That We All May Be One

Easter 3C Trinity Cathedral.

I don’t think it’s too much of an exaggeration to say that – in today’s readings from Scripture – we are witnessing the calling of two of the greatest figures in the New Testament Church.  Peter and Paul!

Now it’s true that Peter had actually been called to be a disciple of Jesus several years before when his brother Andrew had found him and brought him to meet Jesus.  It was on that occasion that Jesus had nicknamed him “Cephas” which is Aramaic for “Rock” (Petros, or Peter, in the Greek of the New Testament).

But Peter had been anything, but a Rock during much of his time as a follower of Jesus. He had loved him and wanted to serve him, but Peter almost always seemed to be getting it wrong in some way, missing Jesus’ point time and time again. And, of course, finally (and famously) he had denied even knowing Jesus three times on that terrible night and must have wondered if there was any hope for him even when he had become convinced that Jesus had been raised from the dead.

Yet in today’s Gospel, the risen Christ appears to Peter in the midst of his daily work of fishing, blessing him with a great catch and even joining him for breakfast!  But it was only after that incredible meal that Jesus asks him three times “Do you love me?” And Peter is invited to respond – each of those three times – “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” (John 21) It could not have been lost on him that he had to affirm his love three times…the same number of times he had denied even knowing his rabbi and friend because of his own fear.

I’ve often wondered if, when you and I meet Jesus face to face, if part of that moment of judgment will be affirming our love as many times as we have denied him in this life.  I don’t know about you, but if that’s so, I’m going to be standing there a long time. (Pause) But then, I guess we have all eternity!

The conversion of St. Paul – which we heard about in our First Lesson today from the Acts of the Apostles – is not all that different in some ways. Once again we have a notorious sinner – Saul the Pharisee – who was zealously going about his business of threatening and arresting followers of this same Jesus.  When he too is confronted with the Risen Christ – this time experienced in a brilliant light from heaven.  And a voice asking him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” (And when) he asked, “Who are you, Lord?” The reply came, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.” (Acts 9)

It would take Saul (who also, later, has his name changed to Paul) twenty years to figure out how in the world he could be persecuting Jesus – the man who had already been arrested, executed, and whom some were claiming had been raised from the dead. It would, I believe, only be while dictating his First Letter to the little church in Corinth, two decades after his conversion, that Paul would realize that those whom he was persecuting were actually members – limbs and organs – of Christ’s Body.  And that what he was doing to them….he really was doing to Jesus!

So, with the conversion (or perhaps in Peter’s case the “re-conversion”) of these two men, the stage is set for the greatest missionary movement in the history of the world.

Peter, the conservative leader of the Jerusalem church who initially thought that you had to be a Jew first in order to become a Christian. Paul, the revolutionary, who seemed to believe almost from the beginning that God was doing a new thing in this crucified and resurrected Messiah and opening the door of salvation to all people, to all who put their trust in him.

These two men didn’t even get along very well. They could not have been more different! The “conservative” working man and the “liberal” scholar. The “traditionalist” leader of the original apostles who had actually spent time with Jesus, and the “progressive” missionary and tent-making evangelist who was willing to risk it all for the sake of One he never met “in the flesh” but certainly encountered “in the Spirit!”

Yet somehow God used them both to transform a local “movement” into a worldwide phenomenon. Peter becomes the model for apostolic leadership and a voice for the unity of the Church across time and space. Paul not only planted individual Christian communities all across the Mediterranean world but wrote most of the New Testament in the form of letters and exhortations to those young Christians about how to remain faithful.

Is there a lesson in all that for us today?  In a church and a secular society which are, all too often, rent asunder by partisanship and division, it’s so easy to want to choose sides and identify the “good guys” and the “bad guys.”  To believe that we have all the truth and that “they” (whoever the “they” are!) have none of it. But what if the early Church had done that in the case of Peter and Paul?

