your mouth and taste, open your eyes and see— how good God is. Blessed are you who run to him. 9 Worship God if you want the best; worship opens doors to all [God’s] goodness. [The Message]
As the hymn says (293): For the saints of God are just folk like me / And I mean to be one too.
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Sermon for: Sept 7, 2008 (St. Benedict’s, Los Osos CA) Brian H.O.A. McHugh, priest
Season: Proper 18A_RCL_Pent XVII
[Note: All Scripture quotes are from The Message.]
As I pondered the readings for this Sunday, I found most of the readings uninspiring. This happens every now and then. Usually it means that I’m in a discouraged or cynical mood. The constant drone of politics will always do it. Usually in such circumsatnces I produce a “comfort sermon”. Most of us like to come together as “church” to be comforted. To be reassured that “all will be well” both in this life and in the unknown Beyond; that God loves us unconditionally. That's OK. Of course, we often make the assumption that if God loves us unconditionally, God approves of us and what we do. This, of course, is not necessarily the case. But, I don’t want to get off on a rant, especially since rants are pretty grim. Aside from their message, maybe that’s why the prophets were so “without honor in their own country”. So, I would like to engage us in a conversation. What does it mean that God is Love – if you agree God is? What does it mean that the Gospel is a Gospel about Peace and Reconciliation – if you agree it is? I will try to take a balanced look at both the Bad News and at the Good News today.
“Israel” is a symbol for Humankind. God chooses all Humankind as Her people. God loves all Humankind equally and unconditionally. This, I think, is clear in both the Hebrew and Christian Bible – despite the fact that various sides are always trying to co-opt God for their own ends. All peoples tend now and then to confuse God’s will with their own cultural values, especially in times of distress or threat, or of scrambling for power.
Today, we hear God sending His “son of man”, the prophet Ezekiel to “speak to Israel” – remember, that’s us. The message is pretty “grim” and unequivocal: 'Wicked man, wicked woman, you're on the fast track to death!” Now, I think this is constant state of human affairs. We live on this fine edge between spiritual death and life most of the time - and I think we all know it. The lament that God has heard from Israel is the lament of Humanity when we are able to be honest: "Our rebellions and sins are weighing us down. We're wasting away. How can we go on living?” And God in frustration replies, “As sure as I am the living God, I take no pleasure from the death of the wicked. I want the wicked to change their ways and live. Turn your life around! Reverse your evil ways! Why die, Israel?'”
“Why die” indeed!? There is an old joke about a man arriving at the Heavenly Gates prepared to show his excellent credentials to St. Peter. Peter just asks to see his chequebook; that will say what he truly valued. What Peter would see in the World’s chequebook today is a vast amount spent on weapons of destruction - this is the prevailing symbol of Death hanging over us all today (except for Costa Rica, which courageously has no military). As I look around the World today, it feels to me as if we are all on the Path to Death, both spiritual and physical. Fanatical extremist terrorists of all religions and cultures; hate-and-fear-driven skinheads of all stripes; ethnic gangs who (as the mayor of Santa Maria said Wednesday) would as easily shoot you as say Hi; governments who permit millions of their people to die or suffer or be raped or starve in order to stay in power; rapacious corporate capitalists, communists, oligarchs, all of whom in their own ways ruthlessly limit freedoms in order to allow the few to become fabulously rich or powerful while the majority – including now the “middle classes” in our society – struggle along managing as best we can, while the growing number of the poor slip further and further into desperation.
Oh, I know that many of us are “doing ok” in the parts of the World with enough economic power to provide the essentials, especially in America – but we are a very small percentage of God’s people. Maybe I’m only seeing the dark picture. If so, I can’t help it. I’ve been raised on the Gospel since I was four. I’ve heard about God’s equal and unconditional love for each and every sparrow that falls. I’ve heard that the heart of the Hebrew Scripture is Love God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength, and your neighbour as yourself. I’ve heard that the summation of all of Jesus’ teaching is, Love one another as I have loved you. I have heard and sung about justice for the poor and the oppressed. I have heard about the Good Samaritan, that my neighbour is anyone in need. I have heard about being my sister’s keeper. I have heard about it not being possible to worship both God and Money/Power - what does the Psalm say today: Give me a bent for your words of wisdom, and not for piling up loot. Divert my eyes from toys and trinkets. I’ve heard about the core ministry of Peace and Reconciliation that has been given to all who have taken up the Way of the Cross.
I can’t help asking myself why, if there are over two billion Christians in the World whose Faith is centered in Love, Justice and Reconciliation, (not to mention one billion moderate Muslims, peace-loving Buddhists, etc), why is the World such a mess? And since I live here, where many of our elected leaders profess to be Christians, either Democrats or Republicans, why do I not see our foreign and domestic policy defined or at least powered by the core Christian values of Love, Justice and Reconciliation, or our Christian politicians walking the Way of the Cross – the Way of self-giving even unto death that all of God’s people may have every blessing for Life that God offers? Or, for that matter, Life, Liberty and Happiness, with equality and Justice for all?
Have I heard wrongly? Is it just simply true that Power Corrupts? If you see it differently, I’d really like you to help me with this. Is the way that I understand the Gospel completely skewed? This is the conversation I’d like to have with you, my fellow travelers.
Of course there is Good News. God, we read in Ezekiel, does not want us to die. We know in Jesus that God gives His life to give us Life. God makes a home in every human heart, and is willing to suffer rejection in order to be there when we need Her. Psalm 119 says, God has taught us lessons for living, given us insight, commanded us on the path to Love and Justice, revealed eternal Wisdom, shown us “straight paths”, made many promises that He has kept, counseled us, preserved our Life. We are here because, I hope, we have experienced this. There is only one crucial catch - it is all dead unless, as the Psalmist says, we make our whole life one long, obedient response.
Paul says to the church in Rome in today’s reading, “The law code—don't sleep with another person's spouse, don't take someone's life, don't take what isn't yours, don't always be wanting what you don't have, and any other "don't" you can think of—finally adds up to this: Love other people as well as you do yourself. 10 You can't go wrong when you love others. When you add up everything in the law code, the sum total is love.
He ends by saying: Dress yourselves in Christ. The question is, just what does this mean for how we live our lives, as individuals, as a church; and what is our witness to our local community and to our nation?
Season: Proper 18A_RCL_Pent XVII
[Note: All Scripture quotes are from The Message.]
As I pondered the readings for this Sunday, I found most of the readings uninspiring. This happens every now and then. Usually it means that I’m in a discouraged or cynical mood. The constant drone of politics will always do it. Usually in such circumsatnces I produce a “comfort sermon”. Most of us like to come together as “church” to be comforted. To be reassured that “all will be well” both in this life and in the unknown Beyond; that God loves us unconditionally. That's OK. Of course, we often make the assumption that if God loves us unconditionally, God approves of us and what we do. This, of course, is not necessarily the case. But, I don’t want to get off on a rant, especially since rants are pretty grim. Aside from their message, maybe that’s why the prophets were so “without honor in their own country”. So, I would like to engage us in a conversation. What does it mean that God is Love – if you agree God is? What does it mean that the Gospel is a Gospel about Peace and Reconciliation – if you agree it is? I will try to take a balanced look at both the Bad News and at the Good News today.
“Israel” is a symbol for Humankind. God chooses all Humankind as Her people. God loves all Humankind equally and unconditionally. This, I think, is clear in both the Hebrew and Christian Bible – despite the fact that various sides are always trying to co-opt God for their own ends. All peoples tend now and then to confuse God’s will with their own cultural values, especially in times of distress or threat, or of scrambling for power.
Today, we hear God sending His “son of man”, the prophet Ezekiel to “speak to Israel” – remember, that’s us. The message is pretty “grim” and unequivocal: 'Wicked man, wicked woman, you're on the fast track to death!” Now, I think this is constant state of human affairs. We live on this fine edge between spiritual death and life most of the time - and I think we all know it. The lament that God has heard from Israel is the lament of Humanity when we are able to be honest: "Our rebellions and sins are weighing us down. We're wasting away. How can we go on living?” And God in frustration replies, “As sure as I am the living God, I take no pleasure from the death of the wicked. I want the wicked to change their ways and live. Turn your life around! Reverse your evil ways! Why die, Israel?'”
“Why die” indeed!? There is an old joke about a man arriving at the Heavenly Gates prepared to show his excellent credentials to St. Peter. Peter just asks to see his chequebook; that will say what he truly valued. What Peter would see in the World’s chequebook today is a vast amount spent on weapons of destruction - this is the prevailing symbol of Death hanging over us all today (except for Costa Rica, which courageously has no military). As I look around the World today, it feels to me as if we are all on the Path to Death, both spiritual and physical. Fanatical extremist terrorists of all religions and cultures; hate-and-fear-driven skinheads of all stripes; ethnic gangs who (as the mayor of Santa Maria said Wednesday) would as easily shoot you as say Hi; governments who permit millions of their people to die or suffer or be raped or starve in order to stay in power; rapacious corporate capitalists, communists, oligarchs, all of whom in their own ways ruthlessly limit freedoms in order to allow the few to become fabulously rich or powerful while the majority – including now the “middle classes” in our society – struggle along managing as best we can, while the growing number of the poor slip further and further into desperation.
Oh, I know that many of us are “doing ok” in the parts of the World with enough economic power to provide the essentials, especially in America – but we are a very small percentage of God’s people. Maybe I’m only seeing the dark picture. If so, I can’t help it. I’ve been raised on the Gospel since I was four. I’ve heard about God’s equal and unconditional love for each and every sparrow that falls. I’ve heard that the heart of the Hebrew Scripture is Love God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength, and your neighbour as yourself. I’ve heard that the summation of all of Jesus’ teaching is, Love one another as I have loved you. I have heard and sung about justice for the poor and the oppressed. I have heard about the Good Samaritan, that my neighbour is anyone in need. I have heard about being my sister’s keeper. I have heard about it not being possible to worship both God and Money/Power - what does the Psalm say today: Give me a bent for your words of wisdom, and not for piling up loot. Divert my eyes from toys and trinkets. I’ve heard about the core ministry of Peace and Reconciliation that has been given to all who have taken up the Way of the Cross.
