I have a Hindu friend, who I once had the audacity to ask, how he managed to keep track of all the 330 million gods of Hinduism. I have a difficult enough time with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and I can’t imagine how I would cope with 330 million gods. My friend just laughed and said, “You christians with your three gods, have forgotten that all gods are just educational toys, given to us so that we might learn about the ONE god, who is beyond the beyond and beyond that also.”
Many of you know that BEYOND the BEYOND, and BEYOND that also, has now become my own way of expressing the Trinity. I suspect that my friend may be right. We christians have indeed forgotten that even the Trinity of CREATOR, CHILD, and SPIRIT are merely educational toys, given to us so that we might learn about the ONE who is BEYOND the BEYOND, and BEYOND that also.
We christians certainly aren’t very good at putting our toys away. I suspect that Jesus, who knew nothing about the church’s doctrine of the Trinity, Jesus who insisted that we must be born again in order to see the basileia ton theon – basileia is a Greek word for the kin-dom or household, or family of God. I must confess that Jesus’ idea of being born again, carries with it all sorts of baggage which I have been carrying around for so very long, it makes me weary. In the words of Nicodemus, who like me longs to see the ONE who is DIVINITY, Nicodemus who asked Jesus: “How can an adult be born a second time?” Well, it’s Trinity Sunday after all. So, we might as well put our toys away, or set them aside, all the words designed to teach us something about the Trinity, let’s put those toys away and imagine for just a moment, that we are born again into a new life, a life without our treasured toys. A life with but a few words: Mama, Mama, Mama, Dada, Dada, Dada. Have you ever noticed how breathy our first words were? Ma, Ma, Da, Da . . .
As infants that ah sound, is breathed into our world as an offering which delights the object of our desire. Ma, Da, Ma – ahhh ahhh, ahhh, our very breath offered to the object of our desire, the ONE who gave us breath. Surely, it is no mere coincidence that the ancient Hebrew word for breath is ruach and the ancient Greek word is nooma ? Even less of a coincidence is the very name of the MYSTERY we call “GOD.” The name so sacred that our ancestors did not speak it. A name better breathed than spoken, YHWH – YAWEH – I AM, WHO AM or I SHALL BE, WHO I SHALL BE . . . YAHWEH, RUACH, RUACH. The ONE that IS. The ONE we desire to know. The ONE expressed by Jesus, with breath ABBA – AAABBAA, AAABAA – Jesus understood that this ABBA, with which Jesus was ONE, is the breath which emanates from his own flesh. Jesus taught us that we are all ONE with ABBA, the ONE that breathes in, with, through, and beyond each of us. YAHWEH, RUACH, ABBA.
We followers of Jesus’ Way of being in the world, are not alone in expressing the DIVINE ONE with our very breath, ALLAH, BUDDAH, BRAHMAN, DHARMA. With our toys put away, we can breathe more deeply of the RUACH as the breath of the NOOMA in-spires our ex-pressions, of the ONE Jesus’ life and death proclaim is LOVE. With our toys tucked away on the shelf, our Father, Son, and Holy Spirit tucked away on the shelf, we can breathe more deeply our offerings of LOVE to the ONE that IS our desire, the MYSTERY, which is our LOVER, BELOVED, and LOVE itself.
RUACH, YAHWEH, ABBA, ALLAH, BUDDAH, BRAHMAN, DHARMA …Freed from the distraction of our toys, let us breathe deeply of the LOVE which is DIVINITY. So that together as ONE with might exhale the LOVE which nourishes, grounds, and sustains, everything and everyone that is, was, and ever more shall be. Our world is crying out for LOVE born of the RUACH …
There will be time enough to play with our toys, when LOVE is born again… May that LOVE, the AGAPE, breathe in, with, through, and beyond, you. AGAPE, now and always…may our LOVER, BELOVED, and LOVE itself be born in you again, and again, and again …
Breathe deeply, dear ONEs, so the world may see in you, the baselia ton theon, the family of the ONE that is BEYOND, the BEYOND, and BEYOND that also…YAHWEH the LOVE which is DIVINE MYSTERY…our AAAAHHHH . . .
