Epiphany VIII A_RCL

Feb 27, 2010

St. Benedict’s, Los Osos CA
The Rev. Brian H. O. A. McHugh

[ Isaiah 49: 8-16A; Ps 131; 1 Corinthians 4: 1-5; Matthew 6: 24-34 ]


Here is an excerpt from a poem entitled “The Summer Day” by the American poet Mary Oliver:

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
……….
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?


Don’t those six words just ring with poetic strength! “What is it that you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” That is exactly the question that Jesus is addressing in the passage from Matthew this morning. I would guess, from now having known most of you for 3 years or so, that we all confront this question. I’ve heard many of you voice it in different ways, regardless of age or experience, and I do so myself quite often. Have I found out what Life is essentially about? And if I’ve gotten an inkling, then how am I living it or how do I plan to live it in all it’s potential fullness?

Jesus puts the choice(s) involved fairly starkly: “You cannot serve God and Wealth.” Jesus is not saying that we can’t make money, wear nice clothes, drink good wine, eat good food. He is asking what the foundation of our Life is, and will it support us in a Life that radiates with the joy and peace and aliveness of the radical Love that is God and, by inheritance, us. As we yet again pull the Divine Life-force into our beings in Word and Body and Blood, He is quietly asking, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do / With your one wild and precious life?”

“God” and “Wealth” are both rich symbols. It’s a challenge to live the human life in our “dust of the earth” bodies which have been somehow magically animated by what the Bible calls the Breath of God. The Genesis Creation Myth addresses the challenge, in the story of the Expulsion from the Garden of Eden. It proposes that once the Human Race had it all, but we made God angry, and now we have to work hard by the sweat of our brow to eke out a living. Steinbeck powerfully portrayed it in the story of the 1930’s Dustbowl, set appropriately in a land East of Eden. It’s just as hard for most people here in the wealthiest nation on Earth, given the idea of the “American Dream”, to make ends meet ….. and it’s gotten a lot harder in the last fifty years.

By the way, I don’t buy the part about once having had it all. The storytellers knew that we have always had to work hard to keep body and soul together. They were looking to answer the question “Why”? The image of an Eden of plenty, with no suffering or pain, just highlights the reality most of us live with. At least they had the grace to put the responsibility where it belongs: on ourselves - which is at least a step forward from Adam and Eve blaming each other or the serpent.

“Where are you focused? Where are you anchored? Where do your energies go? How do you answer the question Who Am I? What defines you? - these are the questions that Jesus is always gently but firmly asking. Because they are critical to our peace and freedom and happiness. Early Christian and other Gnostics had some strange advice around these questions. “The Gnostic secret of being able to face death is simple. Don’t wait; die now! Plato describes the ‘true philosopher’ as someone who ‘makes dying his way of life’. Paul writes, ‘I die daily’. Valentinus teaches, ‘We choose to die so that we can annihilate death completely’. The Islamic Gnostic Abd al-Kader explains: ‘There are two types of death. One which is inevitable and common to all, and one which is voluntary and experienced by the few. It is the second death which Muhammad prescribed saying ‘Die before you die’. Those who die this voluntary death are resurrected.”

In his book “The Laughing Jesus”. Peter Gandy goes on to reflect, “When we identify exclusively with our physical body, we are consciously or unconsciously in a constant state of anxiety, because decay and death is what inevitably lies ahead for this walking-talking skin-bag. But when we wake up we realize we need not fear the death of the body any more than we need fear dying in a dream. The more lucid we become the less we fear death, which makes living a lot more enjoyable!”

And this is what Jesus confronts us with in the Gospel this morning, with His questions about worry over food, drink, clothes and a myriad other things He might have mentioned: power, prestige, ignorance, self-delusion, etc. None of these things guarantee Life. The only thing that guarantees Life and Immortality is, to use a specifically theological image, Surrender to the God of radical Love, and Self-giving. Jesus role-plays it for us, constantly surrendering His life to God and, when it became clear that physical death was inevitable, unconditionally accepting it. And, as Muhammad said, “Those who die this voluntary death are resurrected”. We see it in the Christ ….. and we are asked to imagine it for ourselves.

This is why Jesus says, “Do not worry, saying, `What will we eat?' or `What will we drink?' or `What will we wear?' For it is the Gentiles [meaning those not awake to a destiny for their humanity] who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” And they are! But we may have to adjust our expectations! Expensive Edna Valley wines, designer clothes, and Filet Mignon may have to give way to Kohls and to farmers’ market fresh veggies and to Two Buck Chuck, or the more fancy stuff just now and then. But it won’t matter by then! We will have left our lonely isolation and become part of a human community of radical Love which rejoices our heart.

The Psalm for today says: “I still my soul and make it quiet, like a child upon its mother's breast; my soul is quieted within me.”

Take heart my fellow travelers! Let us quiet our souls. We are walking a holy path, and it has the power to make us new beings. Let us not be afraid to abandon ourselves with faith and trust. We shall be clothed like the lilies of the field in array more splendid than Solomon in all his glory: the shining raiment of a person raised from Death to Life. As Irenaeus said, “The glory of God is a human being fully alive.”

