 |
||
  |
SERMON ARCHIVE October, 2001[BACK to CURRENT SERMONS] Click on the sermon you wish to read.
Where indicated, individual sermons may be printed using the Adobe Acrobat version of the sermon. Click on the "printable format" link. If you do not have Acrobat Reader installed on your computer, click on the icon above and follow the simple directions to download it free from the Adobe web site. October 28, 2001 One of the things I dislike the most about being a pastor is the assumption that I’m religious. I try very hard not to be. I’ll go one step further. The Christian faith is not a religion – at least when it’s understood as the founder of our order, Father Martin Luther, would have us understand the Christian faith as he heard it articulated in the scriptures. We have to go back to Luther’s commentary on Genesis and the creation story to begin to hear what Luther’s understanding of justification by grace through faith is all about. In the beginning, God created humans as creatures made to take care of the creation, to enjoy its fruits and to care for one another. Humans were to be stewards – not owning the earth, not subduing the earth, not owning or even eating the other animals. All the things that grew on the trees and in the ground were there for the humans to eat. The humans were free to enjoy it all and to give good care to the earth, the sea, the air, everything. But something happened – the humans decided that this somehow wasn’t enough – the humans got ambition, thinking they could somehow better themselves and become, well, god-like. This is when all hell broke loose, so to speak. If you have everybody going around trying to be god – you get something like a bad game of king of the hill going. Everybody’s knocking everyone else’s block off trying to be number one. Only worse. And so the dogs of war are loosed and we make of the earth a killing field and do our best to trash every good gift we’ve been given. God of course had to do something to keep us all from killing each other as we each tried to be numero uno. It was called the Law -- most succinctly stated in what we call the ten commandments. The Law tells us first, that God is God and we aren’t. Second the Law tells us how to behave so that some sense of order can be maintained in this world – so that we’re not out killing each other, stealing from each other, wrecking other people’s relationships and being unfaithful in our own, or trying to see how much stuff we can accumulate, which of course always happens at our neighbors’ and the earth’s expense. Human beings, however, not trusting that God knows what God is up to, make sure this Law thing won’t work out too well either. We humans decided to play games around the Law, figuring that if we just kept it perfectly we could get to be like God, or keep God off our backs, or look better than the neighbors. And of course it wasn’t enough to keep it at that. We decided to organize – we in Group A decided that if everybody in the group kept the Law perfectly, we could manipulate God into giving us the most stuff. So we minded each other’s business – with a vengeance. And we also decided that we would be doing God’s work by destroying other groups whom we didn’t think were as devoted to the Law as they should be. Nasty business. It’s called religion. Religion is the temptation is for us to refuse our creaturehood, to refuse our humanity, to refuse to take care of the earth and to control God so that we can be the ones in charge. Sin is located not primarily in the body, but rather precisely in our spiritual pretensions and ambitions. It’s our god-like aspirations that destroy our life and seduce us to make life miserable for one another and for everything else on this planet. So along comes God’s Word in human form, Jesus of Nazareth, who lived in complete trust that God is God, who lived in complete trust that to be creaturely – taking good care of the earth and the neighbor – is to be as God intended things to be. The obedient one was "just," that is, devoid of our religious aspirations and pretensions. But then the religious folk got their shorts all in a knot over that and decided the obedient creature must be destroyed – after all he was undermining religion. Jesus, however, trusted that God would still be God, that God was loving and that the final outcome would be God’s, and that that was sufficient. Jesus was the one human who was completely trusting – that’s what it means to be just, having complete trust that God will be God and that our job is to be creatures. Being a Christian is to be joined to the completely trusting one – whose obedience God sees as being our own – it is to be adopted as sisters and brothers of the truly trusting one, being reborn in the image of the obedient one, it is to be seen by God as "just" – completely down to earth creatures trusting that God is God and we aren’t. What then becomes of our religious one-up-manship? What becomes of our trying to be holier than thou? What becomes of all our religious pretensions? They are useless. What now? Once our religiosity is worthless, once we are told we cannot take heaven by storm, we are restored to earth – earth creatures again – receiving the creation back as a gift to treasure -- doing what we have been given to do – taking care of the land, the sea, the air, the creatures, caring for one another, enjoying the abundance of the creation with one another. The commandments now are no longer law – they instead tell us who we are as sisters and brothers of the Trusting One – we are those who are created to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with God. We trust that God will give us more than enough and we do not need to despoil the earth through our consumerism. We trust that our place is to help the neighbor, protect the neighbor. We trust that our place is to help our neighbor treasure her or his lover and to be faithful to our own. We trust that our neighbor is also a fellow creature, created good and not needing to be controlled by us. Then why are we here in Church? If there weren’t still a vestige of that old creature, the one not joined to Christ, in us, this place would be totally unnecessary – but, alas, the ambitious creature is still with us. This place is where we come to hear who we are as Christ’s sisters and brothers – this place is where we come to receive Christ into our own bodies – this place is where we come to hear that God sees us as completely "just" – this place is where we come to receive the strength and encouragement to trust that God will be God when all becomes finished. That’s called "faith" – or perhaps a less religious word – "trust." So as soon as you’ve received the gifts that are here for you – get out of here. This isn’t where your work is. Go out and begin to take care of the planet we so badly trash. Take care of those around you – especially those who need good care, enjoy some beer, enjoy your bodies. God is God and you belong to God and that is more than enough. And for goodness’ sake, next time someone asks you if you’re religious, tell them "no." Tell them you’re earthy. 