Second Sunday of Easter – April 7, 2013
I am indebted to Bernard Brandon Scott’s reminder of the story about Humpty Dumpty in Frank McCourt’s novel “T’is”
Listen to the sermon here
On Sunday, in churches all over Christendom, worshippers will hear the gospel story of Doubting Thomas. The story of Doubting Thomas is prescribed gospel reading every year for the Sunday after Easter. I’ve never understood why Thomas should hold such a prominent place in our lectionary: I mean, when the chips were down, and Jesus could have used their support, Thomas and the guys deserted Jesus; they left him alone and spread out across the city to hide from the Romans and the religious authorities.According to the Gospels, it was the two Marys, together with the other women who had financially supported Jesus’ ministry, who stuck by him to the bitter end. Also according to the gospels, it was Mary, the one they call Magdala who brought back the news that Jesus was not dead, but had risen. But despite the fact that Mary Magdalene was the one chosen to be the Apostle to the Apostles, (the word apostle comes from the Greek for “the one sent”) our lectionary quickly moves on from the empty tomb to the upper room so that we can all once again explore the story of good old, doubting Thomas.
So here, let me honour Mary the Apostle to the Apostles with this my imaginary account of Mary’s story.
Shalom. I greet you in the name of our risen Christ. My name is Mary. You may know me as Mary Magdalene. I am not from around here. I come from a good family in Magdala. Magdala is a wealthy city on the Sea of Galilee, just south of Capernaum. My family made a lot of money in the fishing industry in Magdala. While I was growing up I lacked nothing. But I was not happy. I was sick. I would sit around the house moping and complaining and make everyone miserable. I was so distraught. Often I was so upset that I pulled out my own hair.
Sometimes I would be so excited that people couldn’t stop me from talking. I ran up all sorts of bills in the market place which my parents had to pay. I was always cooking up some mad scheme or other. I would rant and rave at the slightest provocation. From time to time I would become ill and stay in bed for weeks on end. I knew something was terribly wrong and nothing seemed to ease my anxieties. I was a prisoner inside my own mind. Then I met Jesus. He was teaching outside of the synagogue. At first, I just stood back in the crowd and listened as he spoke about a new world which God intended to create. It would be a world where the sick are healed and prisoners are set free. I wanted to taste this freedom which Jesus spoke about. I wanted to ask him so many questions. But the crowd pressed in upon him demanding that he tell them more and I was pushed farther away from him. In despair, I turned to leave. Continue reading
Christ is risen! Christ is Risen Indeed!
I am indebted to John Claypool’s sermon from back in 1997 for the story of Eugene O’Neill’s play “Lazarus Laughs” and to Henri Nouwen’s “Our Greatest Gift: A Meditation on Dying and Caring” for the “Parable of the Twins”.
Listen to the Sermon here
Download the worship bulletin here
I am indebted to Michael Morewood for his theological insights in his newly released book “It’s Time: Challenges to the Doctrine of the Faith” for helping me to see beyond the idols in my head!
Listen to the sermon here
Listen to the full worship service here – Special thanks to the Rev.Susan J. Thompson for her leadership. As always our worship was empowered by the magnificence of our gifted musician Marney Curran. Special thanks to Gary Curran for his solo.
Download the worship bulletin here (3 pages, print double-sided and fold into a booklet)
Our worship at Holy Cross was lead by Pastor Tom Doherty and The Rev. Susan J. Thompson as we partook of two suppers interwoven to provide nourishment to our bodies and souls. After hearing the story of Jesus washing the disciples’ feet, our hands were tenderly washed and dried for us as we continued in the Word. After enjoying of a plethora of soups, Pastor Tom’s homily ask, “Is this all a big hoax?”
Listen to the Pastor Tom Doherty’s homily here
Download a copy of the worship bulletin here
I post this sermon, which I preached last Easter Sunday, touched by the memories it evokes. Resurrection came to my Gran this past summer. Her 100 years were and are a blessing to her family and friends. She comes to me often in so many ways; this sermon is but one.
Tredegar, Wales the village where Nellie was born in 1911
Sisters and brothers in Christ, today we gather to celebrate the greatest story ever told! Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia! Christ is risen in you and in me. And because Christ is risen, I can welcome each of you to your very own resurrection!!! Christ is risen in you and in me! Alleluia!!!
It is the greatest story ever told. Like all the best stories ever told it does not answer all our questions. Poet Mary Oliver insists that, “There are many stories more beautiful than answers.” The bible is full of great stories. The sacred scriptures contain responses to some of humanity’s greatest questions. The stories in the scriptures provide us with responses to some of our deepest longings, but those responses do not come in the form of answers. The Bible is full of stories that touch the deepest mysteries of life. The ancients knew that eternal truths are best communicated through stories, and so we plumb the depths of the scriptures’ parables, myths and similes to discover our reality. The story that bursts forth on this Easter Sunday is the greatest story ever told. It is a story told in response to our deepest reality and our darkest fear: death. Continue reading
In our parish on Palm Sunday, our liturgy stays with the commemoration of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. Trusting that our members will join us on Good Friday, we have not adopted the practice of rushing to the Passion of Christ. This allows us time to linger over our Hosannas.
Our worship began outside with the reading of Luke 19:28-4, followed by a procession of palm waving, hosanna cheering congregation. This year I changed the first reading to the story of Jacob’s wounding during a wrestling match with God in Genesis 32:22-31, followed by an feminist interpretation of Psalm 118, and the Gospel text John 12:12-15.
I am indebted to Michael Morewood’s book “Is Jesus God” for the inspiration behind this sermon and to John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg’s “The Last Week” for the historical details.
You can listen to the sermon here.
A sermon preached a few years ago after having read “The Last Week” by John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg and “Jesus for the Non-Religious” by John Shelby Spong. These two books are invaluable tools for anyone presuming to preach during Holy Week!
For other Palm Sunday Sermons click here
I love a parade. So, I find the details of the parade on that we celebrate today fascinating. In their book: The Last Week, New Testament scholars John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg, point out that the parade that heralded Jesus entry into Jerusalem wasn’t the largest or most spectacular parade in town during that particular Passover season.
