During my visit to Chautauqua last week, I was introduced to Fr. Gregory Boyle. As the Chaplain for the week, Fr. Boyle introduced us to his work at Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles. “Homeboy Industries provides hope, training, and support to formerly gang-involved and previously incarcerated men and women allowing them to redirect their lives and become contributing members of our community. Each year over 10,000 former gang members from across Los Angeles come through Homeboy Industries’ doors in an effort to make a positive change. They are welcomed into a community of mutual kinship, love, and a wide variety of services ranging from tattoo removal to anger management and parenting classes. Full-time employment is offered for more than 200 men and women at a time through an 18-month program that helps them re-identify who they are in the world, offers job training so they can move on from Homeboy Industries and become contributing members of the community – knowing they count!” Fr. Boyle’s work in and of itself is astonishing. But his ability to share the wisdom his work has taught him through the art of storytelling is miraculous. It was a joy to sit at this master’s feet!!! Here’s a talk he gave back in 2012. I’ve already ordered his book Tattoos on the Heart and look forward to gleaming more from this wise holy man!!!
Thanks to the generosity of my congregation, I am provided with time for Continuing Education. So, last week I journeyed down to the Chautauqua Institution to listen to Jack Spong articulate the thesis of his latest “last” book: Biblical Literalism: A Gentile Heresy. Jack’s 85 years have afforded him much wisdom when it comes to exploring the sacred texts of Christianity in ways that can open us to new visions of a Christianity capable of nourishing 21st century minds. I’m happy to report that Jack has yet another “last” book scheduled for publication in 2018 under the working title: “Charting a New Reformation.” As always it was a blessing to be guided by Jack!!! Thanks to the Chautauqua Institution for making Jack’s lectures available to a wider audience.
Bobby wasn’t like any other 10-year-old boy. Bobby had the face of an angel but the temperament of a devil. Bobby was a beautiful child. His blond hair and blue eyes together with his alabaster skin, pointed toward his Scandinavian heritage. At first sight, Bobby appeared to be the kind of child that any congregation would be proud to count as a member. But, Bobby’s physical appearance was deceiving and Bobby’s presence in church was not welcome. Bobby didn’t go down to Sunday school classes with the other children. The Sunday school teachers had tried to include Bobby, but after several parents threatened to withdraw their children, they asked Bobby’s parents not to send Bobby anymore. So Bobby stayed in the sanctuary with the adults. Most of the adult members tried to tolerate Bobby’s presence but for some, Bobby’s presence was simply unnerving. Bobby is autistic. Sitting and behaving in church was impossible for him. As long as we were singing hymns, Bobby was happy. He would catch the rhythms of the music and rock back and forth and sing. He never sang the same words as the rest of the congregation. But it was clear from his movements and the sounds that emanated from his lips that Bobby was singing. The trouble was that Bobby never stopped singing when we did. When his parents would attempt to put an end to Bobby’s song, he would flail about and sometime throw himself on the floor.
Now there are some churches where flailing about and throwing one’s self to the floor would be interpreted as a sign that the Holy Spirit was at work. But in this little Lutheran church, the reaction of the worshippers to Bobby’s outbursts made it clear that they feared that Bobby was possessed by spirits of the evil variety. Oh, they would never have come out and said that Bobby was possessed by demons, they just acted as if he were. Bobby’s favorite part of the service was communion. I think that he enjoyed the opportunity to walk up to the front of the church and kneel at the altar. When the Pastor would place a communion wafer in his hands, Bobby would giggle with glee. Bobby never ate the communion wafer; he would just hold it up to the light and smile. The communion wine was another thing altogether. Sometimes Bobby’s mother would try to help him drink from the common cup. Sometimes Bobby would dunk his wafer into the intinction cup and slop wine everywhere. At other times Bobby would be so preoccupied with his wafer that he just let the cup pass him by. On a good day Bobby’s behavior only made people uncomfortable. On a bad day, Bobby’s behavior embarrassed some, offended others, and sometimes outraged many.
I remember being summoned to an extra-ordinary council meeting. The meeting had been called to deal with the complaints and concerns of several long time members of the congregation that had decided that Bobby’s presence could now longer be tolerated at worship. The people who were complaining were not bad people. They were fine upstanding members of the congregation who found themselves unable to deal with Bobby’s presence in their midst. During the meeting we agonized over what to do. Continue reading →
He just said it for the third time! “Harlots!” He keeps calling them “harlots”, while I rack my brains to come up with one harlot. Then he points to the text and his charges become clearer, he says, “she is a “prostitute!”
My carefully reigned in anger is unleashed. “Where? Where? Where? Show me where it says this woman is a prostitute!”
As he refers to the Gospel text and insists that, “It is there, right there in the text”,
I want to scream, I want to cry, I want to wipe the bemused expression from his face. I want to rub his nose in the damned text. Instead, I begin the uneasy process of reigning in my anger. I slow my speech, I try to erase the tremor from my voice and I ask him to, “Show me, show me where it says this woman is a prostitute.”
He consults his text and says, “a woman in the city who was a sinner.”
“A sinner not a prostitute.” I respond.
He insists, “Yes a prostitute.”
“Where?” I ask.
Again he insists, “A woman who was a sinner.”
I demanded to know, “Where does it say she was a prostitute?”
He insists, “The author means that she was a prostitute.”
I lose control, “How do you know? What words does the author use to say that his woman was a prostitute? Show me in the text where it says she was a prostitute?”
He still doesn’t get it, “What do you mean? It is clear that this woman was a prostitute.”
Once again I push, “Show me. Show me where?”
He continues to say, “She was a woman from the city who was a sinner.”
