A Fragrant Offering

I'm behind on the posts here.  My wife gave birth to our second child on 9/25 and we're delighted.  The blog will catch up in time.  :)

Sermon preached 10/2/2011, on the occasion of Mae Genevieve's baptism, and one week after Jude Robert's birth.

I’m hoping just now that I don’t become an experiment measuring the effects of sleep depravity on public speaking. Bear with me this morning. It’s been a big week. And it’s not just me, either, you, too - we Church - have had a wonderfully full week; full to overflowing:

The Quinceanera last Saturday - Jessica was beautiful - Jude Robert’s birth then on Sunday(!!), and those of you who graciously stepped up for me at just a couple of contractions’ notice, to lead our Sunday worship. (Bek and baby are well; we felt every one of your prayers.) On Thursday, a return to normalcy: a Vestry meeting. And then, on Saturday, a funeral for a man to this point unknown to our parish. We, Church, welcomed his family into our doors and joined our prayers to their own as, in the sure and certain hope of resurrection, we commended his soul to God. And, then, this morning, in just a few minutes, a baptism. Praise God! Mae Genevieve. You, Church, again, lifting her up. Promising to uphold her in her life in Christ. And then, also today, we Church begin our October conversation about financial stewardship. What we do as Church, as Christians, with our money.

It’s been a full week. On the surface, too much to do justice to any of it. Too much to be present to. But beneath the surface, a perfectly perfect week being the Church, the people of God bearing God’s fruit in this world. Bearing the fruits of the kingdom.

From our gospel this morning: Jesus says, “...the Kingdom of God will be...given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom.”

Jesus was talking to the religious leaders of Israel. Israel, the people that God had set apart to be a light for all the nations. Israel, the people to whom God sent the prophets to encourage them in their faithfulness. Israel, the people to whom in the fullness of time God sent his only Son.

And this is the unedited version of the words Jesus tells them, “The Kingdom of God, Jesus tells them, will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom.”

We could guess from this passage at the reasons that lead Jesus to say that Israel had forsaken its calling, but what we need not guess is what the calling had been, is, and will continue to be for God’s People: Bear fruit. “...the Kingdom of God will be...given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom.” That’s us. Grafted into the people called Israel. To bear fruits of the Kingdom. That’s our call.

The call to be fruitful is what allows a week of expected and unexpected events in the life of St Christopher’s - or your own life, for that matter - to be more than mere busyness, random interruptions bordering on chaos. Have you ever had a week of random interruptions, bordering on chaos, I wonder? Rather, the fruit of the kingdom is what we bear of our faith in our lives as we live them. We’re bearing fruit, good or bad, all the time. Discipleship, the way of the cross, means the disciplines, the internal order, necessary to flourish, grow good fruit, in the way of Jesus.

So in life and, as we remembered yesterday, in death we walk with one another following in Jesus’s steps, with the help of the Spirit. For all its unexpected interruptions, this past week at St Christopher’s carried the unmistakable scent, the aroma, of good fruit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Because the life of the Spirit isn’t predictable, but it does adhere to a certain shape. Which is to say that faithfulness doesn’t depend on our being in control. That’s good news. You can do it anywhere!

So I was talking with Chelsea, Asher, and Blu, who will present Mae Genevieve for baptism today. We were going over the service. I said that I would ask them - and you - if you believed in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. I explained that you would use lots of words, but that basically your answer is ‘yes.’ And I was telling them that I like to ask children if they know what that yes means for the way they will live their lives. I like to ask children because they are honest enough to say ‘no.’ They’ll say, ‘no, it’s not all that clear, you’ve still got some explaining to do,’ and they’re right.

I told Chelsea, Asher, and Blu the same thing I tell the children with the honesty to say they don’t know, and that is that, at a baptismal service, after we ask the ones about to be baptized if they believe in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we ask them another five questions. And these five questions describe the life of someone who has said ‘yes’ to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. What it looks like. These are questions that enflesh our theology. These are questions of Christian fruitfulness.

Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers?

Will you persevere in resisting evil, and whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?

Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?

Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?

Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?

These questions, with the help of the Spirit, and the Church’s profession of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit give you all of the resources necessary for fruitfulness. And fruitfulness of this kind, fruit of the kind that smells like it was picked from the tree of Jesus, is the only real job of the Church.

