True Inheritance

The Lent IV sermon from the Rev. Linda Mackie Griggs on Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32.

One of them squandered his inheritance, and the other didn’t.

We call this The Parable of the Prodigal Son, and we’ve known this story since childhood. But this is one parable whose title robs us of much of its meaning. For one thing, when I first heard this story as a child I thought the word, ‘prodigal’ meant ‘badly behaved’, rather than ‘wastefully extravagant.’ This may not be an issue for those with greater vocabulary than I had, but this simple misconception deprived me of part of the deeper meaning of the story. But even more important than that, note that the title focuses on just one character. If we look only at the son we see him as just a son, and not also as a brother. If we fixate on his transgressions we lose sight of the nature of the celebration at the end. And if we fixate on the inheritance of money and property we lose sight of what the two sons’ true inheritance really is.

“There was a man who had two sons.”

One of them squandered his inheritance, and the other didn’t.

Which son was which?

In the chapter where we find this passage Luke has placed the parable with two others—all of which are told in response to the Pharisees’ and Scribes’ judgmental statement and implied question of Jesus: Why do you consort with sinners? And in the first two parables, the parable of the lost sheep (in which the shepherd left the 99 sheep and searched diligently for the one that was lost) and the lost coin (in which a woman lit a lamp and scrupulously swept and searched her house

until she found the errant coin,) Jesus’ emphasis is not on the losing but on the finding of the sheep and the coin, and on the celebration of their return. If we turn a similar lens upon today’s parable, what will we see? What will we see if we shift our gaze away from the loss—the Son who Squandered Everything –and see instead the true nature of the celebration of his return, and what it meant to be invited to sit down at the banquet?

The younger son essentially wished his father dead when he asked for his share of the property. It was that bad. And he wasted it spectacularly, thereafter hitting rock bottom and sleeping with the pigs. And for a Jewish audience hearing this parable—it was that bad. It couldn’t get more unclean and outcast than to be so hungry that he was willing to eat the food meant for the pigs. So ‘coming to himself’ was a hugely humbling experience. He vowed to return home, ask forgiveness of his father and take his place in the household as an employee.

So the father sees him from far off and responds in prodigal fashion—outrageously killing the fatted calf, clothing his son in the finest robe and putting a ring on his finger. Remember, this is the child who—essentially– disinherited his own father. Yet he is welcomed back into a sonship that he had cruelly rejected. And his father is ready to offer all of this even before the son opened his mouth to deliver his well-rehearsed speech of penitence. The forgiveness was already there; the robe and ring ready; the banquet table already set. Ready for the celebration.

So the party begins.

And the Prodigal gratefully takes his seat.

Now let’s shift our gaze to the elder son. He hears the noise of the party, finds out what is happening, and rather than being overjoyed that his brother has returned, he is enraged. It is telling that when he confronts his father he refers to his brother as “this son of yours.” The elder brother feels rejected, wounded at the perceived unfairness of his father’s generosity toward this other wayward child. The elder son has not the least understanding that his father has enough love—enough of everything– for both of them.

It is the nature of parables to be loaded with symbolism, and this one is no exception. Jesus’ stories in response to the Pharisees are an illustration of the nature of God and the Kingdom. Of course the little ‘f’ father is a metaphor for the big ‘F’ Father–God. This Father’s prodigal response to both of his children exemplifies God’s economy of abundance that is completely at odds with an all-too-human tendency toward an economy of scarcity. The elder son is already in possession of his inheritance of property—the father reassures him that “All that is mine is yours”. But not only that, he is also told that he has a place at the banquet. He is called to ‘celebrate and rejoice.’

But he will have none of it. He only wants to feed on his fury. He is a man trapped in the mire of his own resentment. He is actually a figure that is at the forefront of much conversation these days. Jennifer Finney Boylan, in the New York Times last month, wrote an op-ed called “The Year of the Angry Voter.” She expressed her despair at the current political climate; at an atmosphere of othering and vitriol that keeps rising to new heights on a daily basis. Yet, she notes, the problem isn’t necessarily anger per se. It’s a certain kind of anger. And here she distinguishes narcissistic anger from transformative anger. Narcissistic anger is rooted in the wounded ego; in the feeling that I have been unfairly deprived of something that is rightfully mine. It is based upon a worldview of scarcity. It sees others as being in competition for limited resources. Narcissistic anger seeks to exclude; whereas transformative anger is the kind of anger—or passion– that seeks to change the world. It looks outward and inclusively toward the other. It is based on a vision of compassion and a desire for healing and wholeness. Boylan quotes the Rev. Amy Butler of Riverside Church in New York City, who notes how the two distinct and opposing kinds of anger respond to challenges: “Either our instinctual response to threat is all about us—who we are, what we want, what we need—or it becomes about something bigger than ourselves.”

The elder son in the parable is not thinking of anything bigger than himself. He is in the grip of narcissistic anger. He has lost sight of his brother; and of his own brother-hood. And yet. And yet there is still a seat at the table with his name on it; a plate full of food and a cup filled to overflowing just waiting for him. As the father has said, “All that is mine is yours.” There is no less for him now that his brother is home. He has only to choose to take his place at the table with the rest of the family and the household.

But to make that choice will require an act of humility. It will require him to let go of his anger and his ego focus. He will have to see himself as one in as much need of his father’s mercy as is his brother. But for now he does not see himself as being in need of anything. He only sees himself as having been deprived of a privilege that should be rightfully his.

A few weeks ago, on Ash Wednesday, we recognized our neediness. As we began our Lenten journey we were marked with the ashes of our mortality; acknowledging our source and ending in God. One of the most powerful things about those ashes is that we are called to remember that WE are dust. We are not able to see the ashes on the heads of others without deeply knowing that those ashes mark us as well. When we accept the mercy of God we accept, by definition, that we are IN NEED of that mercy. We thereby accept, and embrace, our own vulnerability. It’s a fine distinction, but to internalize it is to begin to see the power, and the scandal of what Jesus was telling the Temple authorities with this story.

The Scribes and Pharisees thought they were not in need of mercy because they had set themselves apart from the sinners and tax collectors. But Jesus was telling them that they too were called to sit with the sinners; the celebration is for everyone who chooses to take their seat at the table. All they had to do was acknowledge that they were hungry for the banquet of mercy set for them. But to do that they would have to climb down off of a mighty high horse; one they shared with the elder son in the parable.

“There was a man who had two sons.”

One squandered his inheritance, and the other didn’t.

Which brother was which?

The true inheritance is God’s abundant mercy. A mercy “like the wideness of the sea.”* It’s an inheritance that has nothing to do with what we have, and everything to do with what has us. And what has us is a God whose last word, like the father in the parable, is Life and resurrection. The inheritance of mercy requires nothing of us save courage; the courage to claim our vulnerability– our brother- and sister-hood as fellow sinners and children of God. The courage to take our seat at the banquet table, where the place card reads, “Beloved.”

March 7, 2016 0

Storied Beings

For me, the life of faith emerges from participation in narrative. I am attracted to the influences upon our daily lives of the metaphysical dimension – the ultimate inquiry into the hidden nature of reality. For example, someone sent me a quote from the New England Transcendentalist Walden:

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains.

I find such a perspective inspirational, a pointer to the ineffable. Yet, for me it’s the power of narrative or story and my participation in the zone where narrative shapes my experience more directly. In my own experience, and through my observation of others, humans are storied beings.

This is why the first two books of the Bible, Genesis, and Exodus comprise a series of grand narrative cycles, each centered on a central figure. These figures are known to the Tradition as the Patriarchs and their unfolding story cycles introduce us to their encounters and subsequent relationships with God.