What if they had seen these two men bickering as they regularly did – by letter and sometimes even in person – and decided that the Church could do without one or both of them? Would we be any better off without Peter’s remembrance of Jesus’ earthly life and ministry (which may have eventually become enshrined in the four Gospels)? Or, how would it be if the church had decided that only good Jews could become good Christians after all?  How many of us would be sitting in this church if that had been the decision?

No, good Queen Elizabeth the First had it about right when she fashioned a balanced English Christianity which sought to hold together the Petrine Catholics and the Pauline Protestants in her Realm by refusing to “make a window into men’s souls” but to provide space at the Altar for any Christian who could embrace the Gospel, worship with the Book of Common Prayer, and come forward to receive the Sacrament of Christ’s Body and Blood in the Eucharist (even if they didn’t all understand it in exactly the same way!).

It all goes back to Peter and Paul who, I believe could affirm with Queen Elizabeth and, I hope, US the words of this morning’s Collect: “O God, whose blessed Son made himself known to his disciples in the breaking of the bread:  Open the eyes of our faith, that we may behold him in ALL his redeeming work; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

In 2008, I celebrated Easter in the Cathedral Church of St. George in Jerusalem…with Bishop Suheil Dawani and the Presiding Bishop whom I had accompanied on a visitation there.  We sang a wonderful hymn text set to the tune of “Praise my soul the King of heaven” which I’m going to ask Krista Mays to use sometime during the Easter season.  The verses read like this:

Easter people, raise your voices/ sounds of heaven in earth should ring/ Christ has brought us heaven’s choices/ heavenly music, let it ring/ Alleluia! Alleluia!  Easter people, let us sing.

Fear of death can no more stop us/ from our pressing here below/ For our Lord empowered us to/ triumph over every foe/ Alleluia! Alleluia! On to victory now we go.

Every day to us is Easter/ with its resurrection song/ When in trouble move the faster/ To our God who rights the wrong/ Alleluia! Alleluia! See the power of heavenly throngs!

I thought of those words last week when I read an article in “The Christian Century” magazine by William Willimon, a Methodist bishop who used to be a professor at the Duke Divinity School.  It was entitled “Now can we sing?” and he writes: “On two mission trips to Haiti with undergrads, there was widespread agreement that the most disarming thing about the country was the laughter of the children, along with their raucous singing.”

“How dare they sing when their life expectancy is so horribly short?  Was their laughter an escapist respite from the unmitigated tragedy of their lives… or a smart rebuke to our assumption that their lives were trapped in tragedy?  As darkness fell upon Port-au-Prince after the earth heaved that January night, people danced in the streets and sang hymns.  On CNN, Anderson Cooper was incredulous.” (1)

Yes, I imagine he was…but are we? Are we “incredulous” at Christians singing in the midst of tragedy? I mean we just heard the story of women coming to a tomb and finding the stone rolled away…women who discovered that Jesus was not there, but had risen. They told that Good News to Peter who checked it our for himself and, not long afterwards, was able to preach that:

“We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us, who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.  He commanded us to preach to the people…” (Acts 10:39-42

And one of those preachers was Paul the Apostle.  We heard from him today as well: that “since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being: for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ” (I Corinthians 15: 21-22).

The Presiding Bishop wrote in her Easter letter this year that: “The Christian community is meant to be a mutual hope society, with each one offering courage to another whose hope has waned, insisting that even in the darkest of night, new life is being prepared. That work is constant – it will not end until the end of all things. And still the community persists, year in and year out, in time of earthquake and war and flood, in time of joy and new birth and discovery. Together we can shout, “Alleluia, he is risen! Indeed, he is risen, Alleluia!” even when some among us are not quite so confident as others. For indeed, the body of Christ is rising and risen when even a small part of it can rejoice and insist that God is renewing the face of the earth and light has dawned upon us.”

Dear friends: It is that story, that testimony, that proclamation, which somehow makes us understand how Christians could dance in the streets and sing hymns on that January night when the earth heaved in Port-au-Prince.

On one level, of course, it makes no sense at all!  And if Paul’s preaching is all fantasy, it doesn’t make sense. If Peter’s testimony is nothing but a fable, it makes no sense at all.

