Sermon for: Easter IV B_RCL _ May 3, 2009_”Good Shepherd”
St. Benedict’s, Los Osos (The Rev) Brian McHugh +
Recently, we here at St. Benedict’s have had the fun opportunity to hobnob with a flock of goats. That’s probably the closest most of us get to sheep. But in general, we don’t have much if any experience of the culture of shepherds. “Good Shepherd Sunday” usually produces a lot of reflection about sheep. I would like us to focus on the shepherd today. Here is one reflection on the shepherd role:
The symbolism of the shepherd … contains the sense of a wisdom which is both intuitive and the fruit of experience. The shepherd symbolizes watchfulness. His duties entail the constant exercise of vigilance. He is awake and watching. Hence he is compared with the Sun, which sees all things, and with the king. Furthermore, since … the shepherd symbolizes the nomad, he is rootless and stands for the soul which is not a native of this Earth but always a stranger and pilgrim. In so far as his flock is concerned, the shepherd acts as a guardian and to this is linked knowledge, since he knows what pasture suits the animals in his charge. He observes the Heavens, the Sun, the Moon and the stars and can predict the weather. He distinguishes sounds and hears the noise of approaching wolves, as well as the bleating of lost sheep. Through the different duties which he performs, he is regarded as a wise man whose activities are the result of contemplation and inner vision. In other words, the Shepherd is a guide to be trusted.
Why essentially do we gather as “church”? Why are we striving to follow Jesus and His Gospel? I’m a life-long seeker after knowledge, and so I’m always asking and re-asking these questions, and will continue I’m sure until the day I die to this Life. I’m well aware that there are no simplistic answers to these questions. Today, the question is, Who is this “Good Shepherd”, and to what sheepfold are we being shepherded? What Voice are we being asked to hear and trust?
Bruno Barnhart, in his book “The Good Wine: Reading John from the Centre”, writes these words:
Jesus, the new Adam, is at once shepherd and Word, “Name” of God, who is sent to men and women, to call them by name – by their true names in the creative Word, which are godly names, generative of divine being. Those who hear the Word of God are gathered into it and become “gods.” Those who receive the Son of God are gathered in to him and become children of God (John 1:12).
Did you hear those words? “Generative of divine beings”. Now that is a startling phrase! The Shepherd is the Divine Word that has been sent to us. The Divine Shepherd dwells within every person. The Divine Shepherd is the One Who knows who we really are, are meant to be. The sheepfold we are being led to is God, where we become “gods”, or “children of God”. Or, as Barnhart puts it: “The Father and I are one” (10:30). The sheepfold into which Jesus leads those who hear his voice, who hear him speak their new names – whether they have been Jews or Gentiles – is ultimately this One, this I Am, which is his own being. The ultimate goal of the Christian - and as a symbol, of all persons - is, by following what is called in mystical theology the “Unitive Way”, to become One with the Divine. To become not “God” as in taking God’s place, but of God in our humanity. We Christians hold a very high doctrine of human nature - and it is Scripturally based!
Christianity is of course not the only religion or path that seeks unity with God. Most do. It has been said that the primary concern of most religions is Incarnation - the recognition of the divine in Creation. I recently finished a book called “Hidden Journey”, by Andrew Harvey, who was the youngest man, at age 25, to be elected a Fellow of an Oxford college. His description of the search for union with God by fully offering himself as a disciple to a Hindu woman who was recognized as an avatar of the goddess known as the Great Mother, was intriguing. While the Eastern context is “strange” to Westerners, I recognized in it many principles of the mystical life that are taught in Christian and Jewish mysticism. Primary is the recognition that we are of the Divine; that we are not, as our Ego tells us, separate from God, or each other. In reflecting on Jesus’ hearers rushing forward to stone Jesus to death, Barnhart comments that “what they rush forward to destroy is the divine-human life which is their own destiny”. Yes, we are often our own worst enemies when it comes to fulfilling our destiny as human-divine beings – and this is why finding and following a Good Shepherd whose “voice” we can trust is critical.