These are story cycles of epic proportion worthy of the description saga. Abraham’s is the first and those of Jacob, Joseph, and finally, Moses follow. Isaac appears briefly but simply to bridge the Abraham and Jacob saga cycles.

Although we are introduced to Moses at his birth in Exodus 2, it is in Exodus 3: 1-15 that we take a grandstand seat to view the first encounter between Moses and God. This encounter is set against the grand vista of a place evocatively described as a place beyond the wilderness. Here, God self-reveals through the phenomenon of a burning bush. What a story!

Synopsis

Moses, having taken flight after his killing of an Egyptian overseer is now living as a shepherd. While tending his father-in-law’s flock he wanders beyond the wilderness. This leads him to the foot of Horeb, the mountain of God. This seems a Lord of the Rings kind of place and so we are not surprised that Moses sees in the distance a bush that blazes and yet was not consumed.

Moses’ curiosity is aroused and he takes a detour from the track he is following so that he can get a better view of this amazing sight. God sees Moses detour and calls to him from the heart of the burning bush. Moses responds to the sound of his name, but is immediately stopped in his tracks as God calls to him to come no further for he is about to tread on holy ground. First, he must remove his sandals.

God now self-identifies to Moses. It’s important to note that God’s self-identification is in terms familiar to Moses who understands that he is in the presence of the God of his fathers – Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Moses’ first response is one of terror and he hides his face, for he knows well enough that no one directly encounters God and lives to tell the tale.

To cut to the chase, God now gives Moses a job to do. Moses pleads inadequacy – God who am I to do this great thing -but God is having none of this. Moses knows who God is but tests God further asking but what will I say if they ask me who is it that has sent me?

God does something very interesting at this point. He does not repeat God’s familiar name but gives Moses a new name to use. He instructs Moses to tell the Israelites that I am who I am has sent me to you. God is now revealed under a new name, a name not familiar to Moses or the Israelites, yet, a name that is still linked to the familiar. Moses is instructed to say that I am who I am has sent me and to remind the Israelites that I am is none other than the God of their ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. The God, henceforth to be known as YHWH –Yahweh is born into the collective consciousness of the Children of Israel.

Narrative power

I began by saying that despite being drawn to the metaphysical inquiry into the hidden nature of reality, it is the power of story that in my religious experience allows the divine presence to take shape for me. This is a truth not limited to the religious or spiritual domain but applies to all aspects of identity construction and sense making. The power of story lies in the invitation to participate in the story and thus let it shape our experience. Our experience is limited or expanded by the quality and nature of the stories we tell about ourselves, and to ourselves about the nature of God and the world.

This is a story of theophany – the revealing of God. We participate in this story when we allow it to shape or reshape our expectations. It does this when we notice and pay attention to it.

Beyond the wilderness

I’m profoundly struck by the phrase beyond the wilderness. If I don’t pay attention I conflate this place with the wilderness itself. The image of wilderness is so familiar to me, and no doubt to all of us. We picture Moses leading his flock through a barren landscape, a wilderness of Sinai. But the text tells us that Moses is now beyond the wilderness at the foot of Horeb, the mountain of God – a place of mysterious encounter. This is a metaphor for a place that is no-longer-familiar to us in which experience is no, longer boundaried by familair expectation. As we listen carefully, this story shapes us by a powerful realization. Are we willing or not to enter a new landscape, one beyond the familiar, where like Moses, we encounter / are encountered by God?

Curiosity

Moses is wandering along the familiar track through the wilderness when in his peripheral vision he notices something that arouses his curiosity – I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up. Curiosity is a crucial ingredient of the spiritual life. It’s the ability to notice and become curious about the unexpected flashing to us in our peripheral vision. The path that opens through curiosity is the route from the familiar wilderness to a new place; a place beyond the wilderness.

Necessary ambiguity

God comes to us as we risk making choices and taking decisions that take us beyond the confines of the safe and sure, the tried and tested. Here, we have the possibility of a new experience, one in which God identifies as both new and yet with enough familiarity for recognition. The tension of ambiguity lies at the heart of the name I am who I am, for it also means I will be who I will be. The name’s instability of meaning pivots us towards future possibility. In the place beyond the familiar who might God become for us? More importantly, who might we become if we allow ourselves to be shaped by God’s new name; a name beckoning us into possibility, yet to become known?

The paradox of the new

The significance of the place beyond the wilderness lies in the paradox that the new, the yet to become known, very often hides as possibility at the heart of everyday experience. It’s when we pay close attention, become mindfully aware in everyday experience that we discover the new possibility. We need enough familiarity, but not too much otherwise we will miss the necessary ambiguity that opens us to the new. I have discovered the new emerges from the encounter of Tradition with the reality of the life I am actually living.

Daniel Deffenbaugh puts it rather neatly when he says while

theophany surely issues from heaven, it’s holiness can be found only on the lowly ground where it becomes known, in the dust beneath our feet.

I interpret this to mean that our longing to find meaning and purpose for our lives can only be satisfied when we accept God’s call for a partnership to journey to a place beyond the wilderness. This is found not on the mountain of God, but at the center of where our daily lives, live themselves out.

February 27, 2016 1

Let the walls come a tumbling down

An image

I was, as were many particularly moved by the image of the Pope atop a pyramid-like structure overlooking the border of the Rio Grande, the dividing line between the US and Mexico. The Pope was fully visible to people on both sides of this great dividing line. What struck me forcibly was that the people on either side of the border were exactly the same.

National borders, in so many parts of the world are arbitrary lines drawn in the earth. The peoples on either side are invariably the same. It is this truth that tragically results in our need for more and more fences, borders concretized in the form of physical walls of concrete, wire, and steel. The border between the US and Mexico is but one more example of a wall, built upon the earth, but the product of fearful imagination.

I am not seeking to address the thorny political and economic issues of immigration. The politics are one thing, but invariably the economics are another and these factors are usually in tension. Politically, the US does not want the mass migration from Central America. Economically, it cannot continue to thrive without large injections of migrant labor. This is a story as old as time- remember the Israelites in Egypt? We should not be surprised to find that we are no nearer finding an effective solution in the 21^st century than ever before in humanity’s long and frequently sorry history of population migrations.

A segway

As a young undergrad at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand I embarked on a course entitled Asian Studies, a comparative study of Indian and Chinese literature and history with Japanese language. In the early decades of the 1970’s N.Z was trying to reposition itself following the recent entry of the UK to the then European Economic Community. Having developed as the farm for the UK, Britain’s entry in the Common Market closed off access to N.Z.’s historical markets for primary produce. I wanted at that point in my life to enter the Foreign Service, and hence knowledge of Asia, especially fluency in Japanese, for Japan was then at the apex of its economic influence, was a prerequisite for building a new economic direction for the country.

While I have since forgotten the bulk of what I learned having decided after my first year to switch to Law, the historical comparison between the empires of China and Rome remains clear in my mind. Both empires experienced multiple waves of inward bound migrations of foreign peoples. In the case of Rome, the invaders eventually destroyed Roman civil order and culture, ushering in for the West a social regression known as the Dark Ages. In China, each new wave of invaders came not to destroy Chinese civilization, but to join it and to become more Chinese than the Chinese. The successive waves of Mongol invasions from Genghis Kahn to the Manchus who formed the Qing Dynasty in the 17^th century, the last of the great imperial dynasties ending in 1912, demonstrate the veracity of this thesis.

Despite the American Republic’s love affair with Imperial Rome, notably expressed in its civic architecture, American civilization is closer to that of Chinese than to Roman examples from history. Everyone who comes here wants to become American. The increasing atmosphere of paranoia believing that these people are out to destroy us is at variance with this nation’s historical experience. Borders become physical walls when in our imaginations the solidarity of similarity becomes the fear of difference. The movement from one to the other is but a twist in the imagination with dramatic consequences for the lives and livelihood of real men, women, and children.

