That We All May Be One

In his Diocesan Convention address last November, Bishop Lee invited congregations who felt they could to invite some “unchurched” folks to meet and have coffee with one of us bishops during our Sunday visitations. The idea was to hear from the actual people we are not reaching some of the reasons why? It’s easy for us church goers to “guess” at why our congregations are declining. It’s quite another to hear it straight from those who have either left our ranks or who have never been attracted to church in the first place.
Not every congregation has taken us up on the challenge, but quite a number have and we’ve learned something interesting things. First of all, some non-church-goers have been hurt by the church in some way in their past. Maybe they grew up in a very judgmental, hellfire and brimstone kind of church and felt rejected. Some are Roman Catholics who were refused communion after they re-married after divorce contrary to their church’s teaching.
Some have just drifted away because of the busy-ness and stressed out nature of their lives. They just don’t find the time for church, and some have been away so long they feel awkward now coming back. A number of folks just can’t get their heads around what they perceive to be the beliefs and doctrines of the church, and they say they’d feel like hypocrites standing in the midst of folks who seem to believe, say, the Nicene Creed when these people quite obviously don’t! And, again, they’re afraid they would be judged by us if their true beliefs, or lack of beliefs, were found out.
Of this number, some are just out and out atheists. They really don’t believe in God and wonder why some of the rest of us do. Well, we took great pains not to judge any of these good folks. They had honored us by even agreeing to come and have a conversation with us! And we weren’t there to convert them. We were there to learn from them. Privately though, I always wonder – of this last group, the self-professed “atheists” – just what kind of God they “don’t believe in!” In other contexts, I’ve often said to such people, “Tell me about the God you don’t believe in…because I probably don’t believe in that God either.”
I say this because, I think often people have rejected their childhood image of “an old man with a white beard who lives above sky” or the angry, judgmental God who delights in nothing more than casting unbelievers into the fires of hell for all eternity. Some of these folks have never allowed their understanding of God to “grow up” right alongside the other areas of their knowledge which keep expanding with every year. No wonder they can’t square their Sunday school image of God with the post-modern world of the 21st century!
I ran across a beautiful quote this week from a friend of mine named Steven Charleston. Steven is a Native American of the Choctaw Tribe and lives in Oklahoma. But he is also a bishop of The Episcopal Church, has been a seminary professor and dean, and he now writes a daily Facebook post on prayer, spirituality, and the Christian life. This is what he wrote:
The same power that set the sun aflame as though it were a candle, the same power that spun the Milky Way like a pinwheel, the same power that sprinkled the confetti stars across the distant heavens, that very power holds you safe under the shelter of its eternal care. The universe is not unconscious, creation is not unaware, all that was and is and ever will be resides in the mind and purpose of a presence beyond our comprehension or control. That presence is the source of life, of love, of intricate beauty and serenity sublime. That presence is with you today and will be with you forever. (June 17, 2015)
That’s the kind of expansive view of God I would just love the opportunity to introduce some of our unchurched friends to. Because I think our God is bigger than whatever truncated image they have felt it necessary to reject. Yet, that “same power” Bishop Charleston writes about is the one which emboldened the young David to take on Goliath in our First Lesson today. Our God is the same power the disciples of Mark’s Gospel saw in Jesus because of the stilling of the storm. And our God is the source of that same power which sustained Paul through “afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings” and all the rest of it…as he witnesses to the Christians in Corinth in our Epistle this morning.
It’s the same God. But we must find ways to talk about the Holy One in language different from what our grandparents, our parents, and even many of us grew up with. I hope we can find ways to do that. I hope we can find ways to do it before it’s too late, too late for the church…or at least the church as we experience it today. At the very least, I hope you will join Bishop Lee and me in trying to listen to people you may know – people at work, in your neighborhood, people in your own family – who may be struggling to square the image of God they think we believe in with the world as they actually experience it.
Don’t judge them. Listen to them. And then, after you have listened long and deeply, maybe you can find a way to share with them – ever so gently that we welcome seekers in this church (at least I hope and pray that you would welcome such people at St. Columba’s!). Try to help them see that you don’t have to “have it all together” to be an Episcopalian. If you did, probably none of us would be here! The church, at its best, is a school of love; not a museum of saints. Hear again words describing the kind of God at least I hope you would be inviting them to encounter:
The same power that set the sun aflame as though it were a candle, the same power that spun the Milky Way like a pinwheel, the same power that sprinkled the confetti stars across the distant heavens, that very power holds you safe under the shelter of its eternal care. The universe is not unconscious, creation is not unaware, all that was and is and ever will be resides in the mind and purpose of a presence beyond our comprehension or control. That presence is the source of life, of love, of intricate beauty and serenity sublime. That presence is with you today and will be with you forever.

