On Suffering

 Homily for Sunday, May 25, 2014    Buck Mountain Church and Graves Chapel

Lessons:

Acts 17:22-31

Psalm 66:7-18

1 Peter 3:13-22

John 14:15-21

            The collect for today--and what it says about God's love for us--is one of my very favorite collects of the entire church year.  In fact, it's worth repeating: O God, you have prepared for those who love you such good things as surpass our understanding: Pour into our hearts such love towards you, that we, loving you in all things and above all things, may obtain your promises, which exceed all that we can desire.  Paired with today's gospel lesson, in which Jesus promises to love us and be with us always in the form of the Holy Spirit, there are no clearer words to be found about the nature of God's relationship with his people. God loves us lavishly.

            In the epistle, Peter writes about God's love as well, but from a surprising perspective. Peter writes about the way God suffers because of His love for us. God suffers when we stray from the paths we know we should follow, when we do things that cause pain for ourselves or for others. Even when we feel God punishes us for our errors, anything we suffer is matched by the suffering God feels on our behalf.

            If I were really smart, I would stick with the love theme and avoid touching on suffering, even with a ten-foot pole, as the saying goes.  No one wants to talk about why God allows bad things to happen in the world, especially when he suffers with us--that is just too hard to understand.

            In theological terms there is actually a special name for the branch of philosophy that concerns itself with trying to explain why a God we consider all-loving and all-powerful permits bad things to happen. The term, dating back to 1710, is theodicy, but some of the arguments around the issue date to the early centuries of Christianity. Theologians as well as everyday Christians have always pondered this question.  I've known some people who have lost their faith in God when something bad has happened to them or someone they love.  So, please consider these words my disclaimer and bear with me as I take the dangerous plunge into theodicy.

            First, I want to reassert my belief that God does not cause bad things to happen in the world.  Everything from wars to typhoons, from accidents to illnesses happen because the world is a complicated and messy place. If anything, rather than causing the bad things, God does everything in His power to mitigate the injury and destruction.  Remember, he suffers when we suffer, so turning the bad into something good is more in God's line of work. The question then becomes--what is the difference between causing something bad or simply allowing it to happen? 

            When I read the epistle from Peter--and how many times have I read this passage before?--I begin to have a glimpse of an answer to this question. Isn't that the way with scripture and the reason to keep revisiting it?  God's words seem to open themselves to us as we have need of them.

            The most important, and surely the most obvious, thing Peter says about suffering is that Christ suffered on our behalf--"the righteous for the unrighteous"--when he died on the cross. What else but God's great love for us motivated Him to send His Son into the world to die an excruciating death for us? Before he was arrested and sent to the cross, Jesus prayed these words in the Garden: "Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done." God, made manifest in the human form of his son Jesus Christ, is willing to suffer the worst kind of pain and death because he loves human creatures and chooses to suffer with them. The fact that God himself had to suffer on the cross illustrates something about suffering--that it is inevitable and unavoidable. When we pray for comfort in times of sorrow or for healing when we feel pain, we can be assured that we pray to a God who fully comprehends how we are feeling. God has been there--and has been there suffering with each of us from the beginning of time.

            Peter also says, "...if you do suffer for doing what is right, you are blessed...for it is better to suffer for doing good, if suffering should be God's will, than to suffer for doing evil."  Why on earth does Peter say our suffering is a blessing?

            I believe the answer to this riddle is illustrated in the crucifixion and in Christ's words in the Garden. Love itself is God's greatest gift to us--and our greatest blessing.  Yet love is at the root of all our suffering just as it was love that brought Christ to the cross.

            Why do I say that love is at the root of suffering?  Please consider with me.  How do we feel when we hear news of a tornado a thousand miles away that has ripped a school apart and extinguished the lives of young children?....Why do tears come to our eyes when we read of the heroic deeds of a soldier who gave up his own life to save his comrades?...How do we feel when a loved one--a child or spouse or parent--is ill and we are not able to do anything to relieve the pain?...How do we feel when we are separated, by either physical or emotional distance, from someone we love deeply?   Love has immense power, doesn't it?

