Pentecost

Pentecost Sunday 2008
May 11, 2008

John 20: 19-23

There is an urban legend that goes something like this. There was a church that worshipped just like we do at St. Paul’s. Stately, dignified, and measured—this church excelled with executing the liturgy with precision, and such discipline allowed a space for people to experience the mystery of God. One day a visitor came to this church—a visitor who was from a more free-church tradition. He sat in the back of the church, curious about everything that was taking place.

The Gospel had just been read, and the priest went up into the pulpit to preach the sermon, and to the visitor’s surprise, the sermon was not half bad. In fact, it was really good, but to the visitor’s surprise, no one was giving the preacher much help. Here was the sermon being preached that was really good, and the people were just sitting there. No “amens,” no “yes, Lord’s,” absolutely no verbal support was coming from the people.

The visitor sat there for a bit longer, and as he continued to listen to the sermon, he forgot he was not in his own church, and he started to feel excited, as if he was in the presence of the Holy Spirit, eventually the preacher said something he found truly profound, and automatically he belted out, “praise the Lord.”

The priest was a bit stunned, but he thought, “well, we have never heard that here before,” and he continued with his sermon, but again the visitor really liked something the priest said, and still a bit surprised that no one from the congregation was helping him out with voices of affirmation, he shouted out, “praise the Lord.”

This time the choristers started to giggle, and practically everyone in the church was trying to very subtly turn around to see who was saying this, while pretending to appreciate the beautiful organ pipes in the rear gallery.

Amidst all of this, the priest managed to continue, trying to control the constant smile that was adorning his face, “after all this church was accustomed to all sorts of interesting visitors showing up at worship at this downtown church.”

The suddenly a third time, the visitor bellowed from the back of the church, “praise the Lord,” at which time an usher quickly trotted over and said to the visitor in a whisper that everyone could hear, “sir, you are most welcome in this church, but please understand this—in this church, we do not “praise the Lord.”

Most people do not know what to do with Pentecost Sunday, let alone the idea of the Holy Spirit. This is especially true if you grow up in one of those areas of our country where Pentecostals are the vast majority—it can seem that only the charismatics have the gift of the Holy Spirit in such places. Unless you can say, “praise the Lord,” or unless you can demonstrate your faith with bubbly exuberance, you might be made to feel as if you lack the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

Yet the life of Christ shows us something different. When Jesus greets his followers after the resurrection, he simply empowers them to do the work he has begun—simply put, he empowers everyone with the gift of the Holy Spirit. Everyone is given this gift, according to their own talents, for the work of God’s healing and reconciliation. The presence of the Holy Spirit is something much more widespread in everyone—it is not always visible to the eye.

This is the subtle work of Christ—the sharing of the Holy Spirit for all future generations working within every person who loves Christ—there is nothing sensational about it. It’s the everyday life of the church simply striving to be a faithful community. God does not choose only a few to receive the Holy Spirit—God has empowered everyone with the gifts of the Holy Spirit in order that the entire church may be a blessing to the world.

And this directs us to the most important lesson of this day—every person is endowed with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and the church needs every person to develop his or her gifts—only then can the church really achieve its mission. A thriving church will not just be about the gifts of the priest, or about the gifts of certain charismatic lay leaders, but rather a thriving church will make room for every person to find their place to exercise their ministry. Hence we renew our baptismal vows today, for in our baptism each of us is given the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and hence today [later this morning] we gather around the font to celebrate the Sacrament of Holy Baptism with Kacuol, for every single person is to be granted the life of the Holy Spirit.

Just as the church needs the priest to gather the community around the sacraments, the church also needs the person who takes communion to the homebound, the church needs the person who knits the prayer shawls, the church needs the person who organizes outreach ministries, the church needs the person who develops the worship, and the church needs the person who prepares the gardens for summer. The church needs every person, because every person has a unique gift in God’s eyes.

In other words, the church needs ushers who whisper instructions to others, and the church needs extroverted visitors who rankle the regulars, for the truth is this—God has already spoken by giving his Spirit to everyone. Recognizing this is every church’s challenge, especially when it means seeing the spirit at work in those who differ from us. We quickly discover that if we want to benefit from all of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, we must even try to seek out those who are the most different from us—even those who annoy us or make us angry.