This week, as the Church prepares to celebrate Trinity Sunday, the question “Where is the church’s attention focused” becomes even more pertinent as we look ahead to resuming in-person worship. What parts of the church will be buried with lockdown and what will be born out of lockdown. This sermon was preached on Trinity Sunday 3 years ago. I offer it here to my colleagues who are preparing for this Sunday…??? What are we prepared to midwife into being???
Sermon Notes:
– Where is the church’s attention focused?
Skoda – think of the skoda as the focus of the church’s attention???
While our focus is upon our doctrine’s, or style of worship, our buildings, or generally preserving the instructional church, our neighbourhoods have been changing right before our eyes and we have failed to notice
How much attention do our concerns about the church distract us?
What changes in our neighbourhoods have we failed to pay attention to?
Van changing to a taxi?
Scooter changing to a pair of bicycles?
Lady holding a pig
The entire landscape has changed!
Skoda is one of the oldest car companies in the world – Skoda has been around since they first began building automobiles
The old Czechoslovakia
Sold primarily to Eastern block countries
Nobody really wants a skoda – they are cheap, unattractive cars – the image of the Skoda is tied up in a time when people weren’t free to buy the cars of their dreams and had to settle for a skoda
Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes
Five hundred twenty five thousand moments so dear
Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes
How do you measure? Measure a year?
In daylights,
In sunsets,
In midnights,
In cups of coffee,
In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife
In five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes
How do you measure a year in a life?
I wish I could sing this for you. However, I’m not a singer and we can’t afford the copyright license. Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes. How do you measure a year in the life? Here’s another question, which ought to be put into song: Six hundred twelve thousand minutes. Six hundred twelve thousand minutes. How do you measure fourteen months of lockdown? Fourteen long months worshipping via the internet. Fourteen long months locked away from one another.
Fourteen long months and only now, the end is in sight. With jabs in our arms, we approach the second summer of this pandemic with hope in our hearts, because the end is in sight. Here in Canada, our government is promising that all of us will have received our second shot before the end of September. See you in September. See you when the summer’s through. It’s gonna be a long lonely summer…Sorry, no more song lyrics. Instead let me offer you a refrain which we’ve been hearing, in all sorts of forms, whether it’s over Zoom or facetime or even in news reports, over and over again we hear people expressing our longing to return to “normal.” Young people are seeing visions, old people are dreaming dreams, of what our lives will be like, soon and very soon…sorry, sorry, I can’t seem help myself. It is as if a SPIRIT of freedom was injected into my arm with that first vaccine and I can’t help myself, I feel like singing in the rain, just singing in the rain, what a glorious feeling, I’m happy again. You have no idea how lucky you are that the songs which keeping popping into my head are covered by copyright.
As we begin to peer into our future, it is impossible not to look longingly back over our shoulder to life BC, Before COVID and hope against hope that soon, soon, we will be able to get back to “normal.” Now, I am well aware of the current trend of correcting those of us who are longing for normal life to return, by declaring, “Normal wasn’t working before, we can’t simply go back to normal.” I’ve said this myself on more than one occasion, but bear with me as I attempt to make an argument for our return to normal life!
To explore what a return to normal might look like, we will have to go back beyond Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes, beyond the BCs, Before COVID and Before CHIRST, some 13 point 8 billion years ago to about 3 minutes after the big bang, when the Cosmos itself was but a newborn. In those early minutes of Cosmic existence, science tells us that the only things which existed were particles. When suddenly, like only 380,000 years, a mere blink Cosmic in history, suddenly, like the rushing winds, particles began to bond with other particles to form atoms. Now, one of the astonishing things about atoms is that the atoms possessed qualities which the individual particles which bonded to form the atoms did not possess. Particles bonded to make something completely new. Particles bonding to other particles doesn’t simply create a pile of particles but something new. Imagine the vast Cosmos made up of particles coming together to create atoms, which eventually begin to coalesce to become molecules.
