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SERMON ARCHIVE May-June, 2001[BACK to CURRENT SERMONS] Click on the sermon you wish to read.
The Nativity of St. John the Baptist Whenever I'm asked what it is that I do for a living, I can almost count on a person's response to my saying that I'm a pastor to fall into one of four or five categories. I would say, however, that 90% of the responses fall into one category. This category of response usually begins with an awkward silence, a clearing of the throat, and a deep sigh. And then the sad stories begin. Most people, by far, when they hear that I'm a pastor, tell me about the cruelties inflicted upon them in the name of Christ. Some of them are people of other faith traditions, mostly Jews, and we know far too well the horrors that have resulted from the heresy of anti-Semitism – but the vast majority of people in this group are those who were raised in the Church but who have experienced the Church not as a messenger of good news, not as a messenger of God's unconditional love but as a messenger of cruelty, bigotry, judgement, and exclusion. One of the things I miss most from my days in seminary and my days in religious community is the praying of matins – or morning prayer as some know it. One of the songs sung every day in Matins is the prophecy of Zechariah that we hear in this morning's Gospel. It is a song that tells forth who his son John is to be; but even while this song, the Benedictus, speaks of John the Baptist, it has been understood by the Church as a song that tells who we are as messengers of Christ and Christ's Gospel. Listen again to some of this song: Through the Holy Prophets God promised of old to save us from the hands of all those who hate. God promised to show mercy, to set us free from the hands of our enemies, free to worship God without fear, holy and righteous in God's sight all the days of our life. And you, my child, shall be called the messenger of the Most High, for you will go before the Lord to prepare the way, to give people knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of their sins. In the tender compassion of our God, the dawn from on high shall break upon us, to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace. Now, if we jump forward to the third chapter of Luke, the first words we hear out of John the Baptists mouth don't exactly sound forth a note of tender compassion. "You brood of vipers!" John rants. "Who warned you to flee from the wrath that is to come?" It doesn't exactly sound like something to guide anybody's feet into the way of peace. But then, John isn't speaking to "just anybody." It's clear from what follows that John is speaking to those who set themselves apart, who claim holiness and righteousness based on speaking the right language, worshipping in the right place, belonging to the right group . . . words of judgement, to be sure – the same sort of judgement spoken by the one to whom John points, by Jesus whose sandals John found himself unworthy to loosen. It has often been said that the Gospel is discomfort to the comfortable and comfort to the uncomfortable. Indeed the Gospel is filled with harsh words for the religious elite who seat themselves in the place of God by condemning others, for those who do not share their abundance with those who have less, for those who despise foreigners and people who don't speak the right language, for those who despise the strange, the different, the disabled, the poor, the unloved, and the unlovely. By contrast, the words of tender compassion in the Gospel are abundant for the ones hated by the religious elite, words of tender compassion are abundant for the outcast, the foreigner, for women, for people of the street, for all those judged unworthy by those in high places. It is precisely the so-called unworthy who are proclaimed holy and righteous in the sight of God – because they do not lay any claim to holiness and righteousness by their own works or merit, by their belonging to the right group or worshipping in the right place or observing the correct customs. Today is Gay Pride Day. And just a block from us thousands and thousands of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people, their friends, and their families are marching. The agency that sponsors the Gay Pride parade notes that 60% of the people on its mailing list live in the neighborhoods within a couple miles' radius from St. Paul. From this, it's a good guess that a goodly number of the thousands and thousands of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people out there are our neighbors, the ones whom we are called to love if we claim to love God. And I can tell you without any hesitation that the vast majority of them, the vast majority of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people have no use whatsoever for the church. And I hope you can guess why, because very frankly it's far too difficult to rehearse yet once more the self-righteous crap dished out by religious people who declare themselves righteous on account of whom they say they love. In the past few years, people of St. Paul Church have marched in the gay pride parade – one of only three or four main-line churches to do so. And this year, the Reconciling in Christ committee has a booth at PrideFest being held in Civic Center Park until 5.00 this afternoon. And St. Paul is the only mainline Christian congregation with a presence there today. I know not everyone here will be pleased to hear about St. Paul having a booth at PrideFest – but I respectfully ask you to listen and not to judge. Your brothers and sisters in Christ, whom I will join this afternoon, are bearing witness to the Gospel of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ – they are saying to those who have been cast out that here, in this community of faith they will be received as our beloved sisters and brothers, and that here they will hear good news –