“But what if the grieving women who came to the tomb on Easter morning are right?  What if Friday isn’t the end of the story?  What if God is rewriting human tragedy into surprising comedy?  What if Jesus told the truth when he declared, toward the opening of his ministry, that he was turning today’s tears into tomorrow’s laughter?”

“… Luke’s Good News ends not with the disciples grim determination to right what’s wrong with the world, but with their turning toward Jerusalem, the scene of the greatest of tragedies, ‘with great joy’ (the text says)”

“This world is full of death.  Open your eyes and you will see the weeping all around.  Human life can be, even for the undeservedly well fixed among us, one long series of funerals…

[We’ve certainly seen that here at Trinity Cathedral since the first of the year! We’ve lost some wonderful members of this parish this year – seven of them already…the same number we buried in all of 2009. But we’ve celebrated the resurrection at each one of those funerals! We’ve celebrated their earthly lives and we’ve celebrated their eternal lives.  And many people have joined us, marveling at our ability to do that.]

“As far as I can tell,” concludes Bishop Willimon in his “Christian Century” article, “there’s only one thing we know that the world doesn’t…we know another story.  In the gloom, on the margins, there are women singing…without earthly justification.  Their only rationale is theological.  They have learned the secret about God and can’t help singing.  The God who could have been sovereign chose rather to love.”

“…Listen, in Port-au-Prince they are singing: Christ the Lord is risen today, Alleluia!” (2)…and Amen!

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(1) and (2) “Now Can We Sing” the Christian Century; March 23, 2010

Lent 5C – Trinity Cathedral.  Very poignant story in today’s Gospel: Jesus is invited to an amazing dinner party in the home of his friends Mary and Martha in the village of Bethany, which is not far from Jerusalem.  It was actually quite dangerous for Jesus to get this close to Jerusalem. There was already a plot against his life, and undoubtedly that would have been one of the topics discussed at the dinner table that evening.

Death and resurrection would have been very much on their minds since another of the guests was Mary and Martha’s brother, Lazarus who (John’s Gospel has just told us) Jesus had raised from the dead!  The two women are fulfilling their expected and predictable roles – Martha bustling around serving the meal; Mary absolutely focused on Jesus and, no doubt, worrying about his fate and the danger he was in by just being there!

Her love for Jesus leads her to go far beyond the servants’ role of washing his feet, but to anoint them with an expensive perfume — a kind which would have been imported all the way from the Himalayan mountains!  Judas takes offense at this extravagant offering, making what is actually a pretty logical argument that this expensive stuff could have been sold and the money given to the poor. Why waste it on someone’s feet?

The Gospel writer, John, interjects himself into the story here, to call Judas’ sincerity into question. Apparently he wasn’t known for his generosity at all, but rather was known to steal from the common fund Jesus and his friends used to live on! In any case, Jesus sees a deeper meaning in Mary’s action (probably because they had been talking about his possible assassination).

He sees the anointing as a kind of symbolic gesture, the kind of “in-acted parable” the prophets used to engage in.  He sees it as a solemn warning. Before too long (Mary seems to be saying by her actions) there will be another anointing of his body. But it will be the anointing reserved for his corpse! The traditional anointing of the body before burial. So, Jesus says, “Leave her alone! You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me!” (John 12:8)

Now I don’t think for a minute that Jesus is minimizing the need to give to the poor. He’s not setting up some competition between money used to make an offering to him, and money given to the poor. I think he was saying, “You always have the poor with you (and you can help them whenever you will), but this is a special time, a unique moment in history…and it’s right for Mary to observe it in this way.”

In fact, I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that when you make an offering to Jesus, you ARE making an offering to the poor.  And when you make an offering to the poor, you’re making an offering to Jesus!  After all, didn’t he once say, “Inasmuch as you have done it to one of the least of these…you have done it unto me?”