I can’t help asking myself why, if there are over two billion Christians in the World whose Faith is centered in Love, Justice and Reconciliation, (not to mention one billion moderate Muslims, peace-loving Buddhists, etc), why is the World such a mess? And since I live here, where many of our elected leaders profess to be Christians, either Democrats or Republicans, why do I not see our foreign and domestic policy defined or at least powered by the core Christian values of Love, Justice and Reconciliation, or our Christian politicians walking the Way of the Cross – the Way of self-giving even unto death that all of God’s people may have every blessing for Life that God offers? Or, for that matter, Life, Liberty and Happiness, with equality and Justice for all?
Have I heard wrongly? Is it just simply true that Power Corrupts? If you see it differently, I’d really like you to help me with this. Is the way that I understand the Gospel completely skewed? This is the conversation I’d like to have with you, my fellow travelers.
Of course there is Good News. God, we read in Ezekiel, does not want us to die. We know in Jesus that God gives His life to give us Life. God makes a home in every human heart, and is willing to suffer rejection in order to be there when we need Her. Psalm 119 says, God has taught us lessons for living, given us insight, commanded us on the path to Love and Justice, revealed eternal Wisdom, shown us “straight paths”, made many promises that He has kept, counseled us, preserved our Life. We are here because, I hope, we have experienced this. There is only one crucial catch - it is all dead unless, as the Psalmist says, we make our whole life one long, obedient response.
Paul says to the church in Rome in today’s reading, “The law code—don't sleep with another person's spouse, don't take someone's life, don't take what isn't yours, don't always be wanting what you don't have, and any other "don't" you can think of—finally adds up to this: Love other people as well as you do yourself. 10 You can't go wrong when you love others. When you add up everything in the law code, the sum total is love.
He ends by saying: Dress yourselves in Christ. The question is, just what does this mean for how we live our lives, as individuals, as a church; and what is our witness to our local community and to our nation?
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Sermon for: July 20, 2008 Brian McHugh, priest
Season: Proper 11A_RCL, Track 1 St. Paul’s, Cambria CA
It is one of the great privileges of my life as a priest to stand at the altar as an “icon” of the priesthood we all share in Jesus, and to preside at our Eucharistic meal. Thank you for inviting me to be with you this morning. My partner Dennis and I are glad to share worship with you.
St. Paul says to those he loves in the church in Rome this morning: For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and – listen closely here - will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. [Rom 8:19-21].
Ah, yes! This is why you and I are here this morning. There are many reasons why we come together as “church”. But there is one core reason that we stick with it Sunday by Sunday and year by year, often through many frustrations and disappointments. God knows there have been many times in my life when I just wanted to chuck it all through 35 years of priesthood and over 40 in ministry. We stick with each other, and with the Scripture, and with Sacrament because we were called from deep within us, some perhaps recently, some perhaps many years ago. We were called, some gently, some shockingly, by the Christ who dwells at the center. A vision, a hope, was awakened within us. It is a vision of the possibilities for ourselves and for the whole Creation. In Paul’s words, it is the vision of the glory of the children of God.
There are perhaps some hardened souls whom the vision never touches or who don’t allow it to touch them. Such people have created and continue to create havoc and suffering in the World. They often suck many others in because of fear or deception. But most of us, in some way, have caught a glimpse of , well, let’s call it God, and we hunger for it to flower.
Jesus told many parables about the path that leads to the Glory. We gather around one of them in our worship today. But before we look at it, let me “rattle your cage” a little bit. Let’s first talk about the Bible. How people understand the Bible is the fundamental divisive issue among Christians today. Not just how they interpret it, but how they think it came about. Being a “good Episcopalian”, you can make your choices and you certainly don’t have to accept what I say! But I’ll tell you where I have gotten in over 40 years of thinking and meditating and studying and listening to greater intellects than mine.
Some believe that God dictated it word for word to various scribes. Others, that God somehow mysteriously manages by the skin of His teeth to get Her message across through the written experiences of the peoples of the Bible. Most are somewhere in between. (By the way, I use Him and Her for God interchangeably, just to remind us of a longstanding Anglican principle enunciated in what are known as the Articles of Religion (see BCP). The First Article says, God is a spirit, without body, parts, or passions - thereby reminding us that God does not have a gender, and that it is misleading and dangerous to box God in with one or the other.) I’m far to the “skin of His teeth” side. There is an icon often seen in the Eastern Orthodox Church, an icon of Christ the Teacher, holding a closed Gospel Book. This icon is to remind us of something I have believed and taught for a long time: that Christians interpret the Scriptures through Christ, and not the other way around. Once you understand this, as I think the Church did in the early centuries and until the ascendency of the Western Church, you understand why it is important to have an intimate relationship with Jesus, to know the core of His Being. It is His teachings and, most importantly, His Love, grounded in and manifesting the unconditional Love of His Father, that define how we understand and interpret Scripture.
Let’s look at the parable of the Wheat and the Weeds (or tares if you prefer). I do not believe that Jesus interpreted His parables to his followers. As I said, the Gospels are a combination of what Jesus might actually have said, and additions by the early church in the decades following His Death and Resurrection, expressing their understanding of what Jesus said and meant. They would in no way have thought that they were falsifying or misinterpreting Him. The “interpretation” we have today is, I believe, one of those additions. And to me, it doesn’t sound like Jesus. Neither God nor Jesus goes about destroying people and sending them to the “weeping and gnashing of teeth”. I think it comes from the early community defining its specialness as against the surrounding Jewish and pagan cultures and religions. Many scholars agree. And of course, you can do your own thinking.
Jesus, as usual, is clear in his parable today. It is about hope and faith in a loving God Who, having created us, knows what we human beings are like. We can choose Good and we can choose Evil. This is the human condition. And all of us, like St. Paul, have cried out in desperation at how often we fail in choosing the Good, often bewilderingly so. But God wants us, as Romans says, to shine like the sun in the kingdom of the Father. God has a covenant of Love with all of us, symbolized in the covenant with Jacob. The promise is that, despite all, God will stay by us, shower us with mercy and forgiveness and strength and hope, lead us like a faithful shepherd Who is even willing to give His life for the sheep - as He does in every Eucharist.
Our destiny is to have all causes of sin burned out of us, till we shine like the sun in the Kingdom. Even a little success brings light to our own lives and to the World. Our part of the bargain is to be as faithful as we can in repentance and humility, acknowledging our failures and accepting God’s grace and Love. We “come to church” to be held on, and to help each other along, that path.
In the words of the lovely Psalm 139: If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast. This is the God we love and trust and serve.
Season: Proper 11A_RCL, Track 1 St. Paul’s, Cambria CA
It is one of the great privileges of my life as a priest to stand at the altar as an “icon” of the priesthood we all share in Jesus, and to preside at our Eucharistic meal. Thank you for inviting me to be with you this morning. My partner Dennis and I are glad to share worship with you.
St. Paul says to those he loves in the church in Rome this morning: For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and – listen closely here - will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. [Rom 8:19-21].
Ah, yes! This is why you and I are here this morning. There are many reasons why we come together as “church”. But there is one core reason that we stick with it Sunday by Sunday and year by year, often through many frustrations and disappointments. God knows there have been many times in my life when I just wanted to chuck it all through 35 years of priesthood and over 40 in ministry. We stick with each other, and with the Scripture, and with Sacrament because we were called from deep within us, some perhaps recently, some perhaps many years ago. We were called, some gently, some shockingly, by the Christ who dwells at the center. A vision, a hope, was awakened within us. It is a vision of the possibilities for ourselves and for the whole Creation. In Paul’s words, it is the vision of the glory of the children of God.
There are perhaps some hardened souls whom the vision never touches or who don’t allow it to touch them. Such people have created and continue to create havoc and suffering in the World. They often suck many others in because of fear or deception. But most of us, in some way, have caught a glimpse of , well, let’s call it God, and we hunger for it to flower.
Jesus told many parables about the path that leads to the Glory. We gather around one of them in our worship today. But before we look at it, let me “rattle your cage” a little bit. Let’s first talk about the Bible. How people understand the Bible is the fundamental divisive issue among Christians today. Not just how they interpret it, but how they think it came about. Being a “good Episcopalian”, you can make your choices and you certainly don’t have to accept what I say! But I’ll tell you where I have gotten in over 40 years of thinking and meditating and studying and listening to greater intellects than mine.
Some believe that God dictated it word for word to various scribes. Others, that God somehow mysteriously manages by the skin of His teeth to get Her message across through the written experiences of the peoples of the Bible. Most are somewhere in between. (By the way, I use Him and Her for God interchangeably, just to remind us of a longstanding Anglican principle enunciated in what are known as the Articles of Religion (see BCP). The First Article says, God is a spirit, without body, parts, or passions - thereby reminding us that God does not have a gender, and that it is misleading and dangerous to box God in with one or the other.) I’m far to the “skin of His teeth” side. There is an icon often seen in the Eastern Orthodox Church, an icon of Christ the Teacher, holding a closed Gospel Book. This icon is to remind us of something I have believed and taught for a long time: that Christians interpret the Scriptures through Christ, and not the other way around. Once you understand this, as I think the Church did in the early centuries and until the ascendency of the Western Church, you understand why it is important to have an intimate relationship with Jesus, to know the core of His Being. It is His teachings and, most importantly, His Love, grounded in and manifesting the unconditional Love of His Father, that define how we understand and interpret Scripture.
Let’s look at the parable of the Wheat and the Weeds (or tares if you prefer). I do not believe that Jesus interpreted His parables to his followers. As I said, the Gospels are a combination of what Jesus might actually have said, and additions by the early church in the decades following His Death and Resurrection, expressing their understanding of what Jesus said and meant. They would in no way have thought that they were falsifying or misinterpreting Him. The “interpretation” we have today is, I believe, one of those additions. And to me, it doesn’t sound like Jesus. Neither God nor Jesus goes about destroying people and sending them to the “weeping and gnashing of teeth”. I think it comes from the early community defining its specialness as against the surrounding Jewish and pagan cultures and religions. Many scholars agree. And of course, you can do your own thinking.
