Homily for Sunday, March 25, 2012 Buck Mountain and Graves Chapel
Lessons:
Jeremiah 31: 31-34
Psalm 51: 1-13
Hebrews 5: 5-10
John 12:20-33
In March of 2011, just a year ago, the Oxford English dictionary added the first non-word—a graphical symbol that stands for a word—to its hallowed tome. Do you know what that symbol was? The one that has come to represent LOVE on bumper stickers and t-shirts and even in the title of a funny movie from 2004: I Heart Huckabees. That simple and symmetrical symbol, often colored pink or red and always a very important part of Valentine’s greetings, carries powerful weight in our culture.
Have you ever wondered why the Tin Man was so sure he needed a heart? After all, as he travels the yellow brick roads of Oz with his trusty companions, he demonstrates great courage and kindness numerous times, and courage and kindness are both attributes we associate with the heart. In his song, the Tin Man croons, "When a man's an empty kettle, he should be on his mettle, and yet I'm torn apart. Just because I'm presumin' that I could be kind-a-human if I only had a heart. I'd be tender--I'd be gentle and awful sentimental regarding Love and Art. I'd be friends with the sparrows and the boy who shoots the arrows, if I only had a heart." The Tin Man understands that in order to be human, he needs one thing we associate with a heart--no, not the blood that gets pumped through our bodies to keep us alive. He needs love, and the human heart is where love is found. That goes double for the Christian heart. If it's not about love, then it's not Christianity. Our God is a god of love and mercy and kindness. That doesn't always play itself out with roses and valentines; sometimes love has to be strong, brave, or demanding.
The prophet Jeremiah, who is also credited as the author of the Book of Lamentations, usually speaks words of love most of us would rather not hear. As we used to say, Jeremiah can be a real downer. He has been called the "weeping prophet," and he had good reason to weep. Tasked by God to decry the sins of the people and prepare them for the destruction of Judah and their captivity by the Babylonian army, Jeremiah was not a popular guy. In fact, Jeremiah is so much associated with foretelling doom that any long speech in which the state of society is lamented and destruction predicted is called a Jeremiad.
Our reading from Jeremiah for today, however, seems completely out of character for the prophet. These are the sweet words of a lover, not a lamenter. "The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah...I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts and I will be their God and they shall be my people. No longer shall they say to each other, 'Know the Lord,' for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more." Through Jeremiah, the Lord says he had considered himself to be the husband of the people, and even though they have repeatedly broken his heart, he forgives them and says he is willing to make a new covenant with them. And how will the people know the Lord loves them and is with them? They will know it because God himself will write it on their hearts. In this way, God promises a deeply personal, loving commitment to each of us.
As I read through today's lessons preparing to write this homily, I was struck by how the collect, the lesson from Jeremiah, and the psalm all make reference to the human heart. The psalm includes a plea familiar to anyone who reads the daily morning office: "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me." If God is going to write his covenant of love on our hearts, then he himself will prepare it by wiping clean the slate.
The beautiful words of the collect suggest what we associate with our hearts: the emotions. "Grant your people grace to love what you command and desire what you promise; that, among the swift and varied changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found." From ancient times, the heart has not only been associated with the emotions--especially love and courage--but also with the soul. It often seems that the heart and its companion the soul are given more weight than the brain, which is usually related to powers of reasoning. Since the word heart is mentioned 867 times in the Bible, the connection between the heart and the soul is very much a part of our traditional understanding of the way we relate to God. Listen to a few examples:
"Trust in God at all times and pour out your heart before him; God is a refuge for us." (Psalm 62)
"When you said, 'Seek my face,' my heart said to you, 'Your face Lord will I seek." (Psalm 27)
"For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."
(Matthew 6)
"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." (Matthew 6)
"The Lord is near to those who have a broken heart." (Psalm 34)
"Let us draw near with a true heart, in all assurance of faith." (Hebrews 10)
"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind." (Matthew 22:34)
"For the eyes of the Lord range throughout the entire earth, to strengthen those whose heart is true to him." (2nd Chronicles 16:9)
In many other passages we are told how God searches our hearts: in 1st Samuel 16, "For the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart." In Genesis 6, God has examined the hearts of humans, and he now contemplates destroying them all by flood for the evil he finds there. "The Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually...and it grieved Him to his heart." Isn't it reassuring to think of God's sharing this characteristic with humans--having a heart that can be broken just like ours? The fragility of the heart is connected to the emotion we associate with it most closely--LOVE.
The fragility of the heart, and especially God's heart, reminds us of the sterner side of love, the requirements of love that are not the easiest to bear. In today's Gospel lesson from John, Jesus is preparing the disciples for his final hours. As usual, He speaks in a parable, saying, "Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit." Christ speaks here of the kind of love that produces the ultimate self-sacrifice for the sake of others. He would be the grain of wheat that would fall into the earth and die so that many others might live and flourish. At the time of his crucifixion, it would probably have been possible to count on the fingers of one hand those standing near the cross who would admit to being his followers. Today is it even possible for us to number how many proclaiming Christians have lived down through the centuries and still live as a result of Christ's death? Would anyone standing beneath the cross have been able to predict the fruit Christ's death would bear? Most of them thought all their dreams had ended. They thought the bold teacher they had loved and the experiment they had witnessed were failures. Christ knew better. He understood the ultimate gift of love when he said, "Those who love their life lose it, but those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life." Forgetting himself in his love for others, Christ truly served the cause of love in a way that has drawn countless people to him. As He said, "And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself." His was a very great and a very wise heart.