And so we go back to our visitor who liked to say, “praise the Lord;” and we return to our usher with her instructional whispers. Let us hope that they did not get into a fight, or even worse, let us hope that when each of them got home, they did not speak disparagingly of the other while eating lunch. Let’s hope for the alternative. Let’s hope that their encounter sparked a conversation, and that each of them learned to respect the position of the other. Let’s hope that they let the Holy Spirit work in each of them, so that they could see the presence of God in each other. Let’s hope that they did not politely dismiss each other, but rather they sought to learn from each other. Let’s hope that both could develop their gifts for the work of the church, and that everyone could benefit from a greater inclusion of the Spirit’s gifts.

God has granted everyone the gifts of the Holy Spirit—let us hope that we are inquisitive enough to seek out and develop those gifts in every person, so that all of us, as well as the world, may rejoice in the fullness of God’s love made manifest among us.

Amen.

Infinite Love

The 5th Sunday of Easter, 2008

How great is the love of God? Is it infinite? Is it limitless? Or does it have a boundary? Are there some places where God’s love will not go? These are the questions posed by today’s Gospel. When Jesus says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me,” we have to ask, “is the love of God infinite, or does it have a boundary?” for how we understand the scope of God’s love will directly influence how we interpret Jesus to be the way, the true, and the life?

One of the greatest examples in the Scriptures of someone following the way, truth, and life of Jesus is Stephen. Stephen is proclaiming Jesus as the Messiah at the city gates of Jerusalem, and the crowd reacts so violently to his words, that they kill him. Nevertheless, Stephen follows the way of Christ, and as he is being stoned, he asks God to receive his spirit, and amidst the stones being hurled in his direction, he prays that God will forgive his persecutors. He shows that the way to follow Jesus never involves retribution, but rather it only involves forgiveness and reconciliation. When Stephen persecutors are killing him, he chooses the path of forgiveness, seeking to love even those enemies who are murdering his life.

The way of Stephen completely follows the way of Christ. We know from Good Friday that Jesus prayed forgiveness for his enemies, and we know that such forgiveness led to new life at Easter. Jesus, the ultimate example of rejection, became the ultimate example of forgiveness and inclusion. “The stone that the builders rejected has become the very head of the corner.” The rejected stone has become the foundation upon which the whole world finds life. When the world was giving Jesus exclusion and death, Jesus returned with a radical hospitality of inclusion and life.

And this theme continues throughout the Gospels—this theme of exchanging life and inclusion, reconciliation and forgiveness, for death and retribution, for judgment and exclusion. There are countless examples of religious authorities mandating regulations of exclusion in order to keep certain people labeled as unclean or unworthy. Think of all those stories of people with leprosy and other diseases, or those who were blind or could not hear. Think of all those marked as sinners with whom Jesus preferred to share a meal—tax collectors, prostitutes and other persons on the periphery. According to the religious authorities, these were not the proper guests of a true Messiah.

This is one of the greatest contradictions of the Gospels. Again and again we come across those who piously proclaim a faith in God, who claim to know the way, the truth, and the life of God, but who also end up surprised by God, because they are actually shown to know very little. The Temple authorities did not expect the Messiah to be like Jesus. In fact, none of those in power expected the Messiah to be so weak and to die on a cross. The Messiah was to come with power and pomp and glory—not riding on a clumsy donkey and eating with dirty sinners. Those religious persons who spoke with great authority about the way of God, most often got the truth of God wrong. When Christ came to be with them, they showed that they were utterly unprepared for what God might look like within their midst. The faith establishment was consistently not very good at understanding what the way, the truth, and the life were to be, for they could never understand how it could be so open—so porous with its boundaries—so inclusive in its scope.

And so, what is this way of Jesus? What exactly is the way, the truth, and the life of our God? We know is it most supremely exemplified by the life of Jesus on the cross and his resurrection, in the life and actions of people like Stephen, but we also know that as the faithful we often fail to measure up to such a life, and that Jesus most often preferred to be around those whom the religious community was quickest to shun.