Actually, this is one of the reasons, I like the “unified offering” system we have in The Episcopal Church. Except for emergencies and very rare occasions we try not to take up special offerings for this cause and that, Sunday by Sunday, like some churches are wont to do. Offerings for domestic mission, offerings for overseas mission, special offerings to repair the church heating system…and on and on! Instead, we ask you to tithe…or estimate some percentage of your income…pledge to offer it here on Sunday mornings, and trust us to be good stewards of what you give.

Because good stewardship is not actually “fund raising.” Good stewardship is not paying the light or heating bills for Trinity Cathedral.  Good stewardship is certainly not supporting things you approve of, and withholding money from things you disapprove of.

Good stewardship is doing what Mary did in today’s Gospel – offering something to Jesus because you love him. Taking care of the Body of Christ…because the Body of Christ cares of you. That’s why we lift up the offering at God’s altar every Sunday with the words “All things come of thee, O Lord, and of thine own have we given thee!” We’re giving it to Jesus!

I’ve been a tither for most of my adult life.  That means ten per cent of my income given away for purposes that align with the heart of God.  A good portion of that tithe comes here. Some of it goes directly to poor and marginalized people.  Some of it goes to certain family responsibilities we have. Of the amount we pledge here, some of it goes for institutional concerns – building and grounds, staff salaries, and the like. Some of it goes for children’s and adult education, music, evangelism, and outreach.

Some of it goes to our diocese – to support youth ministry and small congregations, overseas mission in Swaziland and Brechin, St. Paul’s Indian Mission in Sioux City, prison ministry, and much more. Of that, some goes on to The Episcopal Church to support similar initiatives on a national and international level that we could not possibly do by ourselves.

The problem is, of course, at least in this congregation, not nearly enough is offered to make all this possible or even to fulfill our responsibilities as a parish. And I’m not really sure why that is. Whether it’s because people think we can live on our endowments (which we cannot); whether people think we’re not being good stewards of your gifts; whether many of you just do not think this church is a high enough priority in your life. I don’t know…

I don’t think it’s because you lack any love for Jesus!  I see that acted out in too many different ways each week to believe that!  But somehow, we all need to catch that vision of a “unified offering.” To know that we need to take care of the Body of Christ because the Body of Christ cares for us.  To know that what we offer to Jesus, we also offer to the poor, and what we offer to the poor, we also offer to Jesus.

We need to be as sacrificial in our giving as Mary of Bethany was in today’s Gospel.  We need to see our tithes and offerings as pure nard…anointing the body of Jesus…so that the fragrance of that perfume (that perfect offering) may…fill…this…house!     Amen.

Lent 1C. Trinity Cathedral.

I know I have mentioned from this pulpit several times that I spent part of my sabbatical years ago studying at St. George’s College in Jerusalem and traveling around the Holy Land.  Now I’ll try not to be a bore about this (like people used to be about showing home movies of their vacation!) but I cannot read Gospel passages like the one we had today without reliving some of those experiences. And sharing them with you!

The desert in which Jesus spent some forty days, fasting and in prayer, begins just outside the city of Jerusalem.  In fact, it’s positively startling to drive (or walk) a total of a few miles from Jerusalem’s city center…to crest the top of a little hill…and to find yourself gazing out into some of the bleakest and most dangerous countryside in that part of the world.  This particular desert is not miles and miles of snow-white sand drifts like you sometimes visualize it.

It is bleak, barren, rocky ground…so hot and dry that you must wear a hat at all times, and drink water constantly in order not to dehydrate and suffer heat stroke in a hurry.  Whenever our professor and guide would note one of us yawning, he would shout, “You’re dehydrating, drink some water!”  A person can die in a couple of days in the desert unless you can find shade and drink plenty of water.  My assumption is that Jesus fasted from solid food for forty days (which other people have done), but not from water!

During those days of fasting and prayer, Jesus – as a relatively young man, by our standards, but in those days it may have seemed more like mid-life – Jesus struggles with just what his life and mission were going to look like.  He had inaugurated his public ministry by being baptized by John in the Jordan River, and immediately felt led by the Holy Spirit to make an extended retreat and to get some perspective on his life and to seek fresh energy for what lay ahead.

