Year B Proper 15 WED 2021 Why Do Good?

 Year B Proper 15, 18 August 2021

St. James the Less Epsicopal, Ashland, VA

“Why do good?”

Collect: Almighty God, you have given your only Son to be for us a sacrifice for sin, and also an example of godly life: Give us grace to receive thankfully the fruits of his redeeming work, and to follow daily in the blessed steps of his most holy life; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

2 Samuel 18:19-23

Then Ahimaaz son of Zadok said, "Let me run, and carry tidings to the king that the LORD has delivered him from the power of his enemies." Joab said to him, "You are not to carry tidings today; you may carry tidings another day, but today you shall not do so, because the king's son is dead." Then Joab said to a Cushite, "Go, tell the king what you have seen." The Cushite bowed before Joab, and ran. Then Ahimaaz son of Zadok said again to Joab, "Come what may, let me also run after the Cushite." And Joab said, "Why will you run, my son, seeing that you have no reward for the tidings?" "Come what may," he said, "I will run." So he said to him, "Run." Then Ahimaaz ran by the way of the Plain, and outran the Cushite.

Acts 23:23-35

Then he summoned two of the centurions and said, "Get ready to leave by nine o'clock tonight for Caesarea with two hundred soldiers, seventy horsemen, and two hundred spearmen. Also provide mounts for Paul to ride, and take him safely to Felix the governor." He wrote a letter to this effect: "Claudius Lysias to his Excellency the governor Felix, greetings. This man was seized by the Jews and was about to be killed by them, but when I had learned that he was a Roman citizen, I came with the guard and rescued him. Since I wanted to know the charge for which they accused him, I had him brought to their council. I found that he was accused concerning questions of their law, but was charged with nothing deserving death or imprisonment. When I was informed that there would be a plot against the man, I sent him to you at once, ordering his accusers also to state before you what they have against him. " So the soldiers, according to their instructions, took Paul and brought him during the night to Antipatris. The next day they let the horsemen go on with him, while they returned to the barracks. When they came to Caesarea and delivered the letter to the governor, they presented Paul also before him. On reading the letter, he asked what province he belonged to, and when he learned that he was from Cilicia, he said, "I will give you a hearing when your accusers arrive." Then he ordered that he be kept under guard in Herod's headquarters.

Mark 12:13-27

Then they sent to him some Pharisees and some Herodians to trap him in what he said. And they came and said to him, "Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality, but teach the way of God in accordance with truth. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not? Should we pay them, or should we not?" But knowing their hypocrisy, he said to them, "Why are you putting me to the test? Bring me a denarius and let me see it." And they brought one. Then he said to them, "Whose head is this, and whose title?" They answered, "The emperor's." Jesus said to them, "Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are God's." And they were utterly amazed at him. Some Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him and asked him a question, saying, "Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies, leaving a wife but no child, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. There were seven brothers; the first married and, when he died, left no children; and the second married her and died, leaving no children; and the third likewise; none of the seven left children. Last of all the woman herself died. In the resurrection whose wife will she be? For the seven had married her." Jesus said to them, "Is not this the reason you are wrong, that you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God? For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. And as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the story about the bush, how God said to him, 'I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'? He is God not of the dead, but of the living; you are quite wrong."

There is a strong and powerful station whose waves are filling the spectrum to our detriment. WII-FM. No it is not a radio station. Worse. It is an acronym for what seems to have become the Zeitgeist, the Spirit of the Times. WII-FM. What’s In It For Me?

In our readings today, we see three vignettes of people doing good, staying true even when they did not have to do so, they do. It was the right thing to do. 

Ahimaaz son of Zadok was to carry tidings to the king, but was given the task of carrying bad news. Despite the weight of his task, he did not falter, instead saying, “Come what may, let me run!”

You might think I would speak to Paul, and staying true, but actually Claudius Lysias took care and protected Paul in his status as a Roman citizen. He made sure that the law was followed and the citizen was protected, and that he would get a fair trial. He did this, though, knowing Paul would probably never be in a position to ever do anything for him.

Jesus is confronted by folksk accusing him, and attempting to catch him in poor answer. He stayed true to the societal and the religious expectations, often a hard middle way when asked about taxes and what people should do. And then the hypocrisy of the Sadducees question, who did not even believe in an afterlife, Jesus countered them and their ridiculousness. But he did so in a way to encourage and strengthen others instead of matching spite with spite.