Now, do you remember when I said at the beginning that we would be talking some this morning about financial stewardship? We’re going to start now, (fight the urge to glaze over!) but there’s a catch - we’re going to start talking financial stewardship, but we’re not going to stop talking about bearing fruit. We’re going to keep talking as if growing generous hearts (our giving) was part and parcel of the fruit we’re called to bear. This is also to say - and I want to say this clearly - that financial giving is not an objective that has any worth for Christians apart from our faithful embodiment, the living out, of the Gospel, being fruitful.

A practical example of how fruitfulness might reframe our conversations about stewardship:
Lots of people in lots of places from lots of churches are ready to tell you (if they haven't already) that churches need new people in order to meet their financial obligations. For many, this information is simply a given. It's how the church is going to 'work'. The starting place for what we do. So church growth, which of itself might have been a good - and really exciting - thing ("Go! Tell my disciples that I'm risen from the dead!") instead becomes code for maintaining - or finding - financial solvency.

*sigh*

I've never seen this mindset work, because it all but destroys the church's ability to value the next visitor through the doors as a person beloved of God (as our baptismal vows suggest, as opposed to a pledge).

Still, some folks dismiss the beloved-of-God argument, reminding me and my ilk that the church, in the end, is a business (a statement I might want to nuance, but probably can't talk the other person out of).

*double sigh*

Even so (and this is the point that connects to the fruit), the person who insists on the church as a business in search of new blood, new money, is not off the hook yet, I think, because by her own pragmatic standard she must still answer the question: 'What if the newcomers give as generously as you give? Is that good news or bad news for the Church?' (It's an honest question only made potentially uncomfortable by the conscience of the hearer.)

We are (and I am) never not called to view my stewardship, my discipleship, my lived response to Jesus, as priority number one. It’s not about my changing them out there, but God changing me, in here. Growing the fruit of a generous heart.

So growing on the outside (the good kind that sticks) requires growing on the inside. But growing on the inside might become so fruitful that we lose our financial motivation for outward growth altogether. That is, we might become so generous, we won’t need the other people’s money. What a problem. What then? What if we wake up one day and all we're left with is the awkward and embarrassing command he left us with: "Go! Tell my disciples that I'm risen from the dead!"?

That’s fruitfulness.

One last thought: “The Kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom.” That’s us. But fruit is not the new people. Fruit is what the Spirit grows in the ones who follow Christ. Still, new people are very important, because fruit is what new people eat in order to live. You and me, like grapes from the vineyard, mixed up with Christ, made like the wine, the blood, of salvation. You and me, receiving the Body of Christ. You and me, praying to be made the Body of Christ for others. That’s pretty cool.

Here’s the take-home: In what ways are you taking seriously the call to fruitfulness, bearing Christ, in your life? In what ways are you taking playfully the call to fruitfulness in your life? He’s not asking you to control what you can’t; only to be faithful in the day to day walk with him. Fruitful living.
Kermit the frog said once, “Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.” Fruitfulness is bearing your fruit such that the fragrance is beautiful. Your aroma, like Christ’s. Not only can you do it, after a week like this past one, I’d be remiss not to tell you, “You’re doing it already.”

And so my prayer for Mae, whom we’ll baptize in a minute, is also for us: May the one who has begun this good work in you bring it to completion.

Amen.

Finding Faith in Finances: an out-loud self-examination

Lots of people in lots of places from lots of churches are ready to tell you (if they haven't already) that churches need new people in order to meet their financial obligations.  For many, this information is simply a given.  It's how the church is going to 'work'.  The starting place for what we do.  So church growth, which of itself might have been a good - and really exciting - thing ("Go! Tell my disciples that I'm risen from the dead!") instead becomes code for financial solvency. 

*sigh*

I've never seen this mindset work, because it all but destroys the church's ability to value the next visitor through the doors as a person beloved of God (as opposed to a pledge).  Still, some folks dismiss the beloved-of-God argument, reminding me and my ilk that the church, in the end, is a business (a statement I might want to nuance, but probably can't talk the other person out of). 

*sigh*

Even so (and this is my point in writing), my interlocutor is not off the hook, I think, because by her own pragmatic standard she must still answer the question: 'What if the newcomers give as generously as you give?  Is that good or bad news for the Church?'  (It's an honest question only made potentially insulting by the conscience of the hearer.)

We are (and I am) never not called to stewardship, discipleship, our lived response to Jesus, as priority number one. 

