A Poem about Jacob and Thoughts for the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

St. Aidan's Episcopal Church
Alexndria, Virginia
July 20, 2014

Angels and Ladders
July 20 for a sermon at St. Aidan’s

So, Jacob had a dream.
Everyone has dreams. 
But Jacob’s dream?
Who gets angels and ladders from heaven in their dreams?

I get that hooded stranger….lurking.
I get faces.  
Examining faces, hungry faces, 
unknown faces I think I might have seen somewhere but can’t quite place, 
all pressed against the windows of my little house. 
Wanting something.

I wake up with, “Oh my God, what was that?”
Jacob wakes up with, Oh my God…..that was….(gasp)”

Angels and ladders.
Who gets angels and ladders in their dreams?

And God?  
Who gets an audience with God in their dreams?
I get a fat baptist preacher.  
I’m riding my my bicycle past an old girlfriend’s beat up Datsun convertible which is sitting on blocks in the middle of a field.  
The preacher is sitting on my handlebars, riding along as I pedal down the road.  
A fat baptist preacher is not God.

Jacob gets angel choruses and heavenly hosts, all assembled for his benefit.
A grand liturgical production.
I get showing up for my ordination 
an hour late 
only to find that everyone’s gone home except the bishop.
And yes…….I am naked.

And it’s not just angels and ladders and God. 
Jacob gets a look at the plan.
Who gets to know what it’s all about?
Who gets that?
All those details, the promises, all that information
bright future all spelled out so clearly.
I, sometimes, get brilliant insights that expand my heart with hope…..and then 
disappear around the corner of consciousness with a quick, backward-looking wink 
and a wide grin to say, 
“Ha! You missed me again.”  

And maybe the hardest part is this.
Maybe the hardest part is this…..
All over the world this morning, 
in churches from Poughkeepsie to Paris 
preachers are explaining to their congregations 
exactly what Jacob’s dream was all about.  
Cherubim, seraphim, celestial light.  
With carefully drawn verbal lines and arrows, 
with references to ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, Ugaritic maybe, they go on.
The world is filled with experts, 
eager to explain the meaning of Jacob’s dream.  

With me it’s, 
“Hi John.  Good to see you.”  
“How’s the week been.”
“Any dreams?”
“Yes?”
“Really.”  
“Interesting.”  
“Oh, I don’t know John, it’s your dream.”  
“What do you think it means?”

Maybe I’m just not ready for angels and ladders.  
Not ready for the big picture.

I don’t mean to sound ungrateful for the little hints.
Maybe glimpses, puzzles and on-going projects are the better way.
It is kind of fascinating, really, 
mining the night for what we have probably known forever and have only just forgotten. 

Honestly.  It’s not so bad.

Sometimes there are smiles 
and jokes 
and old friends, 
and green fields stretching toward forever.  
Sometimes I can fly.  
And streams run there, streams that flow up and down over hills.  
How can they do that?   

Maybe I have seen an angel. 
Maybe a footprint in the morning of that ladder
pressed into the sod outside my door. 

It’s the little sparks that make me wish for Jacob’s fireworks
that leave me hoping there is more.
Knowing there must be more.

I will lay my head upon a feather pillow tonight 
and pull its cool softness up around my face. 
I will close my eyes…

and maybe, just maybe dream of Jacob, 
whose pillow was a stone.  JB

I’ve been interested in dreams for a long time.  If you had asked me a few years ago about my spiritual director, who it is who helps shepherd my soul, I would have told you about a friend, a Jungian analyst who helped me with my inner path for many years.  I still see her once in a while, and she always greets me with the same question, “any dreams?”

My interest in the Jacob and Esau story began long before I had started working in my own dreams, probably before I knew that Jung was pronounced with a “Y” and not a “J” sound.  I was intrigued by Jacob who struggled with a part of himself from which he had been separated since birth.  Even before I had any concept of the shadow self, I was drawn to this Father of many nations who ran in fear from the wildness of his red, hairy brother to travel an event-filled road that would eventually bring them back together.  I think I sensed that such an arc might have something to do with my life.

The theme of estrangement and the journey toward reunion runs through all of our stories.   It is the journey from that trouble in the garden at the beginning of our scriptures to the great gathering around the heavenly throne at the end.  It is the journey of Israel through the desert and of Israel into and out of exile.  It is the path of the prodigal son.  

I love the dreams in the Jacob and Esau saga because they spell out that the journey from separation to reunion has to do with an inner journey.  
We don’t always speak about our inner work, maybe because we are all still daunted by the scope of the project, I know that is true for me, but that good work is the stuff of life.  We have pointed our telescopes at the sky and numbered and mapped the stars….our inner worlds are still a mystery to us, as ripe for the instruction of powerful stories and myths as the constellations once were.  Becoming our best possible selves is what we were put here to do.  The longer I live in this tradition of ours, the more I realize that it has little to do with belief.  Believing/offering our hearts is just the beginning of walking this way of ours.  The real work comes into focus as we learn to listen to that inner teacher who speaks to us in ritual, in our dreams and quiet moments, and in rich, symbolic stories like this story of Jacob and his angels. 