The Gospel, the Pope, and the popular mood

In the gospel for this Second Sunday in Lent, Luke portrays Jesus setting out on his journey from Galilee to Jerusalem. One way of conceiving this is that Jesus now sets out in earnest on a journey that would increasingly involve speaking truth to power. As Luke presents it, Jesus already seems to know what the outcome of this will be. It will cost him his life.

Pope Francis seems to believe that it is his sacred duty to speak truth to power on behalf of the poor and oppressed. His record of doing this is well demonstrated. Whether he is speaking to the Vatican culture or to Mexican political society, at every turn of the way he excoriates the moral bankruptcy, corruption, and violence of governance as the abuse of power. I believe he must be fully aware of the personal risks that this involves. For him, it seems American exceptionalism is no protection for US politicians. For Francis the gospel of Jesus is clear. It calls for the building of bridges, not walls.

In a society where a sizeable percentage of the population feels abandoned by the political culture whether it is of the left or the right, building bridges is not a natural thing to do. There are too many to blame for our woe. There is too strong a need to find scapegoats and the proverbial differences of race, religion, gender, sexual identity, and the political stereotypes of right or left, of the alien – the stranger – the foreigner, abound. Everywhere we construct identities to be feared, protection against which walls must be erected. Sometimes the walls are physical – made from concrete and steel. Often they are political as in policies or the lack of policies on immigration. Mostly, the walls we erect are imaginative – created from primitive tribal attitudes fearful of difference and expressed in attitudes and practices of exclusion and contempt.

The sorry fact is that human beings share common aspirations and have common needs. Going back to my earlier comment that everyone who comes here wants to be American; all anyone wants is to participate in what we already enjoy. It’s our choice to extend that hospitality or refuse it, to build bridges or erect walls. The verdict of history is clear that bridges work better in the long run than walls.

In Luke 13 Jesus offers us two archetypal images, one of the fox the other of the mother hen. What I mean by archetypal images is that in the human imagination the fox and the mother hen are associated with certain characteristics that belong to us and which we project into them. This being the case, I don’t need to go into explaining them, but leave them to impact your imaginations.

The point for me is that Jesus associates the hen with himself and with God, a unique association in the history of religious thought – God as hen rather than lion or eagle. The paradox we see being played out all around us at the moment, especially in the presidential primaries is that those most in need of the hen’s protection seem in thrall to the fox. This might be ironic if it wasn’t yet again the endlessly repeating tragedy for human experience.

We are those who kill the prophets and stone those sent to us. How often do we desire to be gathered as children beneath the protective breast of God as a hen gathers her brood under her wings? The question always remains – but at what cost? The cost requires turning resolutely away from the imaginary of fear and with courage embracing the expectations, always profoundly counter-cultural, of the kingdom of God.

February 20, 2016 0

Wilderness: Where the Journey Begins

Taking a journey

The journey has begun. Have you been on a journey recently? You probably have. Yet, how did you conceive of this journey? Did you even consider it a journey in the proper sense at all? Today we are the most travelled people in the history of the world. We travel often, travelling all over the country and all over the world. But is travelling the same as making a journey?

From the physical angle, travelling and making a journey seem to be the same. From the psychospiritual angle, to travel and to make a journey are not the same at all. The key distinction between travelling and making a journey lies in the focus of the activity.

In travelling our focus is on arriving at our destination. Whereas, when we make a journey, it’s the experience along the way that matters. We travel to get to our destination. We journey to experience a process of becoming changed along the way. The spiritual term for the concept of making a journey is pilgrimage. We make a pilgrimage to a place, yes. But it’s the experience of making the journey that matters. If you have not seen it, I commend to you the film The Way starring Martin Sheen. The film traces the process of transformation as Sheen’s character makes the pilgrimage to the ancient shrine of St James – Santiago de Compostela, set in the Basque Region of Spain. The Camino de Santiago is one of the oldest and most venerable of all Christian pilgrimages and as with all pilgrimage routes amazing miracles of personal transformation happen along the way.

Readers of this blog will know that I often draw inspiration from the poet T.S. Eliot. C.P. Cavafy is a less known poet, who is for me likewise, immensely emblematic. Cavafy lived in the early 20^th Century, in the remnant echo of that 3000-year heritage of Greek –Hellenic culture in the Egyptian city of Alexandria amidst the embers of the Ottoman Empire.

In his poem Ithaka, he writes of a man who sets out for the Greek Island of Ithaka. The narrator advises the man to keep Ithaka always in his mind. Yet, although arriving is his destiny, arrival, i.e. Ithaka itself, is not the source of the richness he seeks. The wealth he seeks is gained through the time taken on the journey. Arrival is simply the end of this process of making the journey. It’s the process of the journey, the time taken, the experiences encountered, the transformation of perspective that is the source of the wealth being sought. In contrast, the destination, Ithaka itself is by the time of his arrival compared to all that has happened to him on the way: a poor place with nothing left to give him.

Temptation – distraction from the journey

On the First Sunday in Lent, we are reminded that a journey has begun. The question for all of us is are we willing to undertake it? Luke tells us that Jesus after his baptism being full of the Holy Spirit was led out into the wilderness where for forty days he was tempted by Satan. Luke tells us that during this time Jesus fasted. Luke describes in detail a series of temptations that Satan presents to the increasingly starving Jesus.

It’s so like Luke to give us a ringside seat on a detailed interpersonal encounter. In Luke, people matter and he often articulates the feeling quality of an encounter or the inner thoughts of the actors in the story. For our modern ears, this gives Luke a very contemporary feel.

In his version of this story, Mark tells us only that Jesus is not led out, but thrown out – expelled by the Spirit into the wilderness where he is tempted. He does not go into the nature of the encounters nor details about the different temptations. Mark tends to set the stage with the overarching vista of the story. For him, the individual actors are not his focus neither is the content of the encounters. For Mark, it’s the grand vista of wilderness that opens before us and remains the focus of Jesus forty days.

The Tradition has placed enormous emphasis on the nature of Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness. They have become allegories for the temptations that lure human beings off the path of the journey:

If we are hungry, why not eat, even if it is at the risk of exploiting our privilege?
As we navigate our way through a complex world of shades of grey, why not enjoy power and privilege when offered, even at the risk of misplacing the object of our true desire and colluding in the idolatry of the world?
Why not take crazy risks, believing in one’s own charmed invincibility?

What all the temptations Luke describes have in common is that they all center on an invitation to misuse power, privilege or position. What I discern in Luke’s story is that the greatest temptation is not to make a choice we know is wrong. We are all able to distinguish in broad outline the difference between right and wrong. We give in sometimes and knowingly make the wrong choice to suit ourselves. Guilt results. But guilt is healthy. It’s an indication that we have not lost our way because through repentance we can find our way back to our journey’s path, our camino or pilgrimage way. The last temptation is the greatest treason -as T.S. Eliot coins it in the voice of Thomas a Becket in Murder in the Cathedral – to do the right thing for the wrong reason. Herein lies the concealed nature of temptation.

Into the wilderness

We stray from our journey’s path without even realizing it at times because this is a path that takes us deep into the wilderness experiences of our lives. We avoid going there at all costs. The scenery along the way is often barren in it’s sheer ordinariness. We long for more dramatic and interesting vistas. Yet, spiritually, the wilderness is where the journey starts. This is the reason why before Jesus goes anywhere at the start of his ministry his journey begins in an encounter with the wilderness experience.