What does that Voice sound like, and what makes Jesus an authentic “Good” Shepherd? A former Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, once translated the meaning of “Good” as “The Beautiful One”. He had this to say about the word “Good”, as applied to Jesus and, by association, with us:
….. the word for “good” here is one that represents, not the moral rectitude of goodness, nor its austerity, but its attractiveness. We must not forget that our vocation is so to practice virtue that [people] are won to it; it is possible to be morally upright repulsively! [What a superb phrase – and true!] In the Lord Jesus we see “the beauty of holiness” (Psalm xcvi,9). He was “good” in such manner as to draw all men to Himself (xii,32). And this beauty of goodness is supremely seen in the act by which He would so draw them, wherein He lays down his life for the sheep.
Yes: the words and deeds of unconditional Compassion and Love - these are the “voice” that will or should resonate with the divine nature that is at our core as human beings, and with the urgency of our Journey through this Earthly Life.
We have a tendency to make the picture of Jesus carrying the little lamb all cute and cuddly and benign. Perhaps we should rethink our iconography about this. “Wandering sheep” – that is, we - are often at great danger, and the shepherd has to be tough, wise, experienced, vigilant, sensitive to the waywardness of our “soul”. In other words, if we really want to achieve Oneness with God, really want to become fully human and fully our Selves, we must not listen to the voice of false shepherds about whom the prophet Ezekial warned the people of Israel - and there are plenty around with seductive voices willing to take on the job!
One of the primary reasons we gather as “church” is to learn the character and nature of a true Good Shepherd. And, as well, to learn how to be a Good Sheep. Ultimately, the Sheep and the Shepherd are One – that is the Mystery we are seeking to inhabit. It is our destiny to become, by our union with God, “attractive”, living our moral virtue so that others are drawn by our acts of kindness and justice, not repulsed by moral aloofness or arrogance. We see a lot of the latter these days. I am heartened by the result of recent polls which show that Americans in greater numbers are rejecting the voices of false shepherds.
Every human person is born with the Good Shepherd indwelling in us. The Christ we know as Christians is trustworthy. Our work is to distill out the authentic Shepherd from the false shepherds that others have insinuated into what we now call the Scriptures.
One hymn that will be sung at my funeral (#645, Hymnal 1980 – The King of Love my Shepherd Is) - in hopes that I have been faithful - makes clear what the central character of the faithful Good Shepherd is; it is a paraphrase of the 23rd Psalm appointed for today’s Liturgy. Listen to the Psalm again, in The Message version:
God, my shepherd! I don't need a thing. You have bedded me down in lush meadows,
you find me quiet pools to drink from.
True to your word, you let me catch my breath and send me in the right direction.
Even when the way goes through Death Valley, I'm not afraid when you walk at my side.
Your trusty shepherd's crook makes me feel secure.
You serve me a six-course dinner right in front of my enemies. You revive my drooping head;
my cup brims with blessing.
Your beauty and love chase after me every day of my life. I'm back home in the house of God
for the rest of my life.
You and I have been “attracted” by the true Goodness of the Christ in us. May our Life Together at St. Benedict’s deepen that Divine Presence in us. May our own lives, reflecting Jesus’ giving up His life in love for the sheep, “attract” others to authentic humanity, and to Oneness with the God of Love.
Monday, May 4, 2009
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Sermon for: Good Friday B_RCL _ April 10, 2009
St. Benedict’s, Los Osos (The Rev) Brian McHugh +
The only reward for emulating the Jesus of Mark's gospel is to have done it. (1)
A priest colleague and friend of mine wrote these words recently in his Blog. There is an obscene explanation that has lurked for millennia amongst the various “explanations” of why Jesus died on the Cross. It says that “God” deliberately sent the Divine Logos/Word, in the guise of his “son”, to suffer horribly and to die on the cross, so that human beings, unable to extract themselves from the consequences of sin, would be “saved” by the substitution of Jesus as the only “worthy” required sacrifice. “Obscene”, perhaps blasphemous, are the only words I can think of adequately to describe this lie. It completely ignores the moral integrity of Jesus’ Life, freedom, and work as a person, let alone as “God’s Son”. It implies that whatever Jesus did or said had nothing to do with what was already a predetermined outcome. And it implies that “salvation”, meaning “wholeness” and health as a human being is a “done deal” and has nothing to do with our response. This is false.