St. Thomas, Chicago
This is, of course, the 5th Sunday of Lent and next week we will observe Palm Sunday and begin our journey together through Holy Week to Easter! We’re in Year B of our lectionary and Sunday Bible readings, the year we read through the Gospel of Mark on Sunday mornings. But Mark is the shortest of the four Gospels and, to make it through the whole year, we have to supplement readings from Mark with a few from John’s Gospel, one of which we have today.
This is one of the passages where we see that Jesus was beginning to have some premonitions about his death. Right after Philip and Andrew arrange to have Jesus meet some Greek-speaking Jews who were curious about him, Jesus says: “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” (John 12:23)
And, in case that was too subtle a reference for them, he goes on to make it clear to the disciples, “Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name!” (John 12:27-28a) As we can see throughout the Gospels, Jesus didn’t want to die (any more than any of us want to die), but he was willing to die if that was what it took to carry out his mission!
As I meditated on that passage this week, I couldn’t help but be reminded of Dr. Martin Luther King’s own “premonitions” as to the danger his own life was in that last week. In Memphis to support the garbage collectors’ strike, on the night before his death he gave what would be his final sermon. Amid the call for African Americans to boycott businesses that mistreated workers, he delivered a sermon, without notes, that focused on his life and disavowed any concern that he might be killed for his role in the fight for civil rights.
“Like anybody, I would like to live a long life,” he said, “Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!” It wasn’t the first time that he had spoken publicly about his possible early death, but I doubt that Dr. King expected that April 3rd sermon to be his last. “He always knew some speech would be his last,” wrote Andrew Young, “Was he afraid? Not on your life!” (Christian Science Monitor, April 4, 2011)
Like Jesus, Martin Luther King did not want to die (any more than any of us want to die) but he was willing to die if that was what it took to carry out his mission!” And like Jesus, Dr. King knew that he had not reached the Promised Land yet, but he had seen it! And he had absolute confidence that, one day, “we, as a people, will get to that promised land!”
You and I need to be reminded to have that confidence today! In the wake of Ferguson and as we mourn the senseless deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice and so many others, it’s easy to give up in despair and to fall into thinking things will never get any better.
Bishop Lee and I just returned from a meeting of the House of Bishops at the Kanuga Conference Center in North Carolina. We gather twice a year as a House for mutual encouragement and support. This time largely because of those tragic events I just mentioned, our focus was on racism and on our own complicity and silence in these times. Oh, the Bishop of Missouri and the Dean of his Cathedral have been in the streets in Ferguson and the Church has spoken out in many places. But we need to do so much more!
We viewed and discussed the powerful film “Traces of the Trade” which is an award-winning documentary produced by a white family of Episcopalians who discovered that their wealth, and the wealth of their little New England village, had been built almost entirely on the slave trade in which they were involved. This family was horrified by the actions of their ancestors and embarked on a journey from Connecticut to West Africa to Cuba and back again in search of answers and repentance. To date there have been more than 300 screenings of that film and discussion about its consequences all around our church and around the country. But we need to do so much more!
That evening we had an intense session entitled “Traces of the Trade and Ferguson” in which it became clear that the deep racism in that community and in so many parts of our country go right back to the “original sin” of this country and our participation in the African slave trade. Contemporary events – whether gun violence and drugs in the city of Chicago, the mass incarceration of young black men in the North, or voter suppression of entire populations in the South – all can be directly traced to the history of racism and slavery in this country!
As bishops, we re-committed ourselves to continue the struggle as our Presiding Bishop challenged us to have “courage to face the problems, curiosity about those we may consider to be the “other” and compassion which means to “suffer with” those with whom we wish to stand in solidarity. Or, as one of the bishops put it: “Show up…speak out…live brave!”
“I may not get there with you,” said Dr. King, “but I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land!” (Pause) “And what should I say – Father, save me from this hour?” asked Jesus, “No, it is for this reason that I come to this hour. Father, glorify your name!”
Jesus and Martin…Courage, curiosity, and compassion…Two who willing to show up, speak out, and live brave! Are we? Am I?

It seems strange to have the story of Jesus’ Cleansing of the Temple read on this Sunday in Lent. We usually think of it as coming in Holy Week, toward the very end of Jesus’ earthly ministry, right after the Palm Sunday story, the so-called “Triumphal Entry” into Jerusalem. In fact, that is where Matthew, Mark, and Luke place this story – setting up the conflict between Jesus and the authorities which eventually led to his arrest, trial and crucifixion later that week.