What do we encounter in the wilderness that is so off-putting? We could read Luke’s account of the temptations as an internal dialogue within Jesus. One that centers on the struggle against an experience of limitation. It has always been a hotly debated question – could Jesus’ divine nature have come to the rescue of his human nature thus liberating him from his wilderness experience? The fact that such a question is entertained is proof of the projection of our own illusions of omnipotence into Jesus. Because we flee from our own experience of limitation, we expect Jesus to have felt the same way. The experience of limitation is the true wilderness for us and we will chase after any temptation that offers release. In this way lies our propensity towards addiction.

This Lent if we are willing to undertake the journey, we will journey into the wilderness of our own lives. Of course, we are skilled at avoiding this place, and the function of the spiritual practices of fasting, meditation, repentance, prayer, and self-denial-control are the ways we can become mindful of our propensity for avoidance. in my comments on Ash Wednesday I spoke about the function of all the spiritual disciplines enjoined on us in Lent as simply ways to cultivate a mindful awareness of ourselves.

In the wilderness part of our lives we come up against the fact that our lives are lived within the boundaries of limitation. Human life does not, in fact, thrive in the context of endless possibilities. As all good parents know it’s only when the limitation in the form of boundaries are held firmly that the space within becomes a rich place for our children’s experimentation and growth. Limitation forces us back into the space where our lives are actually lived and impels us toward the kind of creative adaptation imposed by limitation.

Food for the journey

This Lent, our program will focus on growing a rule of life using horticultural images of seeds growing into plants, supported and trained by the structure of a trellis. A rule of life is required to support us and hold us steady as we journey through our own experience of wilderness. A frequent assumption is that nothing grows in the wilderness. I lived for 5 years in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona. There is a profusion of life that thrives on the knife-edge of environmental limitation through a skillful adaptation that only creative life makes in the face of profound limitation.

Where do you experience wilderness in your life? How do you feel about limitation? Can you become more mindful of the ways you habitually avoid facing up to this? I invite you all to use this Lent as a time to explore the possibility of wilderness becoming a space for what St Benedict calls the Transformation of Life.

The truth is that life is enriched because we live within limitation. Wilderness becomes a place where limitation by imposing necessary boundaries catalyzes us to thrive as the desert plants and wildlife thrive – through skillful and imaginative adaptation.

The journey has begun, let us continue on together!

February 13, 2016 0

Nearer to death, no nearer to God

Another Ash Wednesday is upon us. I have been telling myself that the reason I don’t feel ready this year is because Ash Wednesday is obscenely early. Yet, if I am honest I can’t recall a year when I have been ready. Why is this?

Not feeling ready has a lot to do with the way I live my life. I live as if I have all the time in the world and so I don’t need to be ready, and that’s the truth I hide from. In Choruses from The Rock T.S. Eliot mines this theme with chilling accuracy. He points out that: All our knowledge brings us nearer to death, but nearness to death no nearer to God.

The prophets of Israel railed against pious displays. They identified the spiritual practice that God desires as the practice of justice and repentance: rend your hearts and not your garments, by returning with all our heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning. This traditional language, these familiar images for Ash Wednesday and Lent strike discordantly upon the ears of many in the contemporary Church. Fasting, weeping, and mourning with ashes upon our heads, all conjure up a heavy emphasis on making ourselves miserable, as if this is what is really pleasing to God – suffering. Yet, God’s point here is not an invitation to suffering, but the invitation to return. Matthew reminds us that the spiritual practices of penitence, prayer and generosity focus us upon the difficult task of turning away from empty displays and chasings after external things – images, accolades, solutions, and panaceas – all outside of ourselves, and turning instead to the intimacy of our connection with God in secret, i.e. personal and private. Instead of rending our garments, an action upon an external appearance, rend our hearts, i.e. pay attention to what’s happening inside.

Matthew reminds us that the spiritual practices of penitence, prayer, self-control, and generosity focus us upon the difficult task of turning away from empty displays and chasings after external things – images, accolades, solutions, and panaceas – all outside of ourselves, and turning instead to the intimacy of our connection with God in secret, i.e. personal and private. We have no time to waste with such illusions. Instead of rending our garments, an action upon an external appearance, rend our hearts, i.e. pay attention to what’s happening inside.

Coming from another angle

Putting aside the traditional imagery for a moment I want to approach this from another angle. My recollection that I seem never to be ready for Ash Wednesday and Lent is a recognition that like many others today, I live in denial of the inevitability of death, which is what creates the illusion that I have all the time in the world. Linking a lack of preparedness for Lent with a denial of death, at first sight, seems somewhat overly dramatic. Yet, denying death does not postpone our deaths. It simply pushes it’s inevitability out of mind – psychologically as well as spiritually, a self-defeating thing to do because we distance ourselves from the possibility of spiritual transformation.

Eliot questions: Where is the Life we have lost in living? …. The cycles of heaven in twenty centuries bring us farther from God and nearer to the Dust. In losing our hope for a God who transforms us, we settle for the dust of that which is closest to hand.

The spiritual practices enjoined upon us in the Book of Common Prayer as the way to keep a Holy Lent strike our modern imaginations with images that evoke either pious pretence or emotional masochism. Do you think it might be possible to put aside the defence of cynicism and embrace these traditional recipes for spiritual practice? Might not fasting, penitence, prayer, self-control, and generosity be practices not just for Lent, but for life – so that we do not lose our lives in the living? To lose our lives in their living is Eliot’s image for living unconsciously, life without awareness.

One of the great gifts of Buddhism’s arrival in the West has been its emphasis on living mindfully. Mindfulness is to bring an awareness of life lived in the moment by moment flow of time. Buddhism encourages the cultivation of awareness as a quality of consciousness accompanying the actions of our day. Active awareness dissolves the false distinctions between pain and pleasure, between the exciting and the mundane. To clean our teeth while being consciously aware of the experience of cleaning our teeth is a more satisfactory experience than doing so with our attention lost somewhere other than in the moment we actually inhabit. Mindfulness is the antidote to Eliot’s image of our lives lost in their living.

A Holy Lent

This Lent at St. Martin’s our focus will be upon the creating of a rule of life. This is an ancient piece of Benedictine wisdom, all the more important for us because the best definition I know of what it means to be an Episcopalian is to be a Benedictine shaped Christian. Drawing from horticultural analogy our rule of life is akin to the construction of a trellis. The function of the trellis is to train the plants that grow upon it in order to maximise the ingredients for successful growth – namely support, space, air, and light. As plants need these ingredients to grow, so do we to spiritually flourish. Spiritual flourishing requires the trellis of a rule of life and the ingredient of practices that cultivate awareness of the presence of God, usually made known to us through our experience of the longing (absence) for God.

Therefore, I invite us to the keeping of a Holy Lent through:

Fasting – as a form of spiritual dieting, and like dieting, we practice fasting in order not to starve ourselves and feel miserable, but to bring a new quality of intentionality to what and how we eat so that eating or not eating may make us more mindful of the presence of God.
Repentance – as the awareness that our profound disappointment can become a spur in us to desire to be better than we are – through repentance – the practice of being sorry, we open not to the possibilities of self-improvement but to the power of Grace – God’s gift, freely given and the engine of our transformation.
Prayer – as in reaching out in our loneliness for a greater experience of intimacy with God and those we live among.
Self-control – as in seeing another before we act, hearing another before we speak, considering another as we practice self-awareness.
Alms giving – as in daily practices of generosity that flow from a profound encounter with the forgotten or overlooked gratitude at the core of our lives. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also Matt 6:21.

February 10, 2016 0

It’s The Downward Journey That Matters

A sermon for the Last Sunday of Epiphany: The Rev’d Linda Mackie Griggs; Luke 9:28-43a

“On the next day, when they had come down from the mountain, a great crowd met him.”