Growing on the outside (the good kind that sticks) requires growing on the inside.  But growing on the inside might become so fruitful that we lose our financial motivation for outward growth altogether.   What then?  What if we wake up one day and all we're left with is the that awkward and embarrassing command he left us with: "Go! Tell my disciples that I'm risen from the dead!"?

Forgiveness, the Future, and the Freedom of God

*Sermon on the 13th Sunday after Pentecost, 9/11/2011 at St Christopher's, Portland, TX.*

Jesus tells Peter to forgive seventy-seven times.  And if you grew up on the King James Version (God’s own translation, some folks will tell me) it’s even more, seventy-times-seven, or 490 times.  The word order in the original language is what makes the confusion.  Did Jesus say ‘seventy times and seven’ - you know, like four-and-twenty blackbirds?  Or was he testing the disciples’ knowledge of their multiplication tables?  That’s the question in the translation.  That's why the difference.  But you know what?  Something tells me it doesn’t matter.  That, either way, Jesus doesn’t expect Peter to keep track.  Do you get that sense, too?

Seventy-seven times.

Ask me to do something three times, or even seven times – like Peter suggests – and each time will feel like the first.  I’ll stop.  I'll take a step back.  I’ll think through it.  I’ll start with step one and move on to step two.  I’ll remember step one and step two after the fact.  Ask me to do something seventy-seven - or 490 times - and at some point, if I make it all the way to the end, not only will I not be able to remember each step, at some point, in a real sense, I will have stopped doing the task; I’ll have simply become it.

And so I wonder if that's what Jesus wants for Peter, to become forgiveness.  I wonder what it means to become forgiveness.  Like a cloth soaked through with holy oil, drenched with forgiveness, such that forgiveness is the fragrance others smell on me.  We’ve all known people whose perfume has a way of announcing, “I may have left the room an hour ago, but don’t dare forget I was here!”  Aunt Mildred.  Would that forgiveness would be such a scent on me!  Is that what it means to become forgiveness, I wonder?

On most days, I can’t imagine becoming forgiveness, what it would look like, but I still believe that it is theoretically possible, even for me.  I’ve simply encountered too many living cloths soaked through with holy oil to dismiss the possibility out of hand.

One such holy cloth in my life is Mark.  Mark was a paraplegic young man at the summer camp for the physically and mentally challenged where I was a rookie counselor after my junior year of college.  Mark had attended Michigan State, and though he couldn’t speak, he finished two years there.  He was a remarkable man with a soft spot for Dr. Pepper and the Chicago Cubs.  My first interactions with Mark were unbelievably awkward.  I didn’t know how to start.  I was nineteen and had never helped a grown man use the restroom or spoon fed the same man apple sauce.  My awkwardness melted quickly, however, because Mark was a holy cloth drenched in forgiveness.  His eyes spoke compassion, and his sound board emitted the absolution that his mouth couldn’t speak.  He found something in even my broken efforts to love.  Mark’s patient forgiveness of me opened a friendship more real than any I had imagined was possible on this earth.

Another holy cloth in my life is Father Tony.  I'll be honest, I don’t know Father Tony well, but once a year, every year, he’s there, a retired clergyman hunched over and reading the lessons as we travel through the church of the Holy Family at a midweek Eucharist on our way to the beach.  And he reads the Scriptures so slowly and tenderly it’s like he’s speaking them back to God as a love song.  As if he’s singing a beautful descant in harmony with the written words and the descant says, “Look!  Look!  My forgiveness and the whole love of God are here in these words and if it’s all the same to you I’m going to linger in these words and stay awhile.”

I wonder what it means to become forgiveness.

Ten years now after the first 9/11.  And I am still wondering what it means to become forgiveness.

Whatever it means to become forgiveness, I believe that it at least means being dipped in the holy oil of this morning’s gospel.

I love and hate this morning’s gospel.  Like a mirror that magnifies your image too much and the zits and warts show up.  I always catch myself, for example, at the words: “and seizing him by the throat, he said, ‘Pay what you owe.’”  Seizing him by the throat.  I know that emotion.  I’ve felt it rush through my neck like hot blood.  Seizing him by the throat.  The very opposite of forgiveness.  (If you don’t know forgiveness, there’s still a good chance you can pick out its opposite.)  The erosion of the soul.  The first hint that I have forgotten the Good News that changes everything.

