Knitting needles and garden tools...

A sermon preached at St James Episcopal Church, St James, NY

(Because of the presence of children in the congregation, some of whom are not aware of the deaths at Sandy Hook Elementary, and others who are very upset, I have avoided explicit mention of them)

When I was a child,

one of the highlights of the lead up to Christmas

was opening the doors of my Advent calendar, one by one.

The anticipation grew daily

until that final day, when I could open the double doors

and see the picture

of the baby in the manger.

It’s not a whole lot different now.  I might have switched from a cardboard Advent calendar

to the Jacquie Lawson one on my computer that my mother sent me

but still I count down the days.

The tree is up,

and it’s almost time

to start decorating the church.

Christmas

is almost here.

But this Advent, this season of anticipation,

has been marred for many of us

by the events in Newtown

just over a week ago.

This is supposed to be a season of joy;

instead, it has become a season of sorrow.

We don’t know what to say;

we feel slightly guilty

as we continue with our holiday preparations.

It feels like the spirit of the season

has somehow been broken.

Which is why

when I turned to our New Testament reading today

it felt kind of right.

At first glance, we wonder,

what is it doing here?

Here, the fourth Sunday of Advent,

when with the story of Mary visiting Elizabeth, and her song, the Magnificat,

we are launched into the joyful expectancy that will come to fruition tomorrow night,

why are we reading 

about sin and sacrifice and the will of God?

It feels more like Lent.

But Lent

is where many of us have found ourselves, this last week,

facing the reality of sin and death,

and longing for the coming of a Messiah who will bring light and life.

And it is that experience of the power of sin and evil among us

that the writer of the letter to the Hebrews

is naming,

that experience

and the desire to do something about it.

Our reading this morning

was part of a much longer argument

about the nature of law and sin

and sacrifice.

And of course it comes from a time and culture

when those things defined how religion

and life in general

was practiced.

Jewish belief followed a system of ritual law:

obey them

and you were right with God;

disobey them

and you were in trouble.

The laws weren’t so much about safety

or rights, or limits,

as about defining your actions

so that you would know how to live,

so that you would know how to live a life of

purity, integrity, honesty, reverence.

The laws laid out what an ideal life looked like.

But because pretty much no one could obey them all,

there was a system to ensure forgiveness,

a system of sacrifice.

Bulls, sheep, goats, doves, pigeons,

offered

so that transgressions of the law

might be forgiven.

And the idea was

that after the sacrifice,

you began again with a clean record,

and ideally

next time round

got it right.

But, says the letter to the Hebrews, it didn’t work.

Year after year

the sacrifices were made

and year after year

people returned to their old habits of sin.

So what was the point?

When I was in Israel in September

we went camel riding.

I wanted a photo of myself on the camel.  But unfortunately,

I was riding, and so was everyone else,

and it was too difficult to pass over my camera.

So what I did, was take a photo of my shadow.

You can clearly see the camel, and can kind of tell it’s me,

if you know the type of hat I’m wearing.

But that’s about all.

The system of law and sacrifice in the Old Testament

is, says, Hebrews, like a shadow,

a shadow of what is to come.  You can kind of see

what God intended,

but only a vague outline.

The reality

will be so much clearer, so much more beautiful, so much more full of life. 

The system of law and sacrifice

is a shadow of what will come

when Christ, who was the one sacrifice for all time, comes to reign in all his glory

and evil is destroyed

and all things are brought into the new creation

where everything

is good.

But now we live somewhere in between.

To continue the metaphor,

if the old system of law and sacrifice

is a shadow,

and the coming of Christ in glory at the end of time

is the reality,

what we have

is a photograph.

We can see what it will be like,

but it’s only two dimensional.

We don’t get

the full three dimensional

reality.

So here we are, living in the in between times.

we know that Christ died for us,

we know that his sacrifice is one

that brings us forgiveness,

one that is effective for all time.

Jesus has come

“to mend what was broken, 

to rebuild what had been destroyed, 

to bury the hatchet, 

to recover what was lost, 

and to make peace between God and us.”

Christ has entered humanity 

and given us new access to the mercy, grace, steadfastness, faithfulness and love of God.

And in Christ, God has inaugurated a new covenant

one written on our hearts

that would give us

the knowledge and desire

to do the will of God.

But 

the reality is 

that we still have

free will.

We still get to choose

what we do,

whether to do the will of God,

whether to live our lives as echoes of God’s mercy, grace, steadfastness, faithfulness and love.

To do the will of God

with all the strength that God’s Spirit provides.