Fast forward, incredibly fast, to 3.8 billion years ago approximately 750 million years after the Earth was formed, when molecules come together to make something new, as the first cells appear on this beautiful verdant planet, we call home. Particles beget atoms, atoms beget molecules, molecules beget cells, and cells beget, well you name it! Like comes together with like to create something altogether unlikely, something altogether new. 13.783 billion years of making all things new and humans finally begin to evolve. We are a new thing. After 13.783 billion years of newness, a mere 5 – 7 million years ago, some apelike creatures began to evolve and just 200,000 years ago, something completely new emerges, something which possesses qualities not present in earlier models, for we homo sapiens are so very new; brand spanking new things.
Now fast forward, very fast to about to just about 5,000 years ago when recorded history begins and we can hear tell of one new thing after another new thing being, imagined, envisioned, and created, for newness is baked into our DNA. The Cosmos itself is all about creating the new! There is a FORCE in the Cosmos which continuously allures in order to create something new. Some of our ancestors named this FORCE, RUACH, WIND, BREATH, SPIRIT. This SPIRIT continues to allure, compel, inspire, attract, the intricate particles, atoms, molecules, cells, creatures of the Cosmos together to create something new. In all these 13.8 billion years the Cosmos has not gone back to the way things were in the past. History may repeat itself, but the Cosmos moves on into the newness of reality. Over and over again, in face after face, creature after diverse creature is born, unlike any creature born before it, no two creatures possessing exactly the same qualities. We cannot go back because everything old becomes new, again, and again, and again. Newness is an eternal quality of REALITY. Newness is, if you will “normal.”[1]
There is no going back. Yes, sometimes newness involves reaching back and reintegrating, something which was good that was left behind, which newness needs in order to keep becoming. Please notice I said reaching back and reintegrating. I did not say replicating. Reintegrating something good which was lost, creates something new. At other times, new involves letting go of things which aren’t helpful or are destructive so as not to recreate something which cannot evolve into goodness. Newness both includes and transcends what was. But newness is always part of our REALITY, I’ll say it again, newness is normal. Even these past fourteen months, which have felt for many of us like suspended animation, a time when everything we had come to accept as normal life was set aside to avoid the pandemic, even these past fourteen months have seen the creation of something new, as this enforced time out has caused us to rethink how to move into the future.
Ways of life have been challenged as new ways of living have emerged. Just as surely as the FORCE, the RUACH, the BREATH, the SPIRIT continues to allure, compel, inspire, attract, the intricate particles, atoms, molecules, cells, and creatures of the Cosmos together to create something new, we who are longing for freedom, cannot resist the motion of the Cosmos, a new thing is born. Lifestyles, systems and organizations which insist upon returning to the way things were are not in the Cosmic sense of things “normal.” For new is normal.
So, where does that leave us, here as we begin to envision emerging from these six hundred twelve thousand minutes of lockdown? On this Pentecost Sunday when the church celebrates the birth of a new Way of being in the world, I am reminded of the words of the Apostle Paul which on this very day will be read in churches all over the world: Listen to how Paul described the nature of REALITY to the church in Rome: “We know that from the beginning until now, all of Creation has been growing, groaning in one great act of giving birth. And not only Creation, but all of us who possess the first fruits of the SPIRIT we too groan inwardly as we wait for our bodies to be set free.” (Rom.8:22-23)
That inward groaning as we await the birth of the new is an expression of our own future’s birth pangs as our fears and hopes to coalesce into dreams and visions of new ways of being in the world. Something new is about to be born. Let us dream dreams of life, not like life was, this wouldn’t be normal, for it goes against everything that the Cosmos is was or ever more shall be. Let us dream dreams of life as it is emerging, new life, life beyond our fears, beyond the limitations of our histories, life measured not in minutes, or years, life as the song says, measured in LOVE. How about LOVE? Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes. How do you measure a life of a woman or a man? Remember the LOVE…Sing out, give out, measure your life
In LOVE…Seasons of LOVE…Seasons of LOVE…ah I wish I could sing it! LOVE which continues to allure, compel, inspire, attract, the intricate particles, atoms, molecules, cells, and creatures, that’s you and me dear friends, LOVE is calling us to create something new. LOVE which even now is swirling in and around us, inflaming us, exciting us, always inviting us into something new. THANKS be to ALL that IS HOLY! Amen.
