Tuesday, March 5, 2024

Inequality Spurs Righteous Anger

This is Year B, the Year of Mark's Gospel. But the original evangelist doesn't always give us enough meat on the bones of the Jesus story. And so, this week (and next) we will have stories from the Gospel of John. And John's Gospel puts Jesus in Jerusalem right away...in Chapter Two...and he's already geared up and ready to challenge the system of Empire that has permeated everything...including religion. 

And--oh my--what a difficult text to have on the same weekend that an important commemoration was happening on the Georgia coast to remember the largest slave auction in the 19th century!

This was a moment of "Come Holy Spirit" as I wrestled with how to say things that need saying in a way that they might be heard...understood...and taken in with the hope it might make at least a few people do some self-evaluation and make a turn toward a way of striving for equality and equity.

That is my prayer.

See what you think.

Text: John 2: 13-22

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Most of the Episcopal Churches I’ve been to in my lifetime have something we don’t have here:

a plethora of stained-glass windows.

The sunlight streams through them creating beautiful and mesmerizing patterns of golds…blues and reds on the floors and the walls.

Often times…the scenes depicted in the stained-glass feature one of the Gospel stories about Jesus.

Sometimes….he’s the surprisingly Northern European white Jesus with blonde hair and blue eyes.

Other artists have captured him with darker hair and a darker complexion more reminiscent of people from the Middle East.

Frequently…Jesus is shown lovingly cradling a lamb in his arms.

Or he’s washing Peter’s feet.

Or talking with the Samaritan woman at the well.

In more majestic imagery…he’s either ascending into heaven…or we see him in his dazzling brightness of the Transfiguration through his bleached white robe.

Those are all great.

But once…just once… I would love to see a Jesus in a stained-glass window…his nostrils flaring…his muscles flexing as he’s flipping tables…sending money flying everywhere and chasing people and animals with a whip of cords!

I want to see the human Jesus…the one who knows what it means to get angry and be fed up.

I think a lot of people would be able to maybe see themselves in such an image of Jesus.

I think it’s important for us to understand why Jesus has this massive hissy fit in the Temple that seems so un-Jesus-like.

One of the shortcomings of the church…at least in this priest’s opinion…is that we’ve allowed our Sunday schools…especially for children…to cast this scene as “Jesus cleanses the Temple.” We’ve stopped the lesson at a simple, “Jesus was angry about the House of Prayer being a marketplace.”

That’s really only half right.

And that half-truth has fed into some of the anti-Semitism that we see raise its ugly head… especially in this time of year…and is becoming prevalent in this country and around the world.

It’s that whole ugly idea that Jews only care about money and controlling commerce.

So what’s “the more” going on here in the Gospel?

To understand Jesus’ anger…we need to look at both the where and when that this happens.

This Second Temple…built by Herod the Great over the course of 46 years…was an enormous structure….the size of five football fields…. a massive stone building taking up several city blocks…with many entry gates.

It was the center of everything in Jerusalem.

There was an area for prayer happening in the Jewish section of the Temple…and there was also something like a shopping mall.

Along the Temple’s outer courtyard was the place reserved for Gentiles.

This is where the money changers would have worked…taking in Roman coins with the image of Caesar…in exchange for the Jewish currency which had no graven image.

Think about those Ten Commandments we recited in the Decalogue and heard in our first reading.

The Roman Empire treated Caesar as a God.

Jews would never attempt to make an image of God…so the money used to pay the Temple tax had no face on it.

The time that this scene takes place is just before Passover.

Lots of Jews would have come from all over the countryside into Jerusalem to commemorate the festival of their deliverance from Egyptian slavery…and liberation from oppression.

They would be needing to come into the temple to get their lambs for sacrifice…or doves if they didn’t have money.

Doves were reserved for the poor.

Even Mary and Joseph had to buy a pair of doves for their sacrificial offering.

Doves were also used by lepers and menstruating women.

So all the activities going on in this part of the Temple were normal.

Sacrifices and getting the right coinage were part of the religious practice. 

That’s not what was sticking in Jesus’ craw.

What infuriated him…and it was the thing that sent John the Baptizer out to the Jordan River in protest… was that the Roman Empire…and its religious cronies…had so profaned the religion within this structure that the poor were especially exploited and oppressed by the system.  

