An Almighty and Personal God

 Homily for Sunday, May 27, 2018

“An Almighty and Personal God”

            In the centuries before and since the coming of Christ, cultures all over the world have recognized the existence of an all-powerful being. Each culture developed ways to worship God, to demonstrate their reverence for the deity. In many of these cultures—think of the early Greeks and Romans and Hindus of today—different gods and goddesses came to represent the various aspects and needs of human life.

            Since Jesus was born a Jew, and Jews worship the one great God who made a covenant with Abraham, we who have inherited our faith (and the Old Testament) from the Jewish religion believe in and worship only one God. Even so, God’s powers and majesty are beyond our ability to comprehend. Being human, we simply cannot fathom the entirety of God. Our Christian way of explaining the various aspects of God, the various ways we encounter God, has been to represent God as three persons in One: as the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Every time we say together the Apostle’s Creed (page 120), we encounter an outline of each one’s function as we agree that we worship “God in Three Persons.”

            Still, the Trinity is one of the more complex tenets of our faith. We are adamant that as Christians we worship only one God, but the Trinity allows us to see our God in God’s complexity, exhibiting many different traits and behaving in different ways, based on individual situations. Did the many varied denominations of Christianity arise from that inherent flexibility in the person (or persons) of God?

            Dave and I just returned from a fabulous trip to the Southwest, primarily to New Mexico and Arizona. One of the favorite places we visited was the Taos Pueblo, a Native American community whose current residents descend from generations who have lived in that place for a thousand years. The Pueblo and its long history at the foot of a beautiful mountain are stunning.

            In the center of the Pueblo stands a very old adobe church, St. Jerome’s, a National Historic Landmark. Our young tour guide was a community resident who had just finished her second year of study at the University of New Mexico. She explained that we could enter the little church, but that we must not take photos. She also told us that the statues adorning the altar had been decorated for the season of Easter by the women of the church. We were not quite sure what to expect.

            In silence, Dave and I entered beautiful St. Jerome’s. With grateful awe and delight, we witnessed evidence of the wisdom of the early Catholic priest who had evangelized the Pueblo people so many years ago. The people had obviously been allowed to blend some aspects of their own manner of worship within the Roman Catholic setting. Behind the altar cross and set into the wall is a large arched alcove containing a statue of the Virgin Mary. On the walls to the left and right of the alcove were painted cornstalks, each with three healthy ears of corn. Could those ears represent the bounty of the Trinity, I wonder? Above the cornstalks and circling the top of the arch was painted a green squash vine with yellow squash blossoms. Mary herself was dressed for Easter in a bright pink dress. So were the smaller Mary and two male saints (St. Francis and St. Jerome) in lesser alcoves to the left and right of the altar. All dressed in gauzy pink outfits for Easter! It was a joyous spectacle. St. Jerome’s felt like Graves Chapel to me—the sort of endearing, comfortable home where God is pleased to dwell.

The concept of the Trinity—as the ONE God possessing and demonstrating multiple aspects—has allowed each believer to draw close to the God of his or her understanding. The Church, whether Roman Catholic or Episcopal or Baptist, recognizes our human need to see God to be as multi-faceted and complex as we humans can be.  

The icon I’ve placed today in front of the cross on our altar table is likely the most famous iconic image of the Trinity that exists. It is attributed to a 15th Century Russian artist, Andrei Rublev. As you can see, it is a welcoming image, with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit seated in a companionable way around a table, a wine-filled communion cup in the table’s center. The empty place at the table’s front is an invitation to each one who views the icon—we are asked to see ourselves seated there.

The creation of an icon is called writing, not painting, and this one has a story to tell us. The figure on the left is said to symbolize God the Father. Since the other two figures incline their heads toward him, that seems to be a reasonable assumption. The figure in the middle, at the top of the table, symbolizes Jesus, God the Son. Two details tell us this—he wears blue, the color associated with Jesus, and with his folded right hand extending two fingers on the table, he has just made a sign of blessing. Maybe we are to see the Lord as blessing us, his disciples? The third figure, the one on the right, wears the universal green of the natural world and represents the Holy Spirit, The Holy Comforter, the one who is always with us.