To “venerate the Cross” under such circumstances would, I think, indeed mean that we were venerating an “instrument of torture” - and an immoral “God”. Further, it makes no sense when held up against the words of the apostle Paul, who said: “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me”; and, “We must work out our own salvation in fear and trembling.”
We must ask the question, especially on Good Friday, “What did Jesus do that He ended up on the Cross?” And secondly, “What does it mean, for Jesus, and for us?” On this Good Friday, let’s take a look at His Life for a few moments.
Jesus was an implacable critic of the “organized religion” of His time – the religion based on the Pentateuch which His people had followed for over 1500 years. And he was an implacable critic of those whom He saw perverting the essential message of that religion for their own power and prestige. He regularly denounced them and their interpretations, and taught His disciples to follow His “Good News”. He spoke out, following in the footsteps of the great prophets and of great kings like Josiah, against “harmful religious tradition and intolerance”. In His zeal for His “Father’s House”, he drove the debasers out of the Temple. One of the Gospels is clear that this was the act that set in motion a plan to kill Him.
When Jesus spoke of “taking up our cross and following Him”, He meant us to join with Him, in our own time and place, in this determination to rid our religion of traits that are contrary to God’s desire. I could list those things that I would put on that list, but I will let you build your own. And then we must ask what we will do to join Him in carrying that cross, out of Love for God and for God’s people. We must start with our own Episcopal religious tradition; what in it is contrary to the will of the God of Love? And we must be respectfully critical of the great and powerful religions of the World which accuse others of being “Worldly” but which themselves oppress others in their search for Worldly power under the guise of “spiritual concern”.
Jesus could not avoid confronting “the principalities and powers of imperious politics, hierarchical economics and malign social policy”, either Jewish or Roman. The behaviour of both the Roman and Jewish people in power was contrary in so many ways to His understanding of the politics of God’s Kingdom. We get His point clearly and gently but firmly in His encounter with Nicodemus, in His insistence that we must be “born again” in and by that same Spirit through which He was adopted a Son of God His baptism.
Christians cannot be other than fearless confronters of “the principalities and powers of imperious politics”, whether coming from political leaders or the economically powerful of our World. I don’t have to rehearse for you all those things which are contrary to the health and welfare of the peoples of the World perpetrated by our rich and powerful, given the situation we are in these days. Whether it is the use of torture, or the militarism, or the failure of many administrations to provide healthcare for all Americans, or the continuing tendency of the present administration to curry favour with bankers and arms dealers to the detriment of regular hard-working folk, or the dictators of the world feathering their own nests while their people starve or die in armed conflict, Jesus asks us to “take up our cross” and follow Him in the way of loving confrontation of these policies.
Jesus was a constant foe of anything which “robs individual human beings of their innate dignity”, whether it be those oppressed and denied their humanity by the powerful, or the oppressing powerful themselves who are demeaned and twisted in soul by their lust. In Jesus’ time, this included women, servants, the downtrodden poor, Samaritans, Pharisees. Today He would stand with Gayfolk, women still, and all the men whose humanity is eviscerated by a false and oppressive definition of “masculinity”, and certainly the poor and destitute whose numbers continue to grow in our World while the numbers of the obscenely rich continues to grow as well.
Going willingly to death in order to witness unflinchingly to the unconditional compassion of His Heavenly Father and ending up being crucified is what makes the cross not an instrument of shame and suffering but, as Paul said, an instrument not of Death but of Life – and a worthy symbol for the Christian Church. It is the sign that out of Love alone God brings Life.
I quoted my friend Harry Cook at the beginning:
The only reward for emulating the Jesus of Mark's gospel is to have done it.
We venerate the instrument by which the Christ gave all in Love. Most of us will not be killed for the Kingdom of God. But, every Good Friday, the Cross calls out to each of us to follow Jesus in the way that leads not to death, but to eternal wholeness and health - perhaps with fear and trembling, but also with sure and certain hope that we are on the sacred path of what we call “salvation”.