Contemporary NT scholars like Marcus Borg even write about “two processions” coming into Jerusalem that Palm Sunday – one from the east and one from the west. From the west, Roman cavalry and foot soldiers followed Pontius Pilate into the city to make sure there were no violent uprisings in Jerusalem during the Jewish celebration of Passover. And, from the east, a rag tag bunch of pilgrims and peasants cheered as Jesus rode down the Mount of Olives on the back of young donkey. What a contrast! And what an obvious set-up for a conflict of world views!

But John, the Gospel writer we are following today, for his own purposes, has this event happen early in Jesus’ ministry. His gospel has Jesus going to Jerusalem several times during the course of his three year public ministry rather than only once at its conclusion. And John is interested, not so much in the conflict between Jesus and the Roman government as he was between Jesus and his own religion’s leaders!

A complete outsider to the power structure of the Temple, Jesus issues a challenge to the authority of the Temple itself that quite literally shakes it to its foundations. By throwing the money changers out of the Temple, and letting loose the sacrificial animals, he throws the mechanics of Temple worship into chaos, disrupting the temple system during one its most significant feasts so that neither tithes nor sacrifices could be offered that day.

The implication is that Jesus is claiming authority to challenge the supremacy of the Temple because his whole life bears testimony to the power of God in the world. The Kingship, the Reign, the Sovereignty not of the Temple, but of God alone!

Now, none of this should be interpreted as meaning that Jesus was advocating the superiority of some new religion called Christianity over the old religion, Judaism. Jesus was an observant Jewish male who traveled to Jerusalem regularly for the major holy days. Jesus taught and observed the Ten Commandments we had as our First Reading this morning.

No, Jesus’ challenge was to the authority of a dominant religious institution in Judaism – the Temple and temple worship – not because he’s anti-Jewish – but because he stands in the long line of Hebrew prophets like Amos and Jeremiah who challenged a religious system so embedded in its own rules and practices that it is no longer open to a fresh revelation from God. (see New Interpreter’s Bible; Volume 9, page 545)

And that, dear friends, is where all this begins to apply to us!
We hear a lot today about people, and not only younger people, describing themselves as “spiritual but not religious.” For many of them that means that they believe in God, may admire the figure of Jesus, pray from time to time, and believe in some kind of life after death. But they are not terribly interested in what we sometimes call “the institutional church.”

They perceive us as being hopelessly out of touch with the contemporary world they live in. They shake their heads at our “church wars” over changing liturgies or the ordination of women, or the place of gays and lesbians in the church. And they wonder why we spend so much of our time, money and energy on maintaining church buildings and church governance structures that don’t seem to have very much to do with Jesus or with his primary message to the world!

Well, there may be a certain simplicity in that kind of critique. Very few movements can survive, over time, without a certain institutionalization. You need some kind of structure to pass the message on from generation to generation. But, if we are going to take the message of Jesus in this morning’s Gospel seriously, we need to recognize that he is challenging – not only the Temple-centered Judaism of his day – but the “over institutionalization” of the contemporary church…in our day!

Over the last 65 years or so, we in The Episcopal Church (and most other mainline denominations) have built up some pretty elaborate structures of diocesan and national church bureaucracies and staffs that we can simply no longer afford. We have pretty strict rules and regulations about how worship is to be conducted in an Episcopal Church. And we have an amazingly complicated process through which men and women have to move in order to be ordained. All of these things are being questioned and are, in some sense, up for grabs today.

I don’t think we have any idea what the Church will be like 50 years from now, or certainly by the year 2100. I know it will look very different from the Church we live in today. And we can either be fearful of that kind of change, and resist it with all our might. Or, we can be open and flexible to see indeed “what the Spirit is saying to the churches” in our time.

We have to be willing ask ourselves where and when the status quo of religious practice has become frozen, and therefore closed to the possibility of reformation, change and renewal. The great danger is that we in the contemporary church, like the leaders of the religious establishment in Jesus’ day, will fall into the trap of confusing the authority of our own institutions with the authority of God.

During these 40 days of Lent when we journey with Jesus in the wilderness, I invite you to be open to embrace whatever it is that God is up to in our day. I invite you to join us in this season of discernment – for surely not everything that is “new,” or claims to be of God, is of God.

But I do believe God is calling us into a kind of new reformation in our day. And if we are to be faithful to that calling, it will require us to be open, to travel light, but to ground ourselves ever more deeply in prayer, study, and mission.

Because, as long as we are grounded in God, we need have no fear of changing times or changing circumstances. For it is God alone that we serve. God is our rock…and our salvation!