            I've often thought that one good reason for children to have pets is so they learn a little about the pain of losing a loved one when they experience the death of a beloved pet.  That kind of suffering is also very difficult, however.  I still get sad when I think of losing my cat Frisky, who came into my life when I was seven years old.

            Whether we've considered it or not, our love of ourselves is also deeply connected to our suffering.  If we did not love ourselves and the life we've been given, why would we worry about our own illnesses or the pain we feel over the suffering of a loved one? If we didn't love ourselves, why would we have any concern about our personal integrity--about doing the right thing?  Whether we want to admit it or not, on some level, don't we do good things not just so we can appear to be righteous in the eyes of God and our neighbor, but also so we can feel good about ourselves?

            The hopeful news, ultimately, is that as we grow older and grow in faith, both love and goodness become habits for us--often in spite of suffering.

            In today's gospel lesson, Jesus says to his disciples, "If you love me you will keep my commandments."  He might also have said, "If you love as I love, you will keep my commandments." Doesn't the idea that it is because we are capable of love that we are also capable of suffering shed a new light on what Jesus called the two great commandments?  "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself."  [Matthew 22:37-40]  Love begins and flows lavishly from God, and it is an empathetic love, suffering when we suffer and rejoicing when we rejoice. It should be easy for us to respond in kind, to love God with all our heart. Right? That's the expectation, at least. From there, can we find a balance between loving others and ourselves?  As today's collect states, in this way we "obtain" God's "promises."  Loving others as ourselves involves both empathy for the other and also a healthy love for self.

            Accepting love--and the price of love--is nothing but God's grace. Believing that, we can say with Julian of Norwich, "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well."   AMEN.

Easter rabbits and colored eggs?

Homily for  Sunday, April 27, 2014              Graves Chapel

           

            I know this isn't supposed to be show and tell, but I really want to share this little book with you today. It is called The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes, and when I open it up, the name printed inside the front cover is that of my dear aunt, Mabel: Miss Estes. The little inscription tells me so much. My aunt Mabel is the one from whom I inherited my calling to be a teacher. Mabel began her teaching career in the late 1930s at the Wolftown Elementary School.  After teaching in Wolftown for a few years, she moved to Northern Virginia and taught kindergarten and first grade in Fairfax County for many years.

            After she passed away and I got her house ready to sell, I found this little book among her things and just had to keep it. I have vivid memories of her reading this book to me--more than one Easter--when I was a child, and it remains one of my favorite picture books. The fact that it is labeled "Miss Estes" to identify the owner tells me that my aunt must have read this little book to her students, and I bet some of them loved it as much as I still do.

            The rabbit of the title is first described in the story as "a little country girl bunny," and maybe that's one reason why Mabel and I both found this story appealing--we both began our lives as little country girls born right here in Graves Mill.  Ultimately, though, the humble origin of this little rabbit is not what this story is about. It's a story about Easter.

            In this story, we learn there are five Easter bunnies, not just one.  As a little girl bunny, the main character announces that she wants to grow up to become one of the five Easter bunnies, but the big white rabbits and the tough Jack rabbits all laugh at her and tell her to "go home and eat a carrot."  They tell her to forget her dream.  And, for a while, she does forget. She grows up and gets married and has 21 little baby rabbits. Being very organized and a very good mother, she has a happy home, and she teaches her little ones how to help with all the household chores and how to behave appropriately.

            One day she hears that a new Easter bunny has to be selected since one of the five current bunnies is going to retire. Try-outs for the job will be held at the Palace of Easter Eggs where the wise old Grandfather Bunny will choose the new Easter bunny. The selection is based on several important criteria: Every Easter bunny must be wise and kind and swift.  Our little country bunny, who with her large family has given up on the idea of becoming an Easter bunny, decides to take her 21 children with her to watch the try-outs. Who knows? Maybe one of them will grow up to be an Easter bunny!  Well, since I hope you may decide to read this book someday to your children or grandchildren, I won't tell the rest of the story. Suffice it to say that the country bunny learns that an Easter bunny not only has to be swift and wise and kind, but also brave and self-sacrificing.