St. Benedict’s, Los Osos (The Rev) Brian McHugh +
The only reward for emulating the Jesus of Mark's gospel is to have done it. (1)
A priest colleague and friend of mine wrote these words recently in his Blog. There is an obscene explanation that has lurked for millennia amongst the various “explanations” of why Jesus died on the Cross. It says that “God” deliberately sent the Divine Logos/Word, in the guise of his “son”, to suffer horribly and to die on the cross, so that human beings, unable to extract themselves from the consequences of sin, would be “saved” by the substitution of Jesus as the only “worthy” required sacrifice. “Obscene”, perhaps blasphemous, are the only words I can think of adequately to describe this lie. It completely ignores the moral integrity of Jesus’ Life, freedom, and work as a person, let alone as “God’s Son”. It implies that whatever Jesus did or said had nothing to do with what was already a predetermined outcome. And it implies that “salvation”, meaning “wholeness” and health as a human being is a “done deal” and has nothing to do with our response. This is false.
To “venerate the Cross” under such circumstances would, I think, indeed mean that we were venerating an “instrument of torture” - and an immoral “God”. Further, it makes no sense when held up against the words of the apostle Paul, who said: “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me”; and, “We must work out our own salvation in fear and trembling.”
We must ask the question, especially on Good Friday, “What did Jesus do that He ended up on the Cross?” And secondly, “What does it mean, for Jesus, and for us?” On this Good Friday, let’s take a look at His Life for a few moments.
Jesus was an implacable critic of the “organized religion” of His time – the religion based on the Pentateuch which His people had followed for over 1500 years. And he was an implacable critic of those whom He saw perverting the essential message of that religion for their own power and prestige. He regularly denounced them and their interpretations, and taught His disciples to follow His “Good News”. He spoke out, following in the footsteps of the great prophets and of great kings like Josiah, against “harmful religious tradition and intolerance”. In His zeal for His “Father’s House”, he drove the debasers out of the Temple. One of the Gospels is clear that this was the act that set in motion a plan to kill Him.
When Jesus spoke of “taking up our cross and following Him”, He meant us to join with Him, in our own time and place, in this determination to rid our religion of traits that are contrary to God’s desire. I could list those things that I would put on that list, but I will let you build your own. And then we must ask what we will do to join Him in carrying that cross, out of Love for God and for God’s people. We must start with our own Episcopal religious tradition; what in it is contrary to the will of the God of Love? And we must be respectfully critical of the great and powerful religions of the World which accuse others of being “Worldly” but which themselves oppress others in their search for Worldly power under the guise of “spiritual concern”.
Jesus could not avoid confronting “the principalities and powers of imperious politics, hierarchical economics and malign social policy”, either Jewish or Roman. The behaviour of both the Roman and Jewish people in power was contrary in so many ways to His understanding of the politics of God’s Kingdom. We get His point clearly and gently but firmly in His encounter with Nicodemus, in His insistence that we must be “born again” in and by that same Spirit through which He was adopted a Son of God His baptism.
Christians cannot be other than fearless confronters of “the principalities and powers of imperious politics”, whether coming from political leaders or the economically powerful of our World. I don’t have to rehearse for you all those things which are contrary to the health and welfare of the peoples of the World perpetrated by our rich and powerful, given the situation we are in these days. Whether it is the use of torture, or the militarism, or the failure of many administrations to provide healthcare for all Americans, or the continuing tendency of the present administration to curry favour with bankers and arms dealers to the detriment of regular hard-working folk, or the dictators of the world feathering their own nests while their people starve or die in armed conflict, Jesus asks us to “take up our cross” and follow Him in the way of loving confrontation of these policies.
Jesus was a constant foe of anything which “robs individual human beings of their innate dignity”, whether it be those oppressed and denied their humanity by the powerful, or the oppressing powerful themselves who are demeaned and twisted in soul by their lust. In Jesus’ time, this included women, servants, the downtrodden poor, Samaritans, Pharisees. Today He would stand with Gayfolk, women still, and all the men whose humanity is eviscerated by a false and oppressive definition of “masculinity”, and certainly the poor and destitute whose numbers continue to grow in our World while the numbers of the obscenely rich continues to grow as well.
Going willingly to death in order to witness unflinchingly to the unconditional compassion of His Heavenly Father and ending up being crucified is what makes the cross not an instrument of shame and suffering but, as Paul said, an instrument not of Death but of Life – and a worthy symbol for the Christian Church. It is the sign that out of Love alone God brings Life.
I quoted my friend Harry Cook at the beginning:
The only reward for emulating the Jesus of Mark's gospel is to have done it.