This morning’s gospel reminds me that my judgment of you leaves me forgetting that, once, a very long time ago, he died for me, too.  Because I also had a very large debt.  Much larger than the one you owe me.  And it’s not that the line of credit has been perpetually extended.  He didn't raise my debt ceiling.  It is not that I’ve refinanced divine favor at a lower, more advantageous, rate of interest.  That’s not Good News; that’s a noose.  No, the Good News is that the debt itself has been forgiven.  Every last red cent.  It’s gone.  I’m free.

Once upon a time, the promise of this freedom was wasted on me, because I had always assumed I was already free.  But then I learned that there’s a real difference between the freedom of an un-captured man on the run and the freedom which tells a man he doesn't have to run anymore.  My freedom had been a kind of running away, a hiding.  But he tells me I’m free, no more running.  “You’re free.  Stop your panting.”  It is a wonderful thing to be that kind of free.

So I come up for air, dripping with oil after being dipped in this gospel.  And maybe you owe me a debt.  Whatever you owe me, I no longer need it, because the debt for which I was pinching my pennies, the debt for which I was saving, is gone.  I am free.

I have noticed some things that people drenched in forgiveness seem to have in common: for starters, they aren’t afraid to fail.  Good Lord, can you imagine what a life delivered from the fear of failure might feel like?  A friend on my twitter feed posted this week: “Today’s challenge: fail early and often!”  That's a friend of forgiveness.

Another thing I’ve noticed about people drenched in forgiveness: they take time to love.  They seldom seem rushed.  Like the old priest and his love song.  They talk with you as if you are worth the time it takes to visit.  They don’t give many answers, but they take time and listen with a purpose.  They tell you when they don’t understand.  Because more than appearing to hear you, they really want to hear you.

A last thing that I’ve noticed about people drenched in forgiveness: they laugh a lot.  At themselves.  With others.  It doesn’t matter.  Not the cynic’s laugh you learn from TV, but the laugh of one whose joy is not dependent on her standing.  The joy that receives the present moment and the universe, the whole cosmos, as if it were a gift from God himself to share.  Because they understand that it is.

Do you know what I enjoy most about people drenched in forgiveness?  They open the future.  They walk in a future wide enough for both of us.  That can imagine us together.  Forgiveness is what makes a Sunday marking the 10 year anniversary of 9/11 wide enough to also hold a barbecue luncheon at a small Texas church and the vision we have gathered to share.  Forgiveness makes it possible to celebrate the future without betraying the pain of the past.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu once wrote a book called, “No Future without Forgiveness.”  We have received forgiveness - we receive it as often as we gather and drink the cup of this table - and so the future is open to us.  Standing on the edge of that future this morning, can I make a request?  Let’s make our way boldly, leaning full-weight on the forgiveness of Jesus.  Let’s not hold back.  Let's need him all the way.  Let’s make our way joyfully, remembering the true freedom made open to us.  Let'ss make the way generously – giving of the forgiveness that has been given to us.  Freely you have received, says St Paul, freely give.  Forgiving into a future wide enough to share, because God is Christ Jesus is sharing his future with us.

Jesus tells Peter to forgive seventy-seven times - or seventy times seven if you're old school and prefer the King James.  The word order in the original language is what makes the confusion.  But you know what?  Something tells me he doesn’t expect Peter to keep track. 

Amen.

Reclaiming the Mystery

**From the Fall 2011 Newsletter at St Christopher's.**

___________________________________________________________

“Stay loose, learn to watch snails, plant impossible gardens, make friends with freedom and uncertainty, look forward to dreams.”

Motivational sign on a children’s classroom wall

I have the highest admiration for teachers.  Teachers talk a lot about summer breaks and how much they look forward to times of escape from the classroom, but the twinkle in their eyes this time of year betrays how much they also look forward to children and stories and class pets and the lessons that together they’ll learn with their students over these next nine or so months.  It’s that twinkle in their eyes this time of year that I admire. 

To commit oneself to another’s understanding, to display the kind of patience that leaves a student believing she is loved, these are remarkable qualities.  I often wonder what it is that inspires certain individuals to offer themselves in this way. 