            Sometimes these days I hear people grumbling about the commercialization of Easter, about the silliness of Easter bunnies and dying Easter eggs. Since the rabbit and the eggs have sadly become, for many Americans, the only part of Easter they still observe, I sympathize with such grumbling. It is a real shame that we often seem to have forgotten the true meaning of Easter.  It is also a shame that most of us, even we Christians, don't fully appreciate the lessons about Easter that the rabbit and the eggs were originally intended to illustrate.

            The tradition of the Easter rabbit began centuries ago in Germany, among the early Lutherans, who associated with the Virgin Mary the legend of a hare who could lay eggs and mother many offspring while still a virgin. This Easter hare, or "Osterhase," can be seen in medieval paintings, illuminated manuscripts and other art placed next to Mary and the infant Jesus. The legend became custom, and German children would prepare nests of grass inside their bonnets or caps so that the Osterhase would have a place to lay her eggs, delivered to good children on Easter morning. This custom, now evolved into our Easter baskets, was brought to our country in the early 1700s by the Pennsylvania Dutch.

            And, you may ask, what is the source of the colored eggs? Catholics, Lutherans, Episcopalians and other orthodox churches traditionally fast during Lent.  In medieval times, to preserve any eggs from being wasted during the fast, they were boiled or roasted. Often they were painted to separate them from fresh, unroasted eggs. On Easter morning, when the Lenten fast was broken, the painted eggs were a special treat.

            These two Easter traditions, passed down now for centuries, symbolize some basic elements of our belief in the Resurrection.  Jesus died on the cross to save us, and he arose from the grave to give us the promise of eternal life. The life-giving productivity of the Easter hare is a perfect representation of that abundant life promised to all of us. The colored eggs, consumed at the end of the Lenten fast, illustrate how our faith is life-renewing. Easter is celebrated in springtime in the Northern Hemisphere, where these traditions originated in Europe and where we live in America. Easter and its celebration of the Resurrection, like spring and the greening and blossoming of the earth, remind us that life is everlasting. The very fact that these centuries-old traditions are still carried on every Easter, as if bringing those Easter baskets out of the attic or a closet is itself a kind of resurrection, is a powerful reminder for us and for our children that life is eternal.

            Today, the second Sunday in the season of Easter, we have two lessons in the words of Peter, apostle and founder of the church.  Peter reminds the early Christians that Jesus Christ not only taught us how to live our lives--"You have made known to me the ways of life; you will make me full of gladness with your presence"--but Jesus has also illustrated for us how to overcome death.  Alleluia indeed! As Peter proclaims to the crowd [in Acts 2:22-32], “God raised him up, having freed him from death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power.”  Let me repeat that: It was impossible for death to hold Jesus in its power.

            In his first letter, Peter writes, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead... Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls."

             Theologian Richard Rohr explains how our faith offers us the blessed assurance of eternal life in this way: It seems that we are born with a longing, desire, and deep hope that this thing called life could somehow last forever. It is a premonition from Something Eternal that is already within us. Some would call it the soul. Believers would call it the indwelling presence of God. It is God in us that makes us desire God. It is an eternal life already within us that makes us imagine eternal life.... God, by every religion’s best definition, is love (1 John 4:16). What follows, of course, is that if we are God’s creatures, then love is what we are too, at our deepest core and final identity. When we live consciously within this love, we will not be afraid to die, because love is eternal, and that core self is indestructible. “Love never ends” (1 Corinthians 13:8). [endquote]

            Jesus said we must become like little children if we want to enter the kingdom of heaven. I think he meant that we must have the all-trusting faith of a little child to believe in that much love.  Maybe the children in our lives, and the inner child in each of us, can allow bunny rabbits and painted eggs and the joy of Easter morning to strengthen our faith in the resurrection--and in God's love that made it possible.

AMEN.

           

What would Jesus have us see?

Park Street Christian Church and Graves Chapel            Sunday, March 30, 2014

Lessons:

Psalm 23

1 Samuel 16:1-13

Ephesians 5:8-14

John 9:1-41

            Have you had the experience of losing something, looking high and low for it, and then finding it in the very first place you looked, right where you left it? This happens so much at my house that my husband calls it "front of the shelf syndrome."  We think it’s interesting that I can find his lost items much more easily than I can find my own--and vice versa.  I believe this says a lot about selective seeing.  I don't think "selective seeing" is the kind of seeing Jesus wants from us.  In fact, selective seeing is a kind of half-blindness.  There is enough light to see by, but our eyes are doing their own thing.