There are a number of Feast Days in the church calendar that celebrate milestone events in the life of Jesus. Today…is not one of them. While the Transfiguration, as this story relates, is indeed one of the pivotal episodes in Jesus’ life, today is not the Feast of the Transfiguration, which is celebrated on August 6. Today is simply the day on which the Lectionary instructs us to read this lesson—always on the Last Sunday after the Epiphany. This is somewhat unusual; to see a story emphasized twice during the year like this. While the teacher in me appreciates the importance of repetition to effective learning, this isn’t just about reading the same story twice so that we can be more familiar with the definitive Mountaintop Moment when Jesus shone brilliant white, manifesting God’s glory, bridging the gap between temporal and eternal, earthly and heavenly, the Old and the New Covenants. This isn’t just about repeating the cautionary tale of Peter’s over-impetuous zeal being firmly tempered by God’s command to pipe down and Listen to Jesus. No; it’s not as simple as repetition for reinforcement.

We see this in the fact that the Lectionary has us reading a few extra verses (as you can see in the bracketed bits in your bulletin.) There is more here than just the Transfiguration event alone. Since this is last Sunday in Epiphany, we get to hear the last of this season’s stories of the many manifestations of Jesus’ divinity. But we also see something else. We see today what happens next: Jesus and his friends come down the mountain. And as we look toward our own journey into Lent—a season of fasting, introspection, prayer, and repentance that begins this week (in three days), it is appropriate that the gospel puts us on a path, not only walking down the scriptural mountain, but also, like Jesus, setting our faces toward Jerusalem.

The Transfiguration has come to epitomize the proverbial “Mountaintop Experience”; that vivid transcendent moment when the aesthetic, intellectual, or relational becomes interwoven with the realm of the spiritual—a moment that is so achingly perfect that you somehow feel that it has happened just for you. It’s a moment of connection to the Divine—a place where the veil between earthly and heavenly is gossamer-thin. If you’ve known a moment like that, you can imagine how Peter felt; he didn’t want it to end. Who would? Who would want such feelings of awe, exhilaration, joy and Connection to end? Who would ever want to walk away from being so special; so singled out as a witness to glory?

And yet.

And yet, Jesus and the three disciples, the adrenalin gradually dissipating from their bloodstreams, make their way silently down the rocky path. And it is there, at the bottom, where they are greeted by the first-century equivalent of a neglected inbox full to overflowing. The crowd presses in; a man shouts that the disciples couldn’t heal his son. “Jesus!… Jesus!… Jesus!…” “Where have you been, Jesus? …Help my child, Jesus! …We need you, Jesus!” Frustrated, he lashes out: “How much longer must I be with you and bear with you?” It’s like he’s dealing with the worst possible case of post-vacation letdown.

And yet.

It was necessary to come down the mountain. Because, while Jesus’ identity was affirmed on the mountaintop, he couldn’t do the work from there. Because, while Peter, James and John had the singular opportunity to experience their own witness of and connection to the Divine, they weren’t going to form as disciples while still on the mountain.

The mountaintop is only the beginning of formation, not its apex.

The work takes place down the rocky rutted path, where the crowds are. Where the demons are.

When I first began to respond to my call to Priesthood one of my mentors invited me to the idyllic Kanuga Conference Center in the North Carolina Mountains to spend a week soaking up the wisdom of two well-known theologians whose work I admired. It was a week of beautiful music, worship, fellowship, spiritual conversation, and learning. It was sublime. I felt so loved, so called, so focused. I could have stayed forever at the feet of those people, in the company of new and old friends. I glowed all the way home—feeling certain that my work of discernment was done—I was ready to do God’s work.

The day I came home from Kanuga was also the day of my final meeting with the parish discernment committee—the first step of what is known in the Church as The Process. I took my glowy self off to that meeting, sure that this would be a piece of cake. And it went well. Until near the end, when a member asked me what I perceived my faults to be.

Bear in mind that I was still glowing. I. Was. SO. Beloved. Of. God. I knew the answer to all of Life’s questions. All I needed to do was accept God’s Call to bring everybody else on board. So (you can see this coming, can’t you?) in answer to the question about my faults I said…

…That I had none. Not that mattered. Because God loves me as I am. My goodness, I wish I had a ruler to measure how far six pairs of eyebrows shot skyward.

I swear it is by the grace of God that they passed me on to the next step in spite of that. And it was by the grace of God that I learned, through a long and winding journey, that my mistake had been in thinking that I could stay on the mountain with my ministry as if I could do God’s work by teleconference from the mountaintop. No. I had to get rocks in my shoes, get jostled by competing demands. Skin my knees. Face my demons. The mountaintop is only the beginning of formation, not its apex.

Luke has set today’s Gospel in a context that communicates this same kind of challenge to all of us. If you look more broadly at the chapter in which this appears you see that Jesus tells his disciples twice, once each on either side of our passage, that it will be his fate to suffer and die. And there is more foreshadowing even in the glory on the mountain. Luke alone of all of the three gospel versions of this story tells us what it is that Jesus, Moses and Elijah are talking about: “…his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.” So you see this entire story, even in its glory, is woven on a loom of sacrifice and shot through with a thread of suffering.

That’s not to say that mountaintop experiences, for the disciples or for us, are without value—they emphatically are. There is tremendous value in encounters with ‘Thin Places’ wherever we find them. What I learned at that Kanuga conference profoundly influenced my theological outlook. It nourished me for the hard downward journey. But it was in that very journey that the most crucial formation took place. And now I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

And that’s the Good News. The Good News of the downward journey is that, in the words of Richard Rohr, “The path of descent is the path of transformation. Darkness, failure, relapse, death and woundedness are our primary teachers.”

That’s the GOOD News? Yes.

The realities of our lives, especially the painful and aggravating and scary parts that just happen and send us reeling, these realities can be our teachers. The demons we face—spiritual, emotional, medical, vocational, relational—are challenges that give us a choice; to be formed, or deformed by them. Mountaintop experiences are the grace-filled nourishment that feeds us for the work of formation; to become “fit for God’s purpose,” as Father Mark said last week.

The Good News of the downward journey is that it is God’s invitation into closer relationship through the deepening of our spiritual lives, something this parish has said that it longs for; and it shows. But it is not a linear downward struggle any more than spiritual deepening is a direct ladder to the heavens. The entire journey is more of a spiral—maybe even a rollercoaster.

It’s this rollercoaster image that has me looking toward this Lenten season with a feeling of excitement, believe it or not. People often think of Lent as a depressing time, but the opportunity to engage with scripture more deeply, to explore new spiritual practices in order to deepen our relationship with God, Creation and one another is admittedly exciting, all the more so because we are embarking on this season as a community. As we deepen our spiritual lives we are being formed, individually and communally, for the work that calls us, whatever it will be.

The mountaintop is only the beginning.

February 7, 2016 0

Becoming the change – we long to see

Observations on community

Jesus tells the people he grew up amongst that no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown. An odd thing to say because, until then, things seemed to have been going quite well. In the hearing of those who know his history he has proclaimed the Prophet Isaiah’s vision of the inbreaking of God’s reign of justice. But then, things rapidly deteriorate and Jesus’ very life becomes endangered by the sudden eruption of rage among those who had known him all his life. It’s not clear from Luke’s text, but it seems that Jesus has disappointed them.

I am reminded that communities are – at times – ambivalent places . On the one hand community, is what we all long for. As I was reminded this week by a parishioner of whom I asked a personal favor- she chided me ‘you talk a lot about human beings as relational, but you don’t ask much for yourself. None of us can manage it all by ourselves’. Well, touché! Community is where we get to share the burdens we can’t manage alone. Community is where we find those points of intimate intersection with one another that gives life richer meaning. I am continually impressed by the variety of forms and contexts in which a moment of intimacy makes itself known.