The Jacob and Esau story is not always pretty.  It begins in selfishness and greed and deception, and moves through fear and struggle.  Maybe that is why I find it compelling. Like any good story, it moves……from its very human beginning…..through the fear….through the struggles….toward its resolution.  It is that ending, I think, that first drew me to the story for it is the ending that gives us courage, that turns all the rest into promise.  We get the Jacob story for four weeks this year, but we don’t get the best part.  Let tell you how it all turns out.  After a lifetime of running in fear from his brother, after all his dreams and adventures, this is what we hear…….

The messengers returned to Jacob, saying, “We came to your brother Esau, the one who promised to kill you, and he is coming to meet you, and four hundred men are with him.” Then Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed;……  And Jacob divided his family and his herds so some part of what he had might be saved, and then Jacob went out to meet Esau.  But Esau ran to meet him, and embraced him, and fell on his neck and kissed him, and they wept.

Tears, reconciliation, the healing of what was broken, rejoicing, surely these are the hope of all our best stories.  Surely that is what is meant by salvation.  It is certainly my favorite part of this story.  

And you know…. as I think about it now, maybe this story is one of those ladders into heaven we heard about.  Maybe it is in stories faithfully lived to their finish that we hear the angels.
Who gets angels and ladders?
Maybe everyone does.
  JB

A Sermon for Easter

St. Aidan's Episcopal Church

Alexandria, Virginia

April 20, 2014

John 20:1-18

Alleluia, Christ is Risen!
The Lord is risen indeed!

Really?  What exactly do you mean by that?  Are you sure?  Would the people around you agree with your take on what this day is about?  Of course, I’m just tossing those questions out there so we can all acknowledge that they’re in the room today.  I’m not really asking them.  If there is any day in the Church year when you shouldn’t have to worry about believing the wrong thing, or not believing enough, it is Easter Sunday.  When it comes to Easter, we are all in the same boat, floating on a sea of tradition and mystery whose changing surface reveals only some of the great depth beneath us.  Consider the story we just heard.  

In this story, Mary and Peter and the beloved disciple all go running out to see what has happened.  The three who went to the tomb each approached the tomb in their own way.  One ran eagerly and got there first but didn’t go in.  Peter, as soon as he arrived, went inside.  Mary waited outside.  That first disciple looked into the tomb and saw the linen wrappings.  Mary looked into the tomb and saw angels, but it took her while and she needed some help to recognize Jesus when he showed up.  We are told the one who arrived first eventually did go in, and upon entering, saw and believed, “for as yet, he did not understand.”  What an interesting little snippet about understanding and belief.  Does understanding make belief difficult?  Are they opposed?  Do they come at different times?   Apparently you can have one without the other.  This is a wildly inclusive story.  There is something in this story for everyone.  

Maybe you saw the Washington Post yesterday and the articles in the B section on faith, one article about belief in the resurrection and one by Sally Quinn on belief in God.  The article on the resurrection quoted a James Martin, a Jesuit priest and author who said belief in the actual physical resurrection of the body is essential, that there can be no Christianity without that core belief.  That same article quoted the retired Episcopal bishop, Jack Spong, who has been writing and teaching for years that it is quite possible to be a faithful Christian and understand the resurrection in a metaphorical way.  He says “Jesus was raised back into the life of God……and it was out of this, not his body, that his presence was manifested to certain witnesses.”   Sally Quinn who writes regularly in the Post on faith and religion says she used to consider herself an atheist, but no longer does.  Speaking about her belief in the resurrection, she says simply, “I don’t know.”  

Here again is a group of people with different experiences, different backgrounds and upbringings, people each with their own temperament and ways of perceiving the world, all looking into the empty tomb and seeing something different.  There is something in this story for everyone.  

The disciples went looking for Jesus.  I recommend that, looking for Jesus.  That was the beginning for them of experiencing him in a new way.  And they even looked for Jesus in different ways, some rushing in hopeful, some holding back, maybe not wanting to be taken in by some kind of hoax.  They each approached the story in their own way.  They did not all have the same experience.  And, they all became part of the story.  

This story only gets better with more perspectives and more voices.   Jesus can come to life in some new way for us as we receive the version of the story only our neighbor could tell, or only our friend, or even that person over there whose version of the story seems so different from our own.  Remember, another part of this story-for-everyone today is the part where Mary has to come to terms with a new Jesus, one she didn’t even recognize though she had loved him as much as anyone.  The Jesus she had known died, and the Jesus who came to life in his place kind of was and kind of wasn’t that same Jesus.  He became new to her.  New for her.  

It can happen that way with us.  It has happened that way with me.  There have been times when the Jesus I have known has faded, died even, and been replaced by a Jesus who is new for me in some important way.  

I was eating breakfast with some clergy friends the other day, and the priest next to me asked me something about the atonement…..(yes, we do sometimes talk such heady subjects over breakfast.  Pray for us.)    Anyway, I told my friend that I didn’t have much use for the doctrine of atonement any more and he asked me how I could call myself a Christian and say such a thing.  I have practiced the answer for that sort  of question, so I just smiled an told him I was baptized and I loved Jesus and I figured that was enough.  “Love Jesus?!” he asked.  “What?”  I do confess that I probably enjoy those little exchanges a bit more than I should.