Most loving Father, whose will it is for us to give thanks for all things, to fear nothing but the loss of you, and to cast all our care on you who care for us: Preserve us from faithless fears and worldly anxieties, that no clouds of this mortal life may hide from us the light of that love which is immortal, and which you have manifested to us in your Son Jesus Christ our Lord; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

[1] Peter Gandy, “The Laughing Jesus”, location 2641 in the Kindle edition

[1] ibid

[3] Matthew 6: 33

Sermon for Epiphany VII A_RCL

February 20, 2010

St. Benedict’s, Los Osos CA

The Rev. Brian H. O. A. McHugh

Leviticus 19: 1-2,9-18; Ps 119: 33-40; 1 Corinthians 3: 10-11,16-23; Matthew 5: 38-48


At the risk of sounding defensive: as with all of my sermons, I am not telling anyone what to do or think or believe. My intent is to encourage thinking and discussion and meditation on the important issues of our Path in Life. That said …..

Jesus was not a Literalist. There was almost nothing that he said or taught that He expected anyone to take literally. He taught principally by way of Parables ….. and Parables are not rulebooks. They are carefully crafted stories which, if we are open to be taught, push us over mental or emotional or rational cliffs, to a place where we are forced beyond established patterns of thought or perception, with the hope that we will break into new dimensions of understanding, in head, heart, and “spirit”. Jesus never explained any of His parables; that’s the work of later editors.

So, let me begin by proposing this about the Gospel reading for today: Jesus is not telling us to do what He says literally. He is not telling us to allow ourselves to be abused; to get smacked on the cheek and invite another; to get sued and give the one suing you twice what is required; to do twice the work you’re paid for; to give to the beggar or lend while your family starves; to permit enemies to hurt or destroy you. To do this, to behave this way, would be to reject the ways of Justice and Love which undergird both the ethical path we hear this morning in Leviticus, and the full understanding of Jesus’ commandment to love profoundly as He loved.

Now, lest you think that I am watering down the Gospel Path in what many consider to be a typical Episcopalian way, let me assure you that I am not. Because here is the reality: Jesus is asking us to do far more than meet the literalist responses! Far more. He is asking us to open up our lives to a radical way of living, of understanding Life, ourselves, others, and the Mystery we call God. He is asking us to be transfigured, as He was in the mountaintop vision, into a New Being.

Now: a little caveat here. There have always been special people who did try to reach this level of transformation by following the literalist path. It can be said that Jesus was one of them, when He did things like refuse to allow His disciples to fight for Him, or to justify Himself to Pontius Pilate. After Him, most were monks or nuns or specially guided people. We all know about St. Francis stripping himself naked and living in poverty. And the Buddha leaving his royal palace and his riches (and even his wife and child – not something that in general would be applauded) for the life of a wandering sadhu. But I think these are special witnesses; and it is not their specific renunciations we are called to imitate, but the seeking of the inner light which motivated their Path.

Here’s a little story about the Buddha, to heighten the sense of how the Great Teachers lead us:

If a villainous bandit were to carve you limb from limb with a two-handled saw, even then the man that should give way to anger would not be obeying my teaching. Even then, be it your task to preserve your hearts unmoved, never to allow an ill word to pass your lips, but always to abide in compassion and good-will, with no hate in your hearts, enfolding in radiant thoughts of love the bandit (who tortures you), and proceeding thence to enfold the whole world in your radiant thoughts of love, - thoughts great and beyond measure, in which there is no hatred or trace of harm. Whew!

Jesus tends to be a little more stark. Yet Jesus does not expect us, when He urges us to “take up our cross”, to get literally crucified. He expects us to see how Life is embraced in it’s fullness by relinquishing one life to find a greater. It is in this context, by the way, that we are to understand the story of Abraham and the near-sacrifice of his son Isaac. No God of Love would ask us literally to kill a child – or for that matter pluck out an eye or cut off a foot. This is a story pointing us towards “extravagant” self-giving. Abraham is offering his whole being to God through his blood-son Isaac, who is a representation of himself. We are asked to do the same.

SO: what IS Jesus leading us? To radical Compassion; to a tender understanding of human nature; to a maturity of Being; to a move beyond our isolated Self to a Unity with God and Creation and each other, enemy or friend; this is where Jesus is leading us. (Joseph Campbell said that to love our enemy was the hardest saying in the Bible.) Jesus offers powerful words that push us beyond the walls we have erected – walls which lock us in diminished, dry, shriveled modes of Being Human. If once we should be infused by an inner experience of our Oneness with The Christ, with Divinity, with All Being, our minds would, to use a 60’s phrase, be “blown away”! We would be overwhelmed by such a sense of Liberation that we might think we have been “made a new person”. And indeed we would have.

Who would worry about “length of days” anymore? We would know only calm, intense daily living. Who would be afraid? We would never fear to do what is just and compassionate and loving simply because we preferred to live a long Life rather than a powerful Life. Who would not be generous in all ways, knowing that Life is enriched for us all by making sure that all are sustained by material and spiritual giving? Who would hold back with Love, when Love heals all suffering, for both Giver and Receiver? Is this not the great Teaching of the Resurrection? It has little to do with physical resurrection; it has to do with “dying” to the “little Self” and “rising” to the “Larger Self”. This is the meaning of Baptism. Every time we relinquish our separate Ego, we “die; and every time we awaken to our Unity with all things, we “rise to Life again”.

Lets not lose a grip on Reality and think that we shall suddenly “become as Christ”, become God. We are not meant to be “God”. But we are meant to be god-like in our Humanity, shaped and defined by Love and Compassion, Justice and Forgiveness, by Affection and utter Heart-ache with all our fellow human beings. Never are we meant to despise ourselves for our inability to live up to the call to Perfection. We are not meant to be Perfect in this Life; only Faithful. And there is always a path to renewal: self-knowledge and surrender.