Back then, Jerusalem was a destination hotspot—a tourist town. The city’s population swelled from 40,000 to 200,000 during the holidays and Passover was one of the busiest holidays. Crossan and Borg point out that there were two processions into Jerusalem on what we call Palm Sunday. One, we know well and commemorate today with the waving of palm branches. We remember a peasant riding a donkey, accompanied by his peasant followers coming from the north into Jerusalem. Continue reading
Lent 5C March 17, 2013
Readings: Numbers 27: 1-11; Acts 13:44-51; John 12:1-8
St. Patrick’s Day doesn’t often fall on a Sunday, but as our congregation’s Annual Meeting would begin immediately following our worship service, I decided to be somewhat playful and irreverent with a sermon designed encourage folk to think beyond words on a page. The first reading brought the wonderful story of the Daughters of Zelophehad to church and as this reading does not appear in the Revised Common Lectionary it was fun to play with
these feisty woman. The reading from the book of Acts is actually the prescribed reading for the commemoration of St. Patrick and the Gospel text is prescribed for Lent 5C. The Guinness was just for fun! Enjoy.
Listen to the sermon here
A sermon preached on the Fifth Sunday of Lent
March 22, 2010
John 12:1-8 read the gospel story here
I got my very first job when I was just ten years old. Our neighbours were going away on holiday and they needed someone to take care of their cat. Now I have never been a cat person. In fact, if the truth be known, I’ve always been sort of afraid of cats. When I was little I was terrified of them. But as I grew I learned to control my fears and these days I just tend to avoid cats. I don’t really know why, they just give me the creeps. Back when I was ten, cats still had the power to make me very nervous. But our neighbours tempted me with the promise of a dollar a day for ten days. All I had to do was go into their house each day and feed their cat. There was no litter tray to deal with because back then people still had those little trap doors and the cat could go outside whenever it needed to. So, I signed on and each and every day for ten days I mustered up all my courage and I went into the neighbours’ house and I opened a tin of cat food and I filled a dish with water. I did it as quickly and as quietly as I could and in ten days not once did I ever run into that cat. When the neighbours came home they were so delighted with the good job that I had done that they actually gave me a whole dollar as a bonus. Eleven whole dollars, I was wealthy beyond my wildest dreams. I knew exactly just what I was going to do with that money. You see, Christmas was just a few days away and for the first time in my life I had money to buy Christmas presents! My parents insisted that there was no need for me to buy Christmas presents and they suggested that I should save my money. But I just had to buy presents. To this day I can still remember the joy of hoisting my hard earned cash onto the drugstore counter to purchase my carefully selected merchandise. I can still remember those two amazing gift sets. The first one was for my Dad. It was manufactured by the Old Spice Company and inside it had a soap on a rope, and a two bottles. One of the bottles contained after-shave and the other something called men’s cologne. I didn’t know what cologne was so I had to ask the saleswoman who explained that it’s what they call perfume for men, and I knew that my Dad just had to have some of that. Now the second gift set was a real bargain it was made by Yardly. I wasn’t fooled by all those tiny bottles of perfume that were so much more expensive. No, I picked the gift set that had the biggest bottle of perfume. It also had a big container of something that looked like talcum powder but the container said it was actually dusting powder and it came with a little puffy yellow thing for dusting the powder all over your body. I knew that my Mom would just love this. Together the two gift sets cost a just few pennies less than eleven dollars. I don’t think that I have never enjoyed Christmas quite the way I enjoyed that one. Continue reading
What God is up to today is not just for us. “God is as devoted to Muslims, Hindus and Atheists as to Christians.” Brian McLaren’s contributions to the Lenten Preaching Series at Calvary Episcopal Church in Memphis challenge Christians to move beyond narrow Christian notions of discipleship. recorded Feb.27-28 2013
Listen to a podcast of the evening lecture here
Among the teachings of Jesus, the parables of the lost and found are so well known, so familiar that we are in peril of failing to hear the foolishness they advocate. Although only a few of us have had the opportunity to tend a flock of sheep, most of us at one time or another have been responsible for the welfare of a flock. And whether that flock be sheep or co-workers, clients, customers, students, friends, or children none but the foolish among us would leave 99 to the perils and dangers of the wilderness in order to go looking for one idiot who’d been stupid enough to get themselves lost. We may not keep our coins at home, but I daresay that most of us have felt the sting of loosing a drachma or two or three in this recession. Only a fool would waste a moment searching for our losses when our portfolio’s are so full. I dare say that if we managed to find or recoup our loss, we’re hardly likely to invite the neighbourhood to a party that would in all likelihood eat up more than we had found. Parents, and all of us have been parented, so we know the wisdom of parents not rewarding bad behaviour. Most of us are law-abiding. We all want what is best for our own parents, and so I don’t think any but the foolish among us would consider celebrating the return of someone who has hurt our parents in the past.
These parables of the lost and found are outrageous. None of us would get very fare in life if we lived by these teachings. It is better to put the welfare of the many above the needs of one. It is pointless to cry over spilt milk. Sometimes its better to cut your losses and move on. The best accountants learn quickly to write off losses that would be too time consuming and costly to recoup. Children need to learn that they can’t always get what they want; that there are consequences to their actions, that dues must be paid, that we need to ask for forgiveness and make amends for our crimes, that rules need to be followed, and laws cannot be broken. That doing the right thing will be rewarded. And yet along comes Jesus, spouting such foolishness that even we who are predisposed to agree with him, even we can sympathize with the self-righteous and wonder how anyone could be expected to live like this. Continue reading
As I prepare to preach tomorrow, the prescribed scripture readings have me wondering when and how we shall be able to move beyond the tribal god we created and have worshipped for far too long. Amy-Jill Levine is a Jewish New Testament scholar who continues to help me understand christianity’s jewish past and look toward a time when our various religious tribes can join in a new narrative that empowers us to worship the God our tribal idols belittle by their narrow portrayal of the Creator-of-All-that-IS-and-Ever-Shall-Be.