I know that the text says that, so I implore him to tell me, “The Greek… What does the Greek say?”
He replies, “amartolos”.
I push, “Does that mean prostitute?” We both know that it does not.
He replies, “Sinner. But the context clearly shows that she was a prostitute.”
Still pushing I ask him to “Show me. Show me how the narrative says this woman was a prostitute. Show me where it says her sins were sexual.
Show me where it says so in the narrative.”
He says, “It’s clear.”
Clearly we disagree, so I try again, “Clear to you. Show me. Show me!”
As he fumbles through the pages, I offer him a way out, “Okay. Even if I concede the point that her sins were sexual, show me where it says that these sexual sins were nothing more than lust or adultery, show me where it says that she was a prostitute. Show me!”
He couldn’t show me. It’s simply not there.
Nowhere in the New Testament does it ever say in Greek or in English that Mary of Magdala is a prostitute. But over and over again scholars, theologians, popes, preachers, and dramatists, have continued to cast Mary of Magdala as a prostitute.
In the years that have transpired since than day in seminary, when a visiting New Testament scholar insisted that “the context clearly shows that she was a prostitute,” I’ve delighted in being able to participate in the phenomenon of Mary’s resurrection as the first Apostle. Continue reading →
The song sung prior to the Gospel is Jann Aldridge-Clanton’s “Welcome New Wineskins” sung to the tune of Blessed Assurance. (Inclusive Hymns for Liberating Christians). As for my appropriation of the Beach Boys, “Help Me Rhonda”…my apologies! I am indebted to Christopher B. Zeichmann’s article “Rethinking the Gay Centurion” in The Bible and Critical Theory Vol 11 #1, 2015.
This Trinity Sunday sermon owes much to John Shelby Spong’s book a “New Christianity for a New World” You can listen to the sermon here then watch the tail end of the Wolf Blitzer interview mentioned in the sermon.
In the midst to the devastation and debris that was left of the town of More, Oklahoma, it was all to clear that the power of the tornado that whipped through such a heavily populated area had left behind the kind of destruction that tears not only the foundations of buildings but also of lives. In living rooms around the world millions of people watched as the news media descended on what was left in the wake of nature’s wrath. One particular news report is still reverberating around the Internet. I had just come from my office where I had spent the afternoon, reviewing the Doctrine of the Trinity in order to write this sermon. My wife Carol was in the kitchen cooking supper and I sat down to catch up on the news events of the day. I tuned into CNN and there amidst the rubble of More Oklahoma was the familiar face of Wolf Blitzer. It was the day after the tornado and the big name newscasters had been rushed to the scene in time to provide color-commentary on the evening news. Wolf was interviewing a young mother named Rebecca Vitsmun who was holding a squirming her 19 month old, toddler Anders in her arms. The young mother gave a blow-by-blow account of her narrow escape from. All afternoon Rebecca was paying attention to the weather reports. Rebecca was not from More, but rather from New Orleans and so she was not used to tornado warnings. She’d grown up with Hurricane warnings and so her first instinct was to evacuate the area. But her husband and neighbours had told her that the safest thing to do would be to take shelter. Six-teen minutes before the tornado struck the weather service issued a warning to take shelter. As Rebecca’s husband raced home from work, this young mother grabbed her laptop, a mattress and her toddler and took shelter in the bathtub. Huddled in the tub covered by a mattress she anxiously watched the reports on her laptop. Tracing the path of the tornado, Rebecca realized that the tornado was headed straight for her street. Rebecca’s New Orleans’ instinct kicked in and with her baby in her arms she jumped into her car and without taking time to put her baby in the car seat, she drove as fast as she could out on to the freeway where she pulled over and put Anders into his car seat and then drove some more. After the tornado, Rebecca reunited with her husband, and they headed back to what was left of their home. The bathtub was so full of debris that it was clear to them that Rebecca’s instincts had saved her life.
After telling her harrowing tale, Wolf Blitzer congratulated Rebecca for saving her baby’s life and then said to this young woman, “You gotta thank the Lord.” Rebecca was clearly taken aback by the comment and hesitated. I held my breath, annoyed as hell at Blitzer for asking such a stupid question. Rebecca’s hesitation gave Blitzer the opportunity to move on, but no he just had to have an answer, and so he persisted. “Do you thank the Lord?” Rebecca gave Blitzer the kind of look that says, “Are you kidding me?” Then Rebecca gave Blitzer an answer that he sure wasn’t expecting from an American from the heartland of Oklahoma; Rebecca smiled as she answered, “I’m actually an atheist.”
As Rebecca laughed awkwardly, I cheered so loudly that Carol came into the room to see what was going on. I was so proud of that young woman for not going along with Blitzer’s nonsense. Who in their right minds would believe in a Lord who would pluck one family out of a bathtub and let seven children die in an elementary school? I mean, if this Lord that Bilitzer is so willing to give credit too is such a great rescuer, why didn’t this Lord change the twister’s path and send it out over the cornfields where the only damage it could do would be to crops?