                        Please imagine for a moment what true darkness was like in the Palestine that Jesus knew.  We live surrounded by so much artificial light that it can be difficult to ponder how very dark it must have been in the evenings of Jesus's childhood, especially in the winter when days were short.  Darkness must have felt almost palpable to people who lived in ancient times.  How splendid that the birth of the infant Jesus was heralded by a brilliant star!  It should not surprise us that this infant would grow up to be called "the light of the world."  In the world we've come to know as Jesus's world, circumscribed by a very few miles and revealed to us by the stories of his travels and his works, who are the ones that see by his light?

            Images of light and seeing and their opposites, those of darkness and blindness, pervade not only today's lessons, but many other verses in scripture as well.  Sometimes the words of Jesus, couched in metaphor or parable, can seem inscrutable, but one thing is clear: the kind of seeing presented in scripture isn't just about the use of one's eyes, and those who are blind are not necessarily suffering from loss of physical vision.

            In today's gospel lesson from John, the man born blind becomes a seer, while the Pharisees, caught up in their rigid rules and outward righteousness, are unwilling to see the great healing miracle before their eyes. The Pharisees choose to be blind to the truth when it is not the truth they prefer.  Selective seeing…

            We can certainly find other gospel stories to illustrate the way the Lord chooses to see and would have us see.  Here are opposite examples of selective seeing in one famous parable. A priest and a Levite hurry past a gravely wounded man, robbed, beaten, and left for dead by the side of the road.  Their self-importance blinds them to his great need, and they choose to ignore him, but a Samaritan sees the wounded man with the eyes of his heart, and that Samaritan does all he can to help him. We could also say that the Lord sees with the eyes of the heart. Jesus wants us to see with compassion, to put our own hearts in contact with the hearts of others, the ones we encounter who need our care.

            When I pass by a homeless person standing by a stop sign and asking for a handout, I sometimes catch myself thinking unkind thoughts about him—a way of making excuses for why I don’t stop my car and offer real help, a way of choosing not to see him. Since we humans more often behave like the Pharisees and the priest and Levite than like the Samaritan, Jesus actually says very clearly in one passage what kind of seeing he expects from us:  "How can you say to your neighbor, 'Friend, let me take the speck out of your eye,' when you yourself do not see the log in your own eye?"  Isn't this an interesting way to say that we are much more likely to find fault with others than with ourselves? By using the eyes as the central image, Jesus asks us to consider observing ourselves more closely than we observe others.  He asks us to turn a light on the glaring faults within ourselves rather than so willingly seeing the minor faults of others and criticizing them.  Socrates said, "The unexamined life is not worth living."  Jesus says much the same when he asks us to recognize our blind and unloving spots.

            In his letter to the community at Ephesus, Paul writes that Jesus is the light of the world and that he has come to free us from all darkness--from the darkness of despair, the darkness of poverty and hunger, the darkness of danger and oppression, the darkness of injury and illness. When we ourselves choose, as the priest and the Levite did, to be blind to the needs of those around us, we are shutting out the light. The light of Jesus is the light of love, and it dispels the darkness. As Paul so beautifully puts it, "Once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of light, for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true."

            "All that is good and right and true...” Aren’t those words simply beautiful? There is nothing inconsequential in God’s creation, nothing outside the attention of a loving God. As Jesus tells us in Matthew 10, “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?  Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the Father.” We humans may devalue many of God’s creatures, not seeing their worth, but we are told the hairs on our head are numbered and God’s eye is on the sparrow.  This kind of love, which expresses itself as protective tenderness, is also described in Jesus’s parable about the lost sheep: “If a shepherd has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray.”  (Matthew 18:12-13)   For Jesus, seeing is not just passive; it involves active looking and finding.  If we are the lost sheep, then we certainly have done nothing to earn that persistent seeking of the Lord. We are just muddling through life as best we can, wandering wide of the mark on most days, and yet the Lord seeks us out and returns us to His gracious protection. His is “selective seeing” of an entirely different order of magnitude!