[1] I am indebted to Rob Bell for his insight about “new” being normal which I either heard or read during this long lock down. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to locate exactly where, I only remember that it was Rob Bell. So credit where credit is due. Rob Bell’s insights begat this sermon!
While he was dying of cancer, American poet and short story writer Raymond Carver, penned a poem which, although it is but a fragment of a poem, it has the power to move me into the deepest part of my very self. This poem would eventually be titled, “Late Fragment”
“And did you get what
You wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved,
to feel myself
beloved on the earth.”
Carver’s fragment, offered as he lay dying, is a tantalizing broken piece which is almost completely whole. Some may doubt the power of fragments to heal us. I don’t. I’m convinced that my life, and I suspect your lives are often made whole by fragments; broken pieces barely recognizable, but when we see them, really see them, they have the power to make us whole.
Today, the last Sunday of the Easter season, I want to give you some powerful fragments. For weeks now we have been celebrating resurrection. Not the physical resuscitation of a corpse kind of resurrection for we know only full well the power of medicine to bring corpses back to life. Alas, resuscitation of a corpse doesn’t necessary lead to resurrection. Even though the resuscitated live again, their life is not always one of resurrection and they too must die. Our celebration of resurrection is about awakening to life, new life, fuller life, abundant life, life with an eternal quality.
As I look back to the fragments left to us by our ancestors, I long to see the promise of the Risen CHRIST. Among the broken bits of history, I catch a fleeting glimpse of Mary, the one who in the early morning light, through her tears of grief, was able to see the face of CHRIST in a gardener. Mary, this migdal, this first Apostle whose ability to see CHRIST, resurrected her from the grief and torment of death to life as the Apostle to the Apostle, where she stood as a tower, a migdal in Hebrew, a tower, head and shoulders above the rest of the first fledgling followers of Jesus’ way of being in the world. Dubbed Mary Magdalene by the men who would reduce her legacy to that of prostitute and relegate the fragments of her story to the margins, despite the absence of evidence for their convictions. Sifting through the dispersed fragments of her story, a new story rises up. A story slowly and painstakingly being resurrected by those whose hope is found not in CHRIST ascending to the clouds, but in CHRIST rising up from the Earth itself to live and love here and now. In the fragments, of the Gospel which bears her name new life arises as herstory is pieced together.
From the tattered remains of Mary’s reputation, her accusers can be easily dismissed once and for all. Mary a woman described in the canon of the gospels as “a sinner from the city,” who discovers healing in Jesus company, is set free by the fragments of her own gospel, which for too long now has been set aside by those who would rather bury her witness. Although the author of the gospel attributed to Mary is unknown, this gospel story resurrects the Migdal restoring her relationship as the Tower who stood at Jesus’ right hand, remained faithful to her beloved Jesus while others abandoned him, followed Jesus beyond the cross to the tomb and was able to see that not even the forces of Empire could destroy the CHRIST which she saw, which she experienced in Jesus.
Mary the Migdal, who from the moment she was able to see the face of CHRIST in a gardener, went forth to proclaim the power of resurrection. Mary proclaimed, “I have seen the CHRIST” and sifting through the fragments of herstory, we too can see the CHRIST, in words her followers attributed to Mary, words which continue to offer hope, “Do not weep and be distressed nor let your hearts be troubled. For CHRIST’s grace will be with you all and will shelter you. Rather we should praise CHRIST’s greatness, for CHRIST has joined us together and made us fully human.”