I know they say there are no atheists in fox-holes, but I for one think that that bathtub Rebecca was hunkered down in was indeed a fox-hole and I’m delighted that when all was said and done, she and little Anders were saved by her instinct for survival. As for this Lord of Blitzer’s, well, judging by the awkwardness that Blitzer exhibited after Rebecca stood her ground, I can only guess that this reporter misjudged the situation. Blitzer a city-slicker from New York, assumed that all the local yokels must be bible-thumping Christians, and he probably thought that his question would have received a mindless ra, ra, yeah God, kind of response from all Oklahomans. I trust he won’t make that mistake again. I kind of feel sorry for him, because after all it only took a few hours before some televangelist’s were suggesting that God did indeed send the tornado to teach people a lesson. According to some bible-thumpers, if people prayed hard enough they would have been saved. Some even went so far as to suggest that the tornado was punishment for gay marriage. Continue reading →
I don’t remember the first time I ever saw him. I was barely 17 months old when my brother Alan arrived. Despite the fact that he ruined my gig as an only child, Alan and I grew close over the years. We moved around a lot so we became one another’s best friends. But we went our separate ways when we became teenagers. When I tell the stories, I say that we went our separate ways because Alan became preoccupied with sports. I suspect that when Alan tells the stories, he says that we went our separate ways because I became preoccupied with the church. Either way you tell it, family and friends used to say that it was hard to believe that we grew up in the same household. Alan developed a reputation for being a bit of a redneck. I developed a reputation for being a bit of a radical. Alan drove four-wheel-drives and went hunting. I drove old beat up cars and lived at an ecumenical retreat centre. Alan learned a trade, settled down and raised a family. I travelled the world and didn’t get around to figuring out what I was going to be when I grew up, I went back to school at the age of 30.
Alan and I didn’t get around to understanding one another until we were in our mid-40’s. When I grew to appreciate the gentle man that he has become and Alan began to respect the person I’ve become. We still love to talk politics, but these days we tend to agree more than we disagree, I’m not sure who mellowed, the redneck or the radical. We don’t talk much about religion, though. Growing up, Alan would claim to be an atheist, and scoffed at my involvement with the church. These days, Alan, suggests he is an agnostic, and although he’s come to respect my life in the church, he still scoffs at the hypocrisy of the church.
I still remember the very first time that I saw Manjit. Her face was the colour of pure milk chocolate. Her jet-black hair was long and wavy. She sat at the very back of the classroom. When the teacher introduced me to Manjit, her toothy grin welcomed me. We were twelve years old. I was the new kid in town and Manjit was the only East Indian in the class. We were to share a double-desk for the remainder of the school year. I remember my first trip to Manjit’s home. A science project needed our attention. I can still smell the aroma of Manjit’s home where exotic curries released their pungency into the air. Over several meals at Manjit’s, I learned to like my food hot and spicy. Manjit’s mother would blend her own spices and she never forgot to send a package or two of her specially blended curries home with me.
Manjit is a gentle soul who introduced me to the wonders of her faith. Manjit is a Hindu. Manjit never tried to encourage me to become a Hindu. Although over the years she would remind me of the Hindu saying that admonishes Hindus to be better Hindus, Muslims to be better Muslims, Jews to be better Jews, Buddhists to be better Buddhists, and Christians to be better Christians. Manjit grew into a kind and gentle woman. She works as a social worker in Vancouver’s rough east-end neighborhoods. The last time I saw Manjit she was patiently guiding the students of a confirmation class that I taught, around her Temple. Later that evening Manjit and I talked a long time about Jesus. Manjit told me that she’d always been fascinated with Jesus’ teachings and that she had no problem believing that Jesus is God, but then she explained that Hindus have a thousand god’s.
I can still remember the very first time that Henry walked into my office. A long black beard together with the yarmulke that he wore on his head gave Henry away. So, from the very beginning I knew that Henry was Jewish. But it took a few years of working together before I discovered that in addition to being a graphic artist, Henry is also a rabbi. Henry became a dear friend of mine and over the years he shared so much of his wisdom with me. Many a night Henry and I sat up to the wee hours discussing the Scriptures. Henry even arranged for me to study Hebrew at his Yeshiva. I learned a great deal from Henry. We often talked about Jesus. We rarely agreed about Jesus, but we often talked about him.
Alan, Manjit and Henry, some would call them an unholy Trinity. But to me they are, each of them, sacred. Trinity Sunday is my least favorite Sunday of the Church year. It’s the only festival of the church year that is designed to celebrate not God, nor Jesus, not even the Holy Spirit, but rather a doctrine of the church. The notion that God is One in Three; a doctrine that was created by theologians to explain the inexpressible, a doctrine the church “fathers” began to cast in stone in the words of the Apostle’s, Nicene and Athanasian Creeds. Three Creeds that make up an unholy trinity in and of themselves. Three Creeds that the Lutheran Church continues to hold as articles of the faith. Three Creeds that continue to hold sway in our church.Three Creeds that in my humble opinion make up an unholy trinity. Three Creeds upon which the doctrine of the Trinity rests.
The Apostles’ and Nicene creeds are familiar to most people who’ve spent time in the churches of Christendom. But it’s the 3rd creed of this unholy Trinity that makes Trinity Sunday my least favorite Sunday of the Church year and for me calls into question the entire doctrine of the Trinity. I still remember the first time I actually heard the third creed. I was about 20. I’d been attending church for about five years and I’d already learned to recite the Apostles creed which we used almost every Sunday and the Nicene Creed which we used on the high holy days like Easter, Pentecost and Christmas. But somehow in those five years I never came across the Athanasian Creed. I must have missed a few Trinity Sundays because in the Lutheran Church tradition dictates that on Trinity Sunday the Athanasian Creed be used. So, on this particular Sunday after the Hymn of the Day the pastor instructed us to turn to page 54 in our Lutheran Book of Worship. Continue reading →
This Sunday is Trinity Sunday. In anticipation, preachers all over the world are dutifully pondering the Doctrine of the Trinity desperately searching for something to say to encourage their congregations.
