Hope has Substance

Today, waiting at the train station, I saw a bird perched on a wire, its wings flapping and beak open in song.  Spring is clearly here, and with it all the hope and promise of the season.  And it reminded me of those oft-quoted words of Emily Dickinson, “Hope is a thing with feathers.”

Contrast that with the photo that I took last Fall, of birds once again perched on a wire.  But this was no train station; instead, it was the barbed wire looped along the top of a wall that divides the West Bank from Israel.  Turn the other way, and you see a pile of rubble where a house was recently bulldozed, evidence of continuing political conflict.  This is Bethany - the place where Jesus raised Lazarus, and where Mary anointed his head with oil in preparation for his death.

Hope in such a place has substance.  It is not so much the feathers that matter so much as the strength of those small claws, gripping the wire between the barbs.  These birds are tenacious; they demonstrate a talent for survival.

Hope is one of those words that has many meanings.  Sometimes it simply means wishful thinking; other times a kind of optimistic outlook on life.  But as Christians, our hope has substance. We hope in Christ.

Our hope in Christ is rooted in the events we have just celebrated - those three terrible, joyful days when our Savior died on the cross, lay in the grave, and then, unbelievably, rose again. And somehow in the midst of that terror and joy, Christ brought about our forgiveness, our freedom, our reconciliation with God, and our risen life.

We forget what momentous news that is.  A couple of weeks ago,I spoke with a six-year-old who had heard the Easter story for the first time.  “But you can’t live when you have died,” he said.  No, you can’t.  But Christ did.  And because he did, we will too! 

That is hope, that promise of forgiveness and freedom and reconciliation and risen life.  And when you have that promise, that certainty, life here and now looks different; life is different.

Because in Christ, we are transformed, through the power of the Holy Spirit.  Christianity is not just about eternal life when we die.  It is about the transformation and renewal of all things in Christ, now and in eternity.  That is our hope.

And that hope is at the core of our mission as Christians.  We proclaim the transformative hope of Christ, and we demonstrate it in our lives.  Being “in Christ,” as the apostle Paul puts it, allows us to let go of our own self-obsessions and open our lives to others, reaching out to them with the love and hope of Christ.  

And that’s where mission becomes tangible.  Those words of Christ, in which he identifies himself as the fulfillment of the prophet Isaiah’s words to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor (Luke 4:18-19), give us a hint of what a world transformed might look like.  And when we feed the hungry, and provide shelter, and comfort the broken-hearted, we offer a foretaste of that new creation, a world in which no one goes hungry, and everyone has shelter, where the broken hearted will be healed, and every tear will be wiped away. A world where we no longer need our claws to hold tight in safety and the barbed wire is rolled away.

Invitation to Love

The road from Jerusalem down to Jericho was not an easy one. Eighteen miles long with a 4000 foot drop, it began in the Old City, secure inside its sandstone walls, skirted the Mount of Olives, and headed east. At first the landscape was relatively domesticated, rolling hills scattered with villages and olive groves. But as you travelled south, the terrain became mountainous, bare, rocky slopes strewn with dry desert foliage, the occasional nomads’ camp, and the canyon of Wadi Qelt carving its way through to the Great Rift Valley that runs from Syria to Mozambique. Jericho is there, at the intersection of the wadi and the valley, an oasis of life.

There are all sorts of theories about where the robbers may have lain in wait. Behind the huge boulder that marks the halfway point; in one of the caves or crevices of the wadi. Where it was makes no difference. All that matters is to know what Jesus’ hearers would have known so well; this road was a dangerous one. There was no shelter, no water, no one to call if you got in trouble. You carried everything you needed, avoided traveling alone, and prayed that you would arrive safely.

Which is why no one would be surprised if Jesus’ story had ended with the man left for dead. A moral tale of the dangers of traveling unprepared.

And no one would have been too surprised if neither a priest nor a Levite stopped. Why endanger yourself for someone who had been foolish, or at the very least, unlucky?

But when the Samaritan stopped, that was altogether more uncomfortable. Because it was just a few days earlier, the way the gospel of Luke tells it, that Jesus himself had travelled through a Samaritan village, on the early stages of his journey to Jerusalem. And there, Scripture tells us, the people turned their faces against him. He was going the wrong way, to Jerusalem, the holy city that rejected them as infidels. “Shall we ask God to bring down fire on them?” his disciples asked. “No.” And Jesus turned, instead, rebuked the disciples.

So you would expect the Samaritan to behave just like the priest and Levite. Or perhaps even to give the man a couple of extra kicks for good measure. Instead...well, you know the rest of the story.

Now remember what provoked this story. A lawyer wanted to know what to do to inherit eternal life. And when Jesus asked him what the law said, he answered, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” But the lawyer wanted more. “Who is my neighbor?”

At the end of the story, Jesus asked him, “So, you tell me, which one of these was a neighbor to the man who had been robbed?” The answer looks easy. The Samaritan, of course. Except, it’s not. Because in the original question, the neighbor wasn’t the one doing good; the neighbor was the one you were to love.

Love the Samaritan. The one who just a few days earlier had turned his face against you as you passed through his village, the one who you couldn’t trust, and vice versa. Love the one who has mercy on you. Love him.

But then Jesus twists it again. Do likewise. Be like the Samaritan. Be the one who has mercy.

Give mercy. Receive mercy. Love. Forgive.

I remember hearing a sermon at General Convention many years ago. I was sitting at a table of people who were staying in hotels and eating at restaurants. I was staying in a twelve bed room with no air-conditioning in ninety degree heat, and eating whatever was being offered at exhibition booths - the popcorn was a definite bonus! The preacher asked us to be more generous, to give more. I began to cry.

My table companions were generous. They quietly took up a collection and sent me a check to help with expenses. I was grateful, but also ashamed. I didn’t belong.

Sometimes, as Episcopalians, we assume that we are all on the side of the powerful and the wealthy. We forget that numbered among us, brothers and sisters in Christ, are both rich and poor, people who have money left over at the end of the month and people who can’t pay their mortgage, people who make decisions and people who are trapped in a web of impossible decisions. Some of us are in the position of the Samaritan. Some of us are in the position of the man who was robbed. Often times, we switch between one and the other.

But the key to it all is love. Because I don’t think Jesus’ intention was to send us all out to look for people who were robbed and take them to an inn and pay for their recuperation - though that wouldn't be a bad start. No, it was to invite us to love. To make love the foundation of all our relationships. Love your neighbor. Love the person who helps you and the person whom you help. Love a stranger and love your enemy, love the person who rejects you and the person who welcomes you. Love them gently, and quietly, love them by asking what they need and what they dream of. Love them gratefully and graciously. Love them with all your heart and soul and mind and strength, just as you love God.

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