This is why in the Gospel accounts…we hear that Jesus particularly targeted the tables of money changers and dove sellers.

And…since this is the Gospel of John…Jesus is making it explicit that his body…his own flesh and blood… is replacing this temple of massive stones.

That the religion of justice is in him and not the ginormous edifice with demands of taxes and sacrifices by the poor.

What Jesus could not abide by was this conflation of religion with the privilege and wealth…and how it oppressed the poor.

His protest was against an unjust system.

Such systems still exist.

In fact…it’s something that has haunted the Episcopal Church.

At the founding of our United States…a number of the most powerful men who crafted and signed the Declaration of Independence and created our U.S. Constitution were affiliated with the Episcopal Church.

One of those men was General Pierce Butler…a South Carolina Senator and veteran of the Revolutionary War.

General Butler was farmer and landowner.

He held property in several states…including much of St. Simon’s Island.

His Butler Plantation in Darien, Georgia, was left to his grandson Pierce Mease Butler.

The Butlers owned the land in Darien are where St. Andrew’s and St. Cyprian’s Episcopal Churches stand today.

Owning so much land had made the Butler family quite wealthy…. growing sea island cotton and rice.

But with that generational wealth comes the truth about how they were able to become one of the richest families in the country during the 18th and 19th centuries.

The Butlers owned slaves.

Hundreds of them.

When Pierce Mease Butler’s English wife…the actress Fanny Kemble…came to the States and stayed on one of the Butler plantations…she was horrified by the treatment of the slaves.

She couldn’t accept the arguments her husband and others made to justify the institution.

She became an abolitionist.

As you might imagine…the marriage fell apart and she went back to England.

Maybe she threw over a table or two.

One of the saddest moments in the history of Georgia and the young country…happened on this date in 18-59.

Pierce Butler…having squandered 700-thousand dollars of his wealth…sold 436 African men…women and children at a racetrack outside of Savannah. 

It was the single largest slave auction in the nation’s history.

It took two days…and it poured down rain from the start to the finish.

They call it The Weeping Time.

The thought was that the heavens wept… watching families being sold like cattle.

There are commemorations and vigils of this travesty happening on the Georgia coast in Darien this weekend.

Pierce Butler regained some of his wealth…about 300-thousand dollars’ worth.

But at what cost and pain inflicted on others?

To benefit from a system that dehumanizes people?

And at what further cost to us?

Because sadly…we’ve been handed this legacy…wealth gained on the backs and bodies of other people.

This is the heritage we have…all of us…as a people.

Fortunately…the Episcopal Church is doing the work this weekend by participating in the vigil in Darien to own its part of that heritage.

This is how we begin the work of repairing the breach of history.

We can’t change what has happened in the past.

But we can acknowledge that it happened.

And then we can metaphorically work toward flipping over the tables of systems that have benefitted some… at the great expense of others.

One small but helpful step is to pay attention to where and how we spend our money.

Maybe instead of eating at a chain restaurant…perhaps we go to a local one owned and operated by a black or brown family.

That’s one simple and yet conscious way to make a difference.

Our Gospel is giving us permission to see inequality…and to get angry about it.

Our God calls us to not just get angry…but to flip the script and to take actions to address injustices in the system.

Perhaps one day…I’ll finally see a stained-glass window in an Episcopal Church of a blonde blue-eyed Jesus turning over tables in the temple.

That’ll be a church ready to live into our Baptismal Covenant: resisting evil, striving for peace and justice, and respecting the dignity of every human being.

In the name of God…F/S/HS.

 


Sunday, February 25, 2024

Change is Hard



 I've had a week. So has the world. 

Wars in Gaza and Ukraine drag on and our Congress is of no help to anyone with the Republicans preferring to kowtow to a disgraced presidential candidate than to actually work on the issues facing our country and the rest of the world. 

The Alabama Supreme Court...under the control of a Dominionist Chief Justice...has decided that frozen embryos in an IVF clinic are "children." 

And a non-binary high school sophomore in Oklahoma...Nex Benedict...died a day after a brutal beating in the girl's bathroom at their high school. Oklahoma is one of the many states that has been making the transgender community the target of hateful legislation. 

Meanwhile...I've had to deal with putting out many metaphorical fires in my own sphere. 