Genesis 15:1-12,17-18 – Musing About Genesis Bloody Carcasses
From time to time, the prescribed readings from the Common Lectionary fill me with dread and despair. Something about those bloodied, split, rotting carcasses that sealed the deal between God and Abraham makes me wonder about the nature of the god we have projected into the heavens and ask: Have we evolved or has God? The story of God’s promises to the “Chosen People” portrays God as a churlish player in humanity’s game of tribal rivalry. While I’d rather not preach on the text from Genesis this Sunday, I know full well that simply reading this text during worship without elaboration, will if folk are paying attention, leave a distasteful oder in the sanctuary that will surely spoil our appetite for our common meal of body and blood disguised as bread and wine.
The readings for this coming Sunday have me thinking about tribalism. There’s always more than one way to look at things. Tribalism has served us well. New people to meet can be exciting or it can be frightening. Taking comfort with your own people is wonderful, but taking too much pride in your own kind is dangerous. One minute you’re cheering for your team the next minute you’re hurling insults at the other guy and one too many insults and the next thing you know you’re at war. A little tribalism is a good thing, but how much tribalism is too much? Tribalism is a basic human survival instinct. Tribalism is lodged deep within our psyches and has been from the very beginning of time. Tribal is part of our primordial selves. Tapping into this basic human instinct can mean the difference between survival and death.
Tribal thinking exists on almost every level of human life, from the international to the local. Attack a human on any level and that human will resort to instinctive behaviour. When threatened humans have two basic instincts, fight or flight and the choice between the two often comes down to tribalism. If you have enough people to back you, you’ll probably choose to fight. Not enough people and you’ll probably choose flight.
Human kind has evolved a great deal over the centuries but we haven’t evolved very far from our basic instincts. You don’t have to scratch a fan too deeply to find the primitive tribal mentality. Tribalism is seen in the way we portray our rivals. I once heard a Kiwi say, “I root for two teams, New Zealand and whoever is playing Australia.” Sporting competition is all well and good, but when tribalism is carried to its worst possible conclusion, wars beak out. Tribal feeling is then exacerbated in times of war, and tribal propaganda is used to dehumanize our enemies to make it easier to hate or kill without any qualms of conscience. We don’t kill human beings in war; our victims are not someone’s child, spouse, or parent. NO, one kills either, the Huns, the Krauts, the Japs, the Nips, the VC, the insurgents, the fanatics or the terrorists.
There is within us all a basic, dominant, intrinsic fear of those tribes different from our own, a predisposition to be on guard against them, to reject them, to attack and even to kill them. This tribal tradition arises out of our deep-seated survival mentality and it feeds something at the heart of our insecure humanity. We are tribal people to our core. Far more than we will consciously admit, the religions of the world including Christianity rise out of and undergird our tribal thinking.
Religions are all too often, very deep expressions of a tribal mentality that worships a tribal god. Take for example this Sunday’s reading from the book of Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18. Here we have the story of Abram a wandering Aremeian, who is about to become the father of many nations. Abram has a vision; a vision in which his god promises to give him descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky if Abram only promises to worship YAHWEH as his only god.
To seal the promise YAHWEH enacts an ancient tribal custom, common in Mesopotamia. YAHWEH said to Abram, “Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon. Abram brought God all these and cut them in two, laying each half over against the other; but he did not cut the birds in two. And when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away. As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and a deep and terrifying darkness descended upon him. When the sun had gone down and it was dark, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. On that day the Most High God made a covenant with Abram.”
Centuries ago, in the days of our ancestors, Abraham and Sarah, custom dictated the appropriate manner in which a bargain was to be sealed. When two parties entered into an agreement, a covenant, they would take a bunch of good-sized animals, slaughter them, sever them into halves, clear a path between the pieces, and require that each partner to the agreement walk between them as a sort of self-curse. Kind of like: “cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye.” By passing through the severed bodies of the animals, each partner says, in effect, “May the same thing happen to me if I do not keep my word.”
The whole thing sounds so very barbaric to our modern ears. But this story is part of the foundation of the narrative that begins the narrative of YAHWEH’s covenant with the chosen people.
The last two verses of this story are not usually read in church. The crafters of the lectionary leave them out; perhaps because they are so very offensive. But I would argue that we include them because it is important for us to remember that tribalism permeates our foundation myths.
“When the sun had set and it was dark, a smoking brazier and a flaming torch appeared, which passed between the halves of the sacrifices. On that day YAHWEH made this covenant with Abram: To your descendants I give this land, from the River of Egypt to the Great River, the Euphrates: the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanite, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.”
The Promised Land, the land God promised to the chosen people was not some vacant lot somewhere, waiting for inhabitants to come and enjoy the bounty of milk and honey that flowed there. The Promised Land was inhabited by many tribes; tribes who worshipped other gods. And there have been wars and rumors of wars in the Promised Land from that day to this.
The image of YAHWEH painted by this story is not a particularly glorious one if you are anything other than the Chosen People. The Kenizzites the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, Rephiam, the Amorites, the Canaanite, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites, rue the day YAHWEH chose the descendants of Abram over them.
This image of a tribal god is offensive to our modern ears. We much prefer the more evolved image of God that Jesus paints in the gospel text for this Sunday. “Jerusalem, O, Jerusalem! You kill the prophets and stone those who are sent to you! How often have I wanted to gather your children together as a mother bird collects her babies under her wings—yet you refuse me! “ This mother hen god is a far cry from the YAHWEH of Genesis.
So, I ask you, did God evolve, or did human perception of God evolve? Think of the stars in the heavens, too numerous to count, and yet we dare to describe the Creator of all that is and all that ever shall be as if our images of God are complete. John Shelby Spong has written a great deal about the dangers of worshipping a tribal God. He reminds us that our knowledge of God is ever-evolving and cautions us to remain open to new possibilities when it comes to speculating on the nature of our Creator.
So much of our Christian doctrine relies on deep expressions of a tribal mentality that worships a god who is little more than a tribal protector. The reality of worshiping such an image of God is that all too often it causes us to sink into tribal attitudes. The more we sink into tribal attitudes, the more our lives are consumed with hatred; and as a direct result the less human we become.
In times of tribal conflict the natural survival instincts within us take over and are hurled at our enemies. This tribal mentality may well have been an asset in the human struggle to survive during the evolutionary process, but unless it is transcended, a deeper humanity ceases to be a possibility.