Jesus, as usual, is clear in his parable today. It is about hope and faith in a loving God Who, having created us, knows what we human beings are like. We can choose Good and we can choose Evil. This is the human condition. And all of us, like St. Paul, have cried out in desperation at how often we fail in choosing the Good, often bewilderingly so. But God wants us, as Romans says, to shine like the sun in the kingdom of the Father. God has a covenant of Love with all of us, symbolized in the covenant with Jacob. The promise is that, despite all, God will stay by us, shower us with mercy and forgiveness and strength and hope, lead us like a faithful shepherd Who is even willing to give His life for the sheep - as He does in every Eucharist.
Our destiny is to have all causes of sin burned out of us, till we shine like the sun in the Kingdom. Even a little success brings light to our own lives and to the World. Our part of the bargain is to be as faithful as we can in repentance and humility, acknowledging our failures and accepting God’s grace and Love. We “come to church” to be held on, and to help each other along, that path.
In the words of the lovely Psalm 139: If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast. This is the God we love and trust and serve.
Monday, July 14, 2008
Brian H. O. A. McHugh, priest
Sermon for: July 13, 2007
Season: St. Benedict’s, Los Osos, CA, on their Feast of Title
What do we know about Benedict? Personally, relatively little. He was the son of a Roman noble, born about 480, in Nursia, in what is now Italy. It seems that at about age 19, he became disgusted with the way of life of Rome, which he thought dissolute. He may also have been jilted in love. These things are deduced from the only “biography”, more a character sketch in the hagiographic style, done by Pope St. Gregory the Great. Benedict left the city, taking his nurse and a servant, to live quietly, apparently in some kind of association with a group of “virtuous men”. He apparently knew the Gospels, and was drawn to the life they manifested.
Benedict received the distinctive monastic habit from a monk in the areas named Romanus, with whom he had discussed the reasons that brought him to Subiaco, where Romanus had his monastery. At Romanus’s advice, Benedict became a hermit for 3 years, and he lived in a cave above the river, pondering the Gospel and how one should live to be a part of the Kingdom of God. Some monks begged him to be their abbot, but that experiment failed, and Benedict returned to his solitary life. But many people, attracted by his sanctity and by the various miracles that he is recorded to have performed, came to join him. He had 12 monasteries built, where 12 seekers lived with an abbot. Benedict lived in a separate monastery with a few close followers. Somewhere in this time, he wrote a Rule for his monks, based on an earlier rule called “The Rule of the Master”. Benedicts “Rule”, described by Gregory as “firm but reasonable”, became the basis for Western monasticism in following centuries and up until the present day.
Benedict intended the Rule to be a way of life that honoured Christ’s teachings. The rule allows all that is necessary to each individual: sufficient and varied clothing, abundant food (excluding meat from quadrupeds), wine and ample sleep. Possessions could be held in common; they might be large, but they were to be administered for the furtherance of the work of the community and for the benefit of others. While the individual monk was porr, the monastery was to be in a position to give alms, not to be compelled to seek them. It was to relieve the poor, clothe the naked, visit the sick, bury the dead, help the afflicted, and – what became a central Benedictine character - to offer hospitality to all strangers. The poor came to Benedict to get help to pay their debts, and for food.
Work was critical in the common life, and even more important than liturgical prayer. This is enshrined in the famous phrase, “Laborare est Orare”, to Work is to Pray, and it reflects Gospel teaching that religious faith must manifest itself in good works to be authentic. Work was not to be considered the task of slaves, but seen as a necessary path to for holiness for all men and women. But Prayer was the common bond; the average day provides for a little over four hours to be spent in liturgical prayer, a little over five hours in spiritual reading and private prayer, about six hours of work, one hour for eating, and about eight hours of sleep. The entire Psalter is to be recited in the Divine Office once every week.
All possessions were held in common. And all were equal, whether once slave or noble. Benedictine communities are families. The local community is more important than the larger order, a character that is reflected in our Anglican tradition, where parish communities are the heart and the diocesan level serves the local communities. Unlike many religious orders which take the vows of Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience, Benedictines take the vows of Obedience (so that God comes first), Stability (so that the prime place where holiness is sought is in one’s parish family), and Amendment/Conversion of Life, the goal being to become as Christ. These vows reflect the Baptismal vows.
Benedict is the icon of our community of faith here, what we call our “patron saint”. We live under his bright shadow. Most people are not called to be monastics. But Benedict is a worthy icon for us as followers of Jesus. We are here because we have the same desire as Benedict and his monks did. I was a monk for 15 years. I only knew many years after why I was led to try the monastic life. The monk is an archetype – a symbol of the radical call to become as Christ. Which is the same as the radical call to become fully human and fully the unique individual we have been created to be. But even more amazingly, to become Divine – for that is what the Gospel says we are, an incarnated expression of holy love.
We are not called to be monks or nuns. But Benedict’s radical search for the Gospel life is our search. That is why we come together around the altar and the Eucharist and Scripture. Archbishop Cranmer, in the early 16th C, apparently designed English parish life on the Benedictine model. We pray together, we seek to understand the Gospel life. We commit to obedience to God, to a stable parish family life, and to learning in that family how to let God shape us in the image of Christ. And we work together to reach out to those in need, especially offering hospitality to those on the journey to God, as our mission statement says.
Today we gather to join Benedict on the path to holiness. To thank and honour him as a faithful model and guide for parish life over the last 1500 years. And to recommit ourselves to each other as diverse people brought together by God to help and support each other on our journey of transfiguration into people of Divine Light.
Sermon for: July 13, 2007
Season: St. Benedict’s, Los Osos, CA, on their Feast of Title
What do we know about Benedict? Personally, relatively little. He was the son of a Roman noble, born about 480, in Nursia, in what is now Italy. It seems that at about age 19, he became disgusted with the way of life of Rome, which he thought dissolute. He may also have been jilted in love. These things are deduced from the only “biography”, more a character sketch in the hagiographic style, done by Pope St. Gregory the Great. Benedict left the city, taking his nurse and a servant, to live quietly, apparently in some kind of association with a group of “virtuous men”. He apparently knew the Gospels, and was drawn to the life they manifested.
Benedict received the distinctive monastic habit from a monk in the areas named Romanus, with whom he had discussed the reasons that brought him to Subiaco, where Romanus had his monastery. At Romanus’s advice, Benedict became a hermit for 3 years, and he lived in a cave above the river, pondering the Gospel and how one should live to be a part of the Kingdom of God. Some monks begged him to be their abbot, but that experiment failed, and Benedict returned to his solitary life. But many people, attracted by his sanctity and by the various miracles that he is recorded to have performed, came to join him. He had 12 monasteries built, where 12 seekers lived with an abbot. Benedict lived in a separate monastery with a few close followers. Somewhere in this time, he wrote a Rule for his monks, based on an earlier rule called “The Rule of the Master”. Benedicts “Rule”, described by Gregory as “firm but reasonable”, became the basis for Western monasticism in following centuries and up until the present day.
Benedict intended the Rule to be a way of life that honoured Christ’s teachings. The rule allows all that is necessary to each individual: sufficient and varied clothing, abundant food (excluding meat from quadrupeds), wine and ample sleep. Possessions could be held in common; they might be large, but they were to be administered for the furtherance of the work of the community and for the benefit of others. While the individual monk was porr, the monastery was to be in a position to give alms, not to be compelled to seek them. It was to relieve the poor, clothe the naked, visit the sick, bury the dead, help the afflicted, and – what became a central Benedictine character - to offer hospitality to all strangers. The poor came to Benedict to get help to pay their debts, and for food.
Work was critical in the common life, and even more important than liturgical prayer. This is enshrined in the famous phrase, “Laborare est Orare”, to Work is to Pray, and it reflects Gospel teaching that religious faith must manifest itself in good works to be authentic. Work was not to be considered the task of slaves, but seen as a necessary path to for holiness for all men and women. But Prayer was the common bond; the average day provides for a little over four hours to be spent in liturgical prayer, a little over five hours in spiritual reading and private prayer, about six hours of work, one hour for eating, and about eight hours of sleep. The entire Psalter is to be recited in the Divine Office once every week.
All possessions were held in common. And all were equal, whether once slave or noble. Benedictine communities are families. The local community is more important than the larger order, a character that is reflected in our Anglican tradition, where parish communities are the heart and the diocesan level serves the local communities. Unlike many religious orders which take the vows of Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience, Benedictines take the vows of Obedience (so that God comes first), Stability (so that the prime place where holiness is sought is in one’s parish family), and Amendment/Conversion of Life, the goal being to become as Christ. These vows reflect the Baptismal vows.
Benedict is the icon of our community of faith here, what we call our “patron saint”. We live under his bright shadow. Most people are not called to be monastics. But Benedict is a worthy icon for us as followers of Jesus. We are here because we have the same desire as Benedict and his monks did. I was a monk for 15 years. I only knew many years after why I was led to try the monastic life. The monk is an archetype – a symbol of the radical call to become as Christ. Which is the same as the radical call to become fully human and fully the unique individual we have been created to be. But even more amazingly, to become Divine – for that is what the Gospel says we are, an incarnated expression of holy love.
We are not called to be monks or nuns. But Benedict’s radical search for the Gospel life is our search. That is why we come together around the altar and the Eucharist and Scripture. Archbishop Cranmer, in the early 16th C, apparently designed English parish life on the Benedictine model. We pray together, we seek to understand the Gospel life. We commit to obedience to God, to a stable parish family life, and to learning in that family how to let God shape us in the image of Christ. And we work together to reach out to those in need, especially offering hospitality to those on the journey to God, as our mission statement says.
Today we gather to join Benedict on the path to holiness. To thank and honour him as a faithful model and guide for parish life over the last 1500 years. And to recommit ourselves to each other as diverse people brought together by God to help and support each other on our journey of transfiguration into people of Divine Light.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
The Rev. Brian H. O. A. McHugh
Episcopal Diocese of El Camino Real
Sermon for: June 29, 2008
Season: Gay Pride Service, United Church of Christ, San Luis Obispo, CA
Title: May They All Be One
Let me tell you up front what the central point of my reflection at this Gay Pride service is. Doing this will hold me accountable to myself and to you for my words. I’m following the first of the Four Agreements enunciated by Don Miguel Ruiz, by which I try to live: Be impeccable with your word. My point - and I believe it to be the Good News of the Gospel - is this:
Each and every human person is a manifestation of the holy energy at the core of all life. Every human being is a sacrament of that Holy Mystery - if I may use an old Anglican phrase, an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace. Every person, irrespective of the particular configuration or manifestation of their sexuality or any other characteristic, is a unique, beautiful, sacred Being. God does not disown or reject any person, for God cannot disown or reject Herself.