Too many preachers will trot out tired old clichés conjuring up images of triangles, shamrocks around, or point to H20’s ability to appear as water, ice, or steam while still maintaining it’s unified essence. Or have you heard the one about the 3 blind men and the elephant in the room. That old chestnut is trotted out by many a desperate preacher struggling to put flesh on the doctrine of the trinity. But for the life of me I can’t see how 1 blind man touching the elephant’s trunk and presuming that there is a tree in the room, while a second blind man catching wind of the elephant’s ear is convinced that there is some sort of giant fan in the room, while a third man grabs hold of the tail and is sure that he has hold of a rope, helps you to conclude that just because they’re all sharing a room with an elephant you can now confess that God is indeed Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever amen. But all sorts of mental gymnastics will be exercised in the vain attempt to make some sort of sense of the doctrine of the Trinity!
On Trinity Sundays, mindful of the fact that trying to explain the doctrine of the Trinity usually leads to heresy: dusty theological books that have not seen the light of day since last Trinity Sunday have been poured over to ensure that the formula’s learned in seminary are repeated correctly and heresy scrupulously avoided. The imaginative among us have attempted to baffle our congregations with our theological intellect, the pragmatic among us have attempted to baffle our congregations with something akin to BS, while the desperate among us have simply tried to survive the Trinity Sunday hoping against hope that no one will notice that we haven’t a clue what we’re talking about.
Perhaps only dear old Dr. Martin Luther possessed the theological integrity sufficient to save a preacher from the perils of preaching on Trinity Sunday. So, before I launch, forth, let me remind you what the instigator of the Reformation had to say on the subject of the Trinity. Martin Luther warned that: “To deny the Trinity is to risk our salvation; to try and explain the Trinity is to risk our sanity.”
I will confess that Martin Luther had much more at stake, literally at stake, than I do, because the truth is that for centuries the punishment for heresy would have found many an ancient preacher burned at the stake. But while the death penalty for heresy has been lifted, the risk to one’s sanity remains.
Now, I will confess that when faced with a particularly difficult theological knot, I prefer to begin by quoting Jesus and not Luther, but alas Jesus remained silent on the issue of the Trinity. So, I did try to find something helpful in the words of the Apostle Paul. But alas, without some really amazing theological gymnastics that are beyond my abilities to comprehend, even the Apostle Paul remains mute on the issue of the Trinity. So keeping in mind Dr. Luther’s dire warning that to, “To deny the Trinity is to risk our salvation; but to try and explain the Trinity is to risk our sanity.”
Let me remind you that the Trinitarian formula appears in Scripture only once, in Matthew 28, during what is called the Great Commission, when Jesus commands the disciples to go forth, baptizing in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. But the doctrine of the Trinity does not appear in the Bible
– The doctrine of the trinity, as we know it, was first formulated in the fourth century, by a couple of guys named Gregory and a woman called Marcrina.
– The doctrine of the Trinity was then developed over hundreds of years
– The doctrine of the Trinity was at the heart of several wars
– Thousands of Christians were killed because they came down on the loosing side of arguments over the doctrine of the Trinity
– No one has ever been able to adequately explain the Trinity
– Every explanation of the Trinity that I have ever come across includes some form of heresy
By the way, just so we’re clear, I rummaged through some of my previous sermons on the doctrine of the Trinity and I must confess that if this were the twelfth century, an angry mob would be stoking up the fires beneath my feet because based on things I have proclaimed on various Trinity Sundays a charge of Modalism could very successfully be laid against me, as could a charge of Sabellianism. You might be interested to know, that more traditional preachers than I, will no doubt preach sermons this Sunday which will prove them guilty of Arianism or at the very least Subordinationism. All of these heresies in a bygone age would have left us with a severe shortage of clergy in the church, as many of us would be smoldering at the stake for our crimes. Deciding who is right and who is wrong, who is in and who is out is a deadly preoccupation of humanity, a preoccupation that the church has not been able to escape. Continue reading →
Pentecost Sunday is a day for stories about the nearness of God. So we begin with the story of the Tower of Babel from Genesis 11:1-9, then make our way to the anonymous gospel-storyteller we call Luke’s story of the early followers of Jesus’ encounter with the Holy Spirit at Pentecost in Acts 2:1-21, and then the anonymous gospel-storyteller we call John’s story of Jesus’ insistence that he and God are one, before rounding off with Sandy Eisenberg Sasso’s excellent children’s book God In Between.
It is unusually cold and stormy here today. So, I walked on the treadmill and watched Rob Bell’s latest re-telling of the story of humanity. Well worth watching. To my colleagues who scoff at Bell, I dare you to watch this and not come away with several sermon ideas!!! To those of you who love Rob Bell, you’ll love this. If you’ve never heard of Rob Bell, “where’ve you been?” Enjoy!!! If you know where I can get my hands on a whiteboard like his, hook me up!
If you haven’t had an opportunity to learn from Amy-Jill Levine, don’t miss this opportunity!!! I have travelled far and wide to listen to Professor Levine and she has never failed to open the New Testament in ways that have changed my view of Jesus “The Misunderstood Jew”. Her book “short stories by Jesus” is my go-to for insights into the parables of Jesus. This year our congregation has benefited greatly from “The Jewish Annotated New Testament” edited by Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler. Jewish New Testament scholars are a rare breed and Amy-Jill Levine is powerfully articulate in her approach to the teachings of the Jewish rabbi that we Christians long to follow. Members of Holy Cross: be sure to sign-up for the road trip we will be taking into the city to be a part of this event!!! For those who will be anywhere near Toronto, follow this link for details. In the meantime allow this video to whet your appetite.
“In the night in which he was betrayed. Our Lord Jesus took bread, and gave thanks, broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying: Take and eat this is my body, given for you.”