So what about ambivalence? I mention communities as ambivalent places because as Jesus experienced during his visit home community can be a dangerous place when you disappoint people. They say familiarity breed’s contempt. Intimacy when disappointed, provokes anger. It’s those closest to us that seem to feel a dangerous freedom to abuse us. I am reminded of the aphorism people usually hurt by the Church facetiously chide- see how these Christians love one another. It’s a salutary reminder that in communities where love is the stated goal while we lift our heads in pursuit of lofty love, contempt and hatred seep up unseen from between the floorboards, so to speak.

On the Sunday of the annual parochial meeting, a once a year event, it’s customary for the rector to remind everyone about the achievements and challenges of the past year. The intention is to affirm. Yet, because not everyone agrees on what constitutes an achievement and what presents as a challenge, it can also be a risky business for the preacher. So, given that my stated aim is to affirm, let me make a disclaimer. Although as rector my oversight privileges me with a particular overview of community life, nevertheless my view is like everyone else’s, a subjective one.

Our Achievements

The restoration of the St Martin window is an achievement beyond the structural and artistic restoration elements, which are in themselves, noteworthy. The achievement lies in the community once again finding the confidence to take on such a major and costly piece of preservation. In a moment in time, we decided we could do this. This decision needs to be seen against the backdrop of watching the window’s gradual deterioration over years, with the community somehow feeling the task too much to undertake. Finding the confidence to decide to act, followed up by the confidence expressed in the mini pledge drive to fund the restoration is a real sign of a return of courage and vitality to this community.
Lent 2015 surprised us all with the excitement that the Wednesday evening Lent program generated. The achievement here is to discover the deep desire of our community to grow more deeply into a way of spiritual living and to hear the ancient Benedictine wisdom speaking at the heart of the stress of our modern lives.
For me, a particular if quieter success was the summer program. Moving to one service on Sunday morning, though not new for July and August, this year seemed to remind us of the wonderful experience of all worshipping in one place and one time. This summer we did something new with the introduction of the 5.30pm evening instructional Eucharist. The instructional commentary became a blueprint for our new Sunday service booklets. The early evening also attracted seven new visitors of whom, five have transitioned to regular membership.
Another big achievement has been completing the RenewalWorks spiritual inventory program during our Annual Renewal Campaign this last autumn. Our 102% questionnaire submission rate was astonishing and speaks volumes about the kind of community we want to become; a community in which spiritual growth and nurturance is our number one priority. We learned important information about ourselves. The data having been digested by the program’s leadership team will now form the basis for mapping our way forward, guiding our community development for some considerable time to come.
A particular achievement has been the way people have reconnected with their passion leading to the reenergizing of our community life. My challenge has been for us to become a more magnetic community. Going into my second full year as rector, I am really noticing the surge in energy and excitement. I no longer feel alone in pumping energy into the parish system. I now feel I have many, many partners in this task.

Our Challenges

Shifting furniture about, and meddling with the established pattern of Sunday morning, have been two manifestations of our attempt to respond to the key challenge facing us. Before the Annual Meeting in 2015, I presented five challenges:

Embedding a strong and cohesive staff team.
Developing a new website as a vehicle for projecting ourselves into the wider world.
Revitalizing our ministries with emphasis on newcomer welcome.
Addressing the decline in operating income.
Establishing a model of spiritual direction for the whole community through Biblically-based preaching, teaching, and spiritual-pastoral care.

I can report that building a strong and cohesive Staff Team, presenting an updated image of St Martin’s to the wider community through the development of a new website, and establishing a model of spiritual direction for the community through clear Biblically- based preaching, teaching and pastoral care have become firmly embedded. Addressing the steady decline in operating income continue to be a work in progress. Enthusing others in the revitalizing of the Church’s ministries with a focus on newcomer welcome and incorporation is well underway. A number of reports appear in this year’s pack evidencing the health of some of our key ministry groups. In addition to the explosion of energy across all our community ministries, I note two new developments of the Women’s and Men’s Spirituality groups. As our community magnetism increases, we are already seeing the definite signs of new growth.

Five challenges become one. We need to deepen our spiritual lives, which in itself will lead to a reevaluation of our priorities.

The overview from 30,000 ft

The key challenge facing us continues to be the working through of the larger shifts in Church affiliation and patterns of attendance. In short, the Church no longer sits at the heart of social life. We no longer live in the 1950’s. I welcome this because it means that those of us who continue with Church, along with those of us who are newly discovering Church for the first time, or rediscovering Church again, are increasingly aware of our spiritual hunger. We are impatient to be molded into a spiritual community fit for the purpose of witnessing to the Kingdom values. These are the values Jesus proclaimed when in the synagogue in Nazareth, he read from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah.

But one challenge

We at St Martin’s have but one challenge, and that is to be fit for God’s purpose. Disruption to our comfortable pattern of worship is emblematic of an attempt to make ourselves a more magnetic community; a community whose magnetism draws others. We continue to explore how to reshape ourselves because being fit for purpose means ensuring that we are ready for those who have yet to arrive. Such a community contrasts sharply with one that continues to be a comfortable place for those already here.

Spiritual deepening is the key to this reshaping because the deeper we go spiritually, the more we become reliant, not on our own efforts and imaginative gimmicks, but on the Holy Spirit’s power to transform us to be fit for God’s purpose.

Jesus came to his own hometown, he stood up in the synagogue, opened the scroll of the prophet Isaiah who five centuries earlier had proclaimed a message of transformation that brings: good news to the poor, release of those in captivity, recovery of sight to the blind, freedom for the oppressed, and the year of the Lord’s favor, which means the cancellation of all debt.

As it was in Jesus’ day, so it remains today- a seemingly impossible vision. Yet the division of time into past, present, and future plays tricks on us. Because, that which is already fulfilled in a cosmic sense is still in our temporal experience, in the process of unfolding. Consequently, Jesus proclaims that today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.

The worshipers in the synagogue in Nazareth heard the God News and yet, they pulled back. In the words of Gandhi, they refused to become the change they longed to see. Let us not be guilty of the same lack of courage.In a very real sense to proclaim the Good News is to come closer to its fulfillment. Jesus reminds us that today this vision is fulfilled in our hearing.

January 30, 2016 0

They have no Wine

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Sermon for Epiphany II by the Rev Linda Mackie Griggs, Director of Christian Formation, St Martin’s, Providence.

They have no wine.

This is a declaration of a crisis. For the groom’s family to run out of wine during a multi-day wedding reception was no small matter. Hospitality was a crucial aspect of first-century Palestinian culture, and an oversight of this nature was no mere faux pas to be resolved by a quick run to the liquor store. The groom’s family’s reputation was on the line. The urgent whispers of people aware of the impending crisis were dangerously close to becoming voluble accusations–in short, a disaster loomed.

And the mother of Jesus knew it. They have no wine.

Woman, what concern is that to you and to me?

This account of the wedding at Cana is one of the most well-known theophanies—or God-showings, as the Bishop described them last week, revealing Jesus’ glory as God’s Beloved, and it appears only in John’s Gospel. We hear this exchange between Mary and Jesus, and immediately our own voices, or those of our children or parents, are projected upon the narrative. It is an introductory dialogue that reaches out and grabs us well before the main event; the actual transformation of over 120 gallons of water into a more-than-passable quality wine. We find ourselves caught in a web of wondering about the nature of the family dynamic: Was Mary too pushy? Why did Jesus rebuke her? What did he mean when he said his hour had not come? What made Mary choose to ignore his wishes? This conversation draws us in because it sounds so much like our own families arguing around the kitchen table.