I haven’t always been able to say I loved Jesus.  A few months ago I began meeting with a spiritual director, something I haven’t done in several years.  I had trouble finding someone I thought could put up with my spiritual vicissitudes.  A few weeks ago, she asked me how I imagined God and as I tried to explain, without noticing, I began to talk about Jesus.  She pointed out the shift and asked me about it and I said I was a little surprised too.  I told her that most of my life I hadn’t been very comfortable talking about Jesus.  I had wanted to be a priest because I loved God, but I had been raised around people who spoke of Jesus often, and in ways that made me not want to be among them.  I told her that only in the last ten years or so, and only by consciously working on it had I been able to begin to imagine the God I love and talk to regularly as Jesus.  That it had been a real shift. 

She asked me why I had wanted to make that shift.  I told her I figured it was my job to talk about Jesus and I should probably learn to do it.  She too is a parish priest, she laughed and said, “if our parishioners only knew.”   I have to tell you, there have been times in my life when I was afraid my belief in Jesus wasn’t certain enough, or I didn’t believe deeply enough, or that I didn’t believe the right things about Jesus.  There is nothing like a bit of accepting laughter to scatter the clouds of that kind of self doubt.  It is even more recently that I have learned that worrying about the quality of my faith has always had more to do with doubting myself than with doubting God.  

I am here this morning to tell you the good news about the resurrection.  I’m here to tell you about Jesus coming back from the dead.  I know there are probably as many takes on what those words mean as there are people in this room.  I can only attest to what I have experienced.  Jesus has become new for me many times.  I have, once or twice, thought Jesus was gone, dead, only to find myself recognizing him in a new form and with a new face, familiar, but still new.  I don’t understand that process.  I’m sure it has much to do with me and what I am open to at different times in my life, and I am also becoming more convinced that it has to do with this God-as-companion that I have finally learned to call Jesus.  One of the new faces of Jesus coming into focus for me is that of trusted guide. 

My message today is that Jesus, even though he may seem, dead and gone, can……does rise again, not just in ancient story, but in the lives of people like you and me. May it be so for all of us in this Easter season.  Amen

JB

Readings for the Last Sunday in Epiphany

Sermon for the Last Sunday in Epiphany

So, here’s the question.  Raise your hands. 

Is the world getting better? 

Worse?  

Can’t tell?

That’s kind of what I thought.  More of us in the middle.  Some days it is not that hard to believe that things are getting better.  Like novocain.  Any time I m getting dental work, I am thankful that I don’t live in the days before novocain.  Surely the world is getting better.  When I hear about the amazing work being done around the world by people like Bill Gates, I have hope for humanity.  We live in a time of easy and instant communication, so we know about situations and people no one had heard of just a hundred years ago.  We are able to care about those situations and respond in ways never possible before.  But, that same communication sometimes brings us an overwhelming volume of hard news that can leave us thinking humanity must be coming apart. Wars, famine, disease, displaced populations.  No wonder we are not all of one mind about whether the world is getting better.

Now you know me, and the one overarching theme I come back to again and again, about how you don’t have to believe all the Church’s stories in order to participate in the faith community.  If you want to be here, then you belong.  I believe that and say it all the time. I’ve told people they don’t have to believe anything if they are having trouble with belief.  Just show up.  Well I think I’ve changed my mind on that.  I think there is one thing we do need to believe.  Christians don’t have to believe Jesus walked on water, but we had better believe the world in which we live can be improved, can more clearly reflect the kingdom of God.  

I’ve come to this understanding, in part, because of a little passage I ran across recently in John Crossan’s latest book on the parables of Jesus.  In one chapter, he compares Jesus’ method and agenda with those of John the baptist.  Crossan says Jesus refined his message in response to what he saw John doing.  He says John told the people who came out to see him that the kingdom of God would arrive soon, that it’s coming would be violent, as in “who told you to flee from the wrath to come?” and it would be brought about by God alone.  Jesus, on the other hand, said the kingdom of God is here now, it is non-violent, and making the kingdom known and visible in the world is a collaborative effort.  It was that last part, about the collaborative effort that made me take a new look at the two Moses-up-the-mountain stories we have today.  Yes, two Moses stories.  The first one, of course, is from Exodus, and the second one is the transfiguration story as told by Matthew who certainly wants us to know that Jesus is the new Moses, come to lead the people to a new promised land.  

In the Exodus story, what you need to know is that a few verses before what we read today, God tells Moses to come up the mountain to see him, but to come into his presence alone.  All by himself.  You may remember that while Moses is up the mountain, Aaron and the others get impatient and end up building that golden calf.  God dealt harshly with those people.  It was one of the low points in Israel’s story.  John the baptist knew this part of the story.  He imagined God returning in anger to straighten out an unfaithful people. 

Jesus has a different approach.  When Jesus goes up the mountain, he takes Peter, James and John.  They don’t stand at a distance, but are right there with Jesus where he can reassure them and help them process what they are experiencing.  Jesus answers our calf-building tendencies, not by whipping us into submission, as John expected, but by making us partners in the whole enterprise of making the Kingdom real.  

If the kingdom is just about getting into heaven later, then we can give up on much in this life. But, if the kingdom is here and now as Jesus says it is, and if we are to be a part of making the kingdom real to the world around us, then we have an outline, a purpose for our lives.  Everything matters.  Crossan, in his discussion of this collaborative effort, quotes Desmond Tutu who says, “without us God will not, as we without God cannot.”  