“Do not resist the evildoer, says Jesus. Turn the other cheek, give your cloak, go the extra mile, give. Love your enemies and pray for them. Why? [because] All these instances of abuse provide occasions of awakening, perhaps - for the evildoer as well as the victim.” (1)

In other words: Every day the Path to Full Humanity, the experience of our Oneness with All Existence (or, to put it in Jungian terms, our participation in the Universal Unconscious; or in Christian terms, of loving each other as God loves us) will be offered to us. There are lots of ways we are “struck on the cheek” in Life. To “offer the other cheek” literally would be easy! The harder “offering the other cheek” is to ponder how we will respond in a way that will deepen and enrich our humanity. The same is true with “giving your cloak”, or “going the extra mile”, or “loving your enemies”. If we live in boxes built of our own fear or infantile natures, we will live limited lives. If, however, we risk to “take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost part of the sea”, God meets us there and offers us a Life we couldn’t have imagined.

Here is a wonderful relevant passage from the Buddhist Evening Gatha:

Let me respectfully remind you:
Life and Death are of supreme importance.
Time swiftly passes by, Opportunity is lost.
Each of us should strive to
Awaken, Awaken, Awaken.
Take heed.
Do not squander your Life.

We remember Jesus’ words: “Those who would win their Life must lose it.” This is the Mystery Jesus calls us to “know” and live. To Awaken, to be transformed, even a little, is much harder than enduring insult or unfairness.

Duccio c. 1308 – The Calling of Peter & Andrew

Epiphany III A_RCL

Jan 23, 2011

St. Benedict’s, Los Osos CA

The Rev. Brian H. O. A. McHugh

Isaiah 9: 1-4

Ps 27: 1,5-13

1 Corinthians 1: 10-18

Matthew 4: 12-23


“Called” ….. yes. All persons are called to Wholeness and to Fullness of Humanity. I believe that this Call is intrinsic to our very nature, and that all the great spiritual paths of the World give voice to this Call. The Episcopal Church made its thinking clear on a poster during the time when Ed Browning was our Presiding Bishop; it said “The glory of God is a human being fully alive”. It derives from the teachings of Irenaeus of Lyons in the late 2nd century. [ link: http://www.crossroadsinitiative.com/library_article/149/Man_Fully_Alive_is_the_Glory_of_God___St._Irenaeus.html ]

There is, of course, the other side of the coin. Yes, the Call is voiced, out of the very depth of the Mystery of Being ….. but who hears, how do they hear, and who answers? There seems to be a general consensus that “few” answer. Cynthia Bourgeault, Episcopal priest and author of “The Wisdom Jesus”, using a computer software image, reflects that every human being is born with a “hard-wired operating system” which allows us to establish a distinct identity, but that we are all called to chose a “system upgrade”, which essentially moves us from isolation and separateness to a sense of Oneness with God and each other and the World. Jesus prays intensely for this in the version of the Gospel called John – Father, may they be One as You and I are One.

One of the mysteries is that few seem to choose this “upgrade”, this Path, and it is important to ask, “Why?”. We all know the phrase, Many are called, but few are chosen. In the context of that statement, I think the phrase means, All are called, but many reject it. Is it because, in part, we don’t have many good teachers or exemplars? And that by nature we human beings are lazy about doing the work that keeps on the Path to Wholeness and Fullness of Humanity? I’ve just finished reading a book called "The Value of Nothing”, by an economist named Raj Patel. He says basically that we have allowed an extreme view of unregulated free market profit economics to define what is of value, including ourselves, and that we must change this if the human race is not to descend into both physical and spiritual poverty.

So yes: we Christians are Called by the Gospel….. but essentially to what? Here is a painting from the 14th century Renaissance painter Duccio, depicting the Calling of Peter and Andrew to be apostles and disciples of Jesus. [ I will leave this here on the lectern if you would like to see it more closely, and I will include it with the sermon when it is posted to my sermon blog.] Duccio was greatly influenced by the Byzantine icon style, and that style is strong in this painting. Peter and Andrew are in their boat fishing; this is some time after both had met Jesus. Andrew is waving, and Peter looks stern and skeptical. The sky is golden behind them, indicating that this is a moment set in Eternity. Their net is full of fish ….. live food to feed the biological body. Jesus is standing on the rocky shore, reminding us of the parable of the man who built his house on the solid rock. He is holding out his hand to Peter and Andrew. The Gospel reading tells us that he is saying, “Come, follow Me, and I will make you fish for people.” It is the same invitation He will offer to them at the Last Supper: “This bread is my Body broken for you; this cup is my blood of the New Covenant; anyone who eats this bread and drinks this cup will live forever”. It is the same invitation He offers to the Syrophoenecian woman: Anyone who drinks this living water will never be thirsty. What Jesus is saying to Peter and Andrew is that if they accept His call to transformation, accept His invitation to renounce their “little self” and become their “larger self”, One with God and with all fellow human beings, they will become a Fellowship of Life in which wholeness and fullness will be found.

This of course is the Call of the Church, the Call to us here at St. Benedict’s: to be that Mystical Body of the Christ, where separation and exclusivity and isolation are renounced. As Fishers of People, we cast out the net of Compassion and Unity and draw men and women into the Kingdom. The Church is not a place where we “admire Jesus, but acquire His consciousness”. The Church is called to be a place which lives by the Heart – through harmony, where “separation as a category disappears”, and we are free to live in “fearlessness, coherence and compassion, in other words, as true human beings”

Here also is found the meaning of the Cross. The Way of the Cross is our journey – where the “horizontal axis of our life in time” meets with “the vertical access of timeless reality: the realm of meaning, value, and conscience” . Where they cross is the Heart of Jesus.