We cannot be fully human so long as we are consumed with hatred against those who threaten our survival. If the purpose of Jesus was and is to bring life abundantly, then we need to realize that this goal will never be possible until both our tribal mentalities and our tribal fears have been addressed.
Tribal hatreds diminish the humanity of the victims and tribal hatreds also diminish the humanity of those who are the haters. The image of the tribal God of Israel was still alive and well in the first-century Jewish world in which Jesus of Nazareth lived. It was inevitable for Jesus, the fully human one to have to confront this tribal mentality.
Jesus ministry was about empowering his followers to step beyond all tribal boundaries into the fullness of humanity that his life so clearly exhibited.
Remember that we live in the 21st and not the first century. Remember Charles Darwin and all that we have learned about humanity since Darwin first proposed his theory of evolution. Humanity is a work in progress. We have evolved over the centuries and as our understanding of our purpose and meaning in the world continues to evolve so to will our images of our Creator. As we evolve we begin to understand that evil does not come from some external force, but rather comes as a result of our incompleteness. What we call evil rises from the incompleteness of the evolutionary process. We are not so much fallen sinners who need to be rescued as we are incomplete creatures who need to be empowered to step into the new possibilities of an expanding life.
When we understand that the evil things we do to one another are the result of our incomplete humanity we begin to see how inappropriate it is to portray our Creator as an avenging God bent on punishing us for our sinfulness. Evil cannot be controlled by threats or by discipline, parental or divine. Security can never finally be built on violence. To be saved does not mean to be rescued. To be saved means to be empowered to be something we have not yet been able to be.
In Jesus we see humanity that is not defined as fallen or sinful. Jesus’ humanity is so whole and so complete that Jesus is experienced by those he encounters as one who is filled with God. We see in Jesus one so radically human and free, so whole and complete that the power of life, the force of the universe—that which we call God—becomes visible and operative in Christ and through Christ.Somehow, in some way, though some means, God was and is in Christ and this God presence can still be met in the depths of our humanity. Our task, here and now, is to move beyond tribalism in order to trace in the gospel tradition the echoes of the transforming power that Jesus made visible and public. Those echoes that we discover, paint a consistent portrait that points to the power present in Jesus’ life, a power that people began to identify with God.
Even though the earthly life of Jesus came to an end around the year 30 CE, the power of Jesus was such that Paul, writing in the early fifties, could still make a claim that was so astonishing in his time that it must have hit his readers like a message from outer space. To the Galatians Paul wrote that inside the Christ experience people had with Jesus, all of their tribal barriers melted away! In Christ there is “neither Jew nor Greek,” neither Jew nor Gentile.
To the Romans, a few years later, Paul still had this sense of the Jesus experience when he wrote that salvation has come from God in the person of Jesus and is available “to the Jew first and also to the Greek”. Paul insisted that “God shows no partiality”. These were astonishing claims.
The power of Jesus had expanded Paul’s tribal boundaries and, through these writings the followers of the way were enabled to embrace the world. In the letter to the Colossians, a disciple of Paul proclaims the same transcending message that shrinks tribal identity to nothingness: “If you have been raised with Christ, there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, or free…, but Christ is all and in all.”
Something about this Jesus is sufficiently unique and life-changing that it has the power to enable us to set aside the million-year-old human survival game of tribal identity and to feel Christ’s call to a new level of humanity. Christ empowers us to be so deeply and fully human that we can actually escape the security lines built to serve our primitive survival needs. In Christ we are called to lay down our survival barriers, to sep beyond tribe, beyond language, beyond the fear-imposed levels of our security. We are called to step into a vision of humanity that opens to all people the meaning of life and in doing so opens us to the meaning of God.
When we put away our tribal fears we can begin to see in the fullness of Jesus’ humanity the very face of God. To be followers of Christ in the 21st century is exciting! There’s a new reformation afoot as we open our hearts and minds to the wonders of our God and begin to explore the abundant life that Christ calls us too. Is it frightening? You bet! Encounters beyond the confines of our tribe are scary. But I am convinced that abundant life lies beyond our tribal boundaries. So, do not be afraid! There is much more for us to learn and know for the wonders of our God are as numerous as the stars in the sky, and the blessings that lie ahead are beyond our ability to count.
Ash Wednesday February 13, 2013
Listen to the homily here
To help remind us that we are stardust, our worship began with video: The Call of the Pleiades – Gerald Jay Markoe
Traditionally the season of Lent is a mournful time filled with calls to repentance and self-examination as we follow Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted and then on that long march to Jerusalem where the powers that be will have their wicked way with him. Our liturgies take a mournful tone as we lament our woeful human existence, confess our sinfulness, and hear exultations to take up our crosses so that we too can follow Jesus to the bitter end. Over and over again we are asked to remember that we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves, as we gaze upon the cross remembering that Jesus our savior bled and died as a result of our wicked sinfulness.
Lent is a strange season that harkens back to a forgotten era. Unlike so many of the seasons of the church year it’s not exactly a season that attracts people to church. Not many of you got out of bed this morning and said, “Yippy it’s the first day of Lent. Oh goodie! We get to be reminded that we are sinful, that life is miserable and unless I’m willing to take up my cross and follow Jesus all the way to Golgotha, there’s precious little hope cause we’re all going to die and when the time comes we want Jesus to remember us.”
Now I know that there are some people who just love Lent and I must confess that I like the quieter, more somber tone that our liturgies take. I actually enjoy the opportunity to slow things done and be more reflective in our worship together. I savor the silences and the opportunities to be more contemplative. I love the colour purple with all its vibrant hues and the best part of all is that the beginning of Lent means that spring is just around the corner. What I don’t like about Lent are the signs, symbols, hymns and stories that make it so easy for us to fall back into the 11th century.
It is so easy for us to lean not on the ever-lasting arms of Jesus but on the scales of St. Anslem and find ourselves not looking forward to the promise of resurrection and the gifts of eternal life, but rather dreading judgment day knowing that the scales of justice must be balanced and fearing the moment of truth when our sins are piled onto the scale and knowing that our only hope for reconciliation with our Maker is that Jesus is sitting on the other end of the scale.