Recently, I read a reflection from a career educator who was grousing about standardized testing and the government jargon that comes with it: language like “meta-concepts” and “the implementation of outcome-based instruction,” for example.  The teacher observed that, in all of the official standardized instructions he had read, “I never come on words such as ‘delight’ or ‘joy’ or ‘curiosity’ or, for that matter, ‘kindness,’ ‘empathy’, ‘compassion for another child.’  Nothing, in short, that would probably come first for almost any teacher working with young children.” 

What inspires some people to become teachers?  Not government jargon.  No, the words that make teachers are the words of children. 

I believe that the same dynamic is true in the Church.  That is, necessary words like “church growth” and “building committee” and “capital campaign” sometimes jostle over and against the childlike words of faith you knew when God first found you.  I still marvel at the clarity and wonder with which Annie simply says, “mercy.”  I wonder: what are the words that you knew when God first found you?

Here are mine:  Christ.  Light.  Beauty.  Love.  Mystery.   

I want to encourage anybody with a desire to rediscover your first words of faith with the news that your leadership at St. Christopher’s is committed to that journey. 

This fall, no fewer than four new discipleship groups are gathering at church and in homes to share meals, stories, and life with one other along the pilgrim walk of faith.  Others are working on your behalf to feed the poor, tutor children, lead our worship.  A vibrant core of leaders is committed to opening and sharing the opportunity to grow closer to Jesus and become more like him. 

As your Rector, and working alongside these leaders, it is my strong conviction that the present opportunity before our parish is Jesus and the unending life that he brings, and that if we take hold of this opportunity with both hands, the rest of what matters will come.

So Rally Day is around the corner – September 11! – and I really hope you’ll come, but here’s a fair-warning disclaimer: the call that you’ll find there is not cutting-edge.  The gimmicks have all been shelved.  The call is ancient; the faith is as true as the words of children; and it is the Savior who calls you to reclaim the words that first met you on that slightly strange day you first looked up and all at once knew that God loved you.

Wonderful mystery: he’s calling you still. 

    Faithfully yours in Christ,
    Father Jonathan+

Friendship, Confrontation, and the Kingdom of God

Sermon from 9.4.11, St Christopher's by the Sea

If I asked you to summarize the gospel we heard just now with just one word, I wonder if that word would be “friendship.” Somehow, I doubt it.

Matthew’s gospel this morning is about confrontation. Truth-telling. The one-on-one airing of grievances. Maybe most generously, it’s about ‘speaking the truth in love.’ And I suppose how you feel about speaking the truth in love depends on which word you accent the loudest. Truth or love. But then, a part of us wonders: is it always, or even rightly, a tradeoff?

Holy counsel for how to approach someone you believe has sinned against you. What to do next. Not asking forgiveness this time, but asking to be asked for forgiveness. Because you have been hurt.

And a part of us gets queasy at the thought of confrontation like this. It’s not easy to admit you’ve been hurt. It takes courage to name hurt to the very same person who, knowingly or unknowingly, inflicted it. Confrontation like this makes most of us queasy, and the rare people who enjoy confrontation like this are by and large the reasons that the rest of us don’t like confrontation like this. Because some of us feast on being wronged and banging truth on another’s head like a hammer. And others of us avoid conflict at any cost in order to avoid our being feasted on. And on our bad days we call this mix of tolerance and evasion “love.”

You know, on second thought, maybe we should just skip this one. Turn the page and move on. You didn't ask for this. Come back next week. I’m sure there’s a happier gospel coming.

(That’s a joke. It’s not how we roll, and besides, I think there’s more here than just that.)

Jesus said, "If another members of the church sins against you..."

No question, this passage is about how to approach someone you believe has sinned against you, has wronged you. Step by step. But this passage is not about getting even. Jesus makes clear from the get-go that the goal of these steps is to “regain the one”, to be reconciled, to let love move. So not only is the process not about getting even, the process is not even really mostly about you or me. It’s least of all about standing up for yourself and your rights. No, this passage is about how you know what a real friend is, and how you can be a holy friend worth having.

How can I be a holy friend worth having?

If I asked you to summarize this gospel with only one word, I wonder if that word would be “friendship.” That’s the case I believe these scriptures are making.

Because confronting is something we only do for those we really love.
Because confronting is one way of saying: “I refuse to give up on you.”

Not long after the events of 9/11, the theologian Stanley Hauerwas found himself on a panel at the University of Virginia discussing America’s response to the murderous events of that day. He closed with a prayer, asking God for the grace to make us people capable of breaking the chain of violence. To break the chain of violence, he said, would require that we remember that God is God and we are not. He then prayed that we would be given instead to small gestures of beauty and tenderness. Stanley was rejecting war as a Christian response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11.