But there is more to this than a snippy exchange between the Virgin Mary and the Son of God, and to see it we need to extricate ourselves from the web that John seems to have caught us in. Maybe, just maybe, all is not as it seems. Maybe it is MORE than it seems. But to see this we need to look more broadly at the context of this story.

John’s Gospel is unique from those of Mark, Matthew and Luke, which are known as the synoptic Gospels—they have a common content and historical structure. John’s Gospel differs in order, content and overall tone—You can hear it from the first verse. It doesn’t begin with Jesus’ birth; it begins with the Creation, and with Jesus’ place in it as the Word: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God…And the Word became flesh and lived among us.” This is crucial—John wants us to understand not just that Jesus is the Word but that the Word became human. So the entire Gospel is a dance between the elevated imagery of Jesus’ closeness to his Father (“…God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart…” 1:18) and his Incarnation as one of us: Woman, what concern is that to you and me?

The structure of the narrative around today’s story is not about chronology—it is all about establishing Jesus’ identity as the Word made flesh. In the first chapter we have moved from “In the beginning was the Word”, through the testimony of John the baptizer who tells the Pharisees that the one whom he proclaims is one whom they do not know, whose sandals he is not worthy to untie, and upon whom the Holy Spirit descended like a dove. John the baptizer not once, but twice declares Jesus to be The Lamb of God.

The narrative of the Wedding comes just after the calling of the disciples, and just before the cleansing of the Temple, which in the other Gospels happens much later in Jesus’ ministry. John wants us to see early on that Jesus’ ministry is going to turn everything upside-down—and that following him will not be ‘business as usual.’

John’s Gospel is all about Jesus’ identity as the beloved of God who shared our humanity.

And it is from this context that this story calls us. It is not just a story of family dynamics and miracles meant simply to astound witnesses. What does it tell us about Jesus’ identity, and our identity as well?

“They have no wine.” A statement of crisis.

“What is that to you or me? My hour has not yet come.” Reluctance? Rebellion? Uncertainty? This has the marks of being a pivotal decisive moment in the life of God’s Beloved.

Theologian Carol Lakey Hess describes this as the Scandal of Divine Hesitation—the idea that God would delay acting in the world until being nudged by humanity to do something—humanity in this case being personified by Jesus’ allegedly pushy mother. Seen in a broader sense this Scandal of Divine Hesitation might help to explain issues of theodicy—why bad things happen in the presence of a loving God. Hess postulates that God is waiting for us. My concern here is that it puts the onus on humanity to be a prime mover in any kind of transformative action in the world. It takes God out of the equation, relegating God to a position of divine flunky awaiting instructions from us. You could say that the Scandal of Divine Hesitation is best exemplified in the words of St. Teresa of Avila who wrote, “Christ has…no hands, no feet on earth but yours…Christ has no body now on earth but yours.” ”** But it is not as simple as that—as simply that our action alone makes the difference. A God who created the world doesn’t need humanity to point out what needs to be done. There is something more here; something richer and deeper to this relationship than simply giving God instructions. Rather it is our identity as the Body of Christ—Created by God, living in Christ, led by the Holy Spirit, which can accomplish transformation in the world.

So if Jesus wasn’t waiting for Mary to spur him to action, what was happening in that breath of a millisecond of God’s Time?

John offers us a portrait of God’s Beloved who was one of us. God was present in him, yet he was completely human. What if Jesus was doing what any of us might do when presented with an opportunity? Listen to the exchange again:

“They have no wine”

“What is that to you? And to me?” Hear, instead of grumbling and rebellion, a genuine question of discernment. A willingness to listen, ponder and evaluate; to be alert for the moving of the Spirit.

“What is that to us?” What is needed? How can we serve? What gifts can we offer?”

When we hear Jesus and his mother’s dialogue this way, the Scandal of Divine Hesitation is transformed into the Blessing of Divine/Human Partnership. It becomes a way for us to look at our own moments of hesitation when confronted by questions that have the potential to plumb the depths of our identity as Beloved Children of God; They have no food. They have no shelter. They have no peace. They have no comfort…no safety…no beauty…no justice.

What are these things to us?

Let us pray.

Transform us, loving God, by your Spirit, that we may hear your call to partner in the healing of the world. Help us to discern where our greatest joy meets the world’s deepest need*, to see that we have been filled to the brim with your gifts and to expend them abundantly and joyfully in your service. In the name of the Beloved One, your Incarnate Son, Jesus Christ, Amen.

__________________________________

**“Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses all the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are his body. Christ has no body now on earth but yours.” St. Teresa of Avila

*paraphrased from Frederick Buechner: Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC

January 17, 2016 0

Baptism of Christ

A sermon from the Rt. Rev Nicholas Knisely, 13th Bishop of Rhode Island on the occasion of his annual visitation to St Martin’s in Providence. There is no accompanying text.

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January 10, 2016 0

The Defining Power of Story

This audio track is not a sequential presentation of the written text. Listen to the track first and then read the text.

The metaphor of a cocktail

For many of us the Christmas narrative blurs into a cocktail of images. The many images become mentally remixed into a generalized, yet heady potion of angels, a virginal young woman, a baby, shepherds and animals; a star, wise men, a genocidal monarch; and a huge cosmological vision of the Word – the communicative element of God- coming into the world as the light of all people, shedding light in the darkest of places.

This last reference to light triggers off another set of images flowing out of the great transgenerational vision of the prophets of Israel concerning the coming to a people who walked in darkness of a savior – the Messiah who will usher in a truly global vision of reconciliation and fulfillment.

As a cocktail of images we miss the importance of each ingredient in the cocktail. Staying with the cocktail metaphor for a further moment, each ingredient offers a different flavor to the event of the Incarnation. Incarnation is the word used to mark the event of enormous significance for Christians – that of the creator becoming part of the creation. Although all the major world faiths witness to the truth, only Christianity has this truth.

Each Gospel writer has his own particular take on this event – a take that emerges from the Evangelist’s cultural-historical location, which includes the needs of his intended audience. Both Luke and Matthew begin their Gospels with a Jesus birth narrative. Luke gives us the angel, virgin, shepherds and farmyard ingredients. Matthew gives us the star, wise men, and genocidal monarch ingredients. The focus in Luke’s story is the obedience of a young woman, whereas, Matthew’s focus is on Joseph and through him, Jesus’s messianic lineage. Luke’s is a cosmopolitan story designed to appeal to the 1^st-century multinational world of the Roman Empire. Matthew’s is a story constructed for predominantly Jewish ears, a story firmly located within the prophecies of the Old Testament.

Matthew adds to the theme of Incarnation that of Epiphany recalling the arrival of the Wise Men. The readings the Episcopal Church chooses for the Second Sunday of Christmas more properly belong to the feast of the Epiphany, which always being the 6^th of January, this year occurs on this coming Wednesday. Wednesday being a weekday, everyone accepts that most Episcopalians will not be in church, and hence the readings for the Second Sunday. We don’t want you to miss out on this installment of the Christmas story.

Epiphany – one of those infernal Greek words means showing. What is it that is being revealed? The Epiphany is like a spotlight being trained on the manger scene. In the illumination we see Jesus’ birth taking place against the deep backdrop of the Jewish religious tradition that Matthew speaks to. At the same time, in the arrival of the Wise Men, a contemporary English rendering of the Persian word Magi – magician, Matthew connects the birth of Jesus to both a wider ancient Middle Eastern Wisdom religious tradition, while at the same time, identifying Jesus as the New Moses.