Remember what the Wizard of OZ said to the Tin Man when he awarded him his heart? "A heart is not judged by how much you love, but by how much you are loved by others." In this paradoxical way, the Tin Man is like Jesus. Emptied of his heart from the very beginning, the Tin Man risked all he had, to the point of being broken in pieces, to protect his new friends. Believing he did not have the capacity to love, he became love. And he was rewarded a hundredfold by the love of his friends. The Tin Man’s love bore fruit, even when he didn’t have a heart. What kind of fruit is our heart bearing?
I HEART you! Amen.
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Friday, March 9, 2012
Holy Waters
Homily for Sunday, February 26, 2012
1st Sunday in Lent
Lessons:
Genesis 9:8-17
Psalm 25
1st Peter 3:18-22
Mark 1:9-15
Today is the first Sunday in Lent, the season of the church year specifically set aside for self-examination and penitence. Lent asks us consciously to join Christ on his journey to Jerusalem and to his crucifixion, to reflect on our own Christian path as we consider his last forty days. Lent is a season that calls for quietness, seriousness, confession, and sacrifice.
And yet the very name Lent is derived from an old English word (Lenten) that described the lengthening of days at this time of year. Spring approaches and it is hard to keep one’s heart from lifting with joy as the light increases and the days grow longer.
I think today’s scriptures beautifully reflect that paradox. In the lesson from Genesis, we get the end of the story of Noah, when God promises Noah and his family that God will never again destroy the earth and all its inhabitants with water. The rainbow God places in the sky is a symbol of his covenant, a binding promise. The rainbow reminds us of God’s mercy and opens the door for penitence and forgiveness, a new idea for humankind.
Since the time of Noah, these verses tell us, we humans have been given a choice. We can choose to follow our own will, to live our lives in selfishness and sin, never considering how our choice affects others or disappoints God. Or, we can choose to be fully aware of our words and actions, considering how our behavior may be detrimental or even harmful to others or ourselves. We can take the time, as this Lenten season calls us to do, to acknowledge our mistakes to God and to others and to ask for forgiveness. This second choice is the path of repentance.
Yet the rainbow reminds us of something else. Even if we choose the first path of willfulness and selfishness, as all of us do from time to time, God’s mercy is still with us. We are granted an entire lifetime to repent and turn toward God. God will continue to seek us out and call to us, even as we look the other way, for as long as we live. Remember those one-hundred sheep Jesus tells us about? Ninety-nine of them were behaving appropriately, safely enclosed in their fold. But the good Shepherd did not forget the lost one and did not give up until she was found and brought home. Although we always have the choice to join the ninety-nine or wander off on our own path, we can count on the shepherd’s love to find us.
The psalmist, King David as we are told, himself once a reliable shepherd, has a good understanding of the fullness of God’s mercy. In verses 5 and 6 of Psalm 25, he says, “Remember, O Lord, your compassion and love, for they are from everlasting. Remember not the sins of my youth and my transgressions; remember me according to your love and for the sake of your goodness, O Lord.” These words are written in complete assurance that God will forgive and forget our trespasses. True repentance offers us a completely new beginning with God. So does baptism.
In his first letter, St. Peter makes a connection between the waters of the great flood and the water of baptism. He tells us that during the time Noah built the ark, God was waiting with hope that others would repent and be saved. Although that didn’t happen, God remembered the righteousness of Noah and saved him and seven members of his family from the destruction of the flood. Peter says that Noah and his family were saved through water as we are saved through baptism. Peter tells us that our baptism is not a removal of dirt from the body but an “appeal to God for a good conscience.” Our baptism is the sign that we belong to God, that we are at least willing to do our part to meet God halfway. Our willingness is all the Lord needs. Our Lord Jesus Christ meets us more than halfway, as Peter tells us: “Christ suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God.”
These words from Peter and Genesis and Psalm 25 remind me of the young woman from Piedmont Episcopal Church who wanted to be baptized a second time. As a young child, she had been baptized into one denomination. At the age of eighteen, and now an Episcopalian, she asked Rev. Brad Jackson to baptize her again. She felt a new consciousness of her life as a Christian, a new, fuller awareness of how she had been called by Jesus. Of course Brad explained to her that the church believes one baptism is all that is necessary—or required. But something in her heartfelt need caused Brad to consider a different approach. He allowed her to hear the words of the baptismal sacrament, spoken by her family and friends who surrounded her, as her own father poured handfuls of water over her head. This lovely ceremony took place on a beautiful late summer afternoon, two and a half years ago, in September of 2009, right down from this chapel in the Kinsey Run. I bet if you were there you will never forget it. Just as the waters washed over her, a strong wind came up and hurled itself through the valley, as if the Holy Spirit spoke approval.