On another level of symbolic meaning, the three figures of this icon are also said to represent the three angels who visited Abraham and Sarah and rested under the oak trees at Mamre. Either way you look at them, the figures in the icon appear to be somewhat feminine, don’t they? At least, they appear to be depicted as gender-less, beyond the stereotypes we might associate with either masculinity or femininity. The image startles us since we are much more accustomed to famous Renaissance depictions of God the Father as a stern white-bearded man, who may point an angry finger of judgement toward us. For some women I’ve known who were raised by terribly abusive fathers, this iconic image of God the Father as someone far warmer and free of anger may help them in their prayers.

Two verses from our gospel lesson today illustrate the complexity of God and the ways we Christians have interpreted God’s love for us. I am positive that John 3:16 was the first Bible verse I memorized as a child: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” What a lovely expression of the immense generosity of God! As a parent myself, it is hard for me to fathom the sacrifice of a child, but that is indeed the message: God loves us that much.

Even so, I find myself concerned about the way this special verse is often taken out of context. When a sign proclaiming simply “John 3:16” is held up in a rowdy public event—say a football game—I fear there is some self-righteous judgement being expressed. The holder of the sign seems to me to be saying to all who read the words, “You had better get right with the Lord or you will burn in hell.” I hope the intention is a worthy one, borne of love. For those reading the sign who are completely clueless about what “John 3:16” even represents, they can innocently ignore it. So, it seems the sign is intended for other Christians who may not be living up to the standards of the sign-holder. I do not believe we are asked to sit in judgement of our neighbors, certainly not by holding up a sign citing a verse’s number while we are among strangers.

If only we always included the next verse, John 3:17 when we make reference to verse 16! Jesus tells us repeatedly that we are not supposed to judge one another—unless we want to be judged in the same harsh way by God. Jesus tells his disciples that we are to forgive each other “seventy times seven.” Verse 17 adds this generous expansiveness of God’s love to the promise of Verse 16: “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

This week, as I was pondering the words of scripture and framing this homily, I followed a car on Airport Road that had an interesting license plate. Now this oldish small car had a young male driver, someone with long hair and bumper stickers that suggested he was a hiker and a camper, a lover of the outdoors. I was surprised to see on his license plate this inscription: 1JHN318. Frankly, my stereotype of his looks and car did not suggest that he would be someone quoting scripture, so I was anxious to check out the cited verse in St. John’s first letter (1 John, not the gospel of John) when I got home.

And what did I find? Verse 18 of Chapter 3 of John’s first letter says this: “Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.” Believing in the majesty of God the Creator, the redemptive love of God the Son, and the intimate, personal fellowship of God the Holy Spirit, this young driver shared with me and all who read his license plate a very clear and gentle instruction from the beloved disciple: “Let us love one another in truth and action.” The part of the verse that says “not in word or speech” seems to be directly aimed at any of our self-righteous condemnations of others. I don’t know about you, but I never have enough time to do all the things I want to do as I try to love others “in truth and action.”  How could I possibly have time to sit in judgment of my neighbor, to consider what may be their faults? Loving others in truth and action, as St. John asks of us in his letter, is enough to keep us busy for a lifetime.

 I know I will always think of this young man and of the people of Taos Pueblo when I need to be reminded of the glorious simplicity of our call to worship a Trinitarian God—in truth and action. AMEN.

Abiding in the Love of Christ

Homily for Sunday, April 29, 2018

Graves Chapel

“The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”  Speaking of himself, Jesus once said those words to his disciples.