Listen and hear the good news, that like John the Baptist, your brothers and sisters in Christ will be proclaiming: In the tender compassion of God, the dawn's light is breaking in upon you from on high – to shine into the deadly darkness of this shadowed planet – a light to guide your feet into the way of peace – Christ's peace – peace such as the world can neither imagine nor give. And with this, there can be no argument – for this is, after all, not ours, but Christ's, Holy Gospel. 2 Pentecost 2 Samuel 11.26-12.10, 13-15; Galatians 2.15-21; St. Luke 7.36-50 In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Scripture tells us that David was a person after God's own heart – a person who did the will of God. How can this be? King David was a sleaze-ball, a sleaze-ball who makes certain ex-presidents-who-shall-remain-nameless look like rank amateurs as far as sleaze is concerned. If your memories fail you as to just how low King David could go, let me titillate you with some of the dirty details. It seems that while King David was up on his rooftop one day, engaging in a bit of peeping Tom behavior, peering into the neighbor's bathroom while she was lying naked in her bathtub, Jesus' illustrious ancestor became consumed with lust for the young and beautiful neighbor named Bathsheba and devised a plan to have her brought to him that very night for a tumble in the hay. Of course Bathsheba was married to one of David's faithful army captains but that didn't bother David because Uriah, the faithful soldier, was conveniently off on some battlefront. Well, one thing leading to another as they usually do, Bathsheba got pregnant. Oops. Time for damage control. David summons Uriah home, heaps praise upon him, and tells him to go home and enjoy relations with the wife – hoping of course that once Bathsheba's time had come, Uriah would be math-impaired enough not to be able to count to nine and think that David's kid was his own. David, however, didn't count on the fact that Uriah, ever noble, would refuse such luxury while his men were stuck in the mud on some dusty plain or another. Even sly David couldn't do anything to get Uriah to go home and sleep with Bathsheba. Time for Plan B – David sends an email or something of that sort to Joab, Uriah's commander, telling Joab to stick Uriah in the direct line of fire during the next battle and leave him there to get mowed down by the enemy. Which of course happened, leaving David free to have Bathsheba as yet another one in a long line of David's too-numerous-to-count wives and concubines, one more notch in David's bedpost. And yet – and yet, David is remembered in scripture as being a person after God's own heart who carried out the will of God. David? King Sleaze-ball? How can this crumb-bum be a person after God's own heart? David had a son named Absalom, gifted and handsome with long, flowing locks of beautiful black hair. But Absalom was also vain and ambitious and lusted after power, so naturally he decided he should be King rather than his father, and so he usurped the throne of his father David. One day while Absalom was galloping through the woods on his way to complete his coup-d'etat by killing his own father, Absalom's dreadlocks got caught in the low-lying branches of a tree – the horse of course kept going and Absalom was left to slowly die by hanging until some soldiers came and put him out of his misery by piercing his side with spears. Word was brought to King David that the threat against his life was over and that he could re-ascend the throne because Absalom was now dead. But rather than rejoice, King David ripped his garments and cried out: "O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would that I had died in your place O Absalom, my son, my son!" And there – there it is that we have the person after God's own heart, the one who showed God's will – though Absalom was riding to kill David, David without any prior confession on Absalom's part willed that he himself would die in place of his murderous son. Here is how David does God's will – by showing a quality of mercy that passes all human understanding. Who can understand or conceive of the strangeness of such appalling mercy?I asked a confirmation class of mine one day: Do you want God to be fair? These were good kids for the most part – well scrubbed, well behaved the goal-oriented children of good goal-oriented parents. Who here wants God to be fair?? Absolutely!! Every hand went up with enthusiasm – every hand but one. Back in the corner of the room, separated from the rest of the class sat Jason – short, swarthy, at thirteen, physically mature, dark chest hair poking out above his dirty tee-shirt, his dark, full beard needing to be shaved everyday, Jason, whose family lived in the poorest section of town, Jason, already the subject of whispered rumors of the sexual sort. Jason, I said, you didn't raise your hand. You don't want God to be fair? Jason -- silent for a minute while everyone stared at him in his corner. And then he spoke, his voice slow, sad, yet somehow assured and trusting. "Well," he said, "the way I've got it figured is that if God is fair, then I'm dead meat." Jason, like the woman in today's Gospel somehow grasped in the very core of his being the strange, appalling mercy of a God, who rather than be fair, would die in our place, even as David, though