Mary saw the risen CHRIST in the face of a gardener. Mary understood Jesus’ practice of referring to himself as the “Fully Human ONE”. The title “Fully Human ONE” comes from the Greek – gios tou anthrópou – which translators have been rendering as the “Son of Man”. Son of Man is not, I repeat, not an adequate translation of this important phrase which according to the gospels that did make the biblical canon, Jesus used to describe himself 81 times: gios tou anthropou Anthroupou or Anthropos – we get our English word anthropology from the same root. It does not mean man! It means human. There is a perfectly good Greek word that is used in the New Testament for man – that word is “aner”. The anonymous writers of the gospels deliberately did not translate Jesus’ Aramaic sayings into Greek using the word for “man”. Instead, some 81 times they chose instead, the Greek word for human which includes both males and females. We can only guess why the English translators failed to be so inclusive. Some of us have paid the price for their failure. All of us have missed the incredible, radical meaning of Jesus’ declaration that he is the HUMAN ONE. The Gospel of Mary spells out this tragedy in detail. The Gospel of Mary points us toward Jesus’ vision for a new way of being human. The contemplative scholar Cynthia Bourgeault translates gios tou anthropou so beautifully into English as, “Fully Human”. In the Gospel of Mary, we encounter Jesus as the FULLY HUMAN ONE whose embodiment of the CHRIST provides a vision of the transformation or the evolution of women and men into a new way of being human which transcends gender, a way of being in which we become FULLY HUMAN. As FULLY HUMAN as we can begin to recognize as Jesus did, our ONENESS with the DIVINE; as when Jesus says, “I and ABBA are ONE.”
This ONENESS with the DIVINE ought to open us to the reality that because we live and move and have our being in the DIVINE, the DIVINE is everywhere, for every THING is in the DIVINE. Embracing our FULL HUMANIY, we embrace the CHRIST which lives in, with, through, and beyond us. In the Gospel of Mary, we can begin to see a vision of what it means to follow Jesus into a new Way of Being in which we recognize Jesus as the CHRIST, but more importantly we begin to recognize CHRIST in one another. Perhaps when we begin to share Mary’s faith that the risen CHRIST can be seen, we will begin to see the face of CHRIST in those around us; in faces of the strangers we meet on the road, in the face of the homeless man as we sit and share a meal with him, in the face of a child we reach out to lift up out of poverty, in faces the women upon whose shoulders we stand, in the faces of our opponents as together we struggle for understanding, in the faces of our enemies as we begin to work for peace, in the faces of our tormentors as we strive for justice, in the faces of the sick as we seek healing, and in the faces of the poor as we offer aid, compassion, and justice. When we can look into the faces of those we meet and see the face of Christ, then perhaps we can follow in the footsteps of Mary the Migdal, the TOWER, and all the world will know by our LOVE, that we too follow CHRIST. St. Mary the Migdal, the Tower, the first Apostle, the Apostle to the Apostles, the ONE to whom the RISEN CHRIST entrusts the good news. May the power of Mary’s witness inspire us to live into our FULL HUMANITY so that we can begin to see the CHRIST in every thing and every ONE. From the fragments arise a way of being in the world, which seeks not an escape from life in the world, nor a passport into the next life, but an embrace of our FULL HUMANITY.
“And did you get what
You wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.”
In the fragments of herstory, let us find a Way to see CHRIST who is the embodiment of the LOVE which is DIVINITY in the face of every ONE and every THING so that ONE with CHRIST we, you and I might be LOVE the world. Feel yourself as beloved, here and now on the Earth, loved by the ONE who is our LOVER, BELOVED, and LOVE HESELF. Amen.