In doing this, Jesus had to wrestle with several primary temptations to his life and ministry. First, he was tempted to try and meet everyone’s needs by turning miles and miles of rocks and stones and boulders into bread enough to feed the known world! And, as wonderful as that would have been, Jesus came to see that even ending world hunger would not satisfy what we are really hungry for.

Deep down, we’re hungry for God! We’re hungry for God’s word!  We want to hear from our God, and to know that he loves us and cares for us and will, ultimately, make it all well for us!  And so Jesus said, “One does not live by bread alone.” (Matthew’s account makes it even clearer by adding “one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”)

Next, Jesus was tempted to “sell out” for this world’s goods: “…the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world…To you I will give their glory and all this authority…if you…will worship me, it will all be yours.”  But Jesus said, “It is written, Worship the Lord your God and serve only him.”

And finally, Jesus was tempted to do something dramatic, to do something spectacular to prove that he was God’s Anointed One and that God would come through for him by sending angels to protect him just like Psalm 91 had said. But Jesus told him, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.” He was not about to “tempt” his heavenly Father just to demonstrate his credentials or to impress his Adversary.

Well, I don’t know what kind of temptations you may be facing in your life. But, if you’re like me, they may not be all that different in substance from what Jesus faced. If you’re a “people pleaser” (one who always tries to make everyone happy, to have no enemies, to avoid confrontation, then you may be tempted to try and meet everyone’s needs, to be available to everybody, all the time. And sometimes that may mean everyone except your own family or closest friends or even taking care of yourself and your own needs. And you may need to learn that you can’t please everyone! You have to say No sometimes!

Or, you may face the temptation to “sell out,” to be “bought” or to compromise your own ideals. That doesn’t just happen in the business world. We’re all tempted to do that. We need to resist that temptation and to stand up for what is right!

Or,  maybe you’re tempted to try and do something spectacular, or even outrageous, to get everyone’s attention, to stand out in the crowd. “They’ll respect me, or like me, if I just take this risk or do this one thing that I know I shouldn’t really do.” Those temptations are common to all of us.

But if we seek to be people of deep faith and people of prayer, we’ll ward off those temptations in much the same way Jesus did.  By being attentive to God’s word…by worshipping God and God alone…and by refusing to put our God to the test.

You may not be able to go on an extended retreat right now like Jesus did in the desert…to sort out your life.  But you are entering more fully today into the holy season of Lent.  Like Jesus’ experience, it is a forty-day period of fasting and prayer.  A time to listen for God’s word in your life…a time for worship and for service…a time to stop testing and challenging God.  I hope you’ve taken on some spiritual disciplines which can help you do some of that.

The Ash Wednesday liturgy told you what some of those disciplines are (and it’s not too late to begin today!).  Self-examination and repentance…prayer, fasting, and self-denial…reading and meditating on Holy Scripture.  I continue to invite you to keep a holy Lent this year by observing at least some of those disciplines.

May our prayer this Lent always be the one we prayed today on this first Sunday of the season:

Almighty God, whose blessed Son was led by the Spirit to be tempted by Satan: Come quickly to help us who are assaulted by many temptations; and, as you know the weaknesses of each of us, let each one find you mighty to save; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

Epiphany 3C. Trinity Cathedral.

An unaccustomed hush fell over the Nazarene synagogue as the young Jew rose from his place and made his way forward to read the Scriptures.  Could this really be the son of Joseph? This mature man who been absent from their midst over these last years, whom they had last seen as a young adult working in the carpenter shop?

Yes, this was the one. No mistaking the confidence with which he unrolled the scroll and began to read.  No mistaking the clarity with which he read about bringing good news to the poor…about releasing captives…and restoring sight to the blind…about freeing the oppressed…about being accepted and loved by the Lord.

But it was what happened after the reading that excited them.  No…disturbed them!  He rolled up the scroll, carefully and reverently, handed it to the one who responsibility it was to put it away, and returned to his place.  But there was unfinished business here. Everyone could feel it.