On every road that Dave and I travel, whether in Earlysville where we live or as we drive to faraway places or even on the beautiful country roads that bring us to Graves Chapel, we pass abandoned houses. Over the years, I have observed a pattern to the way an abandoned house disintegrates and finally settles into the earth it stands on. Vines grow up its sides, sometimes obscuring windows. Weed trees take root against the walls. As months and years pass, the vegetation conceals most of the house, but it still stands, a testament to the skill of those who built it. Even so, ultimately the walls collapse and cave in. One such overgrown house, near the Charlottesville airport, has finally been crushed by large trees that fell on it during a windstorm. Its windows had survived the climbing vines, but the falling trees bulged the walls and shattered the glass. The house has bowed its face to the world.

I cannot pass one of these houses without imagining the family that once inhabited it. What happened to them? Why was their house abandoned and left behind? A foreclosure? A disputed estate? No surviving family members?

“Housing insecurity” is a contemporary term for a range of issues that afflict poor people in our country. Affordable housing is such a problem in many cities, including Charlottesville, that working class people, the folks we need to do so many important jobs for us, cannot afford to live there. Whether it is caused by eviction when someone can’t pay the rent or mental instability that drives a person onto the streets, homelessness is an escalating emergency in our country. Every time I pass by an abandoned and moldering house, I think of the homeless persons that might have been invited to live there.  The very thought makes me both sad and angry.

 “The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” As a child, I heard a plaintive note in those words of the Lord, a tone of sadness. I knew that Jesus was the son of Mary and Joseph, a poor carpenter. I wondered why he couldn’t just go back home to live with his family. His calling to be an itinerant and homeless preacher was beyond my comprehension.

Now I recognize much more in the meaning of those words. Even though we Christians say that Jesus was “the only begotten Son of God,” his choice repeatedly to refer to himself as the “Son of Man” was significant. He not only identifies as one of us, as a human being, but also as a member of a particular community of humans: the ones who are poor and homeless, hungry and downtrodden, in need of the most basic necessities of human existence—food and shelter, healing and mercy. He named these people “the least of these.”

From his birth in a stable, attended by lowly shepherds, until his abhorrent death on the cross, Jesus was a poor child and a poor man. Of course he understood and responded to the quiet desperation of the people he came to serve. We can hear his words, “The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head,” as a poignant reminder to take action in our service to his people. Remember, Jesus also called himself “the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”  When he says repeatedly in today’s gospel lesson “Abide in me,” he is inviting us to follow his Way of love.

Have you ever wondered who selects the appointed lessons and how the readings are determined? There is something called the Revised Common Lectionary where the specific readings for Sundays (and other holy days) are outlined, over a three-year cycle. The RCL was developed some years ago by a committee made up of representatives from the Roman Catholic Church and the mainline Protestant churches.  Isn’t it lovely to think of the same lessons from Holy Scripture being read and pondered every Sunday across America (and in other parts of the world) in Episcopal, Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, and Baptist churches? Many other denominations use the Revised Common Lectionary as well. To me, it seems as if there is a potential for an alignment of hearts among all those Christians who hear the same words of the Lord read and discussed on the same day.

Today’s particular lessons are very near my heart. These passages, especially the 4^th chapter of John’s first letter, most clearly and simply state the message that has become my persistent theme: “God is love.” I admit that I’ve wished these lessons would appear together for a Sunday I am preaching. Of course, I am now reminded of the adage, “Be careful what you wish for.” Simply stating “God is love” in no way encompasses the difficulties we face as we try to live out our calling to love one another as Christ loved us. If we ever imagine that loving our neighbors ought to be an easy task, we should simply consider how our Lord ultimately exemplified His love for all mankind: by His death on a cross.

Still, Jesus’s invitation “Abide in me as I abide in you” offers a promise of comfort and support. In his first letter, John tells us why the persistence of abiding works: “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them…There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.”