a sleaze, yet a person after God's own heart, had declared. And so in this morning's Gospel, I see Jason at Jesus' feet, washing Jesus' feet with his tears of sorrow or love or both, passionately kissing Jesus, wiping Jesus' feet with his own dark hair – consumed with love for the one who unfairly accepts him and loves him -- just as he is. Who can conceive of or understand the appalling strangeness of God's mercy? By our own reason or strength, none of us. But faith, says St. Paul, comes through hearing – the Holy Spirit, says Luther, enlightens us through the proclamation of the Word. So hear the Word yet once more. We are all hopelessly flawed, we all make messes in and of our corporate and private lives, we all have places within us that we want nobody in this world to know about -- let alone God. But the God whose mercy is never fair loves and accepts you just as you are. God has bathed you and anointed you with God's own soulful cry, "My Daughter, My Son, I love you so much that I will suffer and die and break open the gates of death for you – My daughter, my Son, my love will pursue you and be beside you beyond every boundary in the universe, beyond every boundary of your imagination, beyond your life and death." My sisters and brothers, God's strange, powerful, appallingly unfair mercy sees in you the very image of Christ. So go in peace; you are lovely and loving, extravagantly merciful and joyfully forgiving, complete and whole and perfect in the sight of our unfair God. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Easter 6 Acts 16:9-15 The promise of the sending of the Holy Spirit—it seems so benign—so inoffensive—peaceful, pastoral. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. Don't worry; be happy?? The Holy Spirit as some sort of warm fuzzy?? Consider our symbols for the Spirit—in Baptism, a shell, a few drops of water - sometimes a dove. Or on Pentecost—a flame, the color red. like geraniums, harmless in pots along a patio or on the altar. Or sometimes a wind—a breath. Breathe on me breath of God. In today's Gospel, the Holy Spirit is called the Advocate and is linked with Christ's promise to leave us his peace, his own peace not as the world gives. And in our reading from Revelation—John while in the Spirit is shown a radiant city and through it flows a river—the water of life and on its sides, a tree of life. But now consider those symbols another way. The Spirit as water—turbulent, high crashing waves that break over the sides of a boat drowning its inhabitants. Or the dove, not carrying an olive branch, but sharp and biting thorns. And flames, hot, flesh-searing, burning, destroying. And red—a color of warning—telling of dangers up ahead. And God's breath—no summer breeze but now a tornado, a violent wind flattening everything in its path. And the Spirit's gift of peace, now not the absence of warfare and trouble—but the Hebrew concept of shalom, a time of trouble for many—a time when all are made equal—when the rich are laid low and all that belongs to the privileged of the world is given over to those that have little or nothing—when those who were on the outside sit equal with those on the inside. And as for John's Spirit-led vision of the city—it comes only after a terror and great tumult—and the river in that city, bright as crystal, but red crystal, a river of blood flowing from a wounded side - and the trees of life on its banks hanging heavy not with domesticate fruit, but hanging heavy with a strange fruit whose flesh drips blood and water from five open wounds. Ask Paul of Tarsus about the Spirit. It was no Hallmark card that greeted him on the road to Damascus—but a violent burst of cosmic energy flattening him to the ground and assaulting his brain and his every sense with violence brighter than any known light. The Spirit not a gentle voice within but a terrifying voice from outside—filled perhaps with the agonized screams of those whose deaths he had overseen. And by what sort of Spirit is it that this mass murder of Christ's first followers should have his name on a Church and be called an Apostle? Ask Paul about the Spirit. It was no sweet song of Kum Ba Yah around the campfire that rang in his brain—but nagging dreams that led him far from the comforts of home and his precious and precocious learning to places profane and impure, across waters that drown to where the rabble roused itself against him constantly. It had to be repugnant for this learned man that Sabbath to find near the river in Phillipi not the quiet place of prayer, but only some women—those, as he had been taught so well, who were not worthy to speak about God certainly not with a man as August as he. And there a certain woman named Lydia—a dealer in the exorbitantly expensive purple goods worn by the very rich—those goods dyed purple by the ground shells of fish that it was an abomination for Paul to even touch—and where would this certain Lydia have gotten the great money to trade in these tainted goods in the first place? Women of business were women of business, if you know what I mean—as Paul certainly knew and without doubt. And what sort of invasion of Paul's own spirit led him to baptize one such as this Lydia and the rest of her disordered house? And what sort of Spirit was it that led Paul to degrade himself by accepting the hospitality of this woman who so disgustingly transgressed norms of gender? And what about us? What is this Spirit that has us holding up a wafer made of wheat paste, that has us holding up some wine, that has us calling it the body and the blood of one hanged as a criminal? What sort of Spirit is it that has talking about