The Call is an invitation with far more consequences that “doing good”, far harder than “dying for the Faith”. It is about coming alive and living for the Faith, about being transformed into a “new person in Christ”. C.S. Lewis depicts it beautifully in "The Chronicles of Narnia” when Eustace, by his greed and lack of caring for his cousins becomes a dragon; being transformed back into a true human being by Aslan is painful, but worth it; Eustace is clothed in the personhood of the Christ, clothed in his divine Humanity.

Every day that you and I live, we are sitting in front of the Laptop of Life. And every now and then, the Message appears on the screen: “An upgrade to this software is available.” There are usually three choices: Yes; Remind me Later; No”. Any one of the three choices comes with a cost and, counterintuitively, in terms of our health and growth as a person, “Yes” is the least costly choice in the long run that is Life. “Remind me Later” or “No” only infantilize us and the cost is heavy.

Every time we come to this altar, hear the Word spoken and interpreted, and hear the invitation to feed on the Body and Blood of the Christ, we are like Peter and Andrew being Called to be transformed, to become an instrument of transformation, a place where the old, out of date software is upgraded for the Journey towards Wholeness.

Each time an “upgrade” is offered, as it is today here at St. Benedict’s – in the fellowship, the breaking of the bread, and in the Prayers, those vows of our Baptism – the invitation is yet again offered to leave the “small Self” and enter into the “larger Self” ….. to “put on the mind of Christ”.

Christ holds out His hand to us. Like Peter, let’s be lifted onto a new plane of Being. Let us be Fishers of Women and Men.

Christmas I A_RCL Dec 26, 2010

St. Benedict’s, Los Osos CA

The Rev. Brian H. O. A. McHugh

Isaiah 61:10-62:3

Ps 147

Galatians 3:23-25; 4:4-7

John 1:1-18


How we love Luke’s beautiful story ….. the Great Myth or Truth-story we all hear on Christmas Eve and day! The familiar Christmas story that features angels and shepherds, a brilliant star and a silent night, Mary and Joseph in a stable, and the newborn child asleep on the hay – this is a story that captures the imagination - source for countless carols and pageants, greeting cards and paintings, and nativity scenes. It appeals to our imagination, as does Matthew’s version, with Wise Men and flights to Egypt. Mark is a little boring - nothing to read at Christmas!. I have learned that great truths must be presented to us in such a way that they engage our Imagination. Human beings thrive on the Imagination; we are shaped by Wonder and Mystery.

When we hear the Gospel version called John, we may think that the appeal is again to our Imagination; the language itself is mysterious, strange: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”. What does “Word” mean? What is a time before Time? The reason John is different is because it’s appeal is not primarily to our Imagination, but to our Intellect, to our Minds. So, while we don’t want to lose track of the Mystery we are participating in as we gather around the altar today – namely, the presence of the Holy in the whole of Creation and specifically the presence of the Holy in each of us – the Prologue of John asks us to stretch our minds – and Episcopalians are good at exercising our minds along with our hearts and spirits and Imagination!

So let’s think a bit about the word Logos. We translate it in English simply as “Word”. But it has a much deeper meaning in its context in the Greek Mediterranean world of Jesus’ time. Let me do a quick, brief and by no means fulsome history.

The Greeks used Logos to mean, besides “word”, “speech”, “account”, or “reason” – and Reason is critical in Anglican thinking. Heraclitus (ca. 535–475 BC), used the term to mean the principle of order and knowledge. The Sophists used the term to mean “discourse”. Aristotle applied the term to "reasoned discourse" in the field of rhetoric. The Stoic philosophers identified the term with the divine animating principle pervading the Universe.
After Judaism came under Helenistic influence, the great Alexandrian Philo (ca. 20 BC–AD 40) adopted the term into Jewish philosophy. Which brings us to today: the Gospel of John identifies the Logos, through which all things are made, as divine, and further identifies Jesus as the Incarnation – the coming in flesh - of the Logos.

Plotinus (204/5–270 AD, the first neo-Platonist, interpreted Logos as the Principle of mediation. This is important for us; John’s Gospel presents Jesus as the Incarnate Logos who makes it possible for you and me to know God (“mediates” God to us), Who is essentially otherwise Unknowable.

The concept of Logos is applied in Sufism (Islam); it is used to relate the "Uncreated" (God), to the "Created" (man). In Sufism, for the Deist, no contact between man and God can be possible without the Logos. The Logos is everywhere and always the same, but its personification is "unique" within each region. Jesus and Muhammad are seen, in Sufi theology, as personifications of the Logos, and this is what enables them to speak in such absolute, authoritative terms.

To return to John’s Prologue: a priest colleague of mine, in reflecting on John’s Prologue, says this (1)

“First, [Logos] refers to the structure that underlies the universe, what holds everything together, what makes things work. It is this Word that scientists of our time endeavor to hear and understand, whether they be physicists or biologists or astronomers. The glue that somehow unites all aspects of our wonderfully complex cosmos – this is part of what John means in today’s gospel in making reference to the Word.

The second meaning has to do, not with what is, but with what ought to be, the divine law and intention. Atoms and galaxies are obedient; they follow laws appropriate to what they are. Human beings are manifestly not obedient, yet still we understand there is a law. All people recognize this, however imperfectly, and ethicists and legislators work to express this law. So the way we are meant to live, in all its power and profundity – this is part of what John suggests in making reference to the Word.