The reason I like to tell people they don’t have to believe everything the Church says is that I don’t know how anyone can change their belief. I still think that is true about most of our stories, but I think there may be a way to change our beliefs about whether the world is getting better, about whether the kingdom is coming into view.  What would happen if we each found some piece of the world we would like to see improved and invested ourselves in that area.  We might find a group that’s doing good work and engaging in worthwhile discussions and follow them on line.  Maybe find some way to plug in and participate in their work.  Even a skeptic can look for signs of something good happening and decide to focus there for a little while.  Maybe that’s how we become believers in the Kingdom Jesus announced, the one that is all around us.  I’ve never met anyone passionate about making the world better who didn’t believe in their heart it was possible. 

Is the world getting better?  Can the world get better?  Looking around from this vantage point, on this hill top with Jesus, what do you see?

John B

Sermon for The Second Sunday of Easter

April 7, 2013

John 20:19-31

I really love Thomas.  I have loved Thomas for years because he has always stood as a symbol that it is ok to be skeptical and have questions about faith.  A little company in that area has always been welcome.  This year, though, I have a new take on Thomas…..new for me at least.

I met this week with the women’s book group, and in the course of our discussion I said something they claimed to have not heard, though I thought I had been saying it quite a bit lately.    I’m pretty sure I have said it among other clergy, and maybe even in front of the bishop’s assistant.  I don’t think I’ve said it around a bishop, and that is probably good.  I have been conscious of saying it because it kind of represents a new place in life for me.  What I said was I have finally gotten to an age where I think I’m old enough to believe what I want to believe.  That’s probably not the sort of thing to be saying around bishops, so in case I end up hearing from one of them, let me practice explaining what I mean when I say I’m old enough to believe whatever I want.

For too much of my life, my faith has been shaped by wanting to be some other kind of Christian.   You all know I make jokes about those Baptists who just seemed to be everywhere when I was growing up, and you know I use them as foils, straw men, for making my liberal theological points from time to time.  But the truth is, I always kind of wanted what they seemed to have.  I really liked their confidence and assurance that they had everything they needed.  The trouble was that by the time I became aware of their message, I had experienced enough death and sickness among loved ones that I already had some serious questions about a good God and bad things happening.  And, some of their basic beliefs like God sending people who’d never heard of him to hell just seemed wrong.  So I lived with a desire for what they had and some strong hesitations about accepting what they believed without any questions.  

How many of you have ever been to a Baptist funeral?  You know they don’t just bury folks, they work in an altar call as long as they have all those people visiting.  The preacher would say, “now I know there’s someone in this room who has been wanting to come forward, wanting to cross that line…”  and I would wonder how the heck he knew.  There were times in my formation when their way of believing looked easy but I just couldn't go there.

I was drawn to the great theologians with their soaringly complicated and articulate explanations about God.  I read theologians who inspired me and made me believe that hard study might lead to really solid ground in this faith that I was a part of.  I read and studied and wanted what they had, but pretty much any answer they provided led to a new series of questions.

I even tried being a charismatic for a while.  That looked good, but my questions came back.

I struggled sometimes, wondering if maybe God wasn’t interested in me because my faith didn’t seem as sure or as confident as that of people around me. 

What took me years to learn, and what I am now beginning to celebrate is the realization that there are all kinds of ways to be in this faith of ours.  And that those different paths can all be faithful and honest and good.  

We are all wired differently.   Some people are more comfortable with major questions left open ended.  Infinite possibility sounds just fine to some.    Others are wired to work within well defined frameworks,  those folks want to know the rules, the givens, they accept the authority of others easily and having done so, are free to explore the deeper meaning of what they have been given.  Some of us have trouble accepting what is handed to us until we work with it, question it, massage it and can finally call it our own.  I just happen one of those people.  

So when I've heard Jesus saying blessed are those who have not seen, but have believed, I took him to be saying blessed are those who are confident in their faith.  That kind of confidence sure looked blessed from my position.   I spent a lot of time wanting to be one of those people.  When I asked why they believed as they did or how they became so sure they would say, well, its in the Bible, or Jesus said so, or that’s the way you’re supposed to believe.  They made it sound so easy and easy sounded good to me. I wanted to be like those folks.  Instead, I kept finding myself to be a question asking, show me kind of disciple, wanting explanations, extremely uncomfortable with the contradictions I heard and with the signs of institutional pressure on the old stories.  Like a four year old who’s learning to work the universe, I asked the question why a lot. And to many of the answers I would ask it again.   Yes, but why?   Why can’t I just believe this stuff and move on with the rest of my life like all those other people I see?  And here’s Jesus saying the ones who can easily believe what they are told are indeed blessed.  Where does that leave the rest of us?  

Well, I think it leaves us where Thomas is.  And in the story we have this morning, Jesus meets Thomas right where he is.  He loves Thomas and works with him to help him find a faith he can embrace.  To Thomas, who doesn't buy what his friends are telling him, who can't believe just because they want him to, Jesus says, "ok Thomas, how can I help you here?  Here are my hands, my side, whatever you need."

What I hear today is Jesus saying there are many ways to believe.   Not just one or two but many.   If you feel yourself wanting something from faith but don’t know exactly why or what you really believe, Jesus says I’ll work with you and we’ll find something that you can be comfortable with.   Wanting something we can’t really name, or fully understand or even imagine in any detail is, I think, a sign that we’re on the right track.  One of the things we know about God..if we can even talk like that..is that God and where our lives might go in company with God is beyond our knowing.  Like Thomas, we sometimes just want to be in that room, hoping, but maybe not really expecting that something will happen.  Hoping but not really expecting that something will touch us in a way that feels real.  