Or to do otherwise.

And that’s where sin and evil

have their insidious tentacles in our lives.

We know what is right.

But we don’t always do it.

And that’s hard to admit.

What happened in Newtown last week

was not an isolated event.

The horror of it was extreme,

but it’s just one of many similar events

that happen each year in our country.

Violence is systemic in our culture

and in our world

and we are part of it.

So how do we respond, as Christians

who particularly at this time of year

proclaim our faith

in the Prince of Peace?

I think

that we have to fight against violence

in any

and every form.

And that includes

dealing with the problem of gun violence.

It you go back to the stories of the Old Testament,

the stories that cemented the identity of the people of God in ancient Israel,

they were stories of war.

The books of Joshua and judges, 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Chronicles

are littered with accounts of battles.

The people of God

were a warrior people

who took their promised land by force

and defended it 

with military might.

But over time, things changed.

They were conquered by foreign powers.

Some were taken into exile.

Some returned.

And Isaiah, perhaps the greatest prophet, 

shared a new vision with them.

A vision that was not simply a return to what they had in the past,

but something entirely new:

The word that Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.
In days to come
   the mountain of the Lord’s house
shall be established as the highest of the mountains,
   and shall be raised above the hills;
all the nations shall stream to it.
Many peoples shall come and say,
‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
   to the house of the God of Jacob;
that he may teach us his ways
   and that we may walk in his paths.’
For out of Zion shall go forth instruction,
   and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
He shall judge between the nations,
   and shall arbitrate for many peoples;
they shall beat their swords into plowshares,
   and their spears into pruning-hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
   neither shall they learn war any more. 

         O house of Jacob,
            come, let us walk
            in the light of the Lord! 

God promised a new covenant,

and with it

the vision 

of a new reign of peace.

That new covenant

was inaugurated

in Christ.

That’s the whole point of our reading from Hebrews.

We live in a new 

and different world,

and that means

living differently.

We, as Americans, live in a culture 

that is in some ways

not a whole lot different

from that of ancient Israel.

Our nation has, in the past,

used military might and force

to establish and protect itself.

It is part of our identity.

But God challenges us.

God challenges us

with the coming of the Prince of Peace

to let go of that violent past,

to allow our identity

to be reshaped 

into something that echoes

the mercy, grace, steadfastness, faithfulness and love of God.

To update the metaphor of Isaiah,

to turn our semi-automatics into knitting needles,

our guns into gardening tools.

You may think this sermon was too political,

that I’ve gone from preaching to meddling.

But if our faith has any validity

it has to shape how we actually live, in tangible ways.

This is where the rubber hits the road.

We follow the Prince of Peace.

And if our words proclaimed in baptism and reaffirmed in confirmation

are not empty,

if when we say “I turn to Christ”, and 

“I renounce evil”

we really mean it

then we have to act, we have to act

regardless of the cost.

As we move into the celebration of Christmas

as the angels sing, “Peace on earth,”

may the Christ Child, the Prince of Peace, be born in us 

and through us, in our world,

today.

Cliff

Recently we’ve heard a great deal in the press about the prospective “fiscal cliff,” the automatic spending cuts and tax increases that will go into effect in the new year if Congress cannot reach agreement on a budgetary plan.  As far as I can tell, it’s less of a cliff than a slope, but the term “cliff” is much more effective in arousing anxiety and creating pressure for resolution.  Cliffs are dangerous places, whether you’re at the top, perched on an overhang looking down at the view, or standing at the bottom, wary of falling stones.

In September, I spent two weeks in Israel and Jordan, exploring the theme of desert wilderness.  Cliffs were in abundance: from the overlook at Mitzpe Ramon to the rock faces of Petra, from the valleys of the Judean desert to the caves that protected the Dead Sea Scrolls, from the monastery perched high above Jericho to the abrupt drop from Temple Mount into the Kidron Valley.  

So it’s not surprising that cliffs - and other rocky places -  appear frequently in Scripture. Jesus’ opponents wanted to throw him off a cliff (Luke 4:29), but he walked safely away; the devil temped him to throw himself from the pinnacle of the temple (Luke 4:9), but he declined.  That time, he quoted from Psalm 91:11-12: 

For [the Lord] will command his angels concerning you
  to guard you in all your ways.
On their hands they will bear you up,
   so that you will not dash your foot against a stone. 

Cliffs provided places of safety, from the caves of En-gedi that sheltered David (1 Samuel 24) and where Elijah stood to hear God not in the wind, earthquake or fire, but in the sound of sheer silence (1 Kings 19:4-14), to the cleft from which Moses was permitted to see the glory of God (Exodus 34:1-4).