            Sometimes for us, the issue is more about blindness than seeing, about what we can’t see rather than what we don’t see.  Thankfully, we have the apostle Thomas to be our test case. He, of course, hears from his fellow apostles about the appearance of the Risen Lord, and since Thomas hasn’t been present when the Lord has appeared, he says he won’t believe the Lord is risen until he sees the nail-scarred hands.  I’ve never been sure it is fair to call Thomas “doubting.”  His question is one any reasonable person might ask, and because he asks the question, he gets a direct response from Jesus:  “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who believe without seeing me.” (John 20:29) 

            That blessing brings two things to mind. One is that faith itself is a blessing, and the interaction between Thomas and Jesus underscores the way we receive the gift of faith.  We may not see the pierced, resurrected body of Christ in the same way Thomas saw him, but we do see Jesus every day of our lives, if we look for him.  We see him in the faces of those who need us, in the eyes of those who seek us, in the hearts of those we love.   As Psalm 23 so beautifully reminds us, the Lord is our shepherd, and he is always near.

Psalm 23 Page 612, BCP

Dominus regit me

1

The LORD is my shepherd; *

I shall not be in want.

2

He makes me lie down in green pastures *

and leads me beside still waters.

3

He revives my soul *

and guides me along right pathways for his Name's sake.

4

Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

I shall fear no evil; *

for you are with me;

your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

5

You spread a table before me in the presence of those

who trouble me; *

you have anointed my head with oil,

and my cup is running over.

6

Surely your goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days

of my life, *

and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.

AMEN.

           

What Does Love Have to Do With It? Everything!

Homily for Sunday, February 23, 2014                    Graves Chapel

Matthew 5:38-48

Jesus said, "You have heard that it was said, `An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.' But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.

"You have heard that it was said, `You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect."

My brother, who sometimes comes to these services, calls me “the prophet of love.” Now, since he is my big brother, Larry’s intention is to tease me, but I don’t mind.  I don’t believe I’m the prophet of love, but our gospel lesson for today includes the words of the one who was the greatest prophet of love the world has ever known. Who else but Jesus would say, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy,’ but I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…”?  All of the actions as well as the words of the one we call Jesus were filled with love. He lived what he preached, turning the other cheek to Pilate and Herod, praying for his persecutors, extending the hand of love to reputed sinners, healing those who seemed incurable, and restoring the dead to life.  His life was a miracle of love.

            But some of the words about love in today’s lesson offer a real challenge to those of us who want to emulate Christ’s love.  It is really hard to turn the other cheek when someone wounds us. Some wounds are just not easy to forgive. And how many of us would find it easy to give all that we have to others in need?  I think everyone here is willing to give a coat to someone who needs it, but would we give our last warm article of clothing?  Just what does Jesus mean when he tells us to be perfect? After all, we are just human.  Can we really love others the way that Christ loves us?

When I was thinking about how to explain the kind of love that Jesus exemplifies, I thought of his first miracle at the wedding in Cana. I think this miracle doesn’t get enough attention. Since it isn’t one of the extraordinary healings, it seems rather pedestrian. The whole changing water into wine episode has been an uncomfortable story, unfortunately, for some churches that forbid the use of alcohol. Back in the days when this chapel was a Baptist church and I was a child here, I remember being told that what the people of Jesus’s day called wine was really more like grape juice. And grape juice was what we got at communion here. Each of us had a little sip of grape juice from a tiny cup; there was no shared chalice and no wine. I’m still not much of a wine drinker, but I think drinking the blood of Christ from a shared chalice of wine is a better reenactment of the Last Supper it is supposed to commemorate. Sharing bread and wine at the Lord’s table is the most important action we Christians undertake to demonstrate we are all members of the same body—the body of Christ, the body of the church, one family.  (But I do admit that, when our mother had to put things away after communion here, Larry and I raced to drain the leftover grape juice from all of the untouched glasses.)