Yet another sense of this term has to do with meaning and purpose, with a question that haunts every human heart: What’s it all about? We endeavor to connect with purpose and meaning through myriad forms of philosophy and religion, literature and art. We rage against the suggestion that the grandeur and sorrow of earthly existence is without significance. A persistent sense of purpose in the universe – this is part of what John means in making reference to the Word.”

So: this is just to “wet your whistle”, to set Logos” within a context, to get you thinking as you ponder John’s Prologue this week! But the principle reason we are here this morning is this phrase from John’s Prologue: What has come into being in him was Life, and the Life was the Light of all people.

Life is the Great Mystery. Who knows whence Life came? Or “when”? Or “from What”? Today we celebrate and wonder at the emergence of Life out of the Hiddenness. We gather in Thanksgiving that we are, that our World is, that the Logos has flooded us in Sacred Light, with a power that Darkness cannot defeat. With heart, mind, imagination, spirit, we pose that eternal Question: “What’s it all about?” And every Sunday morning, as the Bread of Heaven, the Body of Christ, is eaten, and the Cup of Salvation, the Blood of Christ, is drunk, our minds and Imaginations begin afresh the Journey into Life.

John’s Prologue says:

We all live off [God’s] generous bounty, 

gift after gift after gift. 


We remember Ralph Waldo Emerson’s (1803-82) words:

Within us is the soul of the whole, the wise silence,
the universal beauty, the eternal One.

So: Let us Eat. Drink ….. and Know.

Advent I A_RCL Nov 28, 2010 St. Benedict’s, Los Osos CA The Rev. Brian H. O. A. McHugh

Isaiah 2: 1-5 Ps 122 Romans 13: 11-14 Matthew 24: 36-44

There is an old rabbinical saying which says: “Three things come unexpectedly: Messiah, the discovery of a treasure, and a scorpion”. That, I think, sets the stage perfectly for the season of Advent, and for what our Advent “inner work” is as we begin our liturgical year. The message of Advent is, to me, clear: if we don’t do the inner work of Advent, the rest of the liturgical year is very likely to be a waste of time and to bear little fruit. Though, to be fair, there is also the other side of the coin: Like it or not, having prepared for it or not, Life can and will surprise us. But often, as the parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins teaches, if our hearts and minds aren’t at least trained to be opened to the Expected as well as the Unexpected - something we often call Divine Grace - we can be roughly shut out from the metaphorical Wedding Banquet.

The issues of Advent are, to me, clear: Who are you and I as a person?; Who do you and I want to be as a person?; Who do you and I feel invited or called to be as a person - in our case as Christians, by God in Jesus? What vision of the human community do we hold?

Now, I am what has been called an Eighth Day Christian. That is a “mystical” way of justifying many of my odd views ….. and you are all used to my “odd” views! ! Essentially what it means is that, post-Resurrection, everything of Time and Space and Being has “collapsed” into the Now. How’s that for mystical weirdness?? It’s like there’s a Sacred Black Hole into which all Reality has been sucked ….. and our lives are what pop out at the mysterious other end!

I happen to believe that the Eighth Day is the “norm” for Christians. It is he context in which we strive to live each moment. This is reflected liturgically in the Acclamation we all “shout” in the middle of Eucharistic Prayer I: “Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again. Most people think this is linear: the Past, the Present, the Future, following one another. I think it is the only way we know how to say in words that the Life-giving power of the birth, life, death, resurrection, and eternal presence of the Holy One are all simultaneously present and part of our own lives and of the Life of all living things. In it’s own limping way, the Collect for Advent Sunday tries to say the same thing, calling us “now in the time of this mortal life” to live fully Christ’s Incarnation and His Second Coming. It is all our Now.

The Biblical story presents the Incarnation and the Second Coming of Christ as if they are single events in Time. I do not understand them in this way. Advent asks us to be centered in the great Mystery that you and I and all that exists do so through the inpouring and indwelling of the Divine Life. We immerse ourselves in this Divine Life again and again in the celebration of the Holy Eucharist, eating Christ’s Body and drinking Christ’s Blood, merging flesh and spirit. And Advent asks us to be centered at the same time in the expected or unexpected moment by moment “coming” of the Giver of Life into us. I think of the lovely hopeful words of the Psalm: “I lift up my eyes to the hills; from where will my help come?” And in the Psalm appointed for today (psalm 122), there is the beautiful image of Jerusalem, shining on the hill, “to which the tribes go up”. Jerusalem – that place where God “dwells” in His Temple, is “at unity in itself”, a symbol of the unity of God and Humankind, in which we are called to live and daily “to go up”.

Now, I have said many times that, being Episcopalians, we have a wide context for belief! You can go from the rigid so-called “literal” on one end to the verging-on-the-heretical-if-not-wild-eyed mystical-or-metaphorical on the other. I believe that the meaning of the wonderful myths of the Nativity of Jesus (the First Coming) and of the end-time coming of the Christ in judgment (the Second Coming) are not found in chronos, linear time, but in chairos, the “in-between” time where Mystery is revealed. They are both part of the One Reality. What is that One Reality? That God dwells at the core of our Being, and that we are being shaped moment by moment by Divine Love and Mercy and Justice and Forgiveness.

Advent gives us only four weeks to regroup ourselves - to resettle ourselves and to cultivate an openness to the “daily visitation” of the Divine, after forty-eight weeks of dealing with the ups and downs of our crazy lives, and liturgically pondering what we call the Holy Mysteries: Incarnation; Epiphany; Passion and Death; Resurrection; Ascension; the Descent of the Holy Spirit. I think we need more of Advent! If I had my way, I’d reorganize the liturgical year, with at least two mini-Advents through the long Pentecost Season, pulling us back to the center from which we so easily stray. Of course, the Holy Eucharist provides this anchor each Sunday.