This week from the safety of my privileged isolation, I became inconsolable, as the world’s sorrows penetrated the safety of my lockdown. I was drawn into our world’s sorrow by the news from India. In my comfortable living-room, I watched the death of a mother in a crowded, ill-equipped hospital. As this mother slipped away, one of her sons begged for medical care for his mother, while two of her sons desperately administered CPR. When the doctor finally arrived, she took the mother’s pulse and in seconds the sons were wailing in grief as the doctor confirmed that it was too late. The son who had begged for help, began wailing, shouting, screaming, and rocking back and forth, inconsolable, in his grief. Holding my breath in a hopeless attempt to hold back my tears, I felt myself rocking back and forth with this grieving son, and words of scripture rang in my ears. Over and over again I heard: “…Rachel is weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are no more…”
On this Mothers’ Day, Rachel’s tears are magnified by the tears of millions. Millions of mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, husbands, wives, grandparents and children are weeping and like Rachel they refuse to be comforted. As the third wave of this pandemic ravages our planet, there is lamentation and bitter weeping and like the biblical Rachel, there is power in the sorrow of those who grieve. In the Hebrew Scriptures, Rachel refuses to be comforted.
The prophet Jeremiah alludes to this matriarch of Israel, the mother of Joseph, weeping over an event which happened generations after Rachel’s death on the road to Bethlehem. Rachel’s tears are for the descendants of her children’s, children’s, children who have been carried off into captivity by the forces of empire. In the Christian Testament, the anonymous gospel storyteller we know as Matthew, summons up Rachel’s tears as his response to the Slaughter of the Innocents by the forces of yet another empire.
Confronted by the horror of unspeakable tragedy our tears flow, we weep, we wail, we rock back and forth, and we refuse to be comforted, for there is power in our sorrow; a power all too often muted by the comforts heaped upon us by the powers of yet another kind of empire; a financial empire the likes of which the world has never seen before.
I know full well the need we all share right now, not to let the overwhelming suffering of millions consume us in a flood of tears. If we dwell upon just a few of the millions upon millions of tragedies happening all over the world, we run the risk of drowning in our own tears. There’s a good reason for our individual psyches to be working so overtime to distract us from sorrow. It is no wonder that our collective hearts and minds distract our very selves from the pain and the suffering. Occasionally, a tear or two escape when the suffering comes too close to home, and compassion gets the better of us. But as the song says: “tears are not enough.” Ever so quickly, our privileged lives grant us the comforts of home which sooth and sap the power of sorrow to move us beyond the safety of our splendid isolation. What few tears flow, are quickly dried, our fears are quelled, our compassion is muted, and we return to our new normal of coping with, while complaining about the inconvenience of lockdowns. Perhaps a prayer wells up in us; a remnant of a long-rejected belief in the grand-puppeteer-sky-god; a just in case kind of prayer, there’s no harm in trying, kind of prayer, even as our minds scream, “Hopes and prayers are not enough to face the magnitude of sorrows!” But if the DIVINE MYSTERY which we call God is not pulling the strings, how then do we face the suffering? What comfort is there in a MYSTERY which is BEYOND the BEYOND and BEYOND that Also? If we let the tears flow, what power will save us from drowning in a sea of despair?