something so heinous and disgusting as eating the flesh and drinking the blood of a dead man? What sort of Spirit is it that has us infecting our bodies with such unnatural food? What sort of Spirit is it that has us talk of drowning our children so that they might live? And what sort of peace can this Spirit bring when we hear that it will bring us to die to our possessions and toys, to our fortune-filled dreams, to our egos, to our projects of fashioning the world as we would have it.? What sort of asinine Spirit is it that has us see in death a new beginning? How can Jesus say: Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not let them be afraid? Only one possessed would not be afraid of this Spirit. Only one possessed could call this Spirit "Good News". It sounds like a threat when Jesus tells of the Spirit's coming and says "I have told you this before it occurs, so that when it does occur, you may believe." Only a people strange and already possessed could hear those words as a promise. Only a people strange and already possessed by something not of this world find peace in such a Spirit as this. Only those already possessed sing for such a Spirit to enter in. Only those already possessed pray for the coming of this Spirit that passes all understanding. Or, in other words, my Friends—you are already possessed. In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of that Strange Spirit, Amen. Easter 5 Acts 11:1-18 Simon Peter, along with the Church in Jerusalem, knew well what scripture says—that in order for the Lord God to be among them, they must stay away from all that is unclean and they must keep themselves pure, even as the Lord God is pure. And the bible-believing folks in Jerusalem and elsewhere would rather die than defile themselves by eating even a mouthful of food that scripture said was unclean. And they definitely did not want to defile their church by allowing the uncircumcised and unclean people to be a part of their community. They didn't want to get the reputation of being a church that welcomed THOSE PEOPLE. Yes, they were a Bible-believing church to the core. Now Simon Peter, of all people, should have known better. Simon Peter, always striving to be the most fervent and devoted disciple of Jesus, was there, time after time, when the Lord Jesus himself got down and dirty with the unclean. He saw Jesus associating with sinners, lepers, street women and other sorts of people that scripture said would defile the people, that scripture said would drive the Lord God from their midst. He saw Jesus sitting down and eating with those who scripture said were an abomination unto the Lord. Come on Peter—put two and two together Peter—you were the first to declare that this same Jesus was truly the Son of God—the one human in whom God was present without limits—How can it be that associating with the unclean—How can it be that welcoming those whom most thought were an abomination—How can it be that these things would drive God from their midst, when it was Jesus, true God from true God, that was already in their midst, welcoming them into the fullness of God's love? And Peter, you were there too on that night before you denied even knowing your beloved —when he knelt before you and all the disciples to wash your feet—your feet—that most unclean part of the body. And when he had finished making clean that which you all thought unclean, he told you to do likewise and then gave you the new commandment that stands above every commandment—the commandment of the new heaven and earth—that you love one another even as Jesus loved you who would deny and abandon him. Love one another—and by this the world would know you were his disciples. Why couldn't you get it Peter? Make no mistake—I like Peter—he's no plastic saint sittin' on the dashboard of my car. He's real—like us. He thinks he's got it all together—thinks he knows how to be a disciple. But he screws it up every time—like us. He thinks God acts like we think God should act—making distinctions, deciding—oh yes, always on the basis of scripture— who's in and who's out—who's sanctified—and who's an abomination. Peter, like us, couldn't figure it out on his own—Peter needed a little visit from the Holy Spirit. He was no visionary, no prophet—a mere mortal—and a fairly dense and stubborn one at that. Yeah, I like these stories of Peter—repenting—turning back toward the new thing wrought by his Lord Jesus—converted, time after time—not by something within himself— converted rather by a vision of the new creation where no seas divide us—converted by a vision, by a word from the Lord, to live in the new command to love one another—without distinctions. The new creation—the kingdom of God in Christ Jesus is never Peter's idea or agenda. It is always outside him, beckoning him into a time when all things are new. This morning Jonathan Frederic Genovese will receive the sacrament of Holy Baptism. For him, as for us, this is none of our own doing. Rather in Holy Baptism, we are converted, turned round by the Spirit to live in the kingdom where there is no longer clean or unclean—where all sit down to the supper of the Lamb—where all love one another—all—with no distinctions. However, Jonathan, and all of us, are heirs to that something called sin—sin that clouds our eyes—that fogs our brains—that drives us to create God and God's kingdom in our own image of ourselves—creating oceans to divide—imagining that we are the clean ones possessing a god who will dance to our tune. God, however, will have none of it. But instead of knocking us upside the head, God gives us a gift—a gift of water to the thirsty that we might be reborn