So: our work as followers of the Gospel path is to be awake and nurturing of and expectant of the Holy Presence. My colleague Suzanne Guthrie eloquently voices what often is our state:

My soul wallows in its long habit of sleep: of disregard, of thoughtlessness, heartlessness, a psychic hibernation against feeling and against knowing for fear of pain. My soul reclines, suspended in a torpor of uncaring. I'm not ready to greet either the horrors or wonders of the dawning of the Great Day. My body stands dumbly looking at the sky, but my soul lies dormant like a rodent deeply buried in its underground nest in darkest winter, far from my heart.[1]

St. Paul puts it this way in his letter to the Romans today: “make sure that you don't get so absorbed and exhausted in taking care of all your day-by-day obligations that you lose track of the time and doze off, oblivious to God.[2] The Collect proposes the simple answer: “give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light”.

In other words, the answer is the path of Repentance. But Repentance is not just the rejection of Sin, of the unloving. Repentance is the art of learning to call out our rodent souls from their buried nest in darkest winter and stand before the bright Jerusalem, before the moment by moment power of all that God in Christ – and Life! - eternally is: Incarnation, Epiphany, Dying and Rising, Ascending into God, living in the Spirit of Truth.

St. Andrew of Crete (650) speaks to the urgency – as does the apocalyptic language of Advent: The end draws near, my soul, the end draws near; Yet you do not care or make ready. The time grows short, rise up: the Judge is at the door. The days of our life pass swiftly, as a dream, as a flower. Why do we trouble ourselves over what is all in vain?

Advent calls us to Awaken – to awaken to our Reality as a “child of God”. To awaken to the reality of our Sin, but also to our capacity to love. We don’t have to become instantly “perfect in Love”; just each day to face into truth and into the face of God. The mystery of Grace will lead us on.

In his Advent Poem, the 18^th C English priest John Keble writes:

But what are Heaven's alarms to hearts that cower / In willful slumber, deepening every hour,

That draw their curtains closer round, The nearer swells the trumpet's sound?

Lord, ere our trembling lamps sink down and die,

Touch us with chastening hand, and make us feel Thee nigh.

“Three things come unexpectedly: Messiah, the discovery of a treasure, and a scorpion”.

Our hearts do not cower. In Advent, we boldly face the “scorpions” and cast out all delusions. We seek the treasure that is “the Lord, the Christ” in our “earthen vessels”. We welcome the Messiah Who eternally, moment by moment, forever comes among us.

---

[1] Suzanne Guthrie: “Edge of the Enclosure”, for Advent Sunday

[2] Rom 13: 11, The Message

Pent XXI, Prop 24_C_RCL Oct 17, 2010

St. Benedict’s, Los Osos CA

The Rev. Brian H. O. A. McHugh +

Jer 31: 27-34; Ps 119: 97-104; II Tim 3:14-4:5; Luke 18: 1-8


The answer to prayer – at least “from” the God I have over many decades come to know and understand, and yes, I’ll even say love, though that’s a topic for several other sermons! - is instantaneous. [Look around.] Do I see some of you look dubious? But I now see, and I am saying, that every prayer I have ever offered, every insight I have sought, has been instantly answered.

I can equally say that this has been the consequence of “faith”. The Evangelist Luke asks today at the conclusion of the Gospel reading, “When the Son of Man comes, will He find such persistent faith on earth?” ”Faith” is the issue we are being asked to address first, because what we understand by “faith” is critical. Friedrich Nietzsche allegedly said: “A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything”. What I hear in his comment is contempt for a certain understanding of faith, an understanding which believes, for example, that if sufficiently loved, adored and praised, God will prevent suffering. In my experience, delusional thinking. What God will do is, at the least, suffer with us.

My comment on Nietzsche’s words was, “Faith” is not about trading slave-like submission for a Deity’s condescending favour. Faith, from the Latin “fides – trust”, means diligently adhering, often with difficulty, to a path which gives birth to the Mystery of God Within. The meaning of everything: Life, Death, Wholeness, Love, Joy is at stake. Discerning the authentic Path is the life-work of every person. And I might add that there are many paths that need to be discerned throughout our lives. “Having faith” is always a process of liberation; it is never a process of escaping being human.

I believe, based on experience, that both “faith” and “prayer” are two way-streets: between us and God. To what end? To the end of knowing, of sensing, that God lives at the core of our being, and we live at the core of God’s Being, at least at some level of experience and knowing. Or, as Paul the Apostle puts it, coming to know the “Christ in us” which makes us fully human.

This is the point of the instantaneous answer to Prayer of which I spoke: it is the moment at which we experience, even haltingly, our Unity with God. Prayer, for me, is never “God actively gives, I passively receive” - though the answer to Prayer can sometimes feel like that, especially when we are in the midst of struggle and pain. I believe that the answer to Prayer is always a transformative moment, in which, consciously or unconsciously, our humanity has become more whole – which is to say more God-like.

Jesus makes it clear in the Gospel reading that what is essential in being both a prayerful and a faithful person is Persistence, or Perseverance. And here is the bottom line as I see it: God is unchanging, as I understand God. What changes is our perception of God. It is expressed in that classic hymn – which always makes me laugh because of its rather overdone humility – “We blossom and flourish like leaves on the tree / and wither and perish but nought changeth Thee”. The God I know always seeks to give us what we need for abundant, whole Life, and this includes our understanding of what it means to be mortal, subject to decay and death. It is indeed, in some sense, in the Puritan preacher John Edwards’ rather silly sermon title, a “dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God”.