Fortresses were built using the natural defenses of the landscape; it is no wonder then,

that the Psalms constantly call on GOd as a rocky fortress, a place of safety.

The Lord is my rock, my fortress, and my deliverer,
   my God, my rock in whom I take refuge,
   my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my 

   stronghold (Psalm 18:2).

You are indeed my rock and my fortress;
   for your name’s sake lead me and guide me 

   (Psalm 31:3).

O my strength, I will sing praises to you,
   for you, O God, are my fortress,
   the God who shows me steadfast love (Psalm 59:17).

Be to me a rock of refuge,
   a strong fortress, to save me,
   for you are my rock and my fortress (Psalm 71:3).

Yes, cliffs are dangerous places, but in our tradition they are also places where God cares for us, providing safety, protection, and sometimes even a glimpse of the Holy Presence. And whether there’s a fiscal cliff or a slippery slope, or perhaps, we hope, an agreement that gives us a fiscal plain, we need not succumb to fear.  Wherever we are, God will be with us.

Looking for God's Image

Five year olds have a distinctive view of the world.  “What is the best thing to see at the museum?” I asked.  “The mummy animals,” my nephew told me.  “They have cats, and birds, and a baboon. And a big sphinx, and it has wings and a lion’s body and a face.”

I’d never thought much about animal mummies.  But when I found the case - complete with cats, a falcon, an ibis, two crocodiles and the baboon - I found myself wondering why anyone would bother mummifying animals.  The information panel said that many animals were associated with gods, regarded as sacred, and people would present them as offerings; some animals were even thought to be the embodiment of the gods themselves, and so were preserved and honored.

It seems to be part of human nature to want to know what God looks like.  When you visit a museum, you find culture after culture that has striven to embody their gods in wood and bronze and stone - until you come to the section that displays artifacts from the people of Israel.  There the representations stop.  Because on Mount Sinai, when God gave Moses the Ten Commandments, God gave one commandment that would set the Jews apart from everyone around them: “You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them.” (Exodus 20:4-5a)

And that becomes the story of the people of God throughout the Old Testament, the struggle to know and worship a God who cannot be seen.

But all that changes when Christ is born. “Emmanuel, God with us,” the angel tells Joseph that this child will be.  God is incarnate.  God can be seen, and touched, and heard, and yes, even smelled! Jesus travels the length and breadth of the land, bringing the God into the everyday details of life.

But then comes the cross.  Jesus Christ is killed.  Is God dead?

No, is the resounding answer.  No, he is alive, risen by the power of God!  But he can no longer live among them in the same way that he has done.  Instead, he breathes his spirit into his disciples, and invites them to continue his work. And from then on, the followers of Jesus have been filled with his spirit, the Holy Spirit, to bear Christ to the world. 

The second letter to the Corinthians describes it best: 

For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing; to the one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. We are...persons sent from God and standing in his presence...You are a letter of Christ, prepared by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. (2.15-17; 3:3)

We are the heirs of the disciples of Jesus.  We have been given the Spirit, and have become bearers of Christ: God is written on us, so that anyone looking at us, will see God.  And that means, that as Christians, when we speak and when we act, we do so as God’s presence on earth.

God could have done otherwise. If God is all-powerful, then there were any number of means at God’s disposal to work in the world. But God chooses - God chooses - us as the instruments of the divine mission. God chooses to act first and foremost through us, the bearers of Christ. We are the incarnation of God’s mission.

And what is that mission? If we return to 2 Corinthians, this time chapter 5, the mission of God is described as reconciliation: reconciliation between God and humankind, and between every human being.  It’s all about relationships.  God invites us to be part of helping people to be reconciled with one another, and to be reconciled with God.

Reconciliation is about healing relationships.  But it’s about more than that.  The root of the word in Latin is to make good.  Reconciliation is about making good our relationships.  But it is more than that.  It’s is about making things good, restoring all of creation - us included - to what God originally this world to be.  It’s a new Eden, a place where evil is banished and all things work together in harmony, where there is justice and peace.  

Jesus himself described this ministry of reconciliation as he set out on his public ministry, quoting the prophet Isaiah, 

‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
   because he has anointed me
     to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
   and recovery of sight to the blind,
     to let the oppressed go free,
     to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’  (Luke 4:18-19)

So every time

we work for justice,

we are God at work in the world.

Every time we work for peace

we are God at work in the world.