I remember the breathlessness of the weeping man wailing in sorrow for his mother who could not breathe and now I too must catch my own breath, as the image of the almighty-puppeteer-sky-god’s void functions like a vacuum within me. I am not sure I have the courage to refuse to be comforted. Give me that old time religion, so that I can find comfort and breathe freely again. As the wailing son’s tears threaten to overwhelm me, I find myself gasping, gulping huge breathes, breathing as deeply as I can as if my own intake of life-giving air can support his desperate need for comfort. Form long ago, another voice calls to me from the wonderings, pain, and fears of our ancestors; an unfamiliar voice, a voice muted by the seekers of comforts. Her voice is not the voice of comfort. Hers is the voice of DIVINE MYSTERY, known to our ancestors as SHOPIA, named for WISDOM, her story is recorded in the WISDOM Books of the Hebrew Scriptures as she cries out for wisdom. In the midst of our world’s suffering, I hear a thin echo of her words:
“Doesn’t SOPHIA call? Doesn’t UNDERSTANDING raise her voice? On the hills along the road, at the crossroads, she takes her stand; beside the city gates of the town, in the gates themselves, SOPHIA cries out, “Women and men, people of everywhere, I’m calling out to you! I cry to humankind! You who are simple, learn to make sound judgments! To the foolish among you, use your common sense! Listen closely, for what I say is worth hearing, and I will tell you what is right; for my mouth will speak the truth, and my lips hate to lie. Everything I say is right; none of it is twisted or crooked. All of it is plain-spoken to those who understand, clear to those seeking knowledge. Accept my lessons in place of silver, and knowledge in place of gold; for SOPHIA/ WISDOM outsparkles jewelry; anything you desire cannot compare to her.” (Proverbs 8:1-11)
Those are the words of SOPHIA, the feminine voice of God in the Book of Proverbs. These words, crafted as a hymn to WISDOM by our ancestors in the midst of their own crisis, call to me like a voice, the voice of the MYSTERY who dwells in, with, through, and beyond us. Perhaps you can hear it too; the voice of the MYSTERY, which is the LOVE we call God, calling from deep within, speaking not words of comfort, but demanding wisdom. The suffering millions, their tears flow in rivers which cannot be stemmed by our desires for comfort. Only WISDOM discerned in, with, and through the LOVE, which is DIVINTIY dwelling in, with, through, and beyond us can move our suffering world beyond the placating comforts of wealth and privilege toward the kind of healing which restores wholeness.
In the midst of all our suffering, let us offer our strength to the quest for wisdom. Let us refuse to be comforted at the expense of our neighbours. Let us wail when leaders refuse to waive patens for vaccines. Let us refuse to talk of budgets, deficits, and the need to store up our treasures. Let us scream at the horror of national, regional, tribal or self-obsessed interests being put before the interests of our neighbours. Let us mask-up and stand up in the face of ignorance. Let us cheer on the difficult choices of those who have carefully, generously, bravely, sought the wisdom of science together with compassion. Let us shout on behalf of those whose voices have been drowned by their tears. Let us listen to the cries of the grieving. Let us open ourselves to the power of our sorrow and refuse to be comforted until the tears of the suffering millions are dried with the compassion of the MYSTERY of the ONE which IS the LOVE, living, working and LOVing in, with, through, and beyond us to heal the sick, comfort the dying, and feed the poor, so that justice and not tears can begin to “roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” Let it be so. Let it be so among us. Let it be so.
Mothers’ Day is not on the church’s liturgical calendar and yet the statisticians tell us that church attendance on Mothers’ Day is surpassed only by Christmas and Easter. Worship leaders who fail to mark the importance of this day do so at their peril; the same kind of peril which compels so many reluctant offspring to accompany their mothers to church. However, a simple liturgical nod in the direction of mothers or an over-the-top sentimental sermon all too often fail to capture the magnitude of the day’s significance in the history of women. Planning the liturgy is challenging enough, but writing the sermon is a challenge which promises to keep me toiling away into the dark hours of this coming Saturday. So, for my colleagues who share a similar plight: below you will find links to previous attempts to commemorate this day of days. Feel free to share your efforts with me in the comments section. Please! I need all the help you can offer!!! click on the links below for previous Mothers’ Day sermons:
On this Pluralism Sunday, I am mindful of the dangers of misunderstanding progressive christianity’s celebration of pluralism. Christianity’s sad history of being co-opted by imperial colonialism has left far too many christians living under the delusion that all religions will one day merge into one great world religion. But pluralism is not about giving up the wonders of individual religions nor is it about creating uniformity among religions so as to create one world. Pluralism is the belief that people of different beliefs can coexist, learning from one another, caring for one another, respecting one another, celebrating one another, and hopefully learning to love one another.