The work of faith requires perseverance and dogged persistence. NOT so that we can wear God down, until God gives up, or changes Her mind, and gives us what we demand – though it would be easy to misinterpret the parable about the widow and the impious judge in this way. Those who were spiritually unprepared to understand Jesus’ parable would not have gotten the message. But those who are open– and this openness to the message is critical for any transformation – understand that we must persist until everything we have put in the way of hearing the Message is removed. Only then will that moment occur when instantaneously Prayer is answered. The answer to Prayer is instantaneous at the moment when our Self and our Desire begins to merge with God’s Self and Desire.

Two personal examples: One: When I was a Novice in the Order of the Holy Cross, age 21, I had a headache during all waking hours for 7 months. No aspirin or anything else took it away – though a couple of glasses of wine would distract me, or a long walk along the railway tracks along the Hudson River. I assumed it had something to do with my vocation. I prayed a lot, everything from asking that the headache go away (shades of St. Paul!) to understanding why I had it. I persisted for 7 months – discomfort will do that for you! Finally one day, I said to God/the Universe/the Mystery – they all merge for me - “OK, I have no idea why I’m here; You deal with it.” That second, the headache was gone. Yes, it was about that old devil Control, and it’s counterpart Trust. But the “answer” I got was NOT “You aren’t in control, I am, so submit”. I don’t believe in a God who demands “submission”, and I won’t say that horrible line in Eucharistic Prayer B that says, “put all things in subjection under Your Christ”. Rather, the message was, “We’re in this together; trust me and yourself; relax.” I learned a critical lesson about Life – and God.

Second: In 1995, after 9 years of a little congregation in Providence that went from 12 to over a hundred and had a vital ministry to the AIDS community, I took a job I thought would be wonderful: Director of The Oasis, the ministry to the Gay community in the diocese of Newark. Seven months into it, I started having anxiety attacks for the first (and only) time in my life. I prayed about that mightily. One morning I awoke after a bad night, and an inner voice said clearly, “Brian, this job is just not for you. Forget about what others will think; just resign. It’s OK. Not every decision we make is the right one. This setting is not where your gifts are best used. Trust yourself.” Instantaneously, I felt better, and I’ve never had another anxiety attack – though if I do I will know what the message is! I learned that I don’t have to succeed at everything, and to appreciate what gifts I do have, and I’m still learning not to beat myself up.

The answer to Prayer is always, I believe, that we are offered the opportunity to grow and change – and that often is a wrenching process – but it gets easier too! As we take the opportunities, our comprehension of the great Mystery of Life, of God, of Meaning, changes and grows. We set out on the road of isolation at our birth into this Earthly life, and we move towards a sense of unity in our self and with each other and with all Creation and with the infinitely beautiful Power that enlivens it all.

The Message today is: Keep at it! As Winston Churchill once said, “Never, never, never give up”. The great saints are those who first set their hearts on “union with God” - those who like Jacob wrestled with the angel God, until the break of day, and would NOT let go until the angel blessed him. Some of the blessings we receive may seem like a curse – until we recognize we have been freed of things we thought we had to have but which only stood in our way to Freedom.

So in praise of Persistence I leave us with these verses of a very long hymn called Wrestling Jacob, by the great hymnologist Charles Wesley [1742]: [Tune: St. Petersburg, attributed to Dimitri S. Bortniansky 1825]

Come, O thou Traveler unknown / 
Whom still I hold, but cannot see!
 / My company before is gone,
 / And I am left alone with Thee; / With Thee all night I mean to stay, / And wrestle till the break of day.

Wilt Thou not yet to me reveal
 / Thy new, unutterable Name?
 / Tell me, I still beseech Thee, tell;
 / To know it now resolved I am;
 / Wrestling, I will not let Thee go,
 / Till I Thy Name, Thy nature know.

[Sing last verse]

Contented now upon my thigh
 / I halt, till life’s short journey end;
 / All helplessness, all weakness I / 
On Thee alone for strength depend;
 / Nor have I power from Thee to move:
 / Thy nature, and Thy name is Love.

Pent IX, Prop 12_C_RCL

July 25, 2010

St. Benedict’s, Los Osos CA

The Rev. Brian H. O. A. McHugh +

Genesis 18:20-32; Ps 138; Col 2: 6-19; Luke 11: 1-13


I’ve been doing a lot of reading these past months. The history of ideas. Mysticism, including ancient Egyptian and Middle Eastern. Pagan, both Greek and Roman, particularly Plato and Celsus. Christian Gnosticism, particularly Valentinus and Basilides. Early Christian writers, particularly Origen – brilliant man who, of course, strayed too far from the 6th C Roman hierarchy and got condemned as a “heretic” and excommunicated. “Literalist” Christianity, which may be a new term for you, used by Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy in “The Jesus Mysteries” ….. but I won’t get off on that tangent today! I’ve come away with, among a lot of things, a strong sense of how many people think it’s really hard to be and to become a fully human person. One of my favourite cards has a picture of the former Tammy Faye Baker, on the front saying, “Lord, I’m sorry about the money”; inside she says, “Being pretty ain’t cheap.” To paraphrase her, Being a fully human person ain’t easy - and is hard work!

One measure, it struck me, of how hard it is to reach maturity as a human being is the number of persons, philosophies, and religions throughout the millennia that believe in reincarnation ….. including many of the early Christian so-called “Church Fathers” – and a surprisingly large percentage of American Christians, according to a recent poll. Several of those “church fathers”, by the way, of the first two centuries, were Gnostics. Gnostics were exterminated by the Roman Church by the 6th C., but a few have revived; there’s even a Gnostic bishop in – of course! – California/San Francisco.