Now you may ask, Where the hell in the Bible did he get that?! Believe me, I got it from the Bible alright. But not because it is written out in just those words. I got it from the Bible, and from the Gospel, and from the eternal Christ who shines at the heart. I got it filtered through my own personal experience over fifty years and that of thousands of others, of hearing and pondering the Word. I got it through the reasoning of my and many minds, through the longing of my heart, and through the working of the Spirit of Truth which the Christ promised and bestowed.
When I was ordained a priest, I took and oath that I believed the “Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the word of God, and to contain all things necessary to salvation”. And I do. But not in some simplistic, literalist way. I firmly believe that the Mystery we call “God” dwells within and not without. That God is revealed from the inside out. That God is always vulnerable to the workings of the human mind and heart. All Scriptures are written by human beings who are seeking out the meaning of their lives. The myriad pictures we have of God reflect the experience of human beings in every time and culture. Many, if not most, are projections of individuals and cultures, their times and experiences. Many claim to know God, to know that God is “on their side” - a projection that Bob Dylan so aptly parodied. Most of those pictures are misleading, in my view, in terms of the actual nature of “God”. The wonder of sacred writings, for me, is that the still, small voice of God manages to be heard in the minds and hearts of those who are willing to be surprised by the vast and infinite Compassion of God. Over 40 years in ministry, I have learned the wisdom of the old rabbi who said of the Bible’s message, God is Love; all else is commentary.
God has insinuated Herself in sneaky ways into many hearts. Certainly into the hearts of many Gayfolk, many of whom were brought up in cultures and religions which filled them with shame and terror, and caused them to doubt their worth and beauty. It is a wonder to me that so many Gayfolk continue to be part of religious communities, almost all of which have excluded and condemned and brutalized them for millennia. Happily, some of those faith communities have changed their ways, and many of the rest of us are slowly struggling to get there. That “still small voice” has quietly, persistently whispered, and been heard in generous and loving and open and sometimes needy hearts. Hearts that have seen that the orientation of Gayfolk is not a sinful or unnatural choice. Just another facet of human nature. The only choice involved is to reject lies and self-doubt and to be one’s authentic self. The God I know wills this freedom for Gayfolk and for all persons.
It is a cliché, but ….. God does indeed work in mysterious ways! She has in mine. And I think that my experience is a kind of metaphor for the way the Divine Spirit works. I knew what my sexual orientation was when I was a little boy. Luckily I was born in Canada in the late 40’s, among somewhat dour Scots Presbyterians who were both upright and whiskey drinkers. The topic of sex, at any level, was avoided. I did not have to deal with the particular ingrained Puritanism which lies at the root of the American psyche until I came here in the late sixties. There was a counterbalance to Puritanism then in the Flower Revolution, and I am proud, at 62, to be a Hippie throwback. I came here to be a monk, which I was for 15 years. And so - and I can’t help crediting God in this - I ended up in a community of almost all Gay men! What a coup for the guidance of the Unconscious! I could be myself as a Gay man. Equally important, I was then free, in a religious setting of daily prayer and Scripture and learning, to enter into a relationship with the God Who created me and unconditionally loved me just as I was. What a blessing, considering the hell that so many Gayfolk still go through in accepting their gift.
I spent 26 years in parish ministry, often filled with rage at the homophobia of society and of Religion – and we all know what rage can do to us. I was profoundly frustrated at the either inability or unwillingness of people to see the reality before their eyes and hearts in the Gayfolk they knew - the normal glorious fragile humanity we all share, in the heart of the Mystery of God I had come to know. But I chose or was blessed with parishes in which I was basically accepted and appreciated for my gifts. When I finally “retired” in utter frustration at our House of Bishops seeming to kow-tow to homophobic bigots in the Anglican Communion and at the affront (as I see it) to my seminary classmate Bishop Gene Robinson, I considered renouncing my orders. But my partner and other friends counseled wisely. The gift I was given was that the rage was taken away. I resolved to “make no peace with oppression”, to live calmly but passionately as the sacred being I knew myself and each of us to be. And I ended up in a California that now – and I hope forever - allows same-sex couples to marry with the same equality under the law promised by the founding documents of this land.
The title of my sermon today is from the great prayer of Jesus in the Gospel called “John”. May they all be One, as You, Father, and I are one. Jesus wants us all to know the unity that He knew with the Source of His Being. What he prayed for was not superficial in any way. It is not about looking alike; not about a renunciation of uniqueness; not about male or female, “Jew or Greek” (metaphorically speaking), Gay or so-called “Straight” – though I am happy to say that most of my heterosexual friends are anything but what I would call “straight”; “wonderfully bent” would be more like it! It is about knowing at the gut level that each of us is part of the Mystery we call God. It is about knowing that together we are one unquenchable blaze of Compassion, Love and Justice. It is about knowing that our calling as people of Faith is to actualize and make real, by our practice, the truth of our making in the image of the God of Compassion, and our unity as human persons free to be whole.
“Pride” is a paradox. It is both a sin and a blessing. A sin (that is, a rejection of our nature as Love) when we fail to live into our divine nature. A blessing, when we gather together as we do this afternoon, “of many tribes and people and tongues”, of theological perspectives, and of shades of sexual orientation, to claim our sacred selves, and to claim the essential unity we each and all have.
It is my duty and privilege to say today to all Gayfolk: Be proud. Be joyfully and passionately yourselves, with unwavering confidence and power and love. And to say the same to all who have gathered here in support of their sisters and brothers in the family of God. May we all be One, for such I know to be the desire and longing of God. As the lovely Psalm 139 says: You created my inmost being; You knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
Episcopal Diocese of El Camino Real
Sermon for: June 29, 2008
Season: Gay Pride Service, United Church of Christ, San Luis Obispo, CA
Title: May They All Be One
Let me tell you up front what the central point of my reflection at this Gay Pride service is. Doing this will hold me accountable to myself and to you for my words. I’m following the first of the Four Agreements enunciated by Don Miguel Ruiz, by which I try to live: Be impeccable with your word. My point - and I believe it to be the Good News of the Gospel - is this:
Each and every human person is a manifestation of the holy energy at the core of all life. Every human being is a sacrament of that Holy Mystery - if I may use an old Anglican phrase, an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace. Every person, irrespective of the particular configuration or manifestation of their sexuality or any other characteristic, is a unique, beautiful, sacred Being. God does not disown or reject any person, for God cannot disown or reject Herself.
Now you may ask, Where the hell in the Bible did he get that?! Believe me, I got it from the Bible alright. But not because it is written out in just those words. I got it from the Bible, and from the Gospel, and from the eternal Christ who shines at the heart. I got it filtered through my own personal experience over fifty years and that of thousands of others, of hearing and pondering the Word. I got it through the reasoning of my and many minds, through the longing of my heart, and through the working of the Spirit of Truth which the Christ promised and bestowed.
When I was ordained a priest, I took and oath that I believed the “Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the word of God, and to contain all things necessary to salvation”. And I do. But not in some simplistic, literalist way. I firmly believe that the Mystery we call “God” dwells within and not without. That God is revealed from the inside out. That God is always vulnerable to the workings of the human mind and heart. All Scriptures are written by human beings who are seeking out the meaning of their lives. The myriad pictures we have of God reflect the experience of human beings in every time and culture. Many, if not most, are projections of individuals and cultures, their times and experiences. Many claim to know God, to know that God is “on their side” - a projection that Bob Dylan so aptly parodied. Most of those pictures are misleading, in my view, in terms of the actual nature of “God”. The wonder of sacred writings, for me, is that the still, small voice of God manages to be heard in the minds and hearts of those who are willing to be surprised by the vast and infinite Compassion of God. Over 40 years in ministry, I have learned the wisdom of the old rabbi who said of the Bible’s message, God is Love; all else is commentary.
God has insinuated Herself in sneaky ways into many hearts. Certainly into the hearts of many Gayfolk, many of whom were brought up in cultures and religions which filled them with shame and terror, and caused them to doubt their worth and beauty. It is a wonder to me that so many Gayfolk continue to be part of religious communities, almost all of which have excluded and condemned and brutalized them for millennia. Happily, some of those faith communities have changed their ways, and many of the rest of us are slowly struggling to get there. That “still small voice” has quietly, persistently whispered, and been heard in generous and loving and open and sometimes needy hearts. Hearts that have seen that the orientation of Gayfolk is not a sinful or unnatural choice. Just another facet of human nature. The only choice involved is to reject lies and self-doubt and to be one’s authentic self. The God I know wills this freedom for Gayfolk and for all persons.
It is a cliché, but ….. God does indeed work in mysterious ways! She has in mine. And I think that my experience is a kind of metaphor for the way the Divine Spirit works. I knew what my sexual orientation was when I was a little boy. Luckily I was born in Canada in the late 40’s, among somewhat dour Scots Presbyterians who were both upright and whiskey drinkers. The topic of sex, at any level, was avoided. I did not have to deal with the particular ingrained Puritanism which lies at the root of the American psyche until I came here in the late sixties. There was a counterbalance to Puritanism then in the Flower Revolution, and I am proud, at 62, to be a Hippie throwback. I came here to be a monk, which I was for 15 years. And so - and I can’t help crediting God in this - I ended up in a community of almost all Gay men! What a coup for the guidance of the Unconscious! I could be myself as a Gay man. Equally important, I was then free, in a religious setting of daily prayer and Scripture and learning, to enter into a relationship with the God Who created me and unconditionally loved me just as I was. What a blessing, considering the hell that so many Gayfolk still go through in accepting their gift.