20 Pentecost, Proper 24 Genesis 32.22-31 Consider the cast of characters in this morning’s parable: a widow seeking justice, her opponent, an unjust judge, and God. The trick with all parables is to figure out who we are in these little confrontational tales. Let’s start with God; it’s obvious that God is God and we aren’t – so that’s not where we fit in the story. Then we have an unjust judge; the judge’s main function in the story is to provide a comparison to God: if an unjust judge gives in to the persistent pleading of the widow seeking justice, how much more will God grant justice to those who cry out day and night? That probably isn’t us either. Then there is the widow’s opponent, the source of the injustices done to the widow. And the widow herself. Now remember that in the time when this parable was told, women in general were at the bottom of the social heap, without any standing or status apart from that of their fathers and or husbands; women had no legal or religious rights and had no business speaking to either God or a judge. Being a widow only made it worse – widows were a burden to their families, completely vulnerable, destined to finish out their lives begging on the street – at best – and often having to resort to prostitution or thievery in order to survive. So, are we the widow? Or the widow’s opponent? Well, I tell you, my itching ears would just as soon fancy myself as some sort of wronged person seeking justice – but I’m not so sure I fit the bill. After all, I’m not exactly at the bottom of the social heap; being a white, well-educated male living in the U. S., my privileges and advantages are so extreme as to be ridiculous. Consider the following as you try to figure out if you’re the widow seeking justice. If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture or the pangs of starvation, you are ahead of 500 million people in the world. Or this: If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof overhead, and a place to sleep, you are richer than 75% of this world If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change in a dish someplace at home, you are among the top 8% of the world’s wealthy. Or this: If we could shrink the earth’s population to precisely 100 people, with all the existing human rations remaining the same, 6 people would possess 59% of the entire world’s wealth, and all 6 would be from the United States. Out of this 100 people, 80 would live in substandard housing mostly in areas degraded by toxic soil, air and water; 70 would be unable to read; 50 would suffer from malnutrition; 1 would have a college education; and 1 would own a computer. Anybody here honestly think they fit the role of the oppressed widow?? That leaves the widow’s opponent – the source of the injustice done to her. Victor Gollancz throws down this challenge to us who live in the United States: "The plain fact is that we are starving people, not deliberately in the sense that we want them to die, but willfully in the sense that we prefer their death to our own inconvenience." Ugh. Like I said, my itching ears would rather not I once more be put into the category of the oppressor. I’d like to hear something that makes me feel good for a change, some teaching that meets my needs and desires. I’m tired of being the bad guy. Must it be this way? Where is the gospel? Where is the good news? Well, for the widow, it’s clear as can be: God will grant justice to those who cry to God day and night, God will not delay long in helping them. God will quickly grant relief to them. The implication for the widow’s opponent is clear, especially in Luke: the mighty will be cast down and the rich will be sent away empty. You would think this would be enough to make the widow’s opponents quickly turn around, quickly mend their ways before their world order comes crashing down about their feet. And yet, asks Jesus, when the Son of Man comes, will he find this sort of faith on earth? There is yet one more option open to us in this parable. One of my favorite poets is Gerard Manley Hopkins, a Jesuit priest who lived in England at the end of the 19th century. His poetry is not easy to capture with the ear upon first hearing – but I ask you to and listen closely and to bear with the language of an earlier age because it is in Father Hopkins’ sonnet that we hear who we are in this morning’s parable:
The just person does justice. But how can we be the just person doing justice? Not by our own designs, but by grace, by God’s doing, through faith, through trust that God does make us so. So hear the Gospel, the Good News: You, the baptized of God, gifted with the Spirit of God, you are the just ones doing justice. You, the baptized of God, you are the ones who act in God’s eye what in God’s eye you are – Christ, being perfectly conformed to God’s will for justice. And all this by trusting that it is so, by having faith that God is ever making us to be the just. It’s that trust thing, however, that’s so tough. The world gets in the way and tells us to put our trust in ourselves and our systems, in our own enlightened ways, in our material goods, in our getting and having stuff, stuff, stuff. But that’s why we are here. We cannot even do the trust thing on our own, let alone the just thing. Father Martin Luther reminds us in the catechism that it is through the hearing of the Gospel, through receiving the forgiveness of sins, through the Holy Sacraments that God’s Spirit continually works in us making us to trust that we are what God sees we are. Without the Word and Sacraments, we cannot trust, we cannot have faith that God’s gift is to make us to be little Christs to the world. Without receiving the support and mutual encouragement of the communion of saints, our brothers and sisters made just by God, we cannot find the trust to be who we have been reborn to be. But even as this place is where we are given trust and faith, we cannot remain here. It is in the world outside these doors where you, the just, do justice; it is in the world of daily life, in politics, in what you buy or