“In the night in which he was betrayed” these are the words of institution. I remember them well. I also remember the turmoil my pastor created in me when he had the audacity to change those words. It was 1979, I was 22 years old; young and full of ideas, hungry for knowledge and passionately faithful; excited about worship, in love with the church and determined to be the kind of Christian who had the courage not just to talk the talk, but walk the walk. The brand new Lutheran Book of Worship had only been in print for just over a year and as a dedicated member of our congregations Worship Committee I’d been to several workshops to learn all the new fangled changes that this ground-breaking new book introduced into the liturgy; new fangled changes based on a return to the traditions of the church’s glorious past. Three liturgical options, all based on the old Latin Mass of the 11th century. In all three settings of the liturgy these words were clear: “In the night in which he was betrayed. Our Lord Jesus took bread, and gave thanks, broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying: Take and eat this is my body, given for you.”
So, why oh why, did our pastor get it so very wrong. Over and over again, no matter how hard we tried we could not get him to say the right words. Over and over again, he acted as if thousands of years of tradition meant nothing. Over and over again he insisted upon using different words. We tried to bring him back to the tradition. But it was as if he could not hear our well reasoned arguments. It was as if he didn’t care about the great crowd of witness who had gone before us. It was as if he thought he knew better than the Church; and not just the Lutheran Church but the ancient church; better than the writers of the gospels and St. Paul himself. Maybe even better than the Lord God himself, who after all had in my humble opinion, been responsible for inspiring the writing of these words. “In the night in which he was betrayed. Our Lord Jesus took bread, and gave thanks, broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying: Take and eat this is my body, given for you.”
Jesus spoke these words, so why did our pastor believe that he had any business tinkering with these words. Sure he had a good reason for wanting to change the words. But if everyone felt free to change the words of the liturgy the next thing you know we’d have chaos; and where would the church be. I argued with him. I pleaded with him. Others argued with him and pleaded with him. Some, even threatened him. Say the words correctly or there’ll be trouble. We’ll report you to the bishop; we’ll leave the congregation. “In the night in which he was betrayed. Our Lord Jesus took bread, and gave thanks, broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying: Take and eat this is my body, given for you.” And yet over and over again with his back turned to the congregation, because that’s how it was done in those days, when altars were up against the wall, and pastors held up the bread, up high as if God himself were up, there up high above our heads, looking down to ensure that everything was done just so. With the bread held high the pastor would insist upon saying, On the night before he died, Our Lord Jesus took bread, and gave thanks, broke it, and gave it to his disciples saying: Take and eat this is my body, given for you.” I loved that man dearly. He was a sweet, kind, generous, hard working, part-time pastor who scraped out a living as a small time farmer when he wasn’t working in the barn he was there for us. I loved him, but he was just plain wrong. Even if his reasons for being wrong were well intentioned, you just don’t mess with the tradition like that. The words are there, they way they are for reasons beyond our understanding. They are after all divinely inspired. And this is the Eucharist after all; the meal that lies at the very heart of who we are.Continue reading →
With readings from Julian of Norwich, Julia Ward Howe and the Gospel according to John 17:20-26, our Mothers’ Day was infused by Sophia! I am indebted to John Shelby Spong’s “The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic and John Philip Newell’s “Rebirthing of God: Christianity’s Struggle for New Beginnings” for insights beyond my own imaginings.
First Reading Revelations of Love, by Julian of Norwich
Chapter 26:
Again, our Lord showed himself to me, this time more glorious than I had seen him before. I learned that our soul will never find rest until it comes to the fullness of Christ’s joy.
So Christ said, again and again,
“I AM the one.
I AM the one.
I AM the one most honoured.
I AM the one you love.
I AM the one you enjoy.
I AM the one you serve.
I AM the one you long for.
I AM the one you desire.
I AM the one you yearn for.
I AM the one who is everything.
I AM the one whom the holy church preaches and teaches.
I AM the one who showed myself to you.”
There were so many words, I couldn’t understand them all. But the joy I had in listening to those words went far beyond anything I could think or desire. I won’t try to explain them, but, as the grace of God gives you love and understanding, you will know what God means.
Second ReadingThe Founder of Mothers’ Day
Julia Ward Howe’s
Mothers’ Day Proclamation (1870)
Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or tears!
Say firmly: “We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies.
Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have taught them of charity, mercy and patience.
We women of one country will be too tender of those of another to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”
From the bosom of the devastated earth, a voice goes up with our own.
It says, “Disarm, Disarm!”
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.
Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesars but of God.
In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.