I spent 26 years in parish ministry, often filled with rage at the homophobia of society and of Religion – and we all know what rage can do to us. I was profoundly frustrated at the either inability or unwillingness of people to see the reality before their eyes and hearts in the Gayfolk they knew - the normal glorious fragile humanity we all share, in the heart of the Mystery of God I had come to know. But I chose or was blessed with parishes in which I was basically accepted and appreciated for my gifts. When I finally “retired” in utter frustration at our House of Bishops seeming to kow-tow to homophobic bigots in the Anglican Communion and at the affront (as I see it) to my seminary classmate Bishop Gene Robinson, I considered renouncing my orders. But my partner and other friends counseled wisely. The gift I was given was that the rage was taken away. I resolved to “make no peace with oppression”, to live calmly but passionately as the sacred being I knew myself and each of us to be. And I ended up in a California that now – and I hope forever - allows same-sex couples to marry with the same equality under the law promised by the founding documents of this land.
The title of my sermon today is from the great prayer of Jesus in the Gospel called “John”. May they all be One, as You, Father, and I are one. Jesus wants us all to know the unity that He knew with the Source of His Being. What he prayed for was not superficial in any way. It is not about looking alike; not about a renunciation of uniqueness; not about male or female, “Jew or Greek” (metaphorically speaking), Gay or so-called “Straight” – though I am happy to say that most of my heterosexual friends are anything but what I would call “straight”; “wonderfully bent” would be more like it! It is about knowing at the gut level that each of us is part of the Mystery we call God. It is about knowing that together we are one unquenchable blaze of Compassion, Love and Justice. It is about knowing that our calling as people of Faith is to actualize and make real, by our practice, the truth of our making in the image of the God of Compassion, and our unity as human persons free to be whole.
“Pride” is a paradox. It is both a sin and a blessing. A sin (that is, a rejection of our nature as Love) when we fail to live into our divine nature. A blessing, when we gather together as we do this afternoon, “of many tribes and people and tongues”, of theological perspectives, and of shades of sexual orientation, to claim our sacred selves, and to claim the essential unity we each and all have.
It is my duty and privilege to say today to all Gayfolk: Be proud. Be joyfully and passionately yourselves, with unwavering confidence and power and love. And to say the same to all who have gathered here in support of their sisters and brothers in the family of God. May we all be One, for such I know to be the desire and longing of God. As the lovely Psalm 139 says: You created my inmost being; You knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
Sunday, June 8, 2008
Sermon: June 8, 2007 Proper 5 A (RCL)
[Hosea 5:15-6:6][Ps 50: 7-15][Rom 4:13-25][Mt 9:9-13,18-26]
Avoiding Rock Bottom
In the reading from the prophet Hosea this morning, we hear a somewhat petulant God whining. God is ticked off that Ephraim and Judah, who have behaved badly themselves and are now being oppressed and suffering, have turned to the great king of Assyria instead of Him for help. God is heard saying:
I’ll go back where I came from until they come to their senses.
When they finally hit rock bottom, maybe they’ll come looking for me.[1]
The people seem to understand the process of their Life and of their relationship with their God. They say:
Come on, let’s go back to God. He hurt us, but He’ll heal us.
He hit us hard, but He’ll put us right again.
In a couple of days we’ll feel better.
By the third day, He’ll have made us brand new.[2]
Don’t be distracted by the portrayal of God as hurtful and causing pain. I’ve pondered the Scriptures for decades. Of course, being Episcopalians, you are free to interpret as you like! Personally, I know, and I think any of us who truly know God knows, that God does not hurt or cause pain or death. As is said elsewhere, “God does not desire the death of a sinner, but that they should repent and live.” Speaking of God as the origin of both good an evil is an ancient way of saying that God is present in and to all things. It is we human beings who cause suffering and pain and death to ourselves and others, physically and emotionally. It is in embracing the Divine source of Life that we find the power and grace to Live.
Living is what it is all about. Living is why we are here this morning. If you have been doing this for a long time, I suspect it is because you know what Ephraim and Judah knew. If this is new to you, you have brought your hunger for life to the right place. There is a deep and powerful energy that flows through the great Mystery we call Life. A deep and powerful movement – into and away from pain and death and into Life. Our Baptism into Christ is a mind-blowing, blazing image of the power we have laid claim to in our saying Yes to the Gospel. There is indeed a way by which we can be drowned in suffering, where we die at one or many levels, and rise to healing and new life.
The Mystery of the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus throbs at the heart of our Faith. The same Mystery lies at the heart of our own human lives. But as we hear from Hosea, this is an old, ancient, eternal Truth. Ephraim and Judah understood and experienced it. It is heard in every faith and religion, and in all the great literature of every language and people. Have you read Ursula LeGuin’s Earthsea Trilogy? Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings? Beowulf? The same Message rings out:
Come on, let’s go back to God. He hurt us, but He’ll heal us.
He hit us hard, but He’ll put us right again. In a couple of days we’ll feel better.
By the third day, He’ll have made us brand new.
The eternal pattern familiar to Christians in the Christ’s Passion, Death, and Resurrection goes on. We suffer, we “die”, we are buried, we are raised to Life. This is why the Cross shines as the core symbol of the Christian faith. Beyond anything else, it speaks of the God of Love Who is never absent from us, holds us in our pain, walks through the valley of the shadow of death with us, and lifts us up to new Life. The great Holy Week hymn says it all:
Inscribed upon the cross we see in shining letters, God is love:
it cheers with hope the gloomy day, and sweetens every bitter cup.
It makes the coward spirit brave, it takes its terror from the grave, and gilds the bed of death with light.
The balm of life, the cure of woe, the measure and the pledge of love.[3]
But we, like Ephraim and Judah, must do our part. Come on, let’s go back to God. He hurt us, but He’ll heal us. Twenty-six years ago, I left a monastic vocation after 15 years; but, new life opened up in front of my sadness. Six years ago I had heart surgery; I was prepared to awake or not; I did, and knew I was healed. Three years ago I met Dennis; a whole new Life opened up. Two years ago my colon burst; I almost died; I had a colostomy that was later reversed. I was raised to life. In April I “retired”, the culmination of decades of fury at how I and other Gayfolk are treated by society and the church; but out of it came a gift: my anger was taken away, and I am ready to lay hold on Life again. I have aggressive prostate cancer; I face it with calm and trust. Think about it - every one of you here today has experienced this Great Love healing us and giving us Life as we turn into the embrace.
We are not here being “the church”, waiting for an arbitrary God to decide if we have followed the rules/contract suitably enough that She will throw us a tidbit which we have “earned”. We are here, avoiding rock bottom, being “the church”, together eating and drinking God’s Life, holding ourselves in the context of the Death, Burial, and Resurrection of Jesus, in the sure and certain knowledge of at least some of the people of Hosea’s time - After two days God will revive us; on the third day [God] will raise us up, that we may live before Him.[4] We are instruments of that trust and embrace each to the other. Crucified, dead, we rise on the third day. Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes in the morning.”
We’re here to practice our religion, which by Word and Sacrament and Fellowship hold us in the cycle of hurt, healing and revival. We bear each others’ burdens and so fulfill the law of Love. With the ancient Hebrews we say, Come on, let’s go back to God. To the God who lives in us. In Her we find the power to rise and live.
[bm+/060808]
[1] The Message, Hosea 5: 15
[2] ibid, 6: 1ff
[3] Hymnal 1982, #471
[4] The Message, Eugene Peterson
In the reading from the prophet Hosea this morning, we hear a somewhat petulant God whining. God is ticked off that Ephraim and Judah, who have behaved badly themselves and are now being oppressed and suffering, have turned to the great king of Assyria instead of Him for help. God is heard saying:
I’ll go back where I came from until they come to their senses.
When they finally hit rock bottom, maybe they’ll come looking for me.[1]
The people seem to understand the process of their Life and of their relationship with their God. They say:
Come on, let’s go back to God. He hurt us, but He’ll heal us.
He hit us hard, but He’ll put us right again.
In a couple of days we’ll feel better.
By the third day, He’ll have made us brand new.[2]
Don’t be distracted by the portrayal of God as hurtful and causing pain. I’ve pondered the Scriptures for decades. Of course, being Episcopalians, you are free to interpret as you like! Personally, I know, and I think any of us who truly know God knows, that God does not hurt or cause pain or death. As is said elsewhere, “God does not desire the death of a sinner, but that they should repent and live.” Speaking of God as the origin of both good an evil is an ancient way of saying that God is present in and to all things. It is we human beings who cause suffering and pain and death to ourselves and others, physically and emotionally. It is in embracing the Divine source of Life that we find the power and grace to Live.
Living is what it is all about. Living is why we are here this morning. If you have been doing this for a long time, I suspect it is because you know what Ephraim and Judah knew. If this is new to you, you have brought your hunger for life to the right place. There is a deep and powerful energy that flows through the great Mystery we call Life. A deep and powerful movement – into and away from pain and death and into Life. Our Baptism into Christ is a mind-blowing, blazing image of the power we have laid claim to in our saying Yes to the Gospel. There is indeed a way by which we can be drowned in suffering, where we die at one or many levels, and rise to healing and new life.
The Mystery of the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus throbs at the heart of our Faith. The same Mystery lies at the heart of our own human lives. But as we hear from Hosea, this is an old, ancient, eternal Truth. Ephraim and Judah understood and experienced it. It is heard in every faith and religion, and in all the great literature of every language and people. Have you read Ursula LeGuin’s Earthsea Trilogy? Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings? Beowulf? The same Message rings out:
Come on, let’s go back to God. He hurt us, but He’ll heal us.
He hit us hard, but He’ll put us right again. In a couple of days we’ll feel better.
By the third day, He’ll have made us brand new.
The eternal pattern familiar to Christians in the Christ’s Passion, Death, and Resurrection goes on. We suffer, we “die”, we are buried, we are raised to Life. This is why the Cross shines as the core symbol of the Christian faith. Beyond anything else, it speaks of the God of Love Who is never absent from us, holds us in our pain, walks through the valley of the shadow of death with us, and lifts us up to new Life. The great Holy Week hymn says it all:
Inscribed upon the cross we see in shining letters, God is love:
it cheers with hope the gloomy day, and sweetens every bitter cup.
It makes the coward spirit brave, it takes its terror from the grave, and gilds the bed of death with light.