Every time we proclaim the good news of God in Christ

we are God at work in the world.

And when people are searching for a tangible God, they find us.  Not a mummy, or an idol, or even a winged sphinx.  Christ is seen in us, as we do God’s mission in the world.

Stones

Olive trees. 

I had expected drab leaves, 

green coated with dust,

but smooth golden wood

and fruit running with rich-pressed oil.

Underneath sand,

dust, scrubby grass.

But not rocks.

Not rocks, sharp edged limestone, some ground to gravel

but more often chunks

the size of a hand, the rubble

that salts the ground

and emerges

in misshapen outcrops.

To plant crops, you not only have to plow; you have to carry away the rocks, most of them,

lest they stifle the tender new growth.

Remember the parable of the seed?  Sowed on rocky ground

it wilts

and dies.

Olive trees

don’t need the ground cleared.

Just a small patch dug, space enough for their roots

which will tangle their way

through the rocky soil,

their twisted trunks

echoing

the shape underground.

So when Jesus knelt

at the garden of Gethsemane

it was, as likely as not,

not a smooth carpet of green,

a living kneeler,

but rocks,

the only relief

an overlay of discarded leaves and sticks.

It hurt.

Like the wilderness where he began his ministry.

Though there the rocks

defied scale,

traversing the space

from the depths of the earth

to the sky.

And always the temptation, always

to seek an easier, a more domesticated, more controlled

way.

Turn these stones into bread,

take this cup away.

But it was his body, broken, on stone and wood and iron,

that became the bread

and his lifeblood

the cup.

Given for you.

Hezekiah’s tunnel

It is dark. There is no light here.  Not in front, not behind, not above, not below.

Reaching out

you touch

rough hewn stone, sometimes barely wider

than your shoulder.

And above; sometimes you have to bend

to pass through.

Even a flashlight

does little to dispel the darkness.

It is entire,

enclosing you

on every

side.

Your eyes are irrelevant.

Time stops.

But below, there is water.

Not-quite-knee-deep, filling the passage.

Cool.

Flowing.

Alive.

And when you pause

you hear a sound.

Splash.

Someone

is ahead of you.

Lord, you have searched me out and known me;you know my sitting down and my rising up; you discern my thoughts from afar. You trace my journeys and my resting-places and are acquainted with all my ways. Indeed, there is not a word on my lips, but you, O Lord, know it altogether. You press upon me behind and beforeand lay your hand upon me. Psalm 139:1-4

Christianity is something we practice

Recently, I took my first ballet class.  Ever.  I wasn’t one of those little girls dressed in tutus and pink tights who headed off to dance classes each week; I was more interested in reading and music.  But ever since I was given a picture book called “The Little Ballerina,” I harbored a deep down desire to do ballet.  And so finally, at the age of 45, I decided to give it a try, and now each Tuesday evening, I put on my ballet shoes and head into a studio to try to train my body to dance.

I expected it to be hard. My toes - and my hips - have to learn to point in new directions;  I have to look in the mirror rather than at my feet.  But what has been most difficult is to learn the vocabulary of ballet. Plié, relevé, tendu, dégagé, rond de jambe, attitude, pas de bourrée - each term has a corresponding movement, to be learned and demonstrated in action.

As Christians, we have our own unique vocabulary, a vocabulary of faith. It is comprised of words that speak specifically of the things of God.  Some of them are words that have other, ordinary, meanings in the English language; others are unique to the church. They include words like sin, repentance, confession, and forgiveness, baptism and grace, justification, salvation and redemption, discipleship, witness and mission. And what distinguishes them from other words - as well as their technical meanings - is that each of these words invites us to act in a particular way.  

When we talk about sin, repentance, confession, and forgiveness, we are not simply talking about theory.  We are taking the risk of being honest with God, trusting that our foolish ways do not doom us, and opening ourselves to the healing forgiveness that Christ brings.  

When we talk about baptism and grace, where the outward and visible signifies the inward and spiritual, we are venturing into the world of mystery, where water poured binds us to Jesus in his death and in his resurrection, and where God gives us more than we can ask or imagine. 

When we talk about justification, salvation and redemption, we are letting go of our own independence and self-sufficiency, learning how to receive with thanksgiving, and realizing the freedom of this gift of new life.

When we talk about discipleship, witness and mission, we are committing ourselves to follow Jesus, sharing his life in our lives in everything we do and say.

Each word of our Christian vocabulary is not only to be learned, but to be lived into.  To be demonstrated, in the life of faith.