            What if instead of discounting the first miracle, when Jesus changed water into wine at a wedding reception, we embraced it for all it has to teach us?  Remember, it was Jesus’s mother Mary, after all, who instigated the miracle.  Don’t you love that scene? They are at a family wedding, and when the wine runs out, Mary wants to save her relatives from embarrassment, so she tells Jesus to do something! He initially resists, but then asks for several jugs of water. And he doesn’t just change all of that water into any old wine. The steward who tastes it acclaims it to be the best wine. In that scene, the importance of wine—the blood of the eucharist, the blood of Christ—is prefigured.  Since most of the other miracles performed by Jesus have to do with tragic aspects of life—when he heals those who are ill or disabled or brings the dead back to life—how lovely it is that this first miracle is set at an occasion of joy! How splendid that Mary guides her Son to perform his first miracle, as an act of familial love! For me, it reinforces the idea that the Lord is always present with us, in the midst of our family gatherings, in times of joy and of sorrow, and that miracles are always possible. It is a reminder to be grateful for those everyday miracles of simple blessings that we often overlook.

What could be more fitting to represent the establishment of a new religion, one based on love, than a wedding?  In some of his parables, Jesus refers to himself as the bridegroom. And how is Jesus like a bridegroom?  He is faithful.  In the Hebrew tradition, the period of betrothal (or engagement) tested the faithfulness of the groom to his betrothed. The wedding itself was the proof of that faithfulness. A bridegroom is filled with love for his chosen one, just as Jesus loved and continues to love his people.  As any bridegroom would feel, Jesus’s love for us is a very tender, protective love. The church has long been called “the bride of Christ,” and we are the recipients of a love that is faithful, intimate, exclusive, and true. As the “bride of Christ,” we respond with our own tender love, our fidelity, our willingness to serve Christ in one another, our trust.  

The miracle at the wedding at Cana is not just a light-spirited event in the life of Jesus that can be easily overlooked. That miracle foreshadows all of the joy, love, and communion each of us can experience in the church.  The collect for today, the seventh Sunday after the Epiphany, has long been one of my favorites for its bold statement about the nature of love, and it would be a good prayer to say at a wedding:

O Lord, you have taught us that without love whatever we do is worth nothing: Send your Holy Spirit and pour into our hearts your greatest gift, which is love, the true bond of peace and of all virtue, without which whoever lives is accounted dead before you.

Grant this for the sake of your only Son Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

The Lord's Baptism

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Homily for Sunday, January 12, 2014       Celtic Evening Prayer     Buck Mountain Church

I love being present for a baptism, and since they usually happen at our morning service, I hope you regular 5 o’clockers will someday attend a baptism here if you haven’t already. Generally, the ones being baptized are infants or young children. Their parents, godparents, and grandparents gather around the baptismal font. Our vicar Connie calls all of the older children to the front of the church so they bear witness and are  participants in this important sacrament, something they themselves experienced not so long before but likely do not recollect.  There is so much joy, the church is one big smile, and it seems to be a brightly sunlit day, whether the sun is shining or not.  The congregants break into spontaneous applause as Connie carries the infant all the way up the aisle and back and we are asked to welcome the newly baptized.

            The sun shone on Jesus the day he was baptized, or so it seems in the story.  In Matthew’s description, after Jesus is baptized by John, “The heavens opened and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him.  And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’”  Imagine how startled John and other witnesses must have been! The voice of God, as described in the old Hebrew scriptures, including Psalm 29, was “a powerful voice, a voice of splendor,” a voice that could “split the flames of fire or make the oak trees writhe.”  How marvelous it must have been to hear the words of fatherly pride and love in that voice!  I am pretty sure this is the only time in the gospels when all three of the persons of the Trinity are physically represented together in the same scene. In that light, every detail of Jesus’s baptism is significant.

            Jesus chooses to be baptized by his cousin John, even though John demurs and says it would be more appropriate for Jesus to baptize him. Jesus insists, knowing that this “fulfilling of all righteousness,” as he expresses it, will be the public beginning of his ministry. The visible presence of the Spirit in the form of a dove and the proclamation by the Father himself were affirmations he may have needed as he began his journey, his ministry, whose terminal point in a brief three years would be the cross.

            Jesus’s full immersion in the Jordan River, as an adult, is very different from the infant baptisms involving a sprinkle of water that we witness today.  As much as we cherish having the little ones incorporated into the body of Christ and protected by that grace from infancy, there is an aspect of baptism that we lose when we are not fully immersed as adults.