The balm of life, the cure of woe, the measure and the pledge of love.[3]
But we, like Ephraim and Judah, must do our part. Come on, let’s go back to God. He hurt us, but He’ll heal us. Twenty-six years ago, I left a monastic vocation after 15 years; but, new life opened up in front of my sadness. Six years ago I had heart surgery; I was prepared to awake or not; I did, and knew I was healed. Three years ago I met Dennis; a whole new Life opened up. Two years ago my colon burst; I almost died; I had a colostomy that was later reversed. I was raised to life. In April I “retired”, the culmination of decades of fury at how I and other Gayfolk are treated by society and the church; but out of it came a gift: my anger was taken away, and I am ready to lay hold on Life again. I have aggressive prostate cancer; I face it with calm and trust. Think about it - every one of you here today has experienced this Great Love healing us and giving us Life as we turn into the embrace.
We are not here being “the church”, waiting for an arbitrary God to decide if we have followed the rules/contract suitably enough that She will throw us a tidbit which we have “earned”. We are here, avoiding rock bottom, being “the church”, together eating and drinking God’s Life, holding ourselves in the context of the Death, Burial, and Resurrection of Jesus, in the sure and certain knowledge of at least some of the people of Hosea’s time - After two days God will revive us; on the third day [God] will raise us up, that we may live before Him.[4] We are instruments of that trust and embrace each to the other. Crucified, dead, we rise on the third day. Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes in the morning.”
We’re here to practice our religion, which by Word and Sacrament and Fellowship hold us in the cycle of hurt, healing and revival. We bear each others’ burdens and so fulfill the law of Love. With the ancient Hebrews we say, Come on, let’s go back to God. To the God who lives in us. In Her we find the power to rise and live.
[bm+/060808]
[1] The Message, Hosea 5: 15
[2] ibid, 6: 1ff
[3] Hymnal 1982, #471
[4] The Message, Eugene Peterson
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Sermon for: Easter Day_March 23, 2008_A_RCL
Brian McHugh, priest & vicar
[Ezk 37: 1-14][Ps 130][Romans 8: 6-11][John 11: 1-45]
This is the miracle that happens every time to those who really love:
the more they give, the more they possess.
Words of the poet Rainer Maria Rilke.
It seems illogical. It seems counterintuitive. Human logic would say that the more you give, the less you possess.
But I know, in my spirit, however faulty my or our love may be, that Rilke’s words are true. Those who love, and give, discover the truth. Jesus is recorded as saying that, in following Him, we would know the truth and the truth would set us free. I am convinced that is not some theological doctrinal “truth” that makes us “right” that He wanted us to know. What Jesus means us to discover is a way of Life: Rilke has spoken it: “This is the miracle that happens every time to those who really love: the more [you] give, the more [you] possess.”
This paradox - that for those who really love, the more they give the more they possess - I know and passionately believe is at the heart of the Mystery of God, of the Christ, of the Gospel, and of our humanity. We ponder the hints of our holy writings. We listen to longings and hopes that rise up in our hearts and minds. From these, we have imagined a God who pours out unconditional love endlessly. In my view, no other God is worth knowing. No other God can lead us to a mature and authentic humanity.
As “church”, we spend year after year in our worship. We walk with Jesus. We recognize a true child of the God of Love. We listen to His Good News, His teaching about Life. In the week before this day of His rising from the dead, we see His unswerving love of His God; His compassion for God’s oppressed people; His firm clear loving servanthood in washing feet; His mystical gift of Himself in bread and wine; His refusal to compromise God’s integrity in willingly accepting suffering and death.
However and at whatever level we grasp it, Christ’s death and resurrection is a sign to us about the great Mystery of being alive. It is about the mundane miracle of Love. This is the miracle that happens every time to those who really love: the more they give, the more they possess. We will not grasp this truth by reading the tortuous sentences of the Letter to the Hebrews. We will not grasp it by comprehending intellectually Paul’s or Aquinas’s doctrine of salvation. We will only grasp it by embracing Christ’s commandment to “love one another as I have loved you”. This is what it means to “take up his cross and follow me”. It is why the cross is the core symbol of the Christian faith. It is why our primary “work” is exploring what Love is.
Paul the apostle tells us what happens if we love: He wrote in his second letter to the faithful in Corinth:
People are watching us as we stay at our post … working … in gentleness, holiness, and honest love ….. terrifically alive, though rumored to be dead; beaten within an inch of our lives, but refusing to die; 10 immersed in tears, yet always filled with deep joy; living on handouts, yet enriching many; having nothing, (yet) possessing all. [1]
Jesus had set the standard for authentic discipleship and authentic humanity, as recorded in John’s Gospel: “See how they love one another”. And Jesus has requested, putting aside as secondary the whole Law of Moses, only one thing: “Love one another as I have loved you.”
Hanging on the cross, Jesus looked as if His love brought Him nothing, took away everything, including His life. But on the morning of the third day, the angel says to the women, “Why are you seeking the living among the dead?”
Here is the pattern for our life, yours and mine. Paul understood it when he said, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me.” The Christ lives in each of us, and to live we must become One with that Christ. It might seem that pouring ourselves out in love will bring us nothing. But Jesus and His Gospel and His Cross and Resurrection says, with Rilke, “This is the miracle that happens every time to those who really love: the more they give, the more they possess.
The invitation this Easter morning, my friends in Christ, is the same as always: Really love; the more we give, the more we possess of what gives meaning to our lives. It is Love that broke open the tomb in which the dead Christ was buried. It is Love that breaks open the tombs we so often are buried in and gives us Life. It is love that liberates the Christ Who lives within the heart of each of us.
The Rich Young Ruler asked Jesus what he must do to have Eternal Life. The answer he was not ready to hear was, “Really love” – and though you give up all the worldly goods you have, you will possess everything. “
On this Easter morning, may we take one step further on the path of Love. It is our calling as the Body of Christ and as the Beloved of God. The more we give, the more we will possess. And the World will be transformed.
Alleluia! Christ is Risen. Let us be raised with Him!
[1] 2 Cor 6: 4-10 [MSG]
Brian McHugh, priest & vicar
[Ezk 37: 1-14][Ps 130][Romans 8: 6-11][John 11: 1-45]
This is the miracle that happens every time to those who really love:
the more they give, the more they possess.
Words of the poet Rainer Maria Rilke.
It seems illogical. It seems counterintuitive. Human logic would say that the more you give, the less you possess.
But I know, in my spirit, however faulty my or our love may be, that Rilke’s words are true. Those who love, and give, discover the truth. Jesus is recorded as saying that, in following Him, we would know the truth and the truth would set us free. I am convinced that is not some theological doctrinal “truth” that makes us “right” that He wanted us to know. What Jesus means us to discover is a way of Life: Rilke has spoken it: “This is the miracle that happens every time to those who really love: the more [you] give, the more [you] possess.”
This paradox - that for those who really love, the more they give the more they possess - I know and passionately believe is at the heart of the Mystery of God, of the Christ, of the Gospel, and of our humanity. We ponder the hints of our holy writings. We listen to longings and hopes that rise up in our hearts and minds. From these, we have imagined a God who pours out unconditional love endlessly. In my view, no other God is worth knowing. No other God can lead us to a mature and authentic humanity.
As “church”, we spend year after year in our worship. We walk with Jesus. We recognize a true child of the God of Love. We listen to His Good News, His teaching about Life. In the week before this day of His rising from the dead, we see His unswerving love of His God; His compassion for God’s oppressed people; His firm clear loving servanthood in washing feet; His mystical gift of Himself in bread and wine; His refusal to compromise God’s integrity in willingly accepting suffering and death.
However and at whatever level we grasp it, Christ’s death and resurrection is a sign to us about the great Mystery of being alive. It is about the mundane miracle of Love. This is the miracle that happens every time to those who really love: the more they give, the more they possess. We will not grasp this truth by reading the tortuous sentences of the Letter to the Hebrews. We will not grasp it by comprehending intellectually Paul’s or Aquinas’s doctrine of salvation. We will only grasp it by embracing Christ’s commandment to “love one another as I have loved you”. This is what it means to “take up his cross and follow me”. It is why the cross is the core symbol of the Christian faith. It is why our primary “work” is exploring what Love is.
Paul the apostle tells us what happens if we love: He wrote in his second letter to the faithful in Corinth:
People are watching us as we stay at our post … working … in gentleness, holiness, and honest love ….. terrifically alive, though rumored to be dead; beaten within an inch of our lives, but refusing to die; 10 immersed in tears, yet always filled with deep joy; living on handouts, yet enriching many; having nothing, (yet) possessing all. [1]
Jesus had set the standard for authentic discipleship and authentic humanity, as recorded in John’s Gospel: “See how they love one another”. And Jesus has requested, putting aside as secondary the whole Law of Moses, only one thing: “Love one another as I have loved you.”
Hanging on the cross, Jesus looked as if His love brought Him nothing, took away everything, including His life. But on the morning of the third day, the angel says to the women, “Why are you seeking the living among the dead?”
Here is the pattern for our life, yours and mine. Paul understood it when he said, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me.” The Christ lives in each of us, and to live we must become One with that Christ. It might seem that pouring ourselves out in love will bring us nothing. But Jesus and His Gospel and His Cross and Resurrection says, with Rilke, “This is the miracle that happens every time to those who really love: the more they give, the more they possess.
The invitation this Easter morning, my friends in Christ, is the same as always: Really love; the more we give, the more we possess of what gives meaning to our lives. It is Love that broke open the tomb in which the dead Christ was buried. It is Love that breaks open the tombs we so often are buried in and gives us Life. It is love that liberates the Christ Who lives within the heart of each of us.
The Rich Young Ruler asked Jesus what he must do to have Eternal Life. The answer he was not ready to hear was, “Really love” – and though you give up all the worldly goods you have, you will possess everything. “
On this Easter morning, may we take one step further on the path of Love. It is our calling as the Body of Christ and as the Beloved of God. The more we give, the more we will possess. And the World will be transformed.
Alleluia! Christ is Risen. Let us be raised with Him!