Ahimaaz, Claudius Lysias, and Jesus did what was right even though it mattered not to those who countered them. They chose to do right because of who they were, and the nature of their character.

When the world is self-absorbed, and listening to that WII-FM, “What’s In It For Me?”, remember that. We need to uphold our standards and who we are despite whether there is any return on our labor or not. We are not good because of what we can get out of it, but rather who we want to be and eventually who we are. It helps to also remember whose we are and what we are to be in his name.

Do good today. “Come what may, we will run!” Amen.

Year B Proper 15 2021 The Problems with Metaphors

 

Year B Proper 15, 15 August 2021

St. James the Less Episcopal, Ashland, VA

“The Problems with Metaphors”

Collect: Almighty God, you have given your only Son to be for us a sacrifice for sin, and also an example of godly life: Give us grace to receive thankfully the fruits of his redeeming work, and to follow daily in the blessed steps of his most holy life; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

John 6:51-58

Jesus said, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” So Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.”

“Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of the time, because the days are evil. So do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.” St. Paul urges us to rise up to who we should be in Christ. Today’s readings point us to what true Wisdom is. Something to be sought at all expense, so that we can apply it and reap its benefits. If we have Wisdom, she will gift us with everything else we require.

But so much of Wisdom is context and perspective. What seems foolish to one can be so clear and perfect to another.

One time when the kids were young, we were shopping at Costco. My youngest was in the seat in the basket, hard to imagine now that she was ever that small. But she was. We were walking down the housewares aisle, and they had a nice set of drinking glasses. It came in a few sizes in the set, and they had a sample on the shelf. I picked one up, hefted it. Good weight, good feel in the hand. I grabbed the smallest one, and asked Sojo, “Does this fit your hand?” And I handed it to her.

She took the cup, looked back at me like I was crazy, and then proceeded to stick her other hand in the cup. She did exactly what I had asked her to do. Her understanding and actions took literally what I said. Her hand fit in the cup. My understanding, and meaning, were more socially understood. The cup fits my hand, and for her, her hand fit the cup.” Who was the fool, and who was the wise? I could not fault her. She did exactly what I asked of her to the best of her understanding. I was the fool to think a toddler would know what that phrase meant.

Language, especially socially constructed meanings and metaphors, can get us in so much trouble and get in our way. Today I am going to ask you to put on your thinking caps, and join me. Hopefully we can share some wisdom, and as the poetry of Proverbs said, Wisdom invites us. “You that are simple, turn in here!”

We use language a lot, but today I am inviting you to think about how you think, how you use language, how you modify your behavior by what you think. Thinking on how you think is a higher level request, turning on the meta-cognitive as we called it back in my education days. (Metacognition: definition- awareness and understanding of one's own thought processes.)

One of the key things we use in the spiritual realm is the use of metaphor and metaphorical language. Going back to our early grammar, a metaphor is “This is That.” You know, “God is Light.” “I am the Bread of Life.” This is That.

A simile is like a metaphor, but it uses like or as. “God is like the stars, distant but always looking down on us.” “Jesus said the Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed…” Metaphors are stronger because there is no wiggle room. It is clearer, but it creates some problems. And that is where we are coming in today.

In today’s Gospel, we have some very clear metaphors from Jesus.

Jesus said, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

I am the Living Bread.

The Bread I give is my Flesh.

Wow! Clear. Kinda gross. Easily argued and misconstrued. In fact, that is what was fired back. Some folks… “then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”

They took the metaphor and made it literal. Any metaphor has gaps and places where the analogy breaks down and does not work. And that is where our problems emerge. So many problems we face in this world are when we take the metaphorical and treat it literally.

Because this is church, let’s just look at some of Jesus’ statements.

“If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to go into hell.” Matthew 5:29-30

Jesus did not want you to pluck out your eye or chop off your hand. Hyperbole, exaggeration, is a rhetorical device to make a point. When we take some of these statements literally it can have disastrous results. (Ask Origen!)

The folks who countered Jesus on his metaphor, I am the Bread of Life, were being obtuse, intentionally or to be contrary. Anyone with any wisdom would see what he is doing, but some are obstinate just to be oppositional. I prefer doers and thinkers and dreamers to contrarians. But in every system there are those who choose that as their role. As leaders our role is to invite, encourage, cajole them, appealing to the better angels of their nature as Lincoln put it.

Metaphors have a strength and resilience. We celebrate Jesus’ metaphor almost weekly in the Eucharist because it still has value and weight.