            In the early centuries of the Christian faith, those wishing to be baptized [let’s call them catechumens] were adults who endured three years of work and study to prepare themselves for the sacrament.  In those days, all baptisms took place at Easter, and the catechumens participated in a full weekend of services. At 3:00 on Good Friday afternoon, they were publicly examined and anointed with oil for the first of three times, the sign of the cross being made on their heads to signify their turning toward the Lord. The Great Vigil of Easter consumed most of Saturday, and at its high point on Saturday evening, the catechumens stripped off all of their clothing.  Their nakedness represented a renunciation of everything in their past lives, the death of their former selves. At this time, their bodies were anointed with the oil of the Spirit.

            In the dark early morning hours of Easter Sunday, as the vigil continued, the catechumens were led to the baptismal pool, where a crowd awaited them and they were anointed and examined for the last time. After each one entered the pool, the deacon asked three questions: “Do you believe in God? Do you believe in Jesus Christ? Do you believe in the Holy Spirit?” After each question and the response, “I believe,” the deacon held the catechumen’s head under the water, pressing it down.  This baptism was indeed a death and rebirth into new life. As St. Paul said in his letter to the Colossians (Chapter 2), “When you were buried with him in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God.”

            Not only was being held under water like a death and burial, but the nudity can be seen as symbolic of Christ’s nakedness on the cross. Where is the joy in such a baptism, you may ask?  In the resurrection, of course. The newly baptized Christians, knowing themselves to be born into new life in Christ, had undergone a thrilling demonstration of victory over death.  After three years of rigorous preparation, they were now finally members of the church, the body of Christ.  They lived in a world where identification with that radical group known as Christians might very well result in their martyrdom. 

The baptism they had undergone was not only a test, but a preparation. I’m sure many of them kept the story of Jesus’s glorious baptism in mind as an affirmation of their own faith. May we always do the same.   Amen.

Light and Darkness

Homily for Sunday, December 29, 2013   Buck Mountain Episcopal Church Celtic Service

From today’s collect:

Almighty God, you have poured upon us the new light of your incarnate Word.

            In the grand story of creation in Genesis 1, God’s first recorded words are “Let there be light.” The separation of light and darkness, day and night, follows. Even though we think of these words as opposites, each one is necessary to an understanding of the other. Without light, how would we define darkness?  Without darkness, how would we appreciate light?  In John 1, our gospel lesson for today, we have a passage that contains the New Testament complement to the creation story. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John (the Baptizer). He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.”

John’s words speak to the glory of the cosmic shift in our human relationship with almighty God, a shift engendered by the birth of an infant in a lowly stable—the new light that would come into the world. The God of Genesis, who simply by speaking the words of creation brought all things into being, is a God whose power is truly unfathomable to the human mind. Even so, as humans tend to do, we have striven to understand and explain God to one another, often with conflicting and disastrous results. 

Since we have made such a mess of comprehending God and translating that comprehension into action, God chose to be born as one of us, to live among us as the exemplar of all we are supposed to be. The infant Jesus became the light that dispelled the darkness. As the apostle John speaks so eloquently in the gospel, “From his fullness we have all received grace upon grace. The law indeed was given by Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. It is God, the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.”  Jesus has shown us the face of God—as well as the kind heart of God.

The last time I led this Celtic service, I preached about the necessity, even the blessing, of accepting darkness.  That darkness, a result of our feeling distant from God, was called “the cloud of unknowing” by an anonymous early church father, who wrote about the need for letting go of our presumptuous interpretations of God’s meaning, letting go of our need to know exactly what God intends for us, and allowing ourselves to accept the mystery of God. Both God’s power and his infinite love for us are vastly beyond our ability to comprehend.  By letting go of our need to know, by welcoming the darkness of our incomprehension, we can simply relax into God’s loving arms, trusting in God’s great mercy. That trust in what we cannot see, cannot know, is the essence of faith. Often children, as we observe and may remember ourselves, are the ones who exemplify a trusting faith best of all, especially in the Christmas season.