[1] 2 Cor 6: 4-10 [MSG]
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Sermon for: March 9, 2008_Lent V_A_RCL
Brian McHugh, priest & vicar
[Ezk 37: 1-14][Ps 130][Romans 8: 6-11][John 11: 1-45]
Dry Bones! It’s a great story isn’t it. Sunday School kids my age remember it, aided by the popular song - “The ankle bone’s connected to the shin bone / the shin bone’s connected to the thigh bone / the thigh bones’ connected to the hip bone ….. Hear the Word of the Lord”. “Can these bones live?”, God asks Ezekiel. It’s almost as if God is looking for a little reassurance. God spends centuries nourishing, guiding, protecting His people Israel for Life, and what is the state of affairs as God chats with Ezekiel? Israel is like a huge field of completely dry, bleached, clattering, dead bones.
I can hear God’s thoughts: “Is anything ever going to bring these people to Life! Will they ever become the people I created them to be?” But, God never seems to get discouraged. God answers his own question: “I'll dig up your graves and bring you out alive—O my people! I'll breathe my life into you and you'll live. Then I'll lead you straight back to your land and you'll realize that I am God. I've said it and I'll do it.'" God’s problem, of course, is that however generous God is, however forgiving, however faithful in love, we human beings have to cooperate – and there’s the problem.
As far as Life goes, the critical phrase is, “I'll breathe my life into you and you'll live.” This is where Life flows from, says the Bible. We are given Life, made human, by the breath or spirit of God breathed into us. “Life” doesn’t just mean biologically alive. It means far more. The Biblical Creation story says that, after making humanity from the dirt, God breathed Spirit into Adam, and humans became living beings. This morning, the question we are prompted to ask is: What does it mean for me to be truly, fully alive? Maybe it doesn’t grab you, but, as a Christian, it grabs me - a lot.
Even more dramatically we are confronted with the same question by the reading from the Gospel today. What a sight that 4-day-dead Lazarus, wrapped in grave-clothes, must have been to Mary and Martha, their friends, and the disciples, as he emerged from the tomb and later sat with them at dinner! I believe that many were drawn to Jesus because they felt a whole new possibility for their life coming from Him. For the same reason Jesus threatened the religious authorities. They knew deep within them that they were supposed to be leading the people to the Life God wanted them to have. But they had rejected their calling, more interested in prestige and power. Jesus gave new Life to people, by His words, His actions, His teachings. He touched their souls. That’s where these marvelous stories of raising even the physically dead come from. They are a dramatic symbol of how God can yank people from the brink of death experiences to a fuller sense of how we can live, what Life is all about.
“Can these bones live?” That is the question that God asks Ezekiel. It is a very pertinent question as we head for the liturgical celebration of Christ’s Resurrection from the dead in two weeks. This is the core Christian Feast. It affirms and celebrates Life’s power over death in all its aspects. On Easter morning, what will God see in you and in me? Will God see a people - us - risen to new life, flesh breathed into Life by divine Spirit, unafraid, confident, living fully and enthusiastically, full of enjoyment of the Creation, generous in Love, merciful, compassionate, just, full of humility, ? Or will God see yet again a field scattered with bleached dry clattering bones, and asking with a deep sigh, “Can these bones possibly live?!”
Of course we here are not in general unkind or thoughtless or uncaring people. We do what we can to help those who need help, especially amongst our family and friends. But look around at the World, especially at our own country. We are the largest consumers of drugs and alcohol in the world. One out of every hundred of us is in jail – 30 million people! A huge percentage of us are afflicted with clinical depression, including the young, and are on meds to help us manage. Our suicide rate is high, especially amongst the young and the elderly. We are not a happy people – nor is much of the World.
Every year at Easter, God’s words spoken to the prophet Ezekiel are heard again: "I'll dig up your graves and bring you out alive—O my people! I'll breathe my life into you and you'll live. I've said it and I'll do it". And God did it, in raising Jesus from the dead. God hopes that we will hear the message deep within our souls, hear what Her messengers and Her Son taught, and see the path that leads to fullness of Life. We as the Body of Christ are meant to know it for ourselves. But even more so that we can be a light to the World. God want us to know in Christ what Life fully is, and to do as the hymn says – “Lay hold on Life, and it shall be / thy joy and crown eternally”.
Maybe I’m the only one who feels something's missing. But I think we are all called, like Lazarus, like the people of Israel, to become as Christ. Live the Gospel. Help transform the World around us. Two weeks before Easter, and as we prepare to follow Jesus through the journey of Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, we are reminded that, like Jesus, we too are meant to rise daily from the dead places we often inhabit and claim the Life God prepared for us. As always, God is ready to help us.
+++
I sent around on Saturday by email a question: As a follower of Jesus, what (in a few words) is something you strive for, or do, or believe, that makes you a fully-alive human being?
Would anyone like to share (in a few words) your answer?
Brian McHugh, priest & vicar
[Ezk 37: 1-14][Ps 130][Romans 8: 6-11][John 11: 1-45]
Dry Bones! It’s a great story isn’t it. Sunday School kids my age remember it, aided by the popular song - “The ankle bone’s connected to the shin bone / the shin bone’s connected to the thigh bone / the thigh bones’ connected to the hip bone ….. Hear the Word of the Lord”. “Can these bones live?”, God asks Ezekiel. It’s almost as if God is looking for a little reassurance. God spends centuries nourishing, guiding, protecting His people Israel for Life, and what is the state of affairs as God chats with Ezekiel? Israel is like a huge field of completely dry, bleached, clattering, dead bones.
I can hear God’s thoughts: “Is anything ever going to bring these people to Life! Will they ever become the people I created them to be?” But, God never seems to get discouraged. God answers his own question: “I'll dig up your graves and bring you out alive—O my people! I'll breathe my life into you and you'll live. Then I'll lead you straight back to your land and you'll realize that I am God. I've said it and I'll do it.'" God’s problem, of course, is that however generous God is, however forgiving, however faithful in love, we human beings have to cooperate – and there’s the problem.
As far as Life goes, the critical phrase is, “I'll breathe my life into you and you'll live.” This is where Life flows from, says the Bible. We are given Life, made human, by the breath or spirit of God breathed into us. “Life” doesn’t just mean biologically alive. It means far more. The Biblical Creation story says that, after making humanity from the dirt, God breathed Spirit into Adam, and humans became living beings. This morning, the question we are prompted to ask is: What does it mean for me to be truly, fully alive? Maybe it doesn’t grab you, but, as a Christian, it grabs me - a lot.
Even more dramatically we are confronted with the same question by the reading from the Gospel today. What a sight that 4-day-dead Lazarus, wrapped in grave-clothes, must have been to Mary and Martha, their friends, and the disciples, as he emerged from the tomb and later sat with them at dinner! I believe that many were drawn to Jesus because they felt a whole new possibility for their life coming from Him. For the same reason Jesus threatened the religious authorities. They knew deep within them that they were supposed to be leading the people to the Life God wanted them to have. But they had rejected their calling, more interested in prestige and power. Jesus gave new Life to people, by His words, His actions, His teachings. He touched their souls. That’s where these marvelous stories of raising even the physically dead come from. They are a dramatic symbol of how God can yank people from the brink of death experiences to a fuller sense of how we can live, what Life is all about.
“Can these bones live?” That is the question that God asks Ezekiel. It is a very pertinent question as we head for the liturgical celebration of Christ’s Resurrection from the dead in two weeks. This is the core Christian Feast. It affirms and celebrates Life’s power over death in all its aspects. On Easter morning, what will God see in you and in me? Will God see a people - us - risen to new life, flesh breathed into Life by divine Spirit, unafraid, confident, living fully and enthusiastically, full of enjoyment of the Creation, generous in Love, merciful, compassionate, just, full of humility, ? Or will God see yet again a field scattered with bleached dry clattering bones, and asking with a deep sigh, “Can these bones possibly live?!”
Of course we here are not in general unkind or thoughtless or uncaring people. We do what we can to help those who need help, especially amongst our family and friends. But look around at the World, especially at our own country. We are the largest consumers of drugs and alcohol in the world. One out of every hundred of us is in jail – 30 million people! A huge percentage of us are afflicted with clinical depression, including the young, and are on meds to help us manage. Our suicide rate is high, especially amongst the young and the elderly. We are not a happy people – nor is much of the World.
Every year at Easter, God’s words spoken to the prophet Ezekiel are heard again: "I'll dig up your graves and bring you out alive—O my people! I'll breathe my life into you and you'll live. I've said it and I'll do it". And God did it, in raising Jesus from the dead. God hopes that we will hear the message deep within our souls, hear what Her messengers and Her Son taught, and see the path that leads to fullness of Life. We as the Body of Christ are meant to know it for ourselves. But even more so that we can be a light to the World. God want us to know in Christ what Life fully is, and to do as the hymn says – “Lay hold on Life, and it shall be / thy joy and crown eternally”.
Maybe I’m the only one who feels something's missing. But I think we are all called, like Lazarus, like the people of Israel, to become as Christ. Live the Gospel. Help transform the World around us. Two weeks before Easter, and as we prepare to follow Jesus through the journey of Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, we are reminded that, like Jesus, we too are meant to rise daily from the dead places we often inhabit and claim the Life God prepared for us. As always, God is ready to help us.
+++
I sent around on Saturday by email a question: As a follower of Jesus, what (in a few words) is something you strive for, or do, or believe, that makes you a fully-alive human being?
Would anyone like to share (in a few words) your answer?
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Sermon for: March 2, 2008_Lent IV_A_RCL Brian McHugh, priest & vicar
[1 Sam 16: 1-13][Ps 23][Eph 5: 8-14 ][John 9: 1-41]
Well, I am going to be a little “dark” this morning.
I think I have always had a love-hate relationship with the Church. But then again, I think I’ve had a kind of love-hate relationship with mostly everything, including myself. I was raised under Scottish Presbyterianism, which had a strong message of striving for perfection. There was little room, at least theoretically, for human weakness or foibles. It rubbed off while I was singing in the choir and trying to ignore the “dour” approach to life I heard from the pulpit. It is my nature to enjoy Life. A religion of strict limitations has never appealed to me – and I have avoided them. But, a certain guilt at not being perfect still lurks. Part of me longs to live the ideals of the Christian Gospel and the Kingdom of God and personal holiness and charity, and wants to help others to too. Alas, I’ve had to accept minimal success, on my part, and from the church at large. Well, that’s a big ongoing topic.