We venerate the instrument by which the Christ gave all in Love. Most of us will not be killed for the Kingdom of God. But, every Good Friday, the Cross calls out to each of us to follow Jesus in the way that leads not to death, but to eternal wholeness and health - perhaps with fear and trembling, but also with sure and certain hope that we are on the sacred path of what we call “salvation”.
(1)
The Rev. Harry Cook, Holy Week = Homiletic Bonanza, March 30, 2009. I am specifically using some of his thoughts in this sermon.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Sermon for: Lent I B_RCL _ March 1, 2009
St. Benedict’s, Los Osos
(The Rev) Brian McHugh +
It is Lent again. A colleague of mine recently wrote , "During Lent this year the Hebrew scriptures take us week by week through covenants in our holy history. This Sunday the church offers us consideration of the rainbow-sign of the covenant with Noah. It is worth taking time with patristic and medieval typologies of the Ark itself: the Church is the Ark. Lent is the Ark. Wisdom is the Ark. Even our heart is the Ark – a place of safety and yet a place of transformation. Enclosed and tossed upon turbulent seas of sin and chaos and culture, these 40 days of Lent give us a time of growing, transformation, renewing our lives from the core of our hearts. Thus, we emerge from Lent and Holy Week to face again the uncreated Light of the Resurrection, the shadow of which we observed at the Transfiguration. But we have to prepare rigorously to meet this new Light. And so we make our way into the desert, or seal ourselves up into the ark to practice a 40 day "Night of Purification" in this Season of the Soul."
Like everything else that we do as part of our religion, Lent has only one central purpose: To bring us close to God. The Epistle today from the First Letter of Peter, in The Message version, puts it in the context of the meaning of Christ’s life: He went through it all—was put to death and then made alive—to bring us to God. We must take care that none of the “things” we do, or don’t do, give up or take up, should in any way distract us from coming close to God.
The Sufi poet Rumi, in his always sharp clear way, voices the urgency of the call of the Lenten season to stay focused and come close to the Mystery of God and of Life:
Why cling to one life till it is soiled and ragged?
The sun dies and dies , squandering a hundred lived every instant.
God has decreed life for you; and God will give another and another and another.
Why do we have the story of Jesus baptism today? Because Baptism is the entranceway or gangplank into the Ark that is the Church. Like Noah’s Ark, the Church is meant to be a way of Holy Living that keeps us afloat and safe from the waters of chaos; not necessarily protected from the “assaults” of “many temptations” and from the “weaknesses of each of us” mentioned in the Collect, but fortified against them by our relationship to God in Jesus Christ.
I mentioned earlier that Lent will be a time of being taken week by week through covenants in our holy history. What was the Biblical storyteller’s purpose in telling the mythological event of the Great Flood? There are stories of a great destructive flood in the mythologies of many cultures and peoples. But the Biblical story has a purpose unlike the others. For Jews and Christians, the story is a reflection on the meaning of the Rainbow, which they interpret as a sign of God’s power and Goodness, preserving them in the face of potentially destructive floods and other disasters. Any Jew or Christian who knows the essential nature of God as Love, Mercy and Justice would be disturbed by a picture of God as purposely destructive of almost all the Earth’s people. But the real meaning of the story is made beautifully clear by the explanation of the rabbis that is found in the Zohar:
How did the Blessed Holy One respond when Noah came out of the ark and saw the whole world destroyed and began to cry over the holocaust? Noah said, "Master of the world, You are called Compassionate! You should have shown compassion for Your creatures!" The Blessed Holy One answered him, "Foolish shepherd! Now you say this, but not when I spoke to you tenderly, saying 'Make yourself an ark of gopher wood ... I am about to bring the Flood ... to destroy all flesh' ... I lingered with you, spoke to you at length so that you would ask for mercy for the world! But as soon as you heard that you would be safe in the ark, the evil of the world did not touch your heart. You built the ark and saved yourself. Now that the world has been destroyed do you open your mouth to utter questions and pleas?"
This ancient Flood story isn’t about a destroying God; it’s about a God Who has made an eternal covenant with his Creation. It is about the giving and the preservation of Life. This is how we understand the nature of that Mystery which we sense to be at the heart of Life. It is also a story which makes clear that each of us is responsible for the welfare of the human community. Noah rejected that responsibility and death ensued. But both Abraham and Moses argued and bargained with God, and saved the men and women of their generation.