Tuesday, I go back to ballet class.  I think I’ve got the hang of the basic vocabulary, pliés and relevés, though that pas de bourrée still tangles my feet.  But there’s time to learn; I have plenty of Tuesday nights ahead of me.  Just as I have a lifetime ahead of me to continue to learn the vocabulary of faith, not only in my mind but in my heart and soul and life, grace and forgiveness, salvation and discipleship and mission, and above all else, resurrection.

Much More than Memory

One of the things that was new to me when I moved to the United States was the popularity of historical reenactments. I looked with some bemusement at people setting up a-frame canvas tents, dressed in drab, scratchy woolen clothing, and standing over smoky fires, guns propped in the background. But over time I came to appreciate the instinct for preservation - not only of artifacts in museums, but of traditions and ways of life - that drives such reenactments, as well as the honoring of the shared history of our country that occurs at such events.

As we approach the annual celebration of the death and resurrection of our Savior Jesus Christ, it's tempting to view what we do in Holy Week and Easter as something like those historical reenactments.  On Palm Sunday, we process around our churches in imitation of the crowds greeting Jesus with branches that first Palm Sunday. On Maundy Thursday, we share bread and wine as Jesus did with his disciples the night before he died.  On Good Friday we keep vigil at the foot of the cross, remembering the disciples and the women similarly keeping vigil. And at the Easter Vigil and on Easter morning, we do our best to recreate the excitement of that first Easter morning.

However,  if all we do in Holy Week and Easter is reenact and remember, then we have missed the point. As valuable as reenactments are for our understanding of the original events and their contexts, they remain reenactments.  The original events stay in the past. We have no access to them, and no benefits other than those accrued over time.

But the tradition of our faith is clear. God does not merely work in the past; our experience of God's grace is not simply a two thousand year long chain of inheritance.  Instead, God works in us today in and through those events that happened two thousand years ago.

How is that possible?  In essence, it's because God is not constrained by time in the way that we are.  We have no choice but to live in the present, and to experience time as a line that runs in one direction.  But for God, as 2 Peter 3.8 reminds us, "with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day." One way of imagining it is that time is like a line on a piece of paper.  We experience it by tracing along one section of that line. But God is able to pick up the piece of paper and bend it, so that one part of the line touches another.

So when we come to Holy Week and Easter, God bends the paper, so that our part of the line touches the part two thousand years ago, when Jesus lived and died and rose to life.  We don't just remember and reenact; we became part of those events that ensured our salvation, and Christ acts in our lives here and now.  We know the crowds' adulation and betrayal; we experience his presence in bread and wine.  We die with him.  And we are raised with him in glory.

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia!

“Enough already.  I don’t want to hear about Lent. Things are tough enough already.  Why does the church need to add to the bad news?”

Lent has arrived, and with it, the traditional question, “what are you going to give up?”  Chocolate, beer, Facebook...the possibilities are legion. But for many of us, the whole year has been one of self-denial.  The economy may be beginning to show signs of recovery, but the effects of the recession continue with low wages, limited employment, and uncertain housing, compounded for some by the lack of seasonal jobs thanks to an unusually mild winter. We’ve tightened our belts, and now we’ve run out of holes. How can the church demand that we give up even more?

The tradition of giving up something for Lent probably has its roots in the early church tradition of fasting in preparation for baptism at Easter.  However, over time that fast morphed into giving up sins as a form of spiritual training, and then into giving up some form of excess as a means of self-discipline. There is certainly value to that in a culture of indulgence, but cast off from its spiritual moorings it all too easily becomes a new form of self-focus.

By contrast, the true focus of Lenten fasting is turning away from those things that distract us from following Christ. And at a deeper level, entering a place of scarcity - voluntarily or involuntarily - enables us to experience a taste of the sacrificial love of Christ, who, in the words of the letter to the Philippians,   “though he was in the form of God,

   did not regard equality with God
   as something to be exploited, 

 but emptied himself,
   taking the form of a slave,
   being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
   he humbled himself
   and became obedient to the point of death—
   even death on a cross.” (Phil 2: 6-8, NRSV).

Of course, joining Christ in that attitude of self-giving is not simply a matter of giving up chocolate for six weeks (especially when we know we will be able to over-indulge in it come Easter Day!); rather, it is about making space for the life of God within us.  In fact,  making that space may be as much a matter of attitude as of action.  That is, as we invite God into that place of scarcity, whether it is one we have chosen as a Lenten discipline, or one imposed by economic reality, we may find ourselves unexpectedly filled.