“Woe is me. Woe is me for I am sinful. My sins are too numerous to count. There are all the things I have done and all the things I have left undone. Thank God Jesus died for me. Somebody had to pay the price for my sinfulness. Jesus died for a reason, and you and I dear sisters and brothers are that reason. A blood sacrifice had to be paid. God’s justice demanded it and Jesus paid the price with his very own blood. Jesus took our place up there on that cross and the least you and I can do to say thank-you is to spend some time shouldering our own crosses as we retrace Jesus steps to Jerusalem.”
The season of Lent with all of its liturgical trappings makes it so easy to fall back upon St. Anslem’s theory of atonement. St Anslem the 11th century English monk, a legal scholar who came up with the theory about why Jesus died on the cross known as substitutionary satisfaction. Jesus stood in on our behalf to satisfy the debt that had to be paid.
St Anslem’s theory may have satisfied the minds of worshippers in the 11th century but a lot has changed in the last ten centuries. Take for example the sixteenth century — Martin Luther a name near and dear to the hearts of Lutherans everywhere. Good old Martin Luther was so obsessed with his own sinfulness that he spent many a long night agonizing over those things that he had done and left undone that he often found himself flagellating of an evening. You don’t hear much about flagellation these days; at least not in church. But flagellation was all the rage among the religious of Martin’s day.
Why Marty would whip himself into a positive frenzy just thinking about his sinfulness; and I do mean whip himself. Flagellation is the fine art of punishing oneself for ones’ sins by stripping down to the waist and whipping one’s back to the point of drawing blood so that you could bleed just like your Saviour bleed for you before he was led through the streets of Jerusalem on his way to Golgotha. Martin became so obsessed with his own sinful nature that his own priest feared for his life. Father Staupitz, the priest to whom Martin was constantly confessing his sins to is said to have become so frustrated with Martin’s obsession with trivial sin. I mean how much can a faith monk, living in a monetary have to confess. Legend has it that Staupitz grew weary of Martin’s confession of every trivial sin, that in desperation he once told Luther to go and sin boldly, perhaps hoping that Luther would at least have something to actually flagellate for.
Happily for Christendom, Martin Luther eventually came to the realization that far from being a harsh judge of our sinfulness, God is actually a gracious God and thus the Luther’s theology of Grace gave birth to the Reformation. No longer did the faithful have to worry about balancing the scales with acts of piety because God’s grace is sufficient. God in Christ freely forgives us all our sins, not because of any merit we might gain from acts of piety but simply because in Christ, God took on human form and travelled to the cross and paid the ultimate price. Thanks to Luther we all know that we are justified by faith through grace. We are made righteous in the eyes of God through Christ and there is nothing that we can say or do about it.
Now that’s all worked very well for about 500 years. Just a few years ago, even the Roman Catholic Church agreed that when it comes to the doctrine of grace, Martin Luther was correct. We humans it can be and is said, are simul justus et peccator; we are both sinners and saints all at the same time. Yes we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves, but by God’s grace we are also forgiven, and set free to live in joyful response to God’s amazing grace. So, for about 500 years we’ve been chugging alone, delighted that we are all forgiven sinners and then along comes Darwin.
Oops. You mean Adam and Eve weren’t actually the very first people on earth? And then along comes archeology. Oh, I see there’s actually a whole lot of bones that tell us that we humans didn’t arrive ready made, that actually over millions and millions of years we actually evolved into the creatures that we are and indeed there’s lots of medical evidence that insists that we are still evolving. Okay, so you mean to tell me that Eve didn’t actually cause us to fall from grace. There is no garden to which we can return to?
Now how are we going to explain who we humans are? If we are no longer understand the human condition according to the theological concept of “The Fall”, then why did Jesus have to die? The idea that we were once perfect creatures who committed some outrageous sin, and fell from grace and we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden, just doesn’t jive with the facts on the ground.
So, here we are at the beginning of Lent in the full throws of another Reformation and we are struggling to understand our place in the grand scheme of things. When you reject the theory of “The Fall” and you begin to understand yourselves not as broken people, but as incomplete people, people who are still evolving into whatever it is that we were created to be, well you can’t but help to look at Jesus differently. Couple that with the explosion of historical knowledge that has brought us all sorts of new insights into the first century in which Jesus of Nazareth actually walked the earth, and you begin to ask yourself, what are we too do when we get together to worship the creator of all that is and ever shall be.
So, that was my dilemma as I was trying to figure out how we should set off on our Lenten journey. I was busy contemplating the theory of original sin. Which dates back not to Jesus day, but rather to St. Augustine of Hippo who lived during the fifth century. The theory of original sin is one way of understanding the Creation story from the book of Genesis. You see as a result of our fall from the garden, humans, who were originally created to live in a perfect relationship with God, were somehow tempted when evil came to the garden in the form of a snake. Because Eve and then Adam, succumbed to the temptation of evil, God got annoyed and kicked them out of the garden and took away the gift of immortality. This fall from grace meant that from that day to this every human is born sinful by nature.
So there I was in my office contemplating the notion of original sin, when I was distracted by the tone on my computer that indicated that a new email had arrived. Tired of thinking about original sin, substitutionary satisfaction and the doctrine of grace, I gleefully succumbed to temptation long enough to open the email. It was from my daughter in-law. The subject line read: Happy Addison followed by an exclamation mark. The body of the email included one of those viewing screens above which was this message: “There is no video, just wonderful sound!” I eagerly clicked play: and to my delight came the sounds of our nine-month-old grand-daughter. She was laughing and laughing and laughing. Her mommy was playing peek-a-boo with her and her laughter was infections.
There is nothing in heaven or on earth quite like the sound of a baby laughing out loud with such great gusto, that all you can do is laugh right along. I laughed and I laughed, until tears of joy rolled down my cheeks. And I knew once and for all that the theory of original sin is nothing but a crock of ….Well you get the picture. Babies are not born sinful. Sinful babies are not being born all over the world as a result of an apple being eaten by some mythical creature. Now, I know full well that the doctrine of original sin is nothing more than a theory used to describe the human condition. I know the dangers of taking theories literally.