Lent is a time of growing, transformation, renewing our lives from the core of our hearts. There is a story from the sayings of the Desert Fathers of an old Abbot talking about the conversion of the heart with a young monk”:
Once there was a woman of ill repute in a city. She had many lovers. The governor approached her and said: "If you promise me you will behave properly, I will take you for my wife." She promised, he married her and took her to his own home. The lovers who still wanted her, said; "That official has taken her, If we risk going into the palace, he'll catch us and punish us. But we'll get out of that. Let's go round the back and whistle to her. She'll hear it and come down, and then we'll be all right.” But the woman, when she heard them whistling, blocked her ears, bolted the doors and hid herself in the innermost part of the house.
The old man explained the story. The woman of ill repute is our soul. Her lovers are our passions. The governor is Christ. The innermost part of the house is our heavenly dwelling place. The whistlers are the devils. But the soul can always find refuge with its Lord.
St. Francis de Sales neatly summed up the meaning of this story: Let the enemy rage at the gate, let him knock, let him push, let him cry, let him howl, let him do worse; we know for certain that he cannot enter save by the door of our consent. In other words, Evil can only overtake us if we permit it. We need to stay strong and focused on God. This is the point of Jesus’ testing by Satan for 40 days in the Wilderness.
Lent is a version of Christ’s Forty Days. And it is symbolic. For us, the Wilderness is a part of daily living, coming close to God, drinking in Devine Grace and Power and Love, of understanding and living into Jesus’ words after John’s arrest: “Time’s up! God’s kingdom is here. Change your life and believe the Message.”
Our prayer and our path for the Lenten season, centered firmly in our knowledge of the God of the Rainbow, the God of Jesus, the God of the Covenant, is beautifully expressed in the Psalm appointed for today:
My head is high, God, held high;
I'm looking to you, God;
No hangdog skulking for me.
I've thrown in my lot with you; …..
Show me how you work, God;
School me in your ways.
Take me by the hand;
Lead me down the path of truth.
You are my Savior, aren't you?
Mark the milestones of your mercy and love, God;
Mark me with your sign of love.
Plan only the best for me, God!
We board the arks of Church, Lent, Wisdom, our longing hearts, open to transformation, heading always to the Light of the Resurrection.
It is Lent again. A colleague of mine recently wrote , "During Lent this year the Hebrew scriptures take us week by week through covenants in our holy history. This Sunday the church offers us consideration of the rainbow-sign of the covenant with Noah. It is worth taking time with patristic and medieval typologies of the Ark itself: the Church is the Ark. Lent is the Ark. Wisdom is the Ark. Even our heart is the Ark – a place of safety and yet a place of transformation. Enclosed and tossed upon turbulent seas of sin and chaos and culture, these 40 days of Lent give us a time of growing, transformation, renewing our lives from the core of our hearts. Thus, we emerge from Lent and Holy Week to face again the uncreated Light of the Resurrection, the shadow of which we observed at the Transfiguration. But we have to prepare rigorously to meet this new Light. And so we make our way into the desert, or seal ourselves up into the ark to practice a 40 day "Night of Purification" in this Season of the Soul."
Like everything else that we do as part of our religion, Lent has only one central purpose: To bring us close to God. The Epistle today from the First Letter of Peter, in The Message version, puts it in the context of the meaning of Christ’s life: He went through it all—was put to death and then made alive—to bring us to God. We must take care that none of the “things” we do, or don’t do, give up or take up, should in any way distract us from coming close to God.
The Sufi poet Rumi, in his always sharp clear way, voices the urgency of the call of the Lenten season to stay focused and come close to the Mystery of God and of Life:
Why cling to one life till it is soiled and ragged?
The sun dies and dies , squandering a hundred lived every instant.
God has decreed life for you; and God will give another and another and another.
Why do we have the story of Jesus baptism today? Because Baptism is the entranceway or gangplank into the Ark that is the Church. Like Noah’s Ark, the Church is meant to be a way of Holy Living that keeps us afloat and safe from the waters of chaos; not necessarily protected from the “assaults” of “many temptations” and from the “weaknesses of each of us” mentioned in the Collect, but fortified against them by our relationship to God in Jesus Christ.