SERMON:
When I was just a kid, my mother would ask me a question that would be the beginning of a conversation, a routine of sorts that comes out of my Mom’s own childhood in Northern Ireland. The routine goes something like this. Mom would ask me: “How much do you love me?” and I would answer as I’d been taught to answer: “A big bag of sugar!” To which my Mom would reply, “I love you more, I love you two bags of sugar!” To which I would reply, that I loved my Mom, “Five big bags of sugar!” Over the years I’ve met lots of people from Belfast who measure love in bags of sugar. As near as I can tell this loving conversation has something to do with sugar’s ability to make all things sweet and the fact that over the generations sugar was in short supply because most people simply couldn’t afford to buy sugar. I’ve also been told that during and after the two World Wars sugar was rationed, so a big bag of sugar was more sugar than most people ever saw. Sugar was a much sought after satisfying treat, that was essential to a happy life, so measuring love in bags of sugar is something that to this day, my great-nieces and nephews still learn from their elders. But these days even children know that sugar isn’t what it used to be. We all know too well the dangers of a big bag of sugar. Sugar in large quantities is bad for us! Loving someone today, often means limiting their sugar intake. I suspect that expressing love in terms of bags of sugar will soon go the way of Ring-around-the-rosie…while children still sing it they have no idea that it is all about the black plague that saw millions of children fall to their death…. Love measured in bags of sugar, like packets full of posey, is a thing of the past…vaguely remembered by only a few. Given a few generations and our ways of expressing things, like language changes over time. Take for example our way of expressing the Divine, the Source of All that IS and all that Ever Shall be, the names we give to the ONE who is responsible for our Creation, the ONE in whom we live and move and have our being, the ONE we call God, has been known by many names over the centuries. The earliest name for the ONE credited with our Creation is quite simply “El”…”El” is if you will, the generic name for “God” El a word found in both the Ancient Sumerian and Canaanite languages translates as, god. In the ancient manuscripts of what we know call the Hebrew Scriptures, but our parents called the Old Testament, the earliest expression used for the God we were raised to worship is, El Shaddai, which is all too often incorrectly translated into English as God Almighty, but which quite literally translates into english as “breasted one” or the more accurate translation, “She Who Has Breasts”. Elohim, often incorrectly translated as LORD, is the feminine plural word for “majesty”. El Shekinah, is the Ancient Hebrew expression for the presence of God, which quite literally means, “she who dwells among us”. Chokhma is another Ancient Hebrew expression which was used to express the feminine spirit of the Divine which was later translated in to Greek as Sophia, we translate as Wisdom. Ruach is the Ancient Hebrew way of expressing the very essence of God, in the Scriptures it is used in Genesis as the Ruach Elohim, which literally translates as the feminine, majestic “breath, wind, or spirit of God, which we now express as the Holy Spirit. All these feminine ways of expressing what is meant by the word God, were supplemented with images of God as a mother eagle, a mother bear, a mother hen, a birthing mother, a suckling mother, a comforting mother, a woman in labour, and yes even as a woman looking for her lost coin; all these feminine ways of expressing the very nature of our God, were lost to us for generations. Slowly, we are rediscovering these old ways of understanding the nature of our God who is LOVE. LOVE infinitely sweeter than any old bag of sugar. So, today as we read the words put into the mouth of Jesus by the anonymous gospel-storyteller that we call John, in which Jesus insists that he and God are ONE, I can’t help wondering about the ways in which this expression has changed over time. Our Gospel text this morning comes from what is commonly called Jesus’ farewell discourse or the High Priestly Prayer. The story-teller we call John puts Jesus in the garden at Gethsemane just before the events that happen on what we call Good Friday. In this discourse Jesus prays for his followers, “I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all may be one, as you, Abba, are in me and I in you; I pray that they may be one in us, so that the world may believe that you sent me. I have given them the glory you gave me that they may be one, as we are one—I in them, you in me—that they may be made perfect in unity. Then the world will know that you sent me, and that you loved them as you loved me. That we may be ONE…so often this fervent prayer has been interpreted as a plea for unity. Listen to what our friend Jack Spong has to say about the all too common ways this discourse has been used by Jesus’ followers: Jack writes: “The “high priestly prayer”..proceeds in three parts. The first is a prayer that Jesus utters for himself, the second is a prayer he prays for the disciples and the third is a prayer that is offered for those throughout history who will believe because of the witness of the disciples. The primary request in this prayer is that unity be achieved among believers. The desired outcome is not ecclesiastical unity,” (that is to say the unity of the church), which is how this prayer has been interpreted by the church. That interpretation, “that usage is always in the service of institutional power. Nor is it content or doctrinal unity, as various councils of the church have so often implied and sought to impose. It is not a unity imposed on any basis from outside the service of any agenda. No, the unity of which this prayer speaks is the oneness of the human with the divine that has been the constant theme of this gospel. It is the unity of the vine with the branches. That unity is found in understanding God, not as an external being, but as the essence of life. John even makes Jesus use the third-person name and title for himself to make his point: Unity comes in knowing “the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” The Word of God comes from God, reveals the meaning of God and returns to God. It is a mystical experience of oneness-not a oneness in which individuality is lost, but a oneness in which individuality is affirmed, security is surrendered and new being is entered.” What our friend Jack Spong is trying to open us up to is the way in which Jesus followers understood Jesus to be opening humanity up to a new understanding of what it means to be human. A way of being in the world that understands our origins in the ONE, our existence as ONE, and our passage into the ONE. This radical expression of our humanity as being ONE with the divine, or seeing divinity in humanity changes everything. But most importantly, it changes the way in which we relate to God. God is no longer expressed as some far off distant super-natural being, but rather as an intimate, integral, being, in which we live and move and have our being. I reminded you at the beginning of our worship that today is also the feast day of Julian of Norwich, a 14th century woman who understood this ONEness in the same radical way. Julian of Norwich insisted that we are not just created from afar by a distant Creator. We are born from the very womb of the divine. John Philip Newell writes of Julian: “This is why Julian so loves to refer to God as Mother as well as Father. She sees us as coming forth from the essence of the ONE who is the Source of all things. What does it mean that we are made of God rather than simply by God? In part it means that the wisdom of God is deep within us, deeper than the ignorance of what we have done. It is to say that the creativity