If we are indeed in the midst of a new reformation and I really do believe that we are. Then we really do have to begin to examine the theories and metaphors that we’ve been using for centuries to see if they are still life-giving ways of helping us to live in relationship to our Creator. When we no longer see ourselves as creatures born defined by original sin, we are set free to begin to explore human evolution in ways that will help us to evolve into the humans that we were created to be.
Lenten celebrations that flagellate us with words that reinforce a definition of ourselves as wicked sinners who can only be redeemed by a blood sacrifice simply won’t do in the 21st century. Not if we want to equip ourselves to live in communion with our Creator and our fellow creatures. Evolving Christians know that despite our weak and deliberate offences we are not the sum total of our weaknesses for we are fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of our creator; albeit an incomplete image. While we still look to our relationship with our Creator longing for the development of a clean heart with in us, we do so trusting that the Ground of All Our Being works in with and through us to ensure that we evolve into all that our Creator dreams that we can become.
So during the season of Lent we can look to the stories of Jesus of Nazareth who in his time and place revealed to his contemporaries a view of our Creator that challenged their notions of reality. We look to the life and witness of Jesus of Nazareth to see what we can learn about who we are and whose we are. And thanks to the struggles of all those who evolved before us, we can also look to the one we know as the Christ to seek understand of how God works in with and through us to achieve the evolution of humanity into creatures that live in ways that reflect the life of Jesus.
This is an exciting time to be alive. These are exciting days for the church. Excitement can be a wonderful thing, but it can also be frightening. So, sometimes we cling to the things of former days, and we hold on to the familiar. Those familiar comforts are all well and good if they provide us with some sense of security in these exciting times. But those familiar comforts can also be vain comforts if we begin to worship them.
So, during this Lenten season, I invite you to wander off into the wilderness. Now don’t be afraid, because we are after all Canadians and Canadians know how to handle a journey into the wilderness. Take heart for we are not going out into the wilderness alone. Jesus goes on before us. And we will follow his story to see what we can learn from his life and witness. And we’ll take the Mystics along with us to help us see the wisdom of the centuries in new ways.
Imagine if you will a baby in your own life. A baby from your past perhaps, you baby brother or sister, maybe your own babies when they were just new and discovering the joys of creation. Such a beautiful little child. So much ahead of her. So much to explore. But for now a simple game of peek-a-boo. Ah, such laughter. You can’t help but laugh along and as you laugh, the tears of joy stream down your cheeks as you begin to imagine the wonders of the beautiful human being this child will grow into. And as you are over-come with joy, you won’t be able to help yourself as you are compelled to thank the Creator of such a beautiful little creature. And as you give thanks, listen to the words of St Teresa of Avila whose joy echoes down through the centuries to help us evolve into the vision of our Creator: Teresa writes: “Just these two words God spoke changed my life, “Enjoy Me.” What a burden I thought I was to carry— a crucifix, as did Christ. Love once said to me, “I know a song, would you like to hear it?” And laughter came from every brick in the street and from every pore in the sky. After a night of prayer, God changed my life when God sang, “Enjoy Me.”
A Benediction: Listen, listen closely,
can you hear the memory of a baby’s laughter?
Such beauty, such potential, such joy.
Now listen again,
can you hear the voice of God?
Listen carefully,
listen beyond the laughter and you will hear God say:
“Enjoy Me”.
“Enjoy Me!”
Transfiguration Sunday – February 10, 2013
Listen to the sermon here
Two years ago, the Strange History of Transfiguration Sunday inspired this sermon. I offer it here because the words of Desmond Tutu speak volumes as I work on this year’s Transfiguration sermon.
When our images of God are tied to the idol of a supernatural sky-dweller who has the power to solve all our problems, despair is sure to follow as our super-hero fails time after time to impress us.
When I was a very little girl, I was absolutely convinced that I had the power to change the mind of God! Confident that I held such power, I never missed an opportunity to exercise it. Now, I’ll grant you that like most children, I was also convinced that the universe itself actually revolved around me, so believing that I was powerful enough to change God’s mind, wasn’t exactly much of a stretch. In fact, when I was a child, it wasn’t all that difficult to change God’s mind. For instance, I could stop God from breaking my mother’s back simply by leaping over a crack in the pavement. “Don’t step on a crack and break your mothers back.” Now, in my young mind the only one powerful enough to crush my mother’s powerful spine, must be God. I also knew that God wasn’t particularly fond of ladders, and that if I refrained from walking under them, God would smile upon me.
I had no idea why black cats, or spilling salt, or breaking mirrors, or opening umbrellas inside, or leaving hats on the bed, or putting new shoes on the table, would annoy God, but I knew enough to avoid doing such things. I was absolutely sure that God would respond positively if I managed to pull a turkey’s wishbone apart in just the right way so that I was left holding a piece larger than the piece my brother was left with. God also responded well if I knocked on wood, or caught sight of a falling star, or if I crossed my fingers and hoped to die.
I didn’t need to understand why my activities worked to influence the heart and mind of God, I simply knew that they did and would continue to do so just as long as I continued to avoid the necessary evils and indulge in an apple a day, and managed to blow out all the candles on my birthday cakes.
The universe that revolved around me might have been full of all sorts of rules, but it would continue to revolve exactly the way I wanted it to if I managed to placate the old guy up in the sky who was pulling every body else’s strings. I never once considered that that old God in the sky was pulling my strings because I was absolutely confident in my ability to do what was necessary to pull God’s strings.
But as I grew up, I began to learn that despite my best intentions, the universe did not revolve around me. Little by little I learned that I didn’t have what it takes to influence all of the things that were having an impact upon my life. And just as surely as my powers waned, so too did the powers of God.
I can still remember sitting in the back seat of the car and wondering why God despite the fact that I always lifted my feet up each and every time my father drove over a railroad track, my parents simply couldn’t find the money we needed to buy our happiness. Surely God must know that I was doing my part to do what was necessary to make God shine his smile upon my family.