One of the facts that we as a people of faith need to admit, is that anything intangible is metaphor. These intangibles are constructs of our minds, based on faith and experience, but each and every one of us approaches and conceives of them differently. Through years of walking in faith, they may have the proof of the Tangible in our minds. We forget that. As we grow in our faith, the Metaphors gain the weight of the Tangible in our minds. Metaphors give us common language for these ambiguities, but they do not conform our interior constructs, our personal metaphors. Those apart from faith, that is one of the great leaps that they are most uncomfortable making. They need proof more than what an intangible can give.

So many things we treat as hard facts are nothing more than socially agreed upon constructs. National borders. The value of a piece of paper we call money. The zeros and ones in our phones that allow us to conduct business. What we value most in the world too often are the things of no inherent worth outside of the metaphor, the social construct, that we give them.

For Jesus to be the Bread of Life, we must treat him as such. For his Flesh to be that Bread we have to change to make it so. If not it is just electrons flitting through our brains like a daydream or a fantasy. But for those of us who believe, who act on this belief, it is everything.  “For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” I Corinthians 1:18

The opposite is also true. So many problems we face in this world are when we take what was meant literally and we take them metaphorically. “You have heard that it was said, 

“You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.” 

That was not metaphor. Heal the sick. Feed the hungry. Quench the thirsty. These are the simple and easy and clear literal things Jesus said. To these Tangibles, he adds the metaphorical faith statement. When you have done it unto one of the Least of These, you have done it to me. Too often we let the Intangible distract us from the Tangible, the Metaphor consumes us to the Literal’s expense.

On that trip to Costco, we never did get those cups. But everytime I walk down that aisle, and they have those cups, I pick it up and hand it to whoever is with me. “Does this fit your hand?” We are crazy creatures. 

Friends, as we face the problems of this life know what you are dealing with, metaphor or the tangible. If metaphor, know its strengths and weaknesses. If something tangible, ignore it to your detriment. “Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of the time, because the days are evil. So do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.” Amen

Year B Proper 14 WED 2021 Life is not a Game

Year B Proper 14 WEDNESDAY, 11 August 2021

St. James the Less Episcopal, Ashland, VA (Streaming and In-Person)

“Life is not a Game”

Collect: Grant to us, Lord, we pray, the spirit to think and do always those things that are right, that we, who cannot exist without you, may by you be enabled to live according to your will; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Mark 10:17-31

As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, ‘Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ Jesus said to him, ‘Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: “You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honour your father and mother.” ’ He said to him, ‘Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth.’ Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, ‘You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’ When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.

Then Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, ‘How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!’ And the disciples were perplexed at these words. But Jesus said to them again, ‘Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.’ They were greatly astounded and said to one another, ‘Then who can be saved?’ Jesus looked at them and said, ‘For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.’

Peter began to say to him, ‘Look, we have left everything and followed you.’ Jesus said, ‘Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age—houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields, with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.’

This is one of many passages that so many of us think we know. We often cite it, or think of it referring to how we should live our lives often. But I think, too often, we think we know what is happening and being said.

But before I get into that, I want to start where Jesus starts.

Jesus and the disciples are walking, and out of nowhere, a desperate and hurting young man runs up and asks what he has to do to inherit eternal life. Jesus looks at him and says that he knows the commandments, the foundational requirements of the faith. If you believe, then this is how you should behave. We even have them posted on our walls for that very reason. They are good. They always will be. It speaks to some of the primary flaws of the human condition, the peccadillos we go to when we forget to care for each other and our relationship to God.

Then, after Jesus names some of them, it says something so important. “Jesus, looking at him, loved him…” Friends, that is the foundation of ministry. We meet people, and however they are, wherever we find them or they find us, we love them.

In love, Jesus says to this particular individual, 

“You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.

He said he wanted eternal life, but Jesus saw his blind spot. And he called him out on it. He was more obsessed with the things of this world, the baubles of riches, than he was about eternal life. He used his commandment obedience as a way of keeping score. He thought of eternal life as winning the game.

Philosopher and Theologian Dallas Willard was asked what the Gospel of Jesus was. His response, listen closely, was “The Gospel of Jesus is getting into heaven before you die.” Before. Making the Kingdom of Heaven, here, now. “On earth as it is in heaven.” Further in the interview he said, “Grace is not opposed to effort; it’s opposed to earning. Effort is action; earning is attitude.”