Simply put, the way, and the truth, and the life of Jesus is pure forgiveness, pure reconciliation, and total inclusion. It is never a judgment for the sake of creating outsiders, but rather it is a complete salvation that recognizes how all of us humans continually come up short, and therefore it’s always working to reconcile us to the love of God.

To say that Jesus Christ is the way, and the truth, and the life, and to say that only through Jesus Christ do we come to know God, is not to say that we must measure up to the works of Christ, or to say we must have a perfect profession of words and actions in his lordship like Stephen, but rather it is simply to say that through the example of Jesus’ love for the world, we have witnessed how God deeply loves this world, and in the end, nothing will be able to escape that love. The love of God will eventually encompass all things throughout all of time.

Some Christians have tried to predict the exact number of people who will be saved in the end. Frankly, I am always surprised by how small their number is—how few they say will discover the way, the truth, and the life of God. It would seem much more logical to me to simply state that God’s love and power are so great that the number of people saved would be infinite, but herein we return to those initial questions. Is there a limit to God’s love? Can it only go so far? Does it have a boundary? Those who calculate the number of saved souls need to answer such questions for themselves. For us however, I hope that the answer is that God’s love is limitless—it’s infinite—that the way, the truth, and the life of Jesus, the way of forgiveness, reconciliation, and love, is to be a completely free gift for the entire cosmos.

With such a view, no one will ever be excluded. God has chosen all of us—no matter who we are, God has chosen us and God loves us. Jesus’ statement today is not to be used as a statement that separates the faithful from the unfaithful, the good from the bad, the zealous from the lacksadasical. Rather, his words simply proclaim that the life of Christ is powerful enough to save the entire world—no one need to fear that anyone will be left behind.

This is the way, and the truth and the life of Jesus Christ. That in the end, there is nothing beyond God’s reach, and there is nothing that God’s love and forgiveness will not conquer. God will always ensure, even amidst the consequences of death on a tree, that all of life enters into the way, the truth, and the life, and just as we were surprised by the resurrected life of God in Jesus Christ, we will be surprised again when we witness at the end, how nothing has been excluded from the love of God—how everything has become perfectly reconciled to God and to each other through an Easter life of forgiveness, inclusion and limitless love.

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Burning Hearts & Eyes Opened

3 Easter 2008
Luke 24: 13-35

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Today we hear the Emmaus story—a story of Christ’s appearance to some of his followers in a small village not too far from Jerusalem shortly after the resurrection.

Jesus is walking with some believers who are confused about the recent events in Jerusalem, and he explains the Scriptures to them, and when he goes to break the bread, their eyes are opened, and they discover that the Risen Christ is in their midst. Through the reading of Scripture and the breaking of bread they discover that the news from Jerusalem is true—the Risen Christ is alive and with always be with them.

They had been mourning, and they had been shackled by disbelief, but through the action of the Eucharist, they discover that Christ will always be with them. Another way of saying it is this: the resurrection of Christ for all time is centered on this act in which we do today, every Sunday, even everyday.

We come to this church today, so that just like those followers in the village of Emmaus, we too may have burning hearts and opened eyes for Christ. Through the Eucharist, Christ comes alive for us forever, and through the Eucharist, we, like Christ, are resurrected.

I will never forget when a friend of mine in seminary discovered the news that his son had committed suicide. It was terrible for my friend to lose his son, and at times he felt as if there was no point to life at all. His son had battled mental illness for a long time, and the pressures of life became too much for him, and he simply could not endure life anymore.

The father obvious struggled immensely with his son’s suicide. At first, he questioned how he could be a priest to the God who seemed unwilling to save his son. How could he go up into the pulpit every Sunday and proclaim God’s goodness when God seemed to be doling out such tragedies?

The father struggled with the death of his son, but amidst all of the heartache and sadness and anger, one thing remained constant—Christ as the host of the Eucharist. Amidst all of the despair, his heart kept burning for Christ, and his eyes were continually opened by Eucharist. I will never forget seeing him going forward to communicate in the seminary chapel, trying to hide the tears from his face—wiping them with a kleenex, working to keep his composure as he received the body and blood of Christ day in and day out, and seeing the entire community, the Body of Christ, create a place in which this was ok. More than anything else—more than his therapy sessions, more than his wrestling with God, more than his gathering with family and friends—more than anything else, the Eucharist healed the hurt and despair.