A fellow theologian and good friend, Robert Wilkens, was incensed at the perspective presented in Stanley’s talk. Stanley tells the story: “I did not want to lose Robert as a friend, but our differences were deep. Robert wrote soon after the event, asking me if I disdained all “natural loyalties.” He argued that our lives are interwoven with the lives of others whom we rightly use force to protect. We are a better people, he said, because of the sacrifices made in World War II. He was angry that I failed to acknowledge the ways in which our relationships with others bind us to protect them. He was angry that I seemed to be forsaking all forms of patriotism. That Robert wrote to challenge me I regard as a profound act of friendship.”

I share that exchange in part because of our nearness to the tenth anniversary of 9/11, but mostly because of that last sentence: "That Robert wrote to challenge me I regard as a profound act of friendship.”

Neither of them changed the other’s mind, by the way.

But later, Stanley writes, “Robert and I remain friends.” The unity that transcends their differences, they both realize, is in their love for Christ and his church.

“If the member listens to you, you have regained that one.”

Stanley Hauerwas reflects of another time in which he was confronted by a friend. (Stanley has a knack for finding confrontation, I suppose.) He says, “That he came to me directly to call me to task indicated that he thought it still possible I was capable of recognizing the truth.”

I laughed when I saw that one. Do we sometimes hide the truth from each other because we think the other person isn’t smart enough to understand? That is, is our silence a kind of put-down?

Because confronting is something we only do for those we really love.
Because confronting is one way of saying to another person: “I refuse to give up on you.”

It’s not that we’ll talk them out of it. It’s not even that we’re always in the right. It’s just that talking about someone - no matter how many times we say, “Bless his heart” - is not as blessed as the occasion we pull him aside or put our arm around her and say the three words that open up everything: “Can we talk?”

Can we talk?

Can we talk? I don’t know if you know this, but it really hurt me when you did that. Can we talk? It grieves me to see you treat yourself that way. Can we talk? I believe God has more in mind for you than that. Can we talk? You may think that your behavior is not a big deal, but I believe you might be harming your soul. Can we talk?

Because, if your concern that a sister or brother is on the wrong path does not bring you to your sister or brother, then your concern is only in your head. It’s not physical. It’s like love without arms or faith without works. More often than not, it’s worse than dead, it’s gossip.

We might paraphrase Ezekiel along the lines of today’s conversation this way: the wherewithal to see sin without the courage to name it to the person involved is its own kind of sin. It is evil.

A preacher's disclaimer: I’m not speaking just now with a particular person in mind. Except maybe myself. Truly. But if you’re hearing a voice that feels like it’s speaking to you, don’t blow it off. It’s a true voice: the Spirit of God in conversation with your conscience. The Spirit alive in your conscience, your very soul. Listen to it.

How many times have we heard or said something to the effect of: “I could never say that to her face; I love her too much.” But indeed, if you did love her, you could not but say that to her face. Or would you hide the truth, salvation, from the one you claim to love?

Learning to be a holy friend worth having, in whom Christ is present, has everything to do with these words.

One last thought on that note - a thought that makes this whole business so much more than mere moralism:

As he dies for us on the cross, Christ himself confronts the sinful powers of the world; it is, in a sense, the ultimate confrontation. Christ is killed because Jesus’s refusal to join the madness of the world convicts the world, and us, of madness. Because he is who he is, we see ourselves as we are. We don’t like it. But also, in that same moment, in that same breath, the tenderest instruction at the place of confrontation: for there, on the cross, he whispers, “Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they are doing.”

“Greater love has no one than this, than that he lay down his life for his friends,” Jesus says. On difficult days, when you are unsure of what it means to call Jesus your friend, remember that it surely means at least this much: that he had the courage to confront us on the cross with the unyielding love of God.

Such a friend we have in Jesus.
Thanks be to God.

Amen.

Connecting Places: the Church Visible

The Church is people. That's a reality we can't remind ourselves of too much, I think. Part of how we live into that at St. C's is in getting outside of ourselves on a regular basis. Each week, I'll post a few out-of-the-building meet ups. I'd love you to join us at any of these. Or invite us to where you are! We travel well.