The man wanted to earn his way into eternal life. Jesus, I believe, wanted him to let go of that being-blessed-equals-being-rich theology we still are stumbling over 2,000 years after Christ and his Gospel of Grace. Even Peter and the other disciples were wrestling with this. What’s in it for us?

Somewhere along the way we have to shift to doing things to be Christian, but transition to being like Christ more and more and more. Daily, we take up our cross, that gift only we can give to the world, and follow in our master’s footsteps.

For this man, it was his possessions. He left grieving because he had a lot. What is it that gets in my way of following Christ all the more? Possessions? Thoughts? Self-Image? Past Trauma? Ideology? Politics? The Cost? As individual as our fingerprint, we all have one or a myriad of ways to avoid living lives in the Kingdom of God here and now. “How hard it is to enter the Kingdom of God!” Jesus said. Not all the oldest manuscripts have, “How hard it is for the rich…” Jesus knows it is hard for all of us. 

But that is what Christ wanted for the Man, and his disciples, for you, for me. He wants eternal life for us, and he wants it for us now. The Great Reversal, the last shall be first, and the first last. The “Winners” are Losers, and the Losers Win. Choose you this day whom you will serve. Amen

Year B Proper 14 2021 Woe Is Me!

 Year B Proper 14, 8 August 2021

St. James the Less Epsicopal, Ashland, VA

“Woe Is Me!”

Collect: Grant to us, Lord, we pray, the spirit to think and do always those things that are right, that we, who cannot exist without you, may by you be enabled to live according to your will; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Ephesians 4:25-5:2

Putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another. Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil. Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy. Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption. Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

John 6:35, 41-51

Jesus said, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

Then the Jews began to complain about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” They were saying, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” Jesus answered them, “Do not complain among yourselves. No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day. It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father. Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

Woe is me! Woe is me! We live in a time when dissension is running amuck. We have forgotten our neighbors are our sisters and brothers, and that we are all beloved of God. We have forgotten that one of our oldest stories is that we are our siblings’ keepers. We have sinned and fallen short of the high calling you have made on our lives. Woe is me! Woe is me!

There are times and places where we all feel sorry for ourselves. Our own little pity party. Overwhelmed by our emotions, we turn that anger inward. That is Depression. We turn that anger outward. That is Rage. One of the great things about being reflective and intentional in our lives is that we have the ability to take those honest feelings, recognize them for what they are, and then turn in faith to do something about it. 

Our readings all have a common theme today, one that I did not catch in several readings. But then I found a thread that really spoke to me. In 2nd Samuel, David mourns that Absalom was killed. His son had rebelled and taken arms against his father, a wretched betrayal. But David was his Father, and always would be. “O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!”

Woe is me! Woe is me! My son, the traitor is dead, and would that I would have died in his place. Alas…

In our Gospel, Jesus warns those who doubt his veracity to stop complaining amongst themselves. The small, the petty, those who feel unempowered do that. Snivelling and complaining, they complain and backbite, and one day when opportunity arises they escalate to backstabbing. All of it the refuge of the pitiful or the wretched.

Instead of confronting Jesus directly, they stand in their circles and belittle and bemoan. But Jesus knows, the Truth, and the Truth will out. 

Do not complain among yourselves. No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me… Woe is me! Woe is me! What am I to do with these people!

St. Paul’s instructions to us are clear, near impossible, but clear. 

“Putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another. Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil… Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God... Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”

To sum that up: Speak truth. Don’t be petty. Turn the other cheek and respond with only Grace. Be like Jesus, and respond as he did!

My whole life that phrase has haunted me. “Be angry, but sin not.” It goes against my Irish blood. All the reason I need Jesus all the more. I will have the feelings, STRONG FEELINGS. I will recognize the feelings. I will allow myself to feel the feelings. Feelings are just that. Fleeting emotions that come and go. Feelings are our teachers about ourselves. They show us before we think what we are really thinking. Some of us feel deeply. Some of us can cry at a commercial that tugs the heartstrings. Some of us don’t. But all of us have feelings and are confronted with them day in and out.

The hard part is to let them be, and then choose to respond in Christlike ways no matter what our feelings are. My kids are going to make fun of me. I have quoted this in sermons here, and at their chapel at St. Catherine’s. But in the book DUNE, there is a mantra that begins. “Fear is the mindkiller. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

Fear is one of the many feelings that can step in and control. When it arrives it tries to push its way into the driver’s seat. Anger is merely our fear pointed outward as a defensive weapon. Or inward to control ourselves to save us from feeling the feelings, and that swallowing of those emotions can be just as destructive. 