The Spirit descended like a dove on Jesus as he stepped from the waters of the Jordan after his baptism by John. His father’s voice spoke from heaven to say, “You are my son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
Those words of hope and love and gracious mercy are spoken to us as well. As jonquils bloom and maple trees are adorned with red buds, as the days lengthen and the sun grows warmer, let us think of Christ and of all he sacrificed in dying for us. Let us remember also that the sole purpose of his death was for us to have life and have it abundantly. Amen.
1st Sunday in Lent
Lessons:
Genesis 9:8-17
Psalm 25
1st Peter 3:18-22
Mark 1:9-15
Today is the first Sunday in Lent, the season of the church year specifically set aside for self-examination and penitence. Lent asks us consciously to join Christ on his journey to Jerusalem and to his crucifixion, to reflect on our own Christian path as we consider his last forty days. Lent is a season that calls for quietness, seriousness, confession, and sacrifice.
And yet the very name Lent is derived from an old English word (Lenten) that described the lengthening of days at this time of year. Spring approaches and it is hard to keep one’s heart from lifting with joy as the light increases and the days grow longer.
I think today’s scriptures beautifully reflect that paradox. In the lesson from Genesis, we get the end of the story of Noah, when God promises Noah and his family that God will never again destroy the earth and all its inhabitants with water. The rainbow God places in the sky is a symbol of his covenant, a binding promise. The rainbow reminds us of God’s mercy and opens the door for penitence and forgiveness, a new idea for humankind.
Since the time of Noah, these verses tell us, we humans have been given a choice. We can choose to follow our own will, to live our lives in selfishness and sin, never considering how our choice affects others or disappoints God. Or, we can choose to be fully aware of our words and actions, considering how our behavior may be detrimental or even harmful to others or ourselves. We can take the time, as this Lenten season calls us to do, to acknowledge our mistakes to God and to others and to ask for forgiveness. This second choice is the path of repentance.
Yet the rainbow reminds us of something else. Even if we choose the first path of willfulness and selfishness, as all of us do from time to time, God’s mercy is still with us. We are granted an entire lifetime to repent and turn toward God. God will continue to seek us out and call to us, even as we look the other way, for as long as we live. Remember those one-hundred sheep Jesus tells us about? Ninety-nine of them were behaving appropriately, safely enclosed in their fold. But the good Shepherd did not forget the lost one and did not give up until she was found and brought home. Although we always have the choice to join the ninety-nine or wander off on our own path, we can count on the shepherd’s love to find us.
The psalmist, King David as we are told, himself once a reliable shepherd, has a good understanding of the fullness of God’s mercy. In verses 5 and 6 of Psalm 25, he says, “Remember, O Lord, your compassion and love, for they are from everlasting. Remember not the sins of my youth and my transgressions; remember me according to your love and for the sake of your goodness, O Lord.” These words are written in complete assurance that God will forgive and forget our trespasses. True repentance offers us a completely new beginning with God. So does baptism.
In his first letter, St. Peter makes a connection between the waters of the great flood and the water of baptism. He tells us that during the time Noah built the ark, God was waiting with hope that others would repent and be saved. Although that didn’t happen, God remembered the righteousness of Noah and saved him and seven members of his family from the destruction of the flood. Peter says that Noah and his family were saved through water as we are saved through baptism. Peter tells us that our baptism is not a removal of dirt from the body but an “appeal to God for a good conscience.” Our baptism is the sign that we belong to God, that we are at least willing to do our part to meet God halfway. Our willingness is all the Lord needs. Our Lord Jesus Christ meets us more than halfway, as Peter tells us: “Christ suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God.”
These words from Peter and Genesis and Psalm 25 remind me of the young woman from Piedmont Episcopal Church who wanted to be baptized a second time. As a young child, she had been baptized into one denomination. At the age of eighteen, and now an Episcopalian, she asked Rev. Brad Jackson to baptize her again. She felt a new consciousness of her life as a Christian, a new, fuller awareness of how she had been called by Jesus. Of course Brad explained to her that the church believes one baptism is all that is necessary—or required. But something in her heartfelt need caused Brad to consider a different approach. He allowed her to hear the words of the baptismal sacrament, spoken by her family and friends who surrounded her, as her own father poured handfuls of water over her head. This lovely ceremony took place on a beautiful late summer afternoon, two and a half years ago, in September of 2009, right down from this chapel in the Kinsey Run. I bet if you were there you will never forget it. Just as the waters washed over her, a strong wind came up and hurled itself through the valley, as if the Holy Spirit spoke approval.
The Spirit descended like a dove on Jesus as he stepped from the waters of the Jordan after his baptism by John. His father’s voice spoke from heaven to say, “You are my son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
Those words of hope and love and gracious mercy are spoken to us as well. As jonquils bloom and maple trees are adorned with red buds, as the days lengthen and the sun grows warmer, let us think of Christ and of all he sacrificed in dying for us. Let us remember also that the sole purpose of his death was for us to have life and have it abundantly. Amen.
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