Perhaps, the wise prophet Mahatma Gandhi captured the essence of pluralism best, when he said, “I came to the conclusion long ago that all religions were true and that also that all had some error in them, and while I hold by my own religion, I should hold other religions as dear as Hinduism. So, we can only pray, if we were Hindus, not that a Christian should become a Hindu; but our innermost prayer should be that a Hindu should become a better Hindu, and a Christian a better Christian.”
Years ago, when I still languished under the mistaken belief that, God had a master plan to make all the world Christian, my primary responses to people of other faiths were characterized by fear, suspicion, and not very subtle arrogance which came from my belief that I had found the one true faith.
With gratitude and humility, I can now look back upon a relationship with a Hindu woman who embodied Gandhi’s desire that we hold all religions as dear as our own. I was just twenty years old when I met Jiera and although we didn’t know one another for a long time, Jiera managed to challenge me to become a better christian. We were working together at a large, international, department store on Regent Street, in the heart of London. We both worked in the Food Courts were there wasn’t much time for pleasantries. But Jiera never let that stop her from being not only pleasant to unpleasant customers, she went out of her way to be kind. Jiera insist that, “There’s always time for kindness.”
Jiera was my immediate manager; while I supervised a group of eight young women, women much like myself, temporary workers, intending to stay just long enough to earn enough money before resuming our travels. Jiera was in it for the long haul, already a young mother of three beautiful children of her own, she soon became the surrogate Mom to those of us who worked for her. Jiera’s kindness made her easy to love and a joy to obey, as each of us did our best to please her. It didn’t take long for us to become a family, with Jiera chiding us to care for one another.Continue reading →
Tomorrow at Holy Cross, we will be celebrating Pluralism Sunday. For those of you looking for a sermon following the Revised Common Lectionary, this sermon from 2018, explores those readings.
There’s a preacher whose work I admire. His name is Salvatore Sapienza. Sal comes from New York city; Sal would say it differently – “New York.” Speaking with his New York drawl, Sal expresses the vine metaphor in a unique way. Sal says, “Jesus said, youz are the branches and I am da-vine.” Sal goes on to say that, the word divine is ‘of the vine”. Divine is another word for the MYSTERY we call God. Of the vine, vine from the Latin for wine – wine the fruit of the vine.
Wine is something that is intimately intertwined with the stories of Jesus life. According to the anonymous-gospel-storyteller that we call John, Jesus’ very first miracle was turning water into wine. In the story Jesus takes something ordinary and transforms it into something extraordinary. Most of us are very familiar with wine’s ability to transform us. The ancient Romans had a saying, “in vinio vertais” in wine there is truth. From the other anonymous-gospel-story-tellers we also have the story of Jesus last meal, during which Jesus takes wine, gives thanks and shares the wine with his friends saying, “drink this all of you, this wine is my blood…to remember me” When we remember that meal it is as if the wine we drink together is the promise that Jesus’ life force, the life that flowed through Jesus, flows through us in the sharing of the wine. In Jesus’ we see the energy, the flow of the life force that emanates from the MYSTERY, from the LOVE, that we call God. In the sharing of the wine, we too are in the flow, we too are connected to the flow that is the DIVINE.
The anonymous-gospel-story-teller that we call John creates for us a metaphor drawn from the life experience of his people.We are the branches, intimately intertwined with one another, we are all connected to one another, and what flows through the Divine, flows through us. In his teachings and with his life, Jesus said, God is in me, and I am in you, we are all in each other, we are all ONE. Youz are the branches, I am Da-vine. Such a beautiful metaphor; metaphor something that carries us beyond the words to a reality that is beyond words. The storyteller uses the metaphor of the vine to carry us beyond the image of the vine to the reality that is beyond words, the reality that we call Divine and the fruit of the vine flows through us to be the DIVINE in the world or as we say here “to be LOVE in the world”.Continue reading →