Joy, Rage, Sorrow, Pity, all of it can be overwhelming and pull out from us things which we do not want to express. Like the mantra against fear, replace most any emotion. See it. Recognize it. Maybe ask where this is coming from. What was the trigger? And then your brain can choose how you will respond. That way we can be angry, and sin not. When we are slapped or countered or mocked or hurt, we need not respond with the like. We have a choice in how we respond, and as the prophet said, “Choose you this day whom you will serve. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord!” (Joshua 24:15)

Think of the freedom that gives us! Think of the lightening of our burden. We need not be driven by the wind of rage in our sails. We need not be forced by the lash of our emotions to go where we would not choose to go. 

God’s call is for us to be our whole, complete, mature selves, and to be like Christ who even on the cross forgave his torturers, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”

Following that example, and seeing that ability in ourselves, is the only way we can do what St. Paul calls us to: “Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”

Especially for those temperaments whose hot heads sometimes get the best of them. St. Peter is the perfect example of someone whose emotions run ahead of their brain. “Jesus, I will never deny you!” and then within hours three times he denied the very one to whom he swore total allegiance. In the Garden of Gethsemane, striking the High Priest Caiaphas’s servant Malchus with a sword and cutting off an ear to protect the Prince of Peace! The irony! The hypocrisy! But also, the reality! Be angry, but sin not.

Friends, I have to confess my frustration lately with the people who refuse to get vaccinated. I obviously do not mean those who cannot, but those who have excuses and fears that overwhelm the science and numbers. Almost as frustrating are those who do not care enough of others to mask up. Soon they will be the lepers and pariahs in some areas, and some of them will gladly take on the mantle of martyr for their rights. 

And on the other side, people are tired of the pandemic, tired of being told what to do. Just tired. 

I have to remind myself, and all of us, even though I feel so strongly about my point of view, I am called by Christ to love. Period. No ifs, ands, or buts. There are no asterisks on Grace.

Some of you have strong feelings about how we are responding to this ongoing, and this ever-mutating crisis. Thank you for your patience and forgiveness when we get things wrong. None of us have a playbook on how to do this. No, not one. We are doing the best we can with what we have, and we are following the instructions and mandates of those who have authority over us. 

Woe is me! Woe is me! We live in a time when dissension is running amuck. We have forgotten our neighbors are our sisters and brothers, and that we are all beloved of God. We have forgotten that one of our oldest stories is that we are our siblings’ keepers. We have sinned and fallen short of the high calling you have made on our lives. Woe is me! Woe is me!

I express my feelings in lament, that biblical tradition of bringing those deep feelings to God. Lament is prayer. David lamented his son. Jesus lamented those who doubted. St. Paul lamented when we let our anger get in the way of our discipleship. I lament. You lament, though you may not have a word for it or thought of it that way.

As I said in the mantra against fear, Fear is the mindkiller. Lament is a way to let those emotions happen, and then to release them and let them pass on through. Lament is seeing it, and once seen we can let it go. 

Laments are common in the Bible. The dictionary definition is “a passionate expression of grief or sorrow.” Check the Psalms, or better yet, the whole book of lamentations. We have those feelings. Those feelings make us human. What we do with them makes us mature, or shows the opposite. How we respond despite our feelings shows how much we are like Christ.

We are called to love! We are called to forgive! We are called to “be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” Friends, when you find yourself saying “Woe is me! Woe is me!” that is okay. See it. Learn from it. And let it go so you can love like Christ. Amen.

Year B Proper 13 WED 2021 The Cross Only You Can Bear

Year B Proper 13 WEDNESDAY, 4 August 2021

St. James the Less Episcopal, Ashland, VA

“The Cross Only You Can Bear”

Collect: Let your continual mercy, O Lord, cleanse and defend your Church; and, because it cannot continue in safety without your help, protect and govern it always by your goodness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Mark 8:34-9:1

He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” And he said to them, “Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see that the kingdom of God has come with power.”

Good morning! I am glad that we can still be together, and thank you all for keeping the strict masking during this Red Zone/High Risk time. That enables us to meet.

This morning is a passage that has become common in our parlance, and because of that it is often unexamined.