of God is deep within us, deeper than any barrenness in our lives or relationships, deeper than any endings in our families or our world. Within us—as a sheer gift of God—is the capacity to bring forth what has never been before, including what has never been imagined before. Above all else, as Julian says, the love-longings of God are at the heart of our being. We and all things have come forth from the ONE. Deep within us are holy, natural longings for oneness, primal sacred drives for union. We may live in tragic exile from these longings, or we may have spent a whole lifetime not knowing how to truly satisfy them, but they are there at the heart of our being, waiting to be born afresh.” We are not just made by God, we are made of God. Think about it. You and I are made of God. When we begin to see our fellow human beings as ONE with God, this has profound implications for how we relate to one another. For as much as you do unto the least of these you do unto me. Jesus is teaching a whole new way of being in the world. Jesus knew this intimacy, this ONEness with God, and sought to instil the wisdom of this Unity, this divinity that finds expression in humanity, into his followers so that all would know the truth of our ONEness in the unity that finds expression in each of us. The implications for how we live together are enormous. Bags and bags of sugar could not even begin to sweeten life in the way our ONEness with the LOVE that we call God offers to those who embrace this unity. God is not an external, distant entity; God is a life we enter, a love we share, the ground in which we are rooted. The call of Christ is not into religion, but into a new mystical oneness. Jack Spong puts it this way: “The good news of the gospel, as John understands it, is not that you—a wretched, miserable, fallen sinner—have been rescued from your fate and saved from your deserved punishment by the invasive power of a supernatural, heroic God who came to your aid. Nowhere does John give credibility to the dreadful, guilt-producing and guis-filled mantra that “Jesus died for my sins.” There is rather an incredible new insight into the meaning of life. We are not fallen; we are simply incomplete. We do not need to be rescued, but to experience the power of an all-embracing love. Our call is not to be forgiven or even to be redeemed; it is to step beyond our limits into a new understanding of what it means to be human. It is to move from a status of self-consciousness to a realization that we share in a universal consciousness. John’s rendition of Jesus’ message is that the essence of life is discovered when one is free to give life away, that love is known in the act of loving and that the call of human life is to be all that each of us can be and then to be an agent of empowering others to be all that they can be.” Jack Spong, like Julian before him, like the anonymous gospel-storyteller we call John, see in Jesus the expression of the ONEness of which we are made. How much do I love you? Well lets just say that once, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child. But when I became an adult, I put the ways of childhood behind me. Where once a bag of sugar, was enough to express my love, now I am beginning to understand that I was not just created by love, I am created of love, a love beyond my ability to imagine, a love in which I live and move and have my being. The love that we call God, El Shaddai, the breasted one, Elohim, majesty, El Shekenia, She Who Dwells Among us, Sohpia, Wisdom, Mother of us all, Yahweh, I will be who I will be. The I AM, in which I live and move and have my being. And just as, if not more importantly, the I AM in which all humanity lives and moves and has being. The implications of this way of expressing Divinity and understanding humanity are as immense as the LOVE that makes us ONE. Amen.
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 that 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 fails 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!!!
For those who were not able to attend our Pub Night, here’s the video that kicked off our conversations. Diana Butler Bass, speaking at All Saints’ in Pasadena in December of 2015 introduces her book Grounded: Finding God in the World, A Spiritual Revolution. The struggle between the conventional images of God and the emerging images of God sparked some interesting conversation!
I remember a phrase my mother used to use when things were getting to be too much for her; when we were harping on at her, nagging her, disturbing her, being too loud or just generally annoying her, Mom would shout out to us, “Auk away and give my head peace!” As a kid, I used to think that that was just my Mom wanting us to behave, to go away or to be quiet, so that she could get some rest. But over the years I have come to understand that what my mother was really doing was something we all do from time, crying out in desperation for a little peace; the kind of peace that the world cannot give, the kind of peace that the world so desperately needs. The kind of peace that Jesus was talking about when he said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you; but the kind of peace I give you is not like the world’s peace. Don’t let your hearts be distressed; don’t be fearful.”
I have come to believe that our lack of the peace of which Jesus speaks lies at the very heart of the lack of peace in the world. As I grew up I came to know up close and personal the kind of peace my mother longed for. Shortly after my eighteenth birthday, I packed my belongings into a backpack and boarded an airplane in Vancouver for a twelve-hour flight to Amsterdam. I’d been saving for about a year to raise the airfare and the eight hundred dollars in travellers’ cheques that was stuffed into a money belt around my waste. I desperately wanted to see the world and at the time, I actually believed the old tattered book that was stuffed into my daypack that I could indeed see Europe on $5.00 a day. By my reckoning $5.00 a day would buy me 160 days in Europe; just over 5 and a half months. Even if I allowed the odd extravagant day when I might spend $10.00 a day, I might be able to squeeze 5 months out of my $800.00 dollars, which along with my secret weapon should allow me to travel about Europe for at least a year. My secret weapon, was none other than my birth, because as a British citizen I am entitled to work anywhere in the European Common Market. I figured working a few weeks here and there ought to allow me the luxury of travelling about Europe for at least a year at which time I would head back to Vancouver to visit my family and work for a few months in order to head back out on the road, this time maybe to Australia or New Zealand. I had of course informed my friends of my grand plan. But to give my Mother a little peace, I told my parents that I’d probably be gone for between three to six months or so. I was full of bravado as I boarded the plane that would fly overnight over Canada’s vast frozen North to arrive in Amsterdam.
Somewhere after about 8 hours in the air, I began to be afraid; very afraid indeed. What if they didn’t really speak English in Amsterdam? How was I going to find my way to the hotel I had booked? I’d decided that for my first night I’d be better off being a little extravagant, just until I got my bearings straight; besides the week before, I’d learned that the price had gone up at Youth Hostels to $8.00 per night, so, plan of $5.00 a day had been increased to $10.00 a day. So, I’d have to find a work sooner than I’d thought? I’d be out there on my own for a year, exploring all sorts of new place and having all sorts of exciting adventures. I didn’t talk to anyone on the plane. I’m an introvert; a room full of strangers makes me nervous. So a metal tube, hurtling through the air filled with strangers, terrified me. I kept myself to myself and quietly mulled over the fate which awaited me.