Certainly the followers of Jesus in Emmaus experienced this same truth. They had just seen their friend Jesus crucified, and some were saying he was alive, but this probably just seemed like salt was being rubbed into the wounds of hurt and despair. Not until Christ came to them in the Eucharist could they begin to understand how Christ was to always be with them—how Christ, through the Eucharist, would never abandon them.

This act of worship with which we engage is more powerful than we often understand. When all of life is falling apart, the Eucharist remains a steady force in our lives—through the Eucharist the hospitality of Christ never dies. Even though we may try to crucify Christ through our actions on a daily basis, Christ keeps coming back to us with forgiveness and reconciliation in this sacrament of the resurrection.

This is why as Episcopalians we believe that the most important thing we can do for those who are sick is to bring them communion—a treasured experience that our Eucharistic visitors understand very well. When we gather at someone’s bedside, and we read from scripture, and we share the bread and wine, darkness disappears—Christ’ life breaks through, even in the most troubling circumstances.

And this is why as Episcopalians our central act of worship is the Eucharist—everything in our life revolves around this act of worship. We know that only the Eucharist can feed our burning hearts, and only the Eucharist can truly open our eyes.

Hence all of our life is celebrated through the Eucharist. When we are baptized, we celebrate the Eucharist. When we get married or have a union ceremony, we celebrate the Eucharist. When we die, we celebrate the Eucharist. Everything we do is centered on our feast with the resurrected Christ.

This is why we are not able to deny anyone the Eucharist—we understand that the grace of God is not ours to withhold. To not give the Eucharist freely is to destroy the flow of Christ’s love to all people. There is nothing we can do to ever earn the Eucharist—it is a complete gift from God. The Eucharist is Christ’s way of making the resurrection come to life in every age, and so it is not something we can keep from others—rather we can only graciously receive it from the living Christ.

My friend who lost his son is now a wonderful priest, and he celebrates the Eucharist beautifully—through the Eucharist, Christ healed the wounds of his son’s death.

And those followers of Jesus in Emmaus would go forth from that little village continuing to open the scriptures and to break the bread for others just as they had experienced. Their confusion from Good Friday had been healed by Jesus’ appearance in the breaking of the bread.

This morning, we along with countless others, gather with burning hearts for the scriptures, and we will leave here with eyes opened, experiencing the exact same kind of healing.

So let your hearts burn freely, and come forward today to have your eyes opened, for at this altar you will never be turned away—this church will never keep you from the Christ who desires to be your host—come with a kleenex to wipe the tears from your eyes for that is perfectly acceptable, or come forward rejoicing because you have discovered that Christ is alive, for God has made one thing abundantly clear this Easter season. Christ is arisen for all times and for all peoples in the celebration of the Eucharist, and he awaits for each of us to come forward and to receive, to come forward and to be healed, to come forward so that God may welcome us, and be our gracious host.

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The Foot of the Cross

St. Paul’s Cathedral
Good Friday 2008

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It is always interesting to me how the attendance in churches is always much lower on Good Friday than it is on Easter Sunday. Ideally, there would be just as many people in church today as there will be on Sunday, but this is seldom the case. And I do not bring up this point to reward those of us who have come today, and I do not bring this point up to guilt those who are not here. After all, we Episcopalians have never been good at playing the “guilt card.”

Rather, I think the difference in attendance may be seen for what it is. Good Friday shows us death very clearly. It shows us our vulnerability, our fragility, the darker side of our humanity. This is not necessarily a day that will have us whistling happy tunes when we leave. Instead most of us will leave church today with ponderous thoughts.

But the truth of the matter is that if we are to truly be moved by the life of Christ, we need those moments that confront us with our fragility—moments that show us clearly the dysfunction of our lives. We need those times when we sit in silence—when we dwell in a space that is empty—when we try to get comfortable with being uncomfortable—when we admit that sometimes we crucify Christ by our actions and thoughts.