But how we view the Cross of Christ, and the Cross we are called to take up says much about our view of God, our view of Christ, and our view of ourselves.

So often we see the Cross as Jesus paying a price that only he could pay, a blood ransom required by an angry God that must be appeased. I use harsh language because this concept goes against so much of what many if not most of us believe and talk about. If Jesus pays a ransom to redeem us from an impossible debt, what does that say about the nature of God? If Jesus had to do that, and we believe Jesus to be fully human AND fully divine, what does that say that God demands of Jesus and in essence Godself? And what does that say of us? It goes against the Gospel of Grace we say we believe. It goes against any image of a loving God. It goes against the doctrine of Humanity that we preach. So what else could we say?

Another metaphor we use is economic. Jesus paid a price that only he could pay. Very similar, but a debt instead of a blood ransom. This also is problematic, in that it discounts us similarly to the first.

But what might it mean for us to think about the Cross of Christ and the Cross we are called to pick up, if we saw it as the gift that only we can give? What if there is something that only Christ could do? What if our Cross is a gift that only we can give? We are empowered and enabled to be who we are born to be by giving our full self in love, as did Christ.

Think of how that elevates our role in the world. Think of how beautiful and unique and ultimately precious each and every soul is! 

Jesus gives us the gift that only we can give. And calls us to follow him in giving it away.

He calls us to die to self, or is it better seen as our selfishness? What if he is calling us to not hold tight what has been given to us, our talents, our time, our treasure, and we are able to share with all our family, our human family, the gifts that only we can give?

The Cross is our ability to share what makes us our highest and best self! It is the gift of the call of Christ to call us to that. It is in following Jesus that this level of Grace is even possible. 

He models the Grace he calls us to embody. His metaphor is the very gift only he could give. 

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, so that whoever believes in him should not perish by have everlasting [complete, whole, fully actualized] life. For Christ came into the world not to judge [condemn, destroy] the world, but that the world through him might be saved. John 3:16-17

What I am talking about here is not so radical, but rather what we have been invited to from the teachings of Christ. How freeing! How beautiful! How needed still! Amen

Year B Proper 13 2021 Gather Ye Breadcrumbs While Ye May

 Year B Proper 13, 1 August 2021

St. James the Less Episcopal, Ashland, VA

“Gather Ye Breadcrumbs While Ye May”

Collect: Let your continual mercy, O Lord, cleanse and defend your Church; and, because it cannot continue in safety without your help, protect and govern it always by your goodness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

John 6:24-35

The next day, when the people who remained after the feeding of the five thousand saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum looking for Jesus.

When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you come here?” Jesus answered them, “Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For it is on him that God the Father has set his seal.” Then they said to him, “What must we do to perform the works of God?” Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” So they said to him, “What sign are you going to give us then, so that we may see it and believe you? What work are you performing? Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’” Then Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.”

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

C.S. Lewis said of Jesus in Mere Christianity that one of three things had to be true. That he was a liar, and was a charlatan who duped a lot of people, and still does according to our atheist brothers and sisters. He was a lunatic, he believed what he said but he was spouting delusions and we have ingested this particular “opiate of the people” (K. Marx) Or he was the Lord, he was who he said he was and he backed up his words with works of power and signs of grace. Liar, Lunatic, or Lord. This morning, I was reminded of those words in the emphatic statement at the end of the Gospel reading.

In our reading from the Hebrew Scriptures we see God’s providential hand delivering quail and manna from heaven after their complaints in the desert. Water, Food, Shelter, Rest. These are requisite in the Psychologist Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. The base level of that pyramid is what we are talking about. The bare necessities. 

And so the rest of the sermon makes sense, let’s look at this. 

• The base of the pyramid is bodily needs: water, food, warmth, rest. When we torture people, these are the things we take away. In the most horrific ways we treat our fellow children of God we deprive them of oxygen, and that is when the human turns off and we are beasts again. Both those doing it and those suffering.

• The second tier is Safety issues, security and a sense of safety. It is hard to get rest without feeling secure. That is what Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is, that prolonged fear state and the emotional cost of being on edge for hours, weeks, months. It takes years to overcome the loss of these.

• The third tier begins our psychological needs, belonging and love. Freud said that we all need two things, psychologically that is, to feel loved and that we are capable of loving. We need a sense of feeling that we are okay just as we are as Mr. Rogers would put it.

• And the fourth tier is very similar. Self-Esteem, a sense of worth and accomplishment, that we are not living this life in vain. We are of value and we can give to others and our gifts are of worth.