Being old enough to believe what I want is, for me, a way of speaking about trust built over time.  About little moments of insight, affirmation, awe, accomplishment, surrender….little moments that add up over the years, all conveying the message that even though I don’t feel as confident about my faith as I might like, even though I’m not yet transformed into the person I think my faith is calling me to be, still, I am walking this faith road as best I can.  Thomas Merton said just our desire to walk that road with God makes God happy.   There are a thousand doors into those little moments of affirmation that become a life of faith.  

Someone once said the Christian life involves offering as much of ourselves as we can to as much of God as we can understand.  I like that.  We are called to do the best we can with the insights we are offered.  We come at this faith of ours from a lot of directions with a lot of different experiences.  There many, many faithful ways to live into our Christianity.  And Jesus meets us where we are, like Thomas, and says how can I help make this work for you.  

Some of what I missed out on by not becoming a Baptist was getting to preach while waving a floppy Bible and doing altar calls during funerals.  I think I could imagine some others who might be ready for an altar call today.  There isn't a person in this room today who doesn't belong here.  

I know there’s someone in this room today who is here and doesn’t really know why.  Well come on down.  You belong here,  This is your place too.

And I know there is someone here today who came because you love your spouse and your spouse wants to be here.  That's a fine reason for being here.  Come on down.  

And I know there is someone here who is trying to connect their kids to something deeper.  You belong too.  

Someone here today came because you felt a little funny about not having been for a while.  You belong at the table too.  

You know what brought you here today.  Whatever it is, it’s as good a reason to be here as anyone else’s.   Just like he did with Thomas, Jesus works with everyone who shows up, whenever we show up, to help us find our way.  The call on this day in this place is for everyone.  Amen.

Jeremiah 1:4-10

The word of the LORD came to me saying,

"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,

and before you were born I consecrated you;

I appointed you a prophet to the nations."

Then I said, "Ah, Lord GOD! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy." But the LORD said to me,

"Do not say, 'I am only a boy';

for you shall go to all to whom I send you,

and you shall speak whatever I command you,

Do not be afraid of them,

for I am with you to deliver you,

says the LORD."

Then the LORD put out his hand and touched my mouth; and the LORD said to me,

"Now I have put my words in your mouth.

See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms,

to pluck up and to pull down,

to destroy and to overthrow,

to build and to plant."

Call.  this is about call.  Or at least I want to talk about call.  Some elements of call.  

Jeremiah’s call echoes a theme we may all recognize, our hesitation…..I can’t do that, you must mean someone else…..there is no way…….

Sermon Preached at St. Aidan’s

Fourth Sunday after Epiphany

February 3, 2013

Most of you know that I serve on the diocesan Committee on Priesthood.  In that work, those of us on the committee spend a lot of time talking and hearing about “call.”  We also spend a lot of time pushing back against the all-too-common idea that “call” has something to do with ordination.  Call is not about ordination. Ordination is one response to a particular kind of call, but they are not the same thing, though that is a common misconception.  Sometimes the language we use encourages such a limited understanding of “call.”   We say things like, “she received the call and went into the ministry.”   (ministry in that sentence, of course is referring to ordained work, but that is not the primary meaning of ministry.  Another common misconception.)   I can remember even hearing people in my deep, Bible-belt-South beginnings speak of call almost as if it were an affliction.  “He was a pretty good old boy until he got the call.”  That kind of talk might make any of us afraid of hearing our “call,” but we have all been called or we wouldn’t be here.  The call to become part of this community, to be baptized and to bring our children for baptism, is itself a life-changing call and here we all are.  

For Jeremiah in today’s reading, call is a commissioning, a sending out on a particular mission.  Jeremiah’s call becomes a life-defining purpose into which he is called to live.   Would that we might all have such a sense of purpose and vocation in our lives.  Maybe the first question for those seeking to live in response to the call of God is where to look for our calling.  How can we figure out where God might be inviting a response from us.  I can think of a few signs that might be worth attending to as we try to discern our call.  Some of them we hear in Jeremiah’s call this morning. 

What have you thought of doing in the world that needs doing that you walked away from because it was beyond your abilities?  Is there a category where you have said, but what can one person do?  or simply, that’s too hard.  What might happen if you worked in that area long enough to challenge those responses.  Maybe it is hard, but not too hard.  Or maybe one person can’t do much but one person can do something.  Or one person can be part of a community that does something.   Maybe the sense that the job is too challenging is itself a sign of call.  Jonah learned that his real call lay in the work he ran away from.  Moses who, like Jeremiah today, told God he was not a gifted speaker, took up the work anyway and discovered that the call really wasn’t about speaking to the crowds as much as it was about remaining faithful to the path in the most difficult of times.  David, king of Israel was the weakest and youngest, almost not presented as a candidate for anointing because he was surely not up to the task. 

In all the stories of call in our tradition, the call is accompanied by a strong response in the one being called that they are not qualified, not capable of fulfilling the work to which they are being called.  That response is the first step in answering the call.  We are called, not to accomplish what we are capable of, but to accompany God into situations where God can make things happen.  Call is always about stepping out in faith, expecting, or at least hoping in some small part of our being that we will be given words, that we will be shown a way,  or that we will meet someone whose call involves helping us in the work we have been given.   When it comes to call, claiming our own inadequacy for the task may be a great starting point.