What I am segueing to is Prayer – and to the fact that Prayer is “hard”, or perhaps better, requires hard work and stamina and persistence. I was going to say, hard until one gets to the point of “becoming Prayer” – which is what I think St. Paul was pointing to when he said, Pray always”. But on second thought, I won’t say that. I suspect that Prayer requires persistence and stamina forever – given my own experience. Why? Essentially because Prayer is about becoming One with the Soul of the Universe. For some of us, getting to that place and holding there may come more easily than for others. Some people are just more inclined to be what mystics call “Awake” or “Awakened” than others. It’s one of the reasons that relatively few people were fully initiated into the ancient Mystery Religions of Egypt, Greece, Rome, Syria, Persia, and other places; you had to be both highly committed and intellectually agile.

Prayer is essentially a context for living one’s Life. The context is Mystery, and the core “posture” of Prayer is Openness. This is reflected by the ancient “orans” position taken by the priest (or any others for that matter) at the Eucharist, the “Holy Mysteries” – arms open to receive or embrace, recalling Jesus on the Cross, and the Egyptian godman Osiris, who was “hung on a tree”. Our mouths are saying formulas, words, with which we do our best to express what we think we understand about the Mystery of Christ’s self-giving, death and resurrection. But the bottom line is, we “see through a glass darkly”. At the heart of Prayer is Openness and Listening with the Inner Ear. When I was young, I was taught an acronym for Prayer: ACTIP. Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Intercession, Petition. But adoration – standing open to the Mystery and wonder of the infinite and Unknowable God – was and is always first. “Adoration” is the setting, into and out of which, all the other activities of Prayer flow. We catch it in the Psalm for today:

I kneel in worship facing your holy temple and say it again: "Thank you!"
Thank you for your love, thank you for your faithfulness;
Most holy is your name, most holy is your Word.

A friend of mine, in an email last week, went on a rant about how boring the Prayers of the People were at his church’s worship. Just rote – a pile of names and issues and causes raced through in order to get through the service in an hour. I opined to him that the Prayers of the People – and the Eucharist itself – are a Sunday morning metaphor, reminding us that the rest of the week is to be spent open to and acting upon what the Mysteries we celebrate together call us to in daily life: ACTIP.

So, when He is asked by his followers to teach them how to pray, Jesus simply reminds them of the context for a Life that is Prayer (This is in the words of The Message):

Father, Reveal who you are.
Set the world right.
Keep us alive with three square meals.
Keep us forgiven with you, and forgiving others.
Keep us safe from ourselves and the Devil."

Jesus doesn’t say Pray for others, or Ask God to do something. He says: rest in, become One with, the Holy One; know that God’s will and yours are the same; tend to your whole being, material and spirit; stay One with God and others; keep centered in the Inner Christ in times of trail and evil. Then we act out of your own compassionate, loving, divine Being.

The story of Abraham we hear today reveals what I think is the most exciting dimension of Prayer. We all know the reputation of Sodom and Gomorrah! Wicked, wicked, wicked; rebellious against God; the rich and powerful victimizing the poor and helpless. So God decides to go and see what's going on, and God does not seem pleased. But Abraham - who seems to have assumed that God is going to destroy everyone, stands right up to him, blocks God’s way from leaving, confronts Him. “You’re the judge of the whole World”, he says; “You can’t act unjustly!” Abraham starts at 50 righteous people and works down: 40? 30? 20? 10? He is persistent, acting out of the context of his life of prayer. Finally God agrees; God won’t destroy the city if there are just 10 righteous people.

Most people think that this is a story about God. About God changing Her mind. It isn’t. It’s a story about us. It’s about our Journey into the depth of Mystery of God and the Mystery of our true Selves - which ultimately, so the mystics tell us, are the same thing. It’s about us changing our minds, our perceptions, our understanding. It’s Abraham who sees, step by step, deeper into the Mystery of God’s Justice and Compassion, deeper into the Mystery of what it means to be Human. To put it in Christian terms, what it means “to be as Christ”, to discover , as Paul says, “Christ in us, the hope of glory”. I have no doubt that Abraham would have worked God down to 1, maybe even none!. Perhaps that he only got to 10 is a sign to us that the Journey into God and Self never ends. There is always a deeper layer. Step by step, Abraham was challenging himself, opening himself to a fuller and deeper understanding and experience of God. Asking the Question: “How extravagant, how generous is God’s love and compassion for us?” This story asks us to contemplate the Mystery of both God’s and our infinite capacity for Compassion. It asks us to forge ahead on the Journey of becoming fully Human.

In the Hebrew Bible stories, God “changes”. But the hidden meaning – when we can hear it - is that we change. I have said this before and say it again: No prayer changes God or God’s “mind”. God is perfect Love, and God desires and offers us all we need to grow in truth and love - "will not God give you the Holy Spirit ...?". It is always we who must learn and change, adapt or make choices that reflect the Christ in us. When we make intercession for or petition for others, it is always the first step in taking loving action as we are able.

We have only begun to speak of the Mystery of Prayer. The conversation will continue. Let us remember these empowering words of Joseph Campbell, which I think call us to prayer: “The values and distinctions that in normal life seem important disappear with the terrifying assimilation of the self into what formerly was only otherness”. In other words, rhe intent of Prayer is to become One with God and Others and our Self. There is, in the end, no Other. No separation between you and me, others, and God.