• The pinnacle of Maslow’s pyramid is Self-Actualization, achieving one’s full potential and living the life we were designed to live. Our Best Self, is how we might describe it. Doing what we are born to do and being who we were born to be.

Now I went into all that to show you how miraculous and wonderful Jesus was.

The people in Exodus were pleading for something foundational, and God heard their cry. And God’s response was that base level, meeting their daily bread needs, just like we pray for in the Lord’s Prayer. 

Jesus heard the cry of the people, too. But their cries came from their desires, not from their needs. They wanted the bread without the toil, they wanted the manna, the free gift, the grace from God without wanting to gather it. Jesus heard their cry, and saw their true need. They were claiming the base of Maslow’s pyramid, when he was offering something greater and higher.

Many of you have heard me say this before, but read the Gospels. All of them, and in his encounters Jesus met people at one level and invited them to something higher. He takes the issue at hand, reframes it, and invites them to step up to a higher level. Einstein said that “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” Jesus invites us to a higher level of consciousness.

This situation is no different. They want bread after his feeding of the 5,000 and their excitement over that. They wanted to make him King, if you remember. “The Free Bread Party!!! Never work another day in your life!” That sure would be an easy sell! But Jesus knew that would ruin us, we are made to be at work in the world, we are made to do and create and dream and fulfill those dreams. And that is what Jesus offers. 

Hear again from our Gospel:

Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.” Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

So now let’s shuffle these two decks I presented today, C.S. Lewis and Abraham Maslow, and what on earth could they have to do with one another? Liar, Lunatic, Lord; Bare Necessities all the way up to Best Life Possible.

Now, if we look at the words of Jesus, that he is what we need to have a real life, our best life, our truest self then it follows that we need to direct our lives to what he said and how he modeled that Best Life principle. 

If he was a Liar, then we can laugh and walk away. We need not bother at all, and keep on going the way we are going.

If he was a Lunatic, these delusions would be obvious and self-fulfilling. For some they were. I remind you that the earliest known drawing of Jesus is a graffiti mocking a believer in Jesus. Jesus is depicted hanging on a cross with a donkey’s head. Shows us what some thought of Jesus and anyone who would follow an executed criminal.

But if Jesus is Lord, the Christ, the Anointed One, the Long-Awaited and Prophesied Messiah, then we have another think coming. If Jesus is the Bread of Life, stay with me here. IF Jesus is the Bread of Life, and we will never hunger or thirst again then we have some celebrating to do. We have some life-changing to do. We have to step up to that higher plane, that fulfillment level of Maslow’s pyramid.

Friends, most likely we will have to shut down again. We are currently at the time of filming in the Orange Zone, in other words, at Substantial risk. If we move to the Red Zone, High Risk, we will have to close down to care for everyone’s base needs, survival. Our county is less than 30% fully vaccinated. God help us. God forgive us. Fear, wherever it comes from, is a dangerous thing. It makes us turn our higher selves off. Perfect love drives out all fear. And as we care for the base needs of all who worship here, I would encourage us all while we most likely will need to be away to look to Jesus. 

Is he your manna, your base needs? Or, is he your Self-Actualization, that one that empowers and enables you to be the one God made you to be? Or somewhere in between?

Is Jesus the first we turn to, or is he your last resort. Your Hail Mary pass with one second on the clock? Is he the bread which sustains your life, or have you decided to Keto in regards to the spiritual cutting out the Bread of Life?

This week I had opportunity to do a few home visits, and one person when they received the wafer said how much they missed it, how much they needed it. It was a deep reminder to me how precious and special this gift of the Bread of Life is. The wafer is not much... 

But Jesus is everything.

Jesus Christ is the one for me I turn to for all my tiers of Maslow. Because he is the Bread of Life, and the Living Water. Because he is the Good Shepherd, and the True Vine. Because he is the Way, the Truth, the Life. Because he is the Resurrection and the Life. Because he is the Light of the World. He meets us where we are, and invites us to Step Up to where we could be. He is the Way, from our basest needs to our Truest Selves. Thanks be to God!

The Bread of Heaven is there, the manna of God, but friends, we must gather it. This grace has come. Will we receive it? As Jesus said, “Take my yolk upon you and learn from me, for my path is easy and my burden is light.” Matthew 11:29-30

Hear it again for the first time from the Message translation: “Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”

That, my friends, is Good News! Amen