September 6
9:00-11:30 a.m. Food Pantry Distribution Day at St C's

September 7
10:00 a.m. at Texas A&M Corpus Christi

September 8
2:00 p.m. Bell/Whittington Public Library

September 12
10:00 a.m. Starbucks

September 14
6:30 p.m. ALPHA at Dairy Queen

a few jarred frogs (sermon for Pentecost 11)

It’s good to be home. Really good to be home.

I know, I know...I started last week’s sermon that way, too. But then it occurred to me that some of you weren’t here last week, and maybe you’re thinking I’m just back from vacation and that I look especially good this week, especially rested from my two weeks ago two weeks vacation, and far be it from me to turn down a well-intentioned compliment. And besides, it’s still true:

It is good to be home. You’re looking good, too. Not quite so dry as last week. And that’s a good thing.

I want to tell you about a harrowing social experiment: a two-year old’s birthday party. This past Friday morning, Rebekah and Annie and I celebrated Annie’s birthday with an invitation-only front yard, Walmart-special, blue plastic pool, swim and picnic party. It was fantastic. We like to party, to celebrate one other, but Rebekah and I are old-school in this respect: the rule is one invitation per year being celebrated. So two friends this year: Lilly and Mateo.

To some parents (but mostly to people who haven’t yet become parents) this rule sounds severe: only two friends?? Isn’t that a lame party? But we didn’t make the rule up, we only decided that the books we read and the parents we talked to were on to something: namely, that the one-invitation-per-year-being-celebrated guideline has an uncanny ability to track with children’s natural social development.

After all, Annie and Lilly and Mateo sat in the same pool, but they didn’t really play with each other, so much as they played alongside one another. They aren’t there yet. Parallel play, because concepts that we take for granted like sharing and turn-taking and kindness, much less higher forms of social etiquette, well, they’re still working on those.

It’s not that the children can’t - to borrow Paul’s phrase from Romans - live peaceably with one another. It’s just that they’re on some of the more modest, beginning steps of what that peace is, what it looks like, and where it might one day lead them. One day, I can imagine Annie and Lilly and Mateo serving their communities as agents for peace, champions of love, leaders who remind people that the world has been reconciled by Christ and that the victory is God’s; that is, one day, I hope the party gets bigger. But it’s important to remember, I think, that the small steps are more connected to those latter steps than sometimes we give them credit for. Sometimes you can’t get there if you don’t start here. Sometimes it’s enough just to get in the pool with two friends.

I share this because I think that sometimes the Scriptures we read here on Sunday can be so lofty in their vision and so demanding of their hearers that instead of imagining the more modest, beginning steps, we become either easily discouraged or entirely dismissive of the call that has been placed before us.

That would be a mistake.

So, for example, Peter tells Jesus that he doesn’t want him to die, because Peter understands that if Jesus is called to die, Peter might also be called to die, and Peter’s not ready for that. We hear that, and it’s not just that we are like Peter and don’t want to die for our faith; no, more than that, we can’t imagine what that would possibly mean. The message, on the surface, simply doesn’t have any practical overlap with the lives that we live as lower to upper middle class Americans. Now maybe we shouldn’t give up on our being able to imagine what it would mean to give our lives for our faith, but the fact that we can’t imagine it now is a bit of a barrier to even putting our toe in the water.

You see the problem: the higher the calling, the less it seems to apply to us. But we need a high calling. What’s more, in Christ Jesus, we have received a high calling.

But where would I start?

So, just for fun, let’s pull out the reading from Romans, because it’s a very high calling we find there. Lots of short, imperative sentences. Do this and do that. The good news is that, as Paul goes, the sentences are easy to understand. The bad news is that, the sentences are easy to understand, and they’re straight to the point with difficult things. Most of us will have trouble figuring out how to start.

Some examples: “Let love be genuine; hold fast to the good; love one another; be ardent in spirit; serve the Lord.”

“Rejoice in hope; be patient in suffering; keep praying.”

“Give what you have to the saints and welcome the strangers.” (That’s stewardship right there; he’s talking money.)

“Bless those who persecute you; rejoice with the rejoicing and weep with the weeping; hang out with the poor folks” (paraphrase)

“Don’t have a big head.” “Feed your enemies.” “Don’t repay evil with evil, but take thought of what is noble in the sight of all.” And then the kicker, “so far as it depends on you, live peaceable with all.”

Oy.