By the time the plane landed two hours late in Amsterdam, I was exhausted and terrified. I’d spent 14 hours imagining all sorts of horrible things and I was left hoping that the frightening customs officer would refuse to let me enter Holland and send me home on the next flight. When I finally reached the hotel, they told me I couldn’t check in until the afternoon. My backpack weighed a ton as I walked around the block, afraid to wander too far, encase I got lost, or run over by a cyclist I found a bench and sat down to watch the world go by. I remember getting very, very angry as I sat there on that bench. I mean what in the world were my parents thinking? I was barely eighteen years old, how could they let me go off on my own like this. I mean what did I know about the world? I was probably going to get myself killed? Why didn’t they stop me? What kind of crazy parents did I have? If only they’d talked some sense into me, I would be all alone in a strange place about to meet my fate at the hands of some unknown villain who would make off with my $800.00 and leave me to fend for my self on the streets of Amsterdam. I had never been so frightened in my entire life. So, I decided right there and then, that just as soon as I could check into the hotel, I’d call the airline and book the next flight home.Continue reading →
When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick the flowers in other people’s gardens
And learn to spit.
You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.
But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.
But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.
Lydia is one of the many mothers of Christianity. Lydia was the first European convert to Christianity. Lydia was the founder of the church at Philippi. The Scriptures tell us that before Paul and Silias proclaimed the Gospel to Lydia, she was a “God Fearer”. God Fearers, was the name given to people who were not Jewish but who were so intrigued with the God that the Jews worshipped that they lived their lives as if they were Jews. Indeed, most God Fearers followed all the Jewish laws except for circumcision. Circumcision, for adult males, living in the first century, when sanitary conditions were primitive and no antibiotics were available could lead to death. So, most male converts to Judaism, were not called Jews but God Fearers. Generally women were given the same designation as their husbands or fathers.
So right from the beginning of the story, Lydia is described in an unconventional way. We are told that Lydia was “a God fearer; a worshipper of God and a dealer in purple.” Now an introduction like that may not seem very unconventional to us but we have to remember that for the writer of the Book of Acts to have described a situation where, Paul and Silias, two strange men in town meet a woman, any woman was in and of itself unconventional.Continue reading →
Three years ago, on the heels of Peter Rollins visit to our congregation, I preached this Earth Sunday sermon which flows out of Peter’s work. You can listen to Peter’s sermon which is the jumping off point for this Earth Day sermon here
The video of the excerpt from Chief Seattle’s Response is below
On April 22nd this planet will celebrate Earth Day; a time to pause and celebrate the wonders of this planet and to consider the fate of this planet. The church has no day on its calendar to either celebrate the Earth or to pray for the survival of the Earth. Indeed, there are churches in Christendom that actively pray for the demise of the planet, so as to hasten the arrival of Christ. We here at Holy Cross have been celebrating Earth Sunday since 2007. This week I went back over my sermons for the past six Earth Sundays and discovered that I usually point out some ecological disaster and encourage us all to take better care of the planet. While there are plenty of ecological disasters that I could point to that’s not what I want to talk to you about today because let’s face it, I’d only be preaching to the choir. All of you know that the planet is in grave danger and that we all have a role to play in saving the planet. Today, I want to talk to you about something that lies at the very heart of our abuse not only of the planet but of one another. You see all week; I’ve been haunted by a line from Pete Rollins sermon last week.
Peter was talking about the gift that Christianity has to offer the world a gift that has the potential to move us beyond religion toward a more connected holistic way of being in the world. The line that has been haunting me all week came near the end of Peter’s sermon. It was almost a throwaway line and with Belfast Peter’s accent and the speed with which he speaks, I almost missed it. Peter said that all too often what we see in religion is our desire to have some sort of holy experience; a burning bush experience like Moses. We want to find this place where the Holy is and there always seems to be things getting in the way of our having this holy experience.
There are people getting in the way and structures getting in the way of this burning bush experience. Pete insisted that in the what he described as the Apostle Paul’s conversion of bedazzlement, in this incomprehensible blinding revelation that seems so incomprehensible, so transformative has the power to transform us so that we can see inside of ourselves and we can begin to see that every bush is burning. We can begin to see that the sacred are everywhere; that the persecuted ones are the place of our transformation and our conversion.Continue reading →
During my visit to Chautauqua last week, I was introduced to Fr. Gregory Boyle. As the Chaplain for the week, Fr. Boyle introduced us to his work at Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles. “Homeboy Industries provides hope, training, and support to formerly gang-involved and previously incarcerated men and women allowing them to redirect their lives and become contributing members of our community. Each year over 10,000 former gang members from across Los Angeles come through Homeboy Industries’ doors in an effort to make a positive change. They are welcomed into a community of mutual kinship, love, and a wide variety of services ranging from tattoo removal to anger management and parenting classes. Full-time employment is offered for more than 200 men and women at a time through an 18-month program that helps them re-identify who they are in the world, offers job training so they can move on from Homeboy Industries and become contributing members of the community – knowing they count!” Fr. Boyle’s work in and of itself is astonishing. But his ability to share the wisdom his work has taught him through the art of storytelling is miraculous. It was a joy to sit at this master’s feet!!! Here’s a talk he gave back in 2012. I’ve already ordered his book Tattoos on the Heart and look forward to gleaming more from this wise holy man!!!
pastordawn 