Deep background

The Magi are figures from Zoroastrianism, the ancient religion of Persia. For instance, it’s from Zoroastrianism that angels and the idea of a cosmic battle between good and evil, light and dark enter into Jewish religious thinking. The Magi journey from the East, literally the image for the dawning of each day’s new light, guided by the light of a star, a clear astrological-astronomical reference. In the ancient world astrology was the serious scientific study of the heavens in order to come to better understand the larger patterns within which human experience of the natural world unfolded and as such astrology is more than modern day horoscoping. It is the forerunner of modern astronomy. The implication here is that the birth of Jesus is more than a Jewish event, it’s also a Wisdom event and as such is appropriately recognized by the Gentile representatives of Wisdom inquiry.

Matthew weaves into the Magi narrative strand the signifiers of divine kingship – Gold, Frankincense, and Mir and a connection between the Magi and Herod the Great. Herod the Great was the ruler of Palestine, which at the time of Jesus’ birth is still a semi-autonomous vassal state of Rome; a client state not yet fully incorporated into the Empire. This narrative strand connecting Magi and Herod enables Matthew to set up the events of the Holy family’s flight into Egypt; a flight necessitated by Herod’s genocidal jealousy of another ‘king of the Jews’ born within his territory.

It’s easy to miss Matthew’s intent here. He is setting up the connection between Jesus and Moses. Moses too, was delivered from a king’s infanticidal rage as Pharaoh sought to kill all the young Israelite, male children. Jesus’ escape into Egypt also connects him to Israel’s story of deliverance, and through this to the Moses story.

A community’s story

The community I serve is going through some significant changes. Change is usually disruptive and unsettling though there are some who relish the novelty of something different. Although some may feel the changes taking place to be unnecessary, the result of a relatively new rector doing what new rectors do, I deeply appreciate that as a whole, my community is one that is ready for the next installment in its eventful and fruitful history.

How do I know this? I know my community is ready for change because it has said so. In our recent participation in a program called RenewalWorks we had a 120% participation rate in the online spiritual inventory survey. The results of the inventory revealed a startling fact. While my community is below even the Episcopal Church benchmarks for levels of belief and spiritual practice, we greatly exceeded the survey’s expected response rate, hence the odd 120%. I read this as an indication of the members of this community expressing their hunger to deepen and to grow in their faith journey.

An Episcopal parish attracts people who don’t want simple answers to complex questions. The Episcopal Church is increasingly a community of refugees. 40% of the members of my community are Protestant refugees. Some are escaping fundamentalist church experience, being attracted to theological tolerance. Others, from more mainline Protestant churches, are attracted to the rich and deep catholic liturgical worship of the Anglican Tradition. 30% are Roman Catholic refugees. You don’t have to be clairvoyant to discern the attraction of the Episcopal Church for Roman Catholics increasingly disaffected by the conservative shift and maintenance of attitudes of intolerance in their church that have typified the direction under two Popes preceding Francis. That leaves around 30% of my community as either cradle Episcopalian or spiritual seekers arriving from non-church backgrounds.

In our community, we have two main tasks. Firstly, to facilitate the diverse nature of our membership into an experience of belief and spiritual practice that meets complex needs. The one thing that unites us is the need for a belief structure and pattern of spiritual practice that supports us in meeting the challenges of living 21^st-century lives. Connected to this is our second task, which is to become a more magnetic community, a magnet strange attractor for many who find themselves increasingly spiritually seeking. Our resource for both tasks are the accumulated wisdom of the Judeo-Christian tradition, permeated through Anglicanism’s aesthetic richness and theological tolerance.

Folk who are overly educated and formed by a predominant culture of secular inquiry bring complex needs to their search for faith. We bring a deep desire for the numinous, something we are barely able to articulate our need for, but which we are in search of in an attempt to escape from the existential restlessness and disillusionment of materialist culture. Yet, we need our faith to be credible to us. We have poor tolerance for the seeming miraculous enchantment of the Christmas story of angels, virgins, and extra-biological procreation.

For most of the members of my community the importance of the Christmas story lies not in any desire that it meet the needs of literal historicity, i.e. did it happen, and did it happen as described? In teasing-out the Christmas cocktail ingredients and in particular, those that Matthew’s narrative of the Incarnation provides, my aim is to highlight the formative nature of narrative for human awareness and the formation of Christian identity in particular.

Story is all we have

The branch of secular inquiry that I have been most schooled in is that of depth and transpersonal psychologies. There is considerable divergence between the two schools but on one thing they agree. We only ever have the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, about one another, and about the nature of the world around us. Whatever objective reality we have access to, it is always permeated through the construction of a narrative that interprets experience in order to build meaning. Human beings, it might be said are story telling creatures. Far from being exercises in make-believe, stories give voice to experiential reality and the articulation of our meaningful experience of the world.

Individuals, groups, and societies develop identity through the stories they tell, or put more technically, the narratives they construct. Story or narrative builds a sense of meaning and purpose. Mark, Matthew, Luke and John tell different stories about the Incarnation, and each story arises out of their respective cultural and historical locations. Each story further defines the nature of their community’s experience. We have a great advantage in having their variations on the theme of Incarnation as part of our repertoire to draw from. While they differ they are nevertheless variations on the core story, which is that the creator has come at a point in time and space to become subject to the laws of time and space. Living within the limitations of human experience, Jesus reveals God’s fuller dream for human development. The central truth of the stories of the Incarnation is that to be human is to be most like God. This seems to be God truth, proclaimed in the first chapters of Genesis, now repeated more clearly in the life of Jesus.

Mark, Matthew, Luke and John tell different stories about the Incarnation. Each story arises out of their particular cultural and historical location. Each story continues to shape the nature of their community’s experience. We have a great advantage in having their variations on the theme of Incarnation as part of our repertoire to draw from. While they differ they are nevertheless variations on the core story, which is that the creator has come at a point in time and space to become subject to the laws of time and space. Living within the limitations of human experience, Jesus reveals God’s fuller dream for human development. The central truth of the stories of the Incarnation is that to be human is to be most like God. This seems to be God-truth, proclaimed in the first chapters of Genesis, now repeated more clearly in the life of Jesus.

We now live in the second decade of the 21^st-century. Whether overtly religious or avowedly secular, the stories we tell ourselves have to a very great degree been shaped by the religious and cultural narrative of the Western religious tradition. The narratives of Incarnation lie at the heart of our religious tradition and tells us that whatever the world is or isn’t, however our picture of it is coloured or shaped, the world is not an illusion but a day-to-day reality to be engaged with. The spiritual-religious-theological truth we tell ourselves through the Incarnation narrative is that no matter how distorted and contorted our experience of being human might be, to be human is to be a reflection of what is most and essentially true about God.

The great story

I can’t finish without the obligatory reference to T.S. Elliot’s poem The Journey of the Magi. In it he muses on the close relationship between birth and death:

Birth or death? There was a Birth, certainly,

We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,

But had thought they were different…

The Epiphany spotlight on the Incarnation reveals the first chapter in a story of a birth that leads to death, one death in particular. Through that death God does something new – death henceforth leads us back to birth, new birth.

Story is all we have. The question is how we tell the story? What do we include and what do we leave out? All our stories are cocktails created by what is added and what is left out of any particular telling. Through the way we tell our story, connections are forged between the wisdom of the past and future hopes constructing necessary meaning and purpose in the present. Our very lives are a narration, not just in words, but in actions. Through story in action we live out the spiritual insights of Incarnation. This is a story that renews our engagement with the world and leads us towards individual and communal transformation. The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us full, full of grace and truth. This informs us of the truth that the creator is now one with the creation. I invite us all to meditate on this and let it change us and through personal change transform our world.

January 2, 2016 0