in the Holy Spirit—the Spirit that enters our ears when we hear Christ proclaimed—the Spirit that gets inside of us when we receive Christ's body and blood. And that Spirit, promised in Holy Baptism, converts us time and again and will convert us time and again. And in our every conversion, the new heaven and the new earth will break in and the former things will pass away. So now hear and receive the Good News: With every morning sunrise, every time you remember your Holy Baptism, you are reborn and you become in part what you shall one day be in full. All deadly distinctions will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the former divisions and distinction will all have passed away and Christly love will be your all in all—not by your own power, but ever and always by the power of the Holy Spirit. Behold. It is done. Easter 4Pastor Kevin R. Maly May 6, 2001 Acts 9:36-43 At Joppa, there was a disciple whose name in Aramaic was Tabitha—or in Greek—Dorcas —a name meaning Gazelle—a small, swift animal—Tabitha—a disciple—here in Acts, the only time a woman is given the title of disciple, a title sure to raise eyebrows—especially considering the conventional scheme of relations between men and women. Here in this new community of Christ, however, no one stays in his or her place. Common fishermen preach to temple authorities, paralyzed old men are up and walking about and changing lives, and a woman named Gazelle heads up a welfare program among the poor at Joppa. Now widows, by definition, are poor, on the bottom rung of society, without anyone to represent them or protect them—sheep without a shepherd— with the powers that think they be ever ready to pounce and devour. In Joppa, these are the ones to whom Tabitha, the Gazelle, has given life through her good works and acts of charity. She dies, and her life-giving work dies with her—so the community sends for Peter. Peter is taken to the room where Tabitha is laid out. Her death has caused a crisis in the community. Now the most vulnerable ones have no one. The coats and garments that the widows show Peter are tangible evidence of what Tabitha has done— and what her death means for their very existence. These widows aren't concerned with questions of theology— they're not interested in the consolations of the possibility of a better world to come— they aren't interested in a grief support group. They are too poor, too consumed with the need to get by, one day at a time, to play in any language games. Tabitha is gone—she is dead. How will they survive?? Elisabeth Schuessler Fiorenza says it well: "in the first century—as today—the majority of the poor and the starving are women, especially those women who had no male agencies that might have enabled them to share in the wealth of the patriarchal system." So the widows weep, for the one who has been the good shepherd among them is gone. The one who brought power to bear on behalf of the poor is dead. The one who fed the sheep is no more. And the widows are about to be fed to a system that preys on the most vulnerable—a system built upon the backs of the weakest. But Surprise!!! Death will not have the final say. There seems to be power loose in Joppa that is able to break somehow the bonds of the past. In this new community—the body of Christ—widows will not be left to perish. The lambs will not be fed to the wolves. Tabitha is restored to the widows by Peter's bold word and solidarity. The Good Shepherd of the Sheep is mysteriously among the people bearing the same life-and-death-giving power as the creator of the whole universe. Mysteriously, at the speaking of a name, all the boundaries of existence, the highest heavens, and the very breath of life are disordered and reordered toward a new creation. And this story of what happened one day in Joppa says this name belongs to widows and others who have no hope nor power in this world except his name. But this isn't a story just about Joppa—it's not some cute illustration in a Sunday School book. Every community, every family, and even every church exists within certain seemingly settled, fixed arrangements of power and weakness, life and death. People are told that there is a divinely established chain of being, a fixed order in which we are to find our place, stay there, and shut our mouths. Tabitha is supposed to stay home and let the men devise an affordable welfare system. Peter is to stay with his fishing nets and leave theology to the scholars. Women are supposed to stay away from the altar, along with queer people, poor people, their sympathizers and all sorts of other undesirables. But the Word comes to these people in the words and actions of uppity and audacious women and men who, like Peter, won't stay in their place but instead come out among them and stand beside them. And these are miraculous events, subversive of the orders of death because they announce in word and deed a new reality, the reality of the One who rises from the dead—a reality no longer based upon rigid logical schemes of our own making or upon some set of statistically valid social science circumstances, but upon God's promise of a new creation. And every time a couple of little stories like these are faithfully told and lived by the church, every social system of paralysis and death is rendered null and void. The church goes to Joppa, and wherever death seems to have snatched another one away, and speaks the evangelical and prophetic "Rise!" And at that Word, nothing can ever be quite the same. And so I say to you on this Fourth Sunday of Easter, Tabitha, get up. You got work to do. |
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