These days I’m particularly disenchanted with religions and religious leaders, who say they want justice and compassion and peace but seem to foment the opposite. I’ve read several eloquent books recently by atheists. They haven’t so much advocated atheism for atheism’s sake, but reject religion’s shocking failures to live up to it’s principles.
Presumably it has always been so. I admire God’s great optimism, and His ability to find our weaknesses charming. God simply seems to understand the human condition, and is eternally, lovingly patient, hoping we will embrace the way of compassion and find peace, and ready to give us all the help we need.
In the reading today from Samuel, God, having given Saul to the people of Israel as their first king, has rejected him. He brusquely tells his prophet Samuel to “get over it” and stop moping. Saul has disappointed God, and not been a faithful, caring shepherd for His people. He sends Samuel to anoint a new king, a good-looking shepherd-boy. David finally fights his way to the throne, but turns out badly, an adulterer and a murderer. But Davis at least repents and, as always, God is forgiving. It’s the same old story: God has high hopes for human beings, but they mostly disappoint him and reject Her ways.
Perhaps most regular folk behave properly. I’d like to think this is true. On the whole, regular religious folk just get on with caring and helping and being decent human beings. The major problem seems to be the leaders who rise to the top by whatever means. Those are the people Jesus confronted regularly in his ministry, for their legalism, their hard-heartedness, their hypocrisy. In today’s reading it is the Pharisees He’s after, those in Judaism thought to be the most religious and pious. He has healed a blind man on what happened to be the Sabbath. Are the Pharisees thrilled and delighted and amazed by what could only be God’s work through this man, or happy for the man healed? No. They are only legalistically concerned that Jesus was doing something forbidden on the Sabbath – though of course this was just an excuse to cover up their fear and anger at Jesus, whom they saw as undermining their authority. Hypocrites and “whited sepulchers” Jesus called them – looking good on the outside and full of rottenness inside. They called the blind man’s whole identity and integrity into question, and his parents were so intimidated that they knew better than to defend their son. The Pharisees were so intent on discrediting Jesus that they simply refused to acknowledge the amazing healing, and focused only on His “rule-breaking”. Sad. But this is very often what having power and needing to preserve it will do. No wonder God wanted a shepherd-king for His people. And Jesus tried with all His might to teach His followers that true greatness comes through servanthood. Few have learned it, in my opinion.
So it has been in the history of the Church throughout the centuries. Popes, archbishops, bishops and clergy committing all kinds of utterly Un-Christlike things. Orthodox patriarchs siding with ethnic cleansers. Bishops hiding pedophiles. Modern dictators claiming God’s protection for their appalling oppression and cruelty. The Vatican suppressing priests who are fighting to liberate the poor. Televangelists and swamis bilking people of vast sums of money to finance their fleet of Rolls-Royces and aircraft. Various Anglican prelates attempting to destroy a Communion in order to confirm their own narrow Biblical and cultural prejudices. On and on it goes. No wonder more and more choose atheism as an expression of horror at the suffering that false religious leaders have caused. Jesus never ceased to confront them in his zeal for God’s Kingdom.
Well, I’ve painted a rather dark but I think fairly accurate picture. But there is Good News. God rejects such leaders, and eventually, by whatever means, they are replaced. In the Church. In the Islamic Umma. In the political world. The major frustration is the time it often takes.
There is a lesson here for us all. Especially those like us who get to choose our leaders. We need to make sure that we “anoint” the right leaders and support them. For our church. For our country. Leaders that are not wolves in sheep’s clothing. We have got to get our priorities straight. For us, the Gospel commands our first allegiance. Would Jesus want us to make sure that we got adequate medical coverage under plans that disadvantage or exclude the poor? Would Jesus want us to be able to drive expensive gas-guzzling cars at the expense of His Creation? Would Jesus want us to spend 1/3rd to ½ of our GDP on Weapons of Mass Destruction? Would Jesus want us to include only conditionally in His church anyone He died in love for?
We are soon to elect new leaders for our country. Will how you vote be determined by God’s hope for servant leaders who will shepherd the flock in the ways of justice, compassion and peace? St. Peter’s/St. Michael’s is about to call new priestly leadership. Will you call someone who will lead and nurture you on the Gospel path of loving service? Will you help and support your Bishop’s Committee not to be just a managerial business board (some of which they must do), but leaders who stay centered in helping St. P/M reach out to each other and to others with God’s amazing, unconditional love?
Today, we “collected” ourselves around a gathering prayer that asked God for the “true bread that gives life to the world”. As we eat the bread and drink the cup today, may we come alive with God’s amazing joy, and become a servant people who bring life to the World.
[1 Sam 16: 1-13][Ps 23][Eph 5: 8-14 ][John 9: 1-41]
Well, I am going to be a little “dark” this morning.
I think I have always had a love-hate relationship with the Church. But then again, I think I’ve had a kind of love-hate relationship with mostly everything, including myself. I was raised under Scottish Presbyterianism, which had a strong message of striving for perfection. There was little room, at least theoretically, for human weakness or foibles. It rubbed off while I was singing in the choir and trying to ignore the “dour” approach to life I heard from the pulpit. It is my nature to enjoy Life. A religion of strict limitations has never appealed to me – and I have avoided them. But, a certain guilt at not being perfect still lurks. Part of me longs to live the ideals of the Christian Gospel and the Kingdom of God and personal holiness and charity, and wants to help others to too. Alas, I’ve had to accept minimal success, on my part, and from the church at large. Well, that’s a big ongoing topic.
These days I’m particularly disenchanted with religions and religious leaders, who say they want justice and compassion and peace but seem to foment the opposite. I’ve read several eloquent books recently by atheists. They haven’t so much advocated atheism for atheism’s sake, but reject religion’s shocking failures to live up to it’s principles.
Presumably it has always been so. I admire God’s great optimism, and His ability to find our weaknesses charming. God simply seems to understand the human condition, and is eternally, lovingly patient, hoping we will embrace the way of compassion and find peace, and ready to give us all the help we need.
In the reading today from Samuel, God, having given Saul to the people of Israel as their first king, has rejected him. He brusquely tells his prophet Samuel to “get over it” and stop moping. Saul has disappointed God, and not been a faithful, caring shepherd for His people. He sends Samuel to anoint a new king, a good-looking shepherd-boy. David finally fights his way to the throne, but turns out badly, an adulterer and a murderer. But Davis at least repents and, as always, God is forgiving. It’s the same old story: God has high hopes for human beings, but they mostly disappoint him and reject Her ways.
Perhaps most regular folk behave properly. I’d like to think this is true. On the whole, regular religious folk just get on with caring and helping and being decent human beings. The major problem seems to be the leaders who rise to the top by whatever means. Those are the people Jesus confronted regularly in his ministry, for their legalism, their hard-heartedness, their hypocrisy. In today’s reading it is the Pharisees He’s after, those in Judaism thought to be the most religious and pious. He has healed a blind man on what happened to be the Sabbath. Are the Pharisees thrilled and delighted and amazed by what could only be God’s work through this man, or happy for the man healed? No. They are only legalistically concerned that Jesus was doing something forbidden on the Sabbath – though of course this was just an excuse to cover up their fear and anger at Jesus, whom they saw as undermining their authority. Hypocrites and “whited sepulchers” Jesus called them – looking good on the outside and full of rottenness inside. They called the blind man’s whole identity and integrity into question, and his parents were so intimidated that they knew better than to defend their son. The Pharisees were so intent on discrediting Jesus that they simply refused to acknowledge the amazing healing, and focused only on His “rule-breaking”. Sad. But this is very often what having power and needing to preserve it will do. No wonder God wanted a shepherd-king for His people. And Jesus tried with all His might to teach His followers that true greatness comes through servanthood. Few have learned it, in my opinion.
So it has been in the history of the Church throughout the centuries. Popes, archbishops, bishops and clergy committing all kinds of utterly Un-Christlike things. Orthodox patriarchs siding with ethnic cleansers. Bishops hiding pedophiles. Modern dictators claiming God’s protection for their appalling oppression and cruelty. The Vatican suppressing priests who are fighting to liberate the poor. Televangelists and swamis bilking people of vast sums of money to finance their fleet of Rolls-Royces and aircraft. Various Anglican prelates attempting to destroy a Communion in order to confirm their own narrow Biblical and cultural prejudices. On and on it goes. No wonder more and more choose atheism as an expression of horror at the suffering that false religious leaders have caused. Jesus never ceased to confront them in his zeal for God’s Kingdom.
Well, I’ve painted a rather dark but I think fairly accurate picture. But there is Good News. God rejects such leaders, and eventually, by whatever means, they are replaced. In the Church. In the Islamic Umma. In the political world. The major frustration is the time it often takes.
There is a lesson here for us all. Especially those like us who get to choose our leaders. We need to make sure that we “anoint” the right leaders and support them. For our church. For our country. Leaders that are not wolves in sheep’s clothing. We have got to get our priorities straight. For us, the Gospel commands our first allegiance. Would Jesus want us to make sure that we got adequate medical coverage under plans that disadvantage or exclude the poor? Would Jesus want us to be able to drive expensive gas-guzzling cars at the expense of His Creation? Would Jesus want us to spend 1/3rd to ½ of our GDP on Weapons of Mass Destruction? Would Jesus want us to include only conditionally in His church anyone He died in love for?
We are soon to elect new leaders for our country. Will how you vote be determined by God’s hope for servant leaders who will shepherd the flock in the ways of justice, compassion and peace? St. Peter’s/St. Michael’s is about to call new priestly leadership. Will you call someone who will lead and nurture you on the Gospel path of loving service? Will you help and support your Bishop’s Committee not to be just a managerial business board (some of which they must do), but leaders who stay centered in helping St. P/M reach out to each other and to others with God’s amazing, unconditional love?
Today, we “collected” ourselves around a gathering prayer that asked God for the “true bread that gives life to the world”. As we eat the bread and drink the cup today, may we come alive with God’s amazing joy, and become a servant people who bring life to the World.
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