So each and every time God failed to do exactly what I wanted God to do, God’s power was diminished in my eyes. As I grew, I gave up trying to influence God and I took off after God’s son. After all Jesus was far more fun to be around than his old doddering Father. For starters Jesus actually liked children. And Jesus had way better party tricks than his Dad. Jesus could turn water into wine, make the blind see, and the lame walk. And if the cupboard was bare, no need to worry, cause Jesus was even better than my Mom at turning nothing into something. Where Mom could make a meal out of almost nothing, Jesus could make enough to feed 5000. And there was always that trick to beat all tricks, cause in all my young life, I never heard tell of anyone else who ever came back from the dead and brought tons of chocolate with him. I mean that old doddering guy in the sky simply didn’t stand a chance against Jesus. Santa Claus was about the only one who could come close, and everybody knew that Santa would be nothing without Jesus.
So, somewhere along the way, that I had no need to worry about stepping on a cracks, or spilling salt, or dropping forks, because these things were nothing more than superstitions. Besides, who needs to worry about superstitions when you’ve got Jesus for as your friend? My buddy Jesus was all I needed to keep my world on an even keel. So, I walked with him and I talked with him and we were so happy together, until stuff started to happen that made me begin to doubt Jesus ability to change the world.
A few weeks before my eleventh birthday, Sirhan Sirhan shot Bobby Kennedy and for the second time in my life, I saw my father cry. I was only six-years old when the shooting of Bobby’s older brother made the adults in my life cry. Their tears changed something in me. I listened more intently to what was going on in the world around me. I needed to know what was happening so that I could do something to change it. A year after Bobby Kennedy was shot, I went to my first protest march. I was just twelve years old, but I knew that Vietnam was wrong and had to be stopped. I believed that my presence together with the presence of hundreds of thousands, could make a difference.
I left my buddy Jesus playing in the garden. I began to listen to the radical Jesus who spoke truth to power and called us to follow him so that we could change the world. As a teenager I knew that we had to end the war in Vietnam and even though the sixties were drawing to a close, and the flower children would soon be trading in their incense and beads so that the could find jobs and climb the corporate ladder, we marched. And when in 1975, the Vietnam war ended in defeat, I actually naively believed that public opinion had caused the powers that be to change their minds.
So, I continued to work for peace, only this time it was nuclear proliferation that we needed to stop. It was somewhere during the Regan years that I gave up the notion of changing the world by marching in the streets. Iran Contra put an end to my naiveté. Jesus and I retreated. Literally. I mean we literally retreated. A few friends and I worked together on a retreat center. Seabright Farm was a Christian retreat centre designed to nourish people who were trying to live their lives in the world. Jesus was our guide. We wanted to live in this complicated world of ours, the way that Jesus might live. So we dedicated ourselves to learning. Learning all we could about Jesus, Christianity, the church, theology, living responsibly, ethically. Our attempts to change the world took on a more modest approach. We set out to change the world, by changing ourselves.
Eventually, my work at Seabright Farm, brought me into seminary, where I suppose I thought I could change the world by changing the church. Along the way, I must confess that over the years I’ve become more than a little jaded and cynical. There are days when I don’t really believe that anything will ever really change. But there are moments, moments when I actually believe that it’s possible not only to change the world, but to actually change God.
Transfiguration Sunday is a strange festival in the Church calendar. The story of the Transfiguration is the story of Jesus climbing a mountain with his closest friends. On the mountaintop Jesus has a profound experience. There is a dazzling light, a cloud that overshadowed them, and the cloud terrified them. That same cloud appeared generations earlier and overshadowed one of the fathers of the Jewish people. That same cloud appeared generations later and overshadowed the father of the people of Islam.
As we read of that cloud today, we should do so with the same fear and trembling of our sisters and brothers who over the generations have encountered that cloud. For Transfiguration Sunday may be a festival of the church, but it’s history is steeped in the political and religious intolerance of the world. Before the fifteenth century, only a few Christian communities kept the feast of the Transfiguration. The festival hadn’t caught on like other festivals.
In all of Christendom only a handful of congregations marked the day and we would not be celebrating it today if it weren’t for a terrible battle. On the sixth of August 1456 news was announced in Rome that John Hunyady had defeated the Turks near Belgrade and the bells of churches rang out in celebration of the slaughter of some 50,000 Muslims. Overjoyed, Pope Callistus ordered the whole church to commemorate the victory against the infidels by celebrating the feast of the Transfiguration.
For generations the church commemorated the battle by celebrating Transfiguration Sunday on August the sixth. Some church’s still celebrate Transfiguration on the sixth of August. However, shortly after the end of World War II protestant churches discretely decided to move the festival of Transfiguration to the last day of Epiphany. They did so, because of the infamy of August 6. In 1945 a slaughter of a different sort was inflicted on a different people.
On August 6th 1945, someone climbed not a holy mountain, but into the cockpit of a plane—a machine of war. There had been a lull of a week in the fighting between the Allies and Japan. The Allies had a new secret weapon and they wanted to us it with the maximum psychological effect. They had prepared three atomic bombs. On the 16th of July, the first bomb was tested in New Mexico.
As a terrifying cloud rose up from the earth, the father of the atomic bomb J. Robert Oppenheim quoted from the Hindu Scriptures a line from the Bhagavad-Gita, “Now, I am become death the destroyer of worlds.” On August 6 the second bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, and three days later the third one was dropped on Nagasaki. 150,000 people lay dead. Thousands more died later from the effect of atomic radiation. 75,000 buildings were destroyed. Two cities were devastated. The world will never be the same. The date for the festival of Transfiguration was moved.
The shape of that awful cloud hangs now forever in our sky. If you close your eyes you will see that cloud; rising up from the earth; a mushroom more poisonous than anything created by God. It is the new tree of knowledge of good and evil. We have eaten of its fruit and we shall never be the same.
We live in fear of everything that emanates from that terrible cloud. Is it any wonder that the vision of that cloud was invoked by the leaders of our neighbours to the south as they tried to convince the world to go to war against the people of Iraq. Weapons of mass destruction! Yesterday, the memory of the cloud hung over Iraq. Today, the memory of that cloud is being used to isolate Iran and Korea.
Has the memory of that poisonous cloud obliterated from our minds the memory of another cloud? Do we no longer remember the story of another climb, another light, another voice, another cloud? Jesus was there speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.