How can we reconcile the idea of “perfect love” casting out fear with a gospel lesson which states,  “Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned”?  That is a fearful image of punishment, isn’t it? Imagine those words issuing from a traditional fire and brimstone preacher, using them as a warning to sinners about the ferocity of hell. Such preachers condemn moral failures—those ordinary human sins that often involve sexuality or dishonesty—by instilling fear and guilt in their vulnerable listeners. Can you think of a more powerful tool than fear to keep someone in line? In fact, going back to the earliest days of the church as an arm of the Roman Empire, there was a political tradition of using religious fear to keep people under control.  

We see Jesus colliding with the ones who wielded this kind of guilt-driven political power in his day: the Pharisees. Think of the persons the Pharisees were likely to condemn—the woman caught in adultery, for example. Jesus treats her with mercy and kindness, but what does he say to the ones who have accused her? “You who are without sin, cast the first stone.” Jesus often seems to enjoy the company of the very people the Pharisees judge to be terrible sinners, and we can infer from his attitude toward them that he has no expectation of human beings behaving perfectly. His less-than-perfect friends are not the ones he expects to be pruned and thrown into the fire.  As they abide in him and follow his Way, they rest secure in his perfect love. They are free of fear.

So, what does Jesus expect of us when he says, “Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit”? He expects us to follow his “Way,” and it is the way of love, the bearing of the gifts of love.  Let’s revisit some of the first words from the gospel lesson. “Jesus said to his disciples, ‘I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit, he prunes to make it bear more fruit…Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.’” Jesus tells us that the circumstances of his ministry subject him to God’s pruning as well. Sometimes things don’t work out as He hopes and the Lord changes course. Sometimes that change in course occurs when his servants fail to carry out his goal of “bearing fruit.” When we abide in Jesus, following his Way of love in service to our neighbors, our human failings can be avoided—and forgiven when we can’t avoid them.

I cautiously put another thought forward.  Could I be correct that the pruned and burned branches in today’s lesson are NOT symbolic of those considered obvious sinners and consigned to the fires of hell? If so, then do they instead symbolize, as it seems to me, the ones who do not work to bear the fruit of lovingkindness? Not bearing the fruit of love means not following the Way the Lord has modeled for us, and that is what is important to Jesus. After all, the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head. There is much work to be done.

As we abide in Jesus, as we follow his Way, we are able to bear the same fruit he bears. We show kindness and generosity to the poor, the homeless, the sick, the friendless, the prisoner.  Living our lives so that we can bear such fruit is not easy and does not generally make us popular, famous, or wealthy. In fact, if we are honest about our requirement to live as Jesus lived, then we ought to expect to become poorer and more vulnerable ourselves. It is not about us, right? When love is at the heart of what we do, the pruning is voluntary.

Henri Nouwen was a Dutch Jesuit priest and spiritual writer whose many beautiful books (such as The Wounded Healer) have inspired people around the world. Nouwen has always been one of my favorite writers, and I would like to share with you his words on our Christian call to be fruitful. Nouwen taught at Notre Dame, Yale, and Harvard before finally leaving the stress of competitive academia for a position as priest to a community of disabled persons. His was an act of self-pruning.  Here are his thoughts about what he learned along the way: “There is a great difference between successfulness and fruitfulness. Success comes from strength, control, and respectability…Success brings many rewards and often fame. Fruits, however, come from weakness and vulnerability. And fruits are unique. A child is the fruit conceived in vulnerability, community is the fruit born through shared brokenness, and intimacy is the fruit that grows through touching one another’s wounds. Let us remind one another that what brings us true joy is not successfulness but fruitfulness.”

Listen again to the beautiful words the apostle John wrote in his first letter: “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” As Nouwen suggests, the reward of such abiding is true joy.

We find God in our own hearts, if we are vulnerable enough to look for God there. Believing that “God is love,” may we also find our hearts in loving alignment with all God’s children, our neighbors. As we abide in Christ’s love, we pray to bear the fruits of kindness, mercy, and healing with everyone we encounter, but most especially, with the ones Christ would call “the least of these.” AMEN.