Another sign of call may have to do with what you care about?  What moves you?  Tugs at your heart?  Gives you joy?   Call always begins with an encounter with God, with a brush with a deep reality that hints of even deeper things.  “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you,” says God to Jeremiah.  The beginning of your call has been in you all along.   Call is grounded in gifts, loves, interests, leanings, maybe--some probably never really examined.   The beginning of call involves trusting that we are all formed for some purpose in the great cosmic work of creating, reconciling, transforming the world.   Call begins with an encounter with God who most often speaks within us.  For many of us, discerning a call involves silence and conversation, it involves spending some time alone with ourselves and it involves sharing those inner conversations with a few other people.  Discerning a call takes a bit of introspection, and it takes a community; a community to help by asking questions about what is important.  To help us listen to ourselves, to what we say and to what we don’t say.  Sometimes it is hard to know what really calls out within us until we hear ourselves speaking about it.  In a spiritual community, the members help each other recognize the kind of encounters with God that can change our course and set us on a new ad purposeful path.  

Another sign of call suggested in scripture has to do with risky places.   Isaiah receives his call in the throne room of God.  Filled with awe and fear he is approached and given his call.  Moses had to approach a miraculously burning bush.  Ananias had to go preach to Paul who was a real danger to Christians.  There is an old adage, if the cost is clear and the pay off is still murky, it is God calling.  If the pay-off is clear and the cost is unclear it is not God.  If you are feeling a nudge to explore some scary place, it might be worth a look.

Or maybe a call involves the recognition that you are the only person who can answer right now.  Simply hearing of the need brings a responsibility to follow through in some way.  

Of course, there is another possibility as we seek to discern our call that may be right in front of us in a way that we can’t always see.  Your call, your purpose in life may be exactly what you are already doing.   I think of Moses who led all those people for all those years.  Sometimes he seemed to wonder how in the world he had ended up in such a God-forsaken landscape with such a bunch of ornery folks.  In times like those he sometimes ended up on a mountain complaining to God who reminded him of his original call.    Like Moses, sometimes we have to look back when purpose gets clouded and our resolve is waning, remember the passion, the first sense of call and wonder and duty and gratitude immersion in a good work. 

As important as recognizing our call is trusting that we will be supported in that work.  That others with their own calls and God who is always with us will help us as we try to live faithfully into whatever vocation is ours.  “Do not be afraid,” says God, “I am with you.”  Wherever you may be sent, you can be sure it will be a place where that last line is true.  “Do not be afraid.  I am with you.”   Amen

Sermon for the Third Sunday in Easter
April 22, 2012
Luke 24:36b-48

This morning I want to continue a theme I picked up in my sermon on Easter Sunday.  On Easter we used the gospel reading from Mark, which ends pretty abruptly at the tomb with the angel saying he is not here, he will meet you later in the city.  I talked on Easter about what an open ended message that was for all of us.  In Mark’s resurrection, we are not shown any images of what the risen Christ might look like.  Instead, we are told to go out into the world and expect to have our own experiences of the risen Christ.  I said that Mark points us toward a future with Jesus that is still unknown, an unseen future into which we must live.

In this morning’s gospel reading from Luke we have a contrast with Mark’s simple tale and at the same time, some connection with the message that our future with Jesus is yet unwritten.  Luke’s story today gives us a lot of information about Jesus that we didn’t get from Mark.  We have Jesus appearing in the presence of the gathered disciples who are startled frightened.  We have Jesus making himself known in the act of sharing food with the disciples.  We hear that Jesus’ life and death is grounded in the scripture and tradition of God’s unfolding revelation to Israel, and finally, we hear the charge that the message of Jesus is to be proclaimed to all the world, beginning in Jerusalem.  Luke gives us a lot more information about Jesus, but a bit of the background of Luke’s message brings me back around to the theme of an unknown future with Jesus.  It also makes me think of Jor-el.  

You remember Jor-el, right.  No not some obscure figure in Hebrew scripture, though the name does sound like Hebrew.  Jor-el was Superman’s father.  He was well known to those of us who lived with stacks of DC comics and who considered ourselves followers the caped crusader.  You may remember the story.  Superman ended up on Earth because his planet, Krypton, was about to be destroyed.  His father, Jor-el, packed him of in a home-made space capsule--not unlike Moses’ mother putting him in the Nile--and sent him off to earth hoping that his son would find a new life.  In that capsule, Jor-el packed a few essential things his son would need to make it in the new world.  

In a similar way, Luke is preparing Jesus for a journey into a new situation and he is sending him out with the essentials he will need for his new life.   Luke’s world, like that of Jor-el, has been rocked in ways that make it difficult for Jesus to remain in Jerusalem.  Let me explain.  

It is believed that Mark’s gospel was written twenty or thirty years before the others, and that between the time of those writings, the Romans sacked Jerusalem and destroyed the temple.  When Mark wrote his gospel, the Jesus movement was centered in Jerusalem.  Christians were seen as a sect of Judaism and the home of Christianity was certainly in the ancient holy center of God’s people.  By the time the time Luke and Matthew and John’s gospels were written Christianity’s future was moving out into the larger world of the Mediterranean.  There were those in Jerusalem who thought maybe the new sect had brought on the trouble with Rome.  The Jesus movement was not as welcome in Jerusalem as it had once been.  Christianity had moved along trade routes and come to life in Asia Minor, Greece and Rome.  The later gospel writers were writing for a new audience, and along with the stories of Jesus they packed a few essentials for life in a new and unknown future.  