Now, a part of us loves these words. They ring true to our souls. But it’s such a very, very high calling. Maybe for someone else.

So here’s what I did. Do you remember how in science class the teacher would announce that the coming Friday would not be a lecture, but a lab instead? Your chance to dissect a frog or fight with your lab partner over the chance to jab at a rat with a dull and very used knife? Well, rather than try to explain Paul’s sentences that really don’t seem to need much explaining, I found some jarred frogs in some of the writings of the Christian tradition to share with you this morning. They don’t talk about Romans 12; they embody it. They won’t quote Paul, but they will ask you to remember him. They are examples of beginning steps - what the pursuit of Christian holiness might look like from a blue plastic pool at a front yard party.

Call them attempts at application.

The first frog comes from the book called “Common Prayer for Ordinary Radicals,” and it’s called Offering a Sacrifice of Praise:

'There is an old saying many Christian use: “Offer the Lord a sacrifice of praise,” referring to Hebrews 13:15. In many circles this notion of a “sacrifice of praise” almost becomes a cliche. (Perhaps because worship does not often come at much cost, especially compared with the sacrifices of saints who’ve gone before us.) But when we worship with folks from various traditions, there are times when we may hear a prayer that uses language we might not naturally use or sing a song that isn’t really our style. That is part of what it means to be a member of a community as diverse as the church is. And perhaps that also helps shed some light on why it might require some sacrifice for us to give up ourselves.

'When a song isn’t working for you, consider praising God, because that probably means it is working for someone else who is very different from you. Offer your worship as a sacrifice rather than requiring others to sacrifice for your pleasure or contentment. There is something to the notion of becoming one as God is one; it doesn’t mean that we are the same; it just means that we united by one Spirit. After all, we can become one only if there are many of us to begin with. Liturgy puts a brake on narcissism. Certainly, there is something beautiful about contemporary worship, where we can take old things and add a little spice to them, like singing hymns to rock tunes or reciting creeds as spoken word rhymes. But liturgy protects us from simply making worship into a self-pleasing act. So if a song or prayer doesn’t quite work for you, be thankful that it is probably really resonating with someone who is different from you, and offer a sacrifice of praise.'

What do you think? It kind of smells of chloroform. Maybe we should put it back in the jar. An application of love that we already practice, by virtue of Sunday worship. With room for you and me to embrace it more deeply. Not that it’s too hard, only that it’s so close. So simple. So true.

One toe in the water.

Are you game for another jarred frog?

From the same book, a few smelly embodiments of the life we pray God has given us; that is, some things we might try:

1. Join a Bible study led by someone with less formal education than yourself.
2. Visit a worship service in which you will be a minority. Invite someone to
a meal after the service.
3. Attempt to repair something that is broken. Appreciate the people who
repair things for you on a regular basis.
4. Go to a city council meeting. Pray. Speak as the Spirit leads.
5. Keep the Sabbath holy. Rest one day a week this year - don’t answer the
phone or the door, and don’t use the internet. Do something that brings you
life that day.

Nothing fancy. The calling is high, but it’s not fancy. It’s ordinary days – your ordinary days - touched by an extraordinary Savior.

Some church traditions imagine the sanctuary, this space, and this moment, the Eucharist, as the doorway, the gateway to heaven. The place where heaven kisses earth. The calling is high, but it’s not out of reach because God in Christ Jesus has reached down to us.

For you and for me, the high calling starts here in this encounter with Jesus, and the love of the high calling kind continues out from this place with the next, earthy, dirty, God-loved person you see, the next one you come across. And continues with the one after that. And the one after that. And the one after that. And the one after that. Let love be genuine.

A high calling, for sure, but not out of reach. Difficult, but not complicated. Never more complicated than how love finds us: Christ alive to us in the simplicity of water, oil, and bread and wine.

Love one another, and when it feels hard, don’t be discouraged. When it feels lofty, don’t be dismissive; don’t blow this off. Seek Christ in your day to day encounters. The very, very small things. It’s important to remember that the small steps are more connected to those latter steps than sometimes we give them credit for. Because sometimes you can’t there if you don’t start here. And sometimes it’s enough just to get in the pool with two friends.

Let love be genuine. Seek Christ, and find him. Let the Great Pool, even the waters of your baptism, relieve your trepidation, awaken and encourage your soul; may they always sustain you, and from time to time re-start you in this very great adventure called the Kingdom of God.

Amen.