refuse to buy, in how you vote, in how you treat the environment, in how you talk, in what you give away, in how you work for the redistribution of the world’s wealth and resources. It is in your every single thought, word and deed that you act how in God’s eye you are: Christ, in the thousands and thousands of places where the victims of injustice cry out to God by day and by night. You, the just ones doing justice: Be who you are. 18 Pentecost, Proper 22 Hab 1.1-4;2.1-4 In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. You’re not going to like what I have to say this morning. I don’t even like what I have to say this morning. The reason that I don’t much want to be in this or any pulpit right now is the first reading prescribed for this 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time. My guts lurch, my temples throb, and tears are way too close to the surface as I hear the prophet Habakkuk complain to God that violence, destruction, strife, and contention have taken upper hand in human affairs. As we stumble this week toward the one-month anniversary of September 11, I desperately wanted this morning to return to safe ground. I wanted to be back in that world where we in the United States seemingly floated above history – back in that world where our extremely privileged status kept us insulated and immune from those things that the world outside of Europe and the United States must deal with daily. But we have been shaken awake from our slumber now and we can no longer live as spoiled children in a world where, as Habakkuk says, evil so surrounds even those who would be righteous, that all judgement, even the judgement of those who would be good, becomes perverted. The prophet knows too much, sees too well. Injustice is systemic and so clouds our eyes that we cannot even see how we who so wish to be good are implicated in an economic order that despoils the creation and enslaves most of our world’s population. Even we who wish to do no harm most often to not see how the rest of the world looks at the United States, at our privilege, at our wealth – and if you travel to third and fourth-world countries you know that even the poor here live better than the vast majority of the rest of the people on the earth. I remember the first time I came back to the States after being in a third-world country with a group of students from Regis University. The day after our return I drove myself and the students that had been with me in Central America through what we considered to be the worst parts of Denver – it was painfully clear to all of why so many in Central America looked upon us from El Norte, the North, with a mixture fear, envy, and visible hatred. The vast majority of the world sees us in our isolation and our blissful ignorance as we truly are – the richest nation in the history of this planet that gives less support per capita to foreign aid, health relief and hunger relief than any other industrialized nation, a culture that seemingly cares only for itself and its toys, a culture in which depictions of violence are entertainment for we who are bored to death even by our wealth. And there is Habakkuk all along the watchtower waiting for an answer for those who cry out that justice seems never to prevail, that violence and destruction seem ever to have to upper hand. And in a dream, God speaks: write this vision plainly on tablets so that all may hear this message. There will an end to those things that are evil and unjust. If the end seems to tarry, wait, for it will surely come and it will not delay. And if you want to know who the proud, the ones who will be brought down, are, says the oracle – look for those who are most unsettled by these words. The prescribed reading from Habakkuk for this morning stopped before the final verse of the oracle. Perhaps the words were too chillingly relevant: "Moreover, wealth is treacherous; the proud will not endure though they open their throats wide as hell and like Death, they never have enough though they gather all nations for themselves, and collect all peoples as their own." But there will be an end to this, the vision says and the creator of the cosmos does not lie. Make no mistake. It will be as Mary, theotokos, the God bearer, sings in her Magnificat: the powerful will be brought down and the rich will be sent away empty. Dear God – that is me, that is us, that is those most dear to me and to us. Lord God, to whom shall we flee? The prophet speaks: those who would be just and righteous must live by faith. And this is our faith -- though we are caught up in this world’s systems of evil and injustice, still, in an unreasonable paradox, we who are baptized are clothed in Christ to be like Christ -- to be faithful servants to the world. To surrender our power and our privilege and to give to all who ask, to let go of our possessions and to reconcile ourselves with the poor, to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to heal the sick, and to turn the other cheek when violence is done to us. What’s more, this morning’s Gospel tells us we cannot expect any congratulations when, in faith we live as Christ to the world. We are servants – and Jesus tells us that we cannot serve in expectation of a reward. To walk in the way of Christ the servant is instead to bear the cross. And the cross tells us there will be no Hollywood endings for those who walk by faith. Instead for us who bear the mark of the cross upon our baptized foreheads, a strange and alien script is written, and the words that are ours to speak in the midst of the chaos and destruction are the words of our Christ in the Garden, "Not our will be done, but yours." And from the cross, "Father, forgive them. It is finished. Into your keeping we commend our spirit, our very life’s breath." So where is the hope? Our only hope, as people of faith, lies far beyond the reasonableness of our enlightenment way of life. Our hope lies in the Mystery of Christ’s promise to penetrate every atom of our being. We are promised that in the mysteries of God, Christ’s body and blood become our own body and blood. Our true end is accomplished here at the altar – here we are united with Christ, servants who live and work with courage and a song of praise in our hearts to bind up the wounds that violence has imposed upon this broken world, and though our servanthood end in a cross, there and only there will we behold the God beyond all time, space, and reason. It is there at the foot of the cross that the God of Christ promises to find us; it is there that the God of Christ has already found us. |
|