I mentioned earlier that Lent will be a time of being taken week by week through covenants in our holy history. What was the Biblical storyteller’s purpose in telling the mythological event of the Great Flood? There are stories of a great destructive flood in the mythologies of many cultures and peoples. But the Biblical story has a purpose unlike the others. For Jews and Christians, the story is a reflection on the meaning of the Rainbow, which they interpret as a sign of God’s power and Goodness, preserving them in the face of potentially destructive floods and other disasters. Any Jew or Christian who knows the essential nature of God as Love, Mercy and Justice would be disturbed by a picture of God as purposely destructive of almost all the Earth’s people. But the real meaning of the story is made beautifully clear by the explanation of the rabbis that is found in the Zohar:
How did the Blessed Holy One respond when Noah came out of the ark and saw the whole world destroyed and began to cry over the holocaust? Noah said, "Master of the world, You are called Compassionate! You should have shown compassion for Your creatures!" The Blessed Holy One answered him, "Foolish shepherd! Now you say this, but not when I spoke to you tenderly, saying 'Make yourself an ark of gopher wood ... I am about to bring the Flood ... to destroy all flesh' ... I lingered with you, spoke to you at length so that you would ask for mercy for the world! But as soon as you heard that you would be safe in the ark, the evil of the world did not touch your heart. You built the ark and saved yourself. Now that the world has been destroyed do you open your mouth to utter questions and pleas?"
This ancient Flood story isn’t about a destroying God; it’s about a God Who has made an eternal covenant with his Creation. It is about the giving and the preservation of Life. This is how we understand the nature of that Mystery which we sense to be at the heart of Life. It is also a story which makes clear that each of us is responsible for the welfare of the human community. Noah rejected that responsibility and death ensued. But both Abraham and Moses argued and bargained with God, and saved the men and women of their generation.
Lent is a time of growing, transformation, renewing our lives from the core of our hearts. There is a story from the sayings of the Desert Fathers of an old Abbot talking about the conversion of the heart with a young monk”:
Once there was a woman of ill repute in a city. She had many lovers. The governor approached her and said: "If you promise me you will behave properly, I will take you for my wife." She promised, he married her and took her to his own home. The lovers who still wanted her, said; "That official has taken her, If we risk going into the palace, he'll catch us and punish us. But we'll get out of that. Let's go round the back and whistle to her. She'll hear it and come down, and then we'll be all right.” But the woman, when she heard them whistling, blocked her ears, bolted the doors and hid herself in the innermost part of the house.
The old man explained the story. The woman of ill repute is our soul. Her lovers are our passions. The governor is Christ. The innermost part of the house is our heavenly dwelling place. The whistlers are the devils. But the soul can always find refuge with its Lord.
St. Francis de Sales neatly summed up the meaning of this story: Let the enemy rage at the gate, let him knock, let him push, let him cry, let him howl, let him do worse; we know for certain that he cannot enter save by the door of our consent. In other words, Evil can only overtake us if we permit it. We need to stay strong and focused on God. This is the point of Jesus’ testing by Satan for 40 days in the Wilderness.
Lent is a version of Christ’s Forty Days. And it is symbolic. For us, the Wilderness is a part of daily living, coming close to God, drinking in Devine Grace and Power and Love, of understanding and living into Jesus’ words after John’s arrest: “Time’s up! God’s kingdom is here. Change your life and believe the Message.”
Our prayer and our path for the Lenten season, centered firmly in our knowledge of the God of the Rainbow, the God of Jesus, the God of the Covenant, is beautifully expressed in the Psalm appointed for today:
My head is high, God, held high;
I'm looking to you, God;
No hangdog skulking for me.
I've thrown in my lot with you; …..
Show me how you work, God;
School me in your ways.
Take me by the hand;
Lead me down the path of truth.
You are my Savior, aren't you?
Mark the milestones of your mercy and love, God;
Mark me with your sign of love.
Plan only the best for me, God!
We board the arks of Church, Lent, Wisdom, our longing hearts, open to transformation, heading always to the Light of the Resurrection.
Sunday, December 21, 2008
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
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, 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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