Even though normally the Sabbath service would have continued at this point with prayers and singing, it was as though everyone was waiting for the other shoe to fall…as though something else needed to be said.  And so, he said it. Slowly and carefully. “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

It’s hard to imagine just what Jesus’ neighbors and kinfolk would have made of that statement.  Luke’s gospel tells us that at first they spoke well of him and found his words “gracious.”  But that, after he explained himself still further, their acceptance turned into rejection and their pleasure to wrath.  Which led Jesus to say, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown.” Or, as one New Testament scholar translates it, “The truth is, no prophet is welcome on his home turf!”

Well, whatever his original hearers understood him to say, I think we know enough today to be quite certain what it meant. “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” means that Jesus Christ was the enfleshment – the incarnation – of Isaiah’s prophecy.  In Jesus Christ, the world was to see good news preached to poor people…those who were in bondage unshackled…the blind given sight…and those who were downtrodden given their freedom for the first time.  Jesus of Nazareth was the incarnation…the manifestation…the very epiphany of that long-hoped for prophecy!

And, whether you believe it or not, so are we to be! We are to bring good news to the poor and light to those in darkness.  We are to liberate the bound ones and the crushed ones!  Whether it’s in Haiti or right here in the Hilltop neighborhood. Oh no, not me, you say!  I don’t have the power to do all that!  No, not alone. But together, we are the inheritors of that prophetic tradition which goes back to Isaiah and beyond.

And we are members of a Church which is described in today’s Epistle as being the very Body of Christ! And “just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.  For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body – Jews or Greeks, slaves or free – and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.  Indeed the Body does not consist of one member but of many.” (I Corinthians 12:12-14)

Yet, no matter how passionately St. Paul pleads for unity in the Body of Christ, the primary reason we have failed at our prophetic task of being a light to the nations, over the centuries, is that, almost from the beginning, we have been riddled with dis-unity!

From the factionalism of the church in Corinth to the political wranglings of the 11^th century which split apart the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox to the explosion of the 16^th century Reformation to the short-sighted breakaway groups weakening every denomination today (including The Episcopal Church) we have crippled the Body of Jesus Christ in this world, withholding our gifts from one another…and that is our great sin.

This week we are observing the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.  Every year, from January 18 until January 25, every major Christian communion in the world prays for the unity of the Church.  I encourage you to join in those prayers.

Pray for our dialogues with the Roman Catholics which, however stressed they are today, have showed so much progress over the years.  Pray for our full communion relationship with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. And for our interim Eucharistic sharing partners – the Moravian Church and the United Methodists.  Pray for the seven downtown churches right here in our own neighborhood and our united efforts in the PUNCH program.

Pray for church unity, not only because it is the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, but because it was for the unity of the Church that Christ himself prayed – on the night before he died, according to John’s Gospel.  He said, “Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one…that they all may be one…so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” (John 17:11, 21).

That’s the reason for church unity.  Not to create some mega-institution, but because it is only when we are “one in the Spirit” that we can ever hope to have a cogent and consistent message “that the world may believe.” I see glimpses of that unity today – in some of our ecumenical dialogues, in charismatic and liturgical renewal, in movements like Cursillo and Marriage Encounter where people draw closer to each other as they draw closer to God.  Those glimpses show us that church unity is possible.

Many years ago now, the Archbishop of Canterbury (who was then Michael Ramsey) was meeting with the Roman Catholic Cardinal Suenens of Brussels.  Before beginning their conversation, they decided to pray together.  They opened the Bible to John 20:26 and these were the words they found: “Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’”

The two bishops felt that this was an invitation from the Lord to continue their dialogue despite apparently closed doors!  They knew in their hearts that God was being true to his Word and that Christ was present with them because they had come together in his name…and around his Word.

Well, Jesus is still true to his word.  And when this crippled and broken Body of Christ is finally put back together again, perhaps we will fulfill Isaiah’s prophecy of preaching Good News to the poor.  Perhaps we will realize Paul’s dream of being one Body with many members.

Perhaps we will once again be able to say – and people believe – that “Today (the) Scripture has been fulfilled…in your hearing.”