Jesus was speaking of his death, his destruction by another tree. Do we not meet on Transfiguration Sunday today under the shadow of that tree, to break bread and to proclaim the victory of Christ’s death over every evil, even the total annihilation by human evil.
Friends, I trust that we will be led out of this morass of fear and hatred by a pillar of cloud; a cloud that transformed Moses and a band of refugees in the desert into a people; a cloud that rested upon Jesus declaring Jesus to be the embodiment of all that God had tried to say for generations; the same cloud that carried on Mohammad into the heavens, leaving behind a people who would take on the name Islam, which itself means peace.
Memories of clouds… Sorry, but I’ve looked at cloud’s from both sides know and like the song says I really don’t know clouds at all. I’m still wondering if its possible to be the people God created us to be? I’d given up wondering whether or not it’s realistic to hope, but rather whether it’s even possible to hope that the world can be changed. The poor will always be with us. Wars will keep breaking out just as surely as the sun rises in the east. Bad things will continue to happen to good people. And just when I think that hope is pointless…that the powerful will always abuse the powerless…just when I’m about ready to join the ranks of those who say live for today and forget about tomorrow…some people half a world away, begin to turn the whole world upside down…and dictators begin to loose their grip…and I begin to wonder, what if? And I feel the hope begin to stir in me.
In his book, God Has A Dream: A Vision of Home for Our Time, Desmond Tutu tells about a transfiguration experience that he will never forget. It occurred when apartheid was still in full swing. Tutu and other church leaders were preparing for a meeting with the prime minister of South Africa to discuss the troubles that were destroying their nation. They met at a theological college that had closed down because of the white government’s racist policies. During a break from the proceedings, Tutu walked into the college’s garden for some quiet time. In the midst of the garden was a huge wooden cross. As Tutu looked at the barren cross, he realized that it was winter, a time when the grass was pale and dry, a time when almost no one could imagine that in a few short weeks it would be lush, green, and beautiful again. In a few short weeks, the grass and all the surrounding world would be transfigured. As the archbishop sat there and pondered that, he obtained a new insight into the power of transfiguration, of God’s ability to transform our world. Tutu concluded that transfiguration means that no one and no situation is “untransfigurable.” The time will eventually come when the whole world will be released from its current bondage and brought to share in the glorious liberty that God intends.
Just over a week ago, many of you followed Jesus out of your comfort zone and down to the Inn From the Cold. You worked very heard to prepare over 200 meals to feed the hungry. But you did so much more than just feeding your neighbours. I believe that you actually achieved a transfiguration of sorts. Shortly before that evening, some of us watched Desmond Tutu talk about the need to change our image of God. I’d like to read back to you the words that Tutu said: The images that we have of God are odd because God—this omnipotent one—is actually weak. As a parent I understand this. You watch your child going wrong and there’s not very much you can do to stop them. You have tried to teach them what is right, but now it is their life and they are mucking it up. There are many moments when you cry for your child, and that’s exactly what happens with God. All of us are God’s children.
I frequently say, I’m so glad I’m not God! Can you imagine having to say, “Bin Laden is my child. Saddam Hussein is my child. George Bush is my child.” Oh! All of them, including me. Can you imagine what God must have felt watching the Holocaust? Watching Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Watching Rwanda? Can you imagine God watching Darfur? Imagine God watching Iraq and saying, “These are my children here, and they are killing my other children. And I can’t do anything because I have said to them, ‘I give you the space to be you and that space enables you to make choices. And I can’t stop you when you make the wrong choices. All I can do is sit here and cry.’” And God cries until God sees beautiful people who care, even if they may not do earth-shattering things.
There is a fantastic story of a so-called colored woman who was driven from her home and ostracized by her family because she had HIV/AIDS. She came to live in a home for people who suffered from the disease, and there were white men there who would help her because she couldn’t do anything herself. She was all skin and bones. They would carry her like a baby and wash her, bathe her, feed her. Then they would put her in front of a television set and hold her. And this was during the apartheid years. I visited this home and said, “What an incredible lesson in loving and compassion and caring.”
It was transfiguring something ugly, letting something beautiful come from a death-making disease. When God sees that, a smile breaks forth on God’s face and God smiles through the tears. It’s like when the sun shines through the rain. The world may never know about these little transfigurations, but these little acts of love are potent.
They are moving our universe so that it will become the kind of place God wants it to be. And so, yes, you wipe the tears from God’s eyes. And God smiles.” You people have transfigured the face of God on more than a few occasions. By following Jesus out into the world, to reach out to your sisters and brothers, you have transfigured the face of God.” (see the video below for the full context of this quote)
So, on this Transfiguration Sunday, let me remind you of God’s ability to Transform the world precisely because God dwells in with and through you! Do not give up hope: no one and no situation is “untransfigurable.” The time will eventually come when the whole world will be released from its current bondage and brought to share in the glorious liberty that God intends. Continue to give hope to the hopeless, reach out and love the world that God loves, and always remember that you have the power to transfigure the face of God!
A Benediction: Always remember that you have the power
to transfigure the face of God!
You can wipe the tears from God’s eyes.
You can make God smile.
Reach out with love.
Be the compassionate people God created you to be!
Receive the blessing of God whose love knows no boundaries,
Christ whose peace you embody,
And the Holy Spirit, whose power breathes
in with and through you,
To transfigure the world with love!
The Epistle Reading (Second Reading) for this coming Sunday is 1 Corinthians 13:1-13. Most of us have heard this reading over and over again at weddings as if it were some sort of recipe for happiness between lovers. So often we hear it as an impossible recipe and cast it aside as something nice but unattainable. What would happen if we could hear this passage not as a prescriptive recipe but as a descriptive revelation of the LOVE that is God. Couple this revelation with the knowledge that God dwells in, with, and through us and it becomes a description of the possibilities for each of us being LOVE in the world. The knowledge that LOVE dwells in us might just open us to being the love that the world so desperately needs.
Johnny Barnes is a Bermuda native who embodies the LOVE that dwells in him. How might we embody the LOVE that dwells in us? What does, would, could, will the embodiment of LOVE look like in you?
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