Today’s lessons are all about the light that shines forth once we accept and move beyond the darkness. In his letter to the Galatians, Paul explains the simplicity of faith as something revealed to us. He writes, “Now before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed… But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith.” Doesn’t it sound as if Paul is saying that humans needed to attribute a harsh and demanding nature to God, needed to assign laws as the pretext for a relationship between God and God’s people? The laws provided necessary limits for humans—yes indeed! But these laws also placed imagined limits on God and God’s ability to respond to human need. Through these laws, interpreted and written by humans, we have presumed to understand God and express God’s will. We refuse to accept the darkness of unknowing when we make God into OUR idea of a disciplinarian. We refuse the lessons exemplified by the living Christ when we condemn ourselves and one another. Paul tells us that it is with child-like faith that we are freed.

            And what is the source of our freedom?  Clearly, God did not wish us to remain imprisoned by our false notions about God. Paul says, “When the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law so that we might receive adoption as children.” It is no wonder we cherish the expression, “Love came down at Christmas.” In this way, the Old Testament Word entered the world as the new light of grace. The light of Christ’s message, the light signified by a star and offered to us through his humble birth and through his teaching, is the most simple Word of all: “Love one another as I have loved you.” 

Love, fully expressed and fully experienced, is grace upon grace.  The star of Bethlehem is the bright light of love.  AMEN.

Thanksgiving, 2013

Why Give Thanks?

Lessons:

Deuteronomy 26:1-11

Psalm 100

Philippians 4:4-9

John 6: 25-35

“If the only prayer you ever say in your life is thank you, it will be enough.”

13^th century mystic Meister Eckhart is the source of that quotation.   Is his sentiment really true?  Why should we give thanks above all else?

Today’s lessons, the ones selected for Thanksgiving Day, certainly point in that direction. In Deuteronomy, offering a sacrifice of Thanksgiving to God is the thing the people are told to do first.  Deuteronomy was a book collecting the words of Moses to the people, with his explanations of the laws handed down by God and his own words of instruction. If Moses says give thanks, then maybe we ought to listen.

As the psalm says, we give thanks because “The Lord is good; his mercy is everlasting and his faithfulness endures from age to age.”  I’m pretty sure most of us can offer plenty of evidence of God’s faithfulness in our lives: of all the ways we have been blessed by God. But how often do we count our blessings?

In his letter to the Philippians, Paul offers clues about the importance of Thanksgiving when he writes, “Do not worry about anything, but in everything [in every situation] by prayer and supplication WITH THANKSGIVING let your requests be made known to God.” 

I’m pretty sure most of the prayers I make are prayers of supplication—when I make requests of God. I’m also sure that I don’t give equal time to saying thanks.

In the words from the Gospel of John, Jesus tells us directly why we should thank God:  “The bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”

The basic fact that we are alive and breathing, that we have the most essential necessities of life—food and water, shelter, someone who loves us—all are gifts from God. Many of the things we ask for in our prayers are not things we need, but things we want.  We know by the evidence of our own lives and the words of the Lord that God grants us everything we need before we ever even think to ask.

It stands to reason, then, that prayers of Thanksgiving are not just what we ought to say, but that words of thanks should simply rise to our lips spontaneously at any moment. When we thank the Lord for his provision of all we need, we acknowledge that we have received our blessings with a full awareness of their source.  We simply remind ourselves how very blessed we are when we give thanks to that Source of all we are and all we possess.  We very much need such a reminder when we get caught up in worries about our problems.

Right now I’m thankful that the epistle lesson appointed for this day is Philippians 4:4-9.  These most beautiful words are some of my very favorite ones in all the bible, and they always remind me of my sweet mother and her siblings, of how blessed I was to be born into their family. In these words, Paul lists some of the intangible blessings that we too often take for granted:  “Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”

Something about the way giving thanks can bring us to an internal state of balance, “set us to rights,” so to speak, must have been what President Lincoln had in mind when he began the annual tradition of this holiday by proclaiming a national day of “Thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens” to be celebrated on Thursday, November 26^th, 1863—right at the height of the Civil War.  Lincoln, whom many consider to be our greatest and wisest President, understood well the healing nature of giving thanks.

I am thankful for you, for this lovely old chapel, for all of our many blessings, and for the holiday we are about to celebrate.  May the Lord continue to bless us and keep us in his care.   AMEN.