Like Matthew with his great commission and John who has Jesus in a long discourse hand over his mission to the disciples, Luke includes a commissioning in which he says that the message of the gospel is for the whole world.   The list of essentials we hear Luke including as he commends the message of Jesus to its future in the world includes basic elements of the faith that you and I still recognize.   

First, Jesus becomes known in the community of those who gather in his name.  We know that to still be true.  There are all kind of ways Jesus can become known to us, but they all start here, in this place where we tell the stories and where we offer our hopes and our lives and eventually ourselves as disciples.   Then there is the basic central message that Jesus becomes known to us in the context of a shared meal.  For two thousand years the bread broken by Christians on this, the first day of the week, has marked us, transformed us and fed us.  The meal we share at the table can seem to us an everyday act of piety and it can be the deepest of mysteries.  This table fellowship with the risen Christ will continue long after we are gone.   Another of the basics is that Jesus puts previous revelation in context and is himself put in context by those same scriptures.   This one is especially important for Luke.  Luke, who goes on to tell the story of the new Church in the book of Acts, wants to make sure we know that Jesus is the keystone in salvation history.  And finally, Luke wants us to know that the message is to be spread to all the corners of the earth.  Christians have a mission in the world.  All of these are packed away with care by Luke and handed over to a world and a future Luke could not have imagined.  Luke seems to have chosen well, for these Christian essentials still provide the structure and framework of our faith.  

Of course, another theme kind of jumps out as we read the story from Luke this morning.   In today’s story, unlike the Emmaus story which precedes it or John’s breakfast on the beach, Jesus’ eating of the piece of fish is used to provide an extra level of surety about the truth of the risen Christ.  A ghost can’t eat a piece of fish, but the risen Jesus can.  Luke wants us to know that this part of the story is true.  That would seem to be the hardest part of what Luke and John and Jor-el had to do.  Some things you can pack along with what you are commending to the future, but how do you pass along what you have come to cherish in your heart about this person, this experience you are having to let go of.  Maybe the answer, at least in the case of Jesus, is you don’t.  Jesus will be ok out there.  Jesus will make himself known among new people in new ways.  We know that to be true.  You’ve given us the basics Luke.  We can work with those.  In fact we are called to keep working with those basics in this new world.

When Luke spoke of Jesus being foretold in scripture he was referring to the promise of an heir of David restoring the kingdom of God.  He was thinking of Isaiah whose suffering servant would provide a homecoming for the exiles.  He had in mind psalm 22, my God, my God...which mirrors the story of the crucifixion.  Maybe it is still up to us in our time to continue the work of looking at history through Jesus.   We were told that scripture proves the truth of Jesus.  Maybe Jesus is also the embodiment of the prophet’s call for a new kind of sacrifice of self giving and service to the poor.  In our time, for many, the mission of making Christ known is centered at least as much in service to others as in words about God and Jesus. Christians have gone back and forth between those two calls since the beginning, and I am certain that the call of our heart whatever it may be in that two sided mission is important for our world in our time.  In this new world of ours the hope of meeting Christ in the community gathered continues, and in our best times we challenge ourselves to see Christ in new places and among people who are very different from us.  As the world becomes smaller through communication we have to look for ways to experience the risen Christ in a community where some of us are Christians and some are Muslim, Jews, Hindu and on and on.  Luke, who so obviously trusted the experience of Jesus showing himself to the disciples, sent us not just a story about one moment in history, but a lens through which we might watch for the risen Christ in our own time.  

The truth of the story that luke so desperately want to convey really can’t be given.  I am often dismayed as I hear the early evangelists trying to convince us at such a distance of the solid reality of what they are proclaiming.  I hear them, but I can’t always feel the certainty they want to impart.  That’s the way it is when you have to release your most cherished beliefs into the unknown world of the future.   The deepest, most profound truth of the story has to do with experience and that has to be lived.   And we know something about that too.  We experience the risen Christ in little ways and in profound ways.  In the face of another person, in moments of insight, in a voice that reassures us in hard times, in the call to love and serve, in lives changed.  We live those moments and then we return to this place with its community,  and table,  and lore of scripture and tradition.   Here we put our experiences of the risen Christ in the context of their experiences.  Here we find encouragement to keep watching and expecting to meet him in new ways in lives yet unseen.  JB   

A Sermon for Easter, 2012

Mark 16:1-8

Alleluia Christ is risen!

I don’t think I’ve ever begun an Easter sermon in any other way.  Those words mean Easter.  They are Easter.  But as I hear them this year, I wonder what we are supposed to think of such a claim.  Christ is risen.  We come to this morning from all kinds of lives, with a variety of experiences and levels of engagement with the Christian faith.  For some, the words, Christ is risen, may speak of the event that changes everything, a concrete moment in time when the rules were turned upside down.  For others the words may be just another outrageous claim by a church who asks its members to believe the wildly impossible as a condition of belonging.  If you are wondering about what kind of claim this risen Christ idea might be able to have on your life you are in good company.  This is a good place for such questions.