And so we come to church today to be silent when God dies. We come to this place in which God’s great altar for feasting was stripped bare last night. We come today to pray the solemn collects—prayers that are very long and for which we make no apologies for their length. On this day we simply pray for all those things for which we need to pray—we make no exceptions. We do not care how long it goes on this day.

And we come to meditate on the cross—that 1st century symbol of torture, as well as everything that is painful and dark in our lives—we come to dwell in the darkness, so that we can understand more deeply the gift of Christ’s life. In other words, on Good Friday we do much that makes us uncomfortable—in fact, we do everything today that the church growth experts tell you NOT to do.

Yet, even though our world is not impressed with the glory of the cross, we come today to sit at the foot of the cross. We just heard how very few joined Mary and John at the foot of the cross when Jesus died. And we also know that very few people sit at the foot of the cross today. Soup kitchens and homeless shelters are not overflowing with volunteers—hospital beds do not have a plethora of people surrounding the sick. The homeless do not have beds, the naked do not have clothes, and the hungry do not have food. There is always more room for more people at the foot of the cross.

However the beauty of the cross is this—for those who are willing to be like Mary and John—for those who are willing to go to the foot of the cross, Easter is always a reality, even on this day of death. Amidst the doom and gloom, the death and chaos, for those who are willing to meet Christ at the foot of the cross, Easter will be truly a life-changing experience. For such daring and bold types, there will always be hope that the story does not end today, even on a day like this, when God has suffered and is now dead.

And so, our goal is to invite everyone to the foot of the cross—to show our world the Christ who is homeless, hungry, and naked. When we have many people at the foot of the cross, and when we have people willing to sit in silence during the death of Christ on Good Friday, we will know that we are a faithful people. Good Friday is the measure of our faithfulness, for if we are here, Easter will always be a reality.

I remember someone once saying to me, “I do not like to go to church on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, and I really do not care for Lent. Those days are just too sad and too depressing for me.”

My hunch is that her experience is indicative of how many people feel. Most people simply have trouble being with Christ at the foot of the cross—and that is understandable. It’s true that living with Christ’s suffering is not fun—it’s not a joyful experience—but it is necessary, otherwise we will never fully understand our faith—without today, we will never truly taste the life of Christ at the resurrection feast.

Embrace the foot of the cross—embrace this day—sit in silence—go to the foot of the cross—wait with Mary and John—be patient and willing to die and rise with Christ in all of his suffering as well as with all of the suffering that you see in our world—sit and wait and pray. Only then will it make sense to come back here in a couple of days. Only by embracing the foot of the cross will the resurrection make any sense—and only then will there be freedom from what is perhaps the greatest tyranny of all time—a superficial understanding of Easter that revolves around obligation, and a faith that never seems to be very good at sustaining the soul.

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Dying & Rising Like Lazarus

5th Sunday of Lent, 2008

John 11:1-45

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I remember going to church one time on Easter Sunday, and the priest gave a children’s sermon. She asked the children what made Easter a special day? Why was Easter such a big event?

Of course, the children were jumping up and down, raising their hands, begging and pleading that she would call on them to give the answer, and so, one by one the children constructed a theology about Jesus’ death and resurrection during the sermon.

But then something really funny happened. One of the children had been quiet the whole time, seeming to be indifferent to the whole conversation. It was as if she was bored with the whole process. Just as the priest was about to wrap up the children’s sermon, the child spoke up with the authority only a child could assume, saying, “I don’t know why you’re all so excited about Jesus coming back to life. On my mom’s soap opera people die and come back to life all the time. What’s the big deal?”

Today we heard about Lazarus rising from the dead in the village of Bethany. Bethany sits just outside of Jerusalem in the West Bank, and if we were living in the Jerusalem we could all go together to Lazarus’ tomb this coming Saturday, the Saturday before Palm Sunday. This is the tradition—Christians go to Bethany on the Saturday before Holy Week to reenact Lazarus’ rising from the tomb. And on the next day, Palm Sunday, it is also from Bethany that the great Palm Sunday parade travels over the Mount of Olives to the Old City of Jerusalem to the famed Temple Mount. This tradition is alive and well today, and so Holy Week is really not Holy Week in Jerusalem, until we have been to the tomb of Lazarus to start the whole week off right. This is the context.