I know also that I’ve never approached an Easter sermon without wondering how best to welcome all the people who don’t get here that often.  If you haven’t been to church in a while I am delighted that you decided to come this morning.  Really.  As far as I’m concerned, this is your service.  It’s easy for the regulars to be here, but some of you have had to do some traveling to be present today.   Maybe you’ve had to ignore some of your serious questions about the church.  Maybe you decided to test the waters of Church again after a long hiatus and were afraid the preacher might draw attention to those who don’t come very often.  Oops.  Sorry.  Many are here, I’m sure, out of pure love for someone who asked you to come with them this morning.  What a nobel and worthwhile calling.  I am so glad you’re here.  

And for all of you who are here throughout the year and those who are visiting friends and relatives.  Welcome to this glorious morning of music and color and celebration.  I look forward to this day all year long, to the hymns, the crowd, the children the Easter outfits the flowers.  All of it.  But again.  What is it about?  What do those words, Christ is risen mean.  Given half a chance, I’d love to try and explain it to you, but this year I have been warned off that task by a fellow named Andrew Sullivan whose article you may have seen in the most recent issue of Newsweek.  

The line on the cover said, Forget the Church, Follow Jesus.  Turning to the article, I read, “Christianity has been destroyed by politics, priests, and get-rich-quick evangelists.  Ignore them.”   Now I can go off on get rich quick evangelists and politicians with the best of them, and because of that, I sure didn’t appreciate seeing myself lumped in with them like that.  Evangelists, politicians and priests.  Humph.

But reading on, the point became clear enough.  Part of the problem with Jesus is that everyone has their take on what he means and what he is about, what people who follow him should be about, how they should act and what they should believe.  It is so easy to take possession of the newly risen Jesus, bending him to our own limited views and purposes.  Even when those purposes seem so right…..maybe even when they are right.  The problem begins says Sullivan when we start accusing others of not following Jesus, or not understanding what Jesus is about, or claiming that those who don’t agree with us are enemies of Jesus.  You can hear all of that and more in the political headlines this week.  And you can hear people in my business talking pretty easily about what jesus is calling us all to do.  I have my lists,  maybe you have yours.  Sullivan says that kind of infighting about the message is a big part of why people give up on the Church.  I say it again,  if you happen to be here today because you’re willing to give the Church another chance, God bless you. I only hope I don’t screw this day up for you.  Of course I do have some help in the form of a gospel reading we don’t usually haul out for the main service on Easter morning.  

You may not be familiar with the resurrection story in Mark’s gospel.  We just heard the whole thing.  At least what we heard is considered the oldest version of Mark’s Easter story.  You may know that Mark’s gospel was written at least twenty years before the other three gospels.  The other writers had Mark’s gospel and some other material, but they owe the heart of their stories to Mark.  Those other gospels are much longer than Mark’s because the others added not only stories, but theology and explanation to their gospels.  John and Luke, for instance, have Jesus appearing to the disciples several times after his death.  John and Luke want sightings of Jesus to take place in the context of a meal.  John has Jesus cooking on a beach.  Luke has him break bread at an inn at Emmaus.  Matthew not only tells the stories, he preaches them as well.  When Matthew has Jesus tell a parable, he then has Jesus proceed to tell us what the parable means.  Matthew, Luke and John tell the resurrection story in light of what the Church is already coming to understand and believe about Jesus.  You can feel the interpretation narrowing as the meaning of “Christ is risen” is defined.  

Mark, on the other hand, tells a very open ended story.  He is not here, says Mark’s angel.   Go into the city and he will meet you there.  No word about what will happen.  No expectation about what comes next.  Jesus will be there and together you will do what comes next.  Mark’s Easter revelation is simply that Jesus isn’t where you expected him to be.   He has gone ahead of you and will meet you in the new place.  

Whether you are a regular at these services or are here for the first time today.  Chances are you have some pretty fixed ideas about Jesus and the Church and God.  I know I do.  

What I’m hearing today is that even the best of those beliefs, even my most cherished ideas about what it means to follow Jesus may need to be held lightly.  Mark’s Easter message is challenging in its announcement that the disciples’ new life with Jesus lies out there, in a future yet unseen.  This day is not about reinforcing ideas and convictions as much as it is about freeing us to discover what may still be.   Jesus isn’t where you left him, says the angel.  He’s waiting for you just ahead, down the road a bit.  

Maybe the message of this Easter day has to do with meeting Jesus in some new place in our lives.  If Jesus has been companion and comforter for you, maybe the risen Christ will be teacher, challenger of the status quo, prophet.  If Jesus is champion of the poor, maybe the Jesus you meet in town can help you wrestle with what it means for God to love the rich as well.  Maybe if Jesus has become a sign of God’s, or maybe better, the Church’s judgement, then the risen Christ might be the one who convinces you finally that you…..that you are worth whatever effort it takes for the two of you to walk together in the new life.  To enter that new life with Jesus, whatever shape it might take, we first have to hear that he isn’t where we left him.  He’s moved on and wants us to join him.   

Mark’s gospel--the oldest version anyway-- doesn’t give us any examples of what it means to experience the risen Christ.  No encounter stories.  No surprised disciples.  In this sparse telling of the tale we don’t read about how others met Jesus.  We are instead encouraged to go out and meet him for ourselves.  Our celebration today really isn’t about today, it’s about tomorrow and the next day and the next.  And it is about discovering anew the depth and variety of meaning in the cry that has echoed in the world for all these centuries, the cry that announces the beginning of another new chapter in our story, the cry that points us toward the new life we have only to go out and meet.  Alleluia, Christ is risen!     JB