And the whole story of today’s Gospel is a foretaste of what is to come—death being conquered by life, a great stone being rolled away from a cave, Jesus giving perhaps one of the greatest statements of our faith—“I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” And we have a great affirmation of Jesus as the Messiah by Martha—“Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”

And so just before Holy Week we are given this little snippet of a story, this little glimpse into what is to come, this little narrative that points to the greatest story of all time.

If we are to follow Christ, we have to die. We have to die, otherwise our faith is just fluff—it lacks substance. And this is true on many different levels. Foremost we believe that when we literally die, when we take our last breath, God will be there to welcome us—we do not get overwhelmed with the specifics about what exactly the afterlife will look like, for we are happy enough to know that God will simply welcome us most. We are sure that God will make sure the details of the afterlife are good.

But we also must remember that our dying and rising is not just something that happens at the end of our lives. The truth is that we are to die and rise in Christ every day, and this season of Lent has been an experiment in dying and rising in Christ. We seek to die to ourselves—to kill off our own selfishness, to self-empty ourselves of all that is not of Christ, to strip away all self-entitlement and forms of idolatry, focusing instead on who Christ wants us to be—on who we really are. To be true to Christ, we have to die every day—die so that we may discover the new life that Christ ordains for each of us.

Take a moment to think about those times in your life when you were facing a great challenge. Maybe you were struggling to give up cigarettes, or maybe you had an alcohol addiction. Perhaps you had created such a web of lies and secrets that you no longer knew how to tell the truth. Perhaps you had to stand up for yourself and so “no” to abuse. Maybe you were facing financial ruin, or maybe you have a child that never seems to discover a healthy path. Maybe it was a relationship that was disintegrating out of control. Think about those times when you did not want to wake up and face those problems.

Under such duress, if there was the chance or ability to deal with such challenges honestly, there certainly was pain, there was darkness, there was probably great loneliness. But, our faith tells us that the story never ends there. If we were willing to face our lives honestly, we die and rise unto Christ. Out of the death of our own self-needs, or self-perceptions, or perceived self-wants—out of the death of all those things that kept us detached from God—out of that death, new life started to sprout. We could say that from the dry and deserted landscape of Lent, Easter could spring forth with great beauty.

Just like Lazarus’ decaying body, our lives can have a truly great stench if we do not die and rise in Christ. But if we do die in Christ, eventually we will be unbound and given our freedom—we will be able to walk freely from the dark tomb into the resurrection light.

The little girl of our children’s sermon did a wonderful job of demystifying the death and resurrection for us. Sure God has done something wonderful—something to be excited about—to be joyful and exuberant about—but it does not end with God. We are not to be passive bystanders of Good Friday and Easter Day, but rather we too are to die and rise in Christ. This dying and rising is to be something we do every day, every hour, every minute of our lives. This is our faith—how God’s story of death and resurrection is our story too. When we talk about Calvary and the empty tomb, we are to be talking about our own story—about our stories of dying and rising in Christ all of the time.

And thankfully this story will not be like the superficial dramas of soap operas and TV sitcoms, but rather our story will be the story of Christ that goes on from age to age. This is also why as Christians we do not simply profess a love of beauty, or an appreciation for refined and proper liturgy, or some other simple theology of our own self-help propaganda or personal well-being, but rather we profess, as stated in our ancient and most trustworthy Creeds, the whole life of Christ, the entire gift of the death and resurrection. We do this, because we know that to do anything less, fails to do justice to the healing we’ve experienced. We simply cannot deny the words of Christ, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who believes in me will never die,” for we’ve been resurrected by this belief—and just like Lazarus we have discovered the gift of life—the gift of Jesus Christ.

So we come back to our little girl of the children’s sermon. So what is the big deal? If we are faithful, all of us die and rise regularly in Christ just like Lazarus. Our stories of dying and rising would be nothing without the great story of Christ, and for that dying and rising, we can never get too excited.

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