As I read the Gospel, I thought about all that's swirling around me. I reached the conclusion that in every case, what is tripping us up is the fear of things that are changing...and the people who are hell-bent on trying to keep the status quo alive...even if it's futile.

With that set up....here is my sermon. See what you think.

Text: Mark 8:31-38

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Our Gospel reading this morning should give us pause.

Because what Jesus is proposing is something that many of us try to avoid at all cost: change.

Real change.

A real shift in how we are to live and move and have our being.

A movement out of our comfort zones.

And his imagery…that “taking up your cross”…is one that Mark’s initial audience…Jews living with the aftermath of a brutal and destructive war that left them like a rudderless boat in the middle of the ocean…would have put a lump in their throats.

They know what the cross represented.

The cross was an instrument of torture.

As commentators like Ched Myers note…it was to keep the lower classes…and anyone who challenged the law and order of the Roman Empire…in line.

It was used as a means of letting the powerless know who was in charge.

And now Jesus…ever the relentless rebellious upstart in Mark’s Gospel...is saying to his followers….saying to us…be ready to challenge the status quo…and die.

But the death we are called to is not a death on a cross.

And even in this speech…there is a metaphorical message that is the one we must heed.

So let’s first back up and figure out how we got to this point of Jesus making this statement.

In the verses before our Gospel…Jesus is with his disciples.

They are “on the way” through Caesarea Philippi.

Whenever Jesus and the disciples are “on the way”…that’s about this journey toward a showdown coming in Jerusalem.

That they are in this particular region…means that they are in a largely Gentile region.

In fact…this whole scene…according to Biblical scholars…happened outside a cave with a shrine to the pagan God Pan.

Pan is a nature God…associated with shepherds…and goats and sheep.

His name also has given us the word “panic” as one story says he helped a friend escape a vicious battle by letting out a terrible screeching sound that sent the enemy fleeing.

This seems a perfect spot then for the conversation that takes place.

This is where Jesus asks the disciples, “Who do people say that I am?”

And after a few rounds of lots of different ideas…Jesus says, “But who do you say that I am?”

And Peter…the Rock…announces, “You are the Messiah!”

You gotta love Peter!

As we talked about as the cast when we were preparing for the staged reading of this Gospel, Peter represents us…all humans.

He nails this one…naming Jesus the Messiah…the Christ…the anointed one of God.

But Peter and all the disciples had a particular understanding about what it meant to have a Messiah.

Their vision of the Messiah was like a knight in shining armor who was going to ride in and be a warrior king…with sword and a head full of steam…leading an army in a glorious if bloody battle to drive out the Roman Empire once and for all.

Instead…Jesus tells Peter to keep quiet about this Messiah business.

Jesus switches the title from Messiah…this warrior…to Son of Man…or in other translations “the Human One.”

The Messiah that Jesus depicts is not fearsome warrior.

He is one of the dissidents.

He is part of the disinherited.

He is one with those who are suffering.

He will not come on a war horse and lead an army against Rome.

He’s plotting to ride into town on a donkey.

And as we heard…Peter doesn’t like any of this.

He really doesn’t like Jesus talking about getting killed. That’s not the script that Peter knows…nor the one that any of us would want to believe if we were Peter.

When we think of a leader…we often look for someone strong.

A person who will kick butt and take names.

And Jesus calls Peter “Satan.”

Not because he thinks Peter is a bad guy.

But just as Satan tested Jesus out in the wilderness…and at least in Matthew and Luke’s accounts kept trying to get him to give into egocentric desires for power… Jesus sees Peter’s rebuke as focusing on the wrong thing.

This is where Peter, the disciples, the crowd…and us…face the uncomfortable…difficult challenge from Jesus: we must change.

We must put away our ideas and identities built on the conventional wisdom of what “Messiah” means…what “strength” looks like.

We must lose our old ideas of what it means to be powerful.

And probably the toughest thing Jesus says in this Gospel: he tells the crowd…and us…we must die to self…die to our ego-driven ways… in order to gain our lives.

Such directives can cause panic.

We don’t want to die…even if the thing we’re killing off is something that needs to go.

When I read through this… I thought about what happens to so many of us when we go through a major event in our lives…some life-altering moment that forces us to face ourselves and our image of ourselves.

It’s what happens to people when they retire…or resign…or otherwise lose a job.

In our society….so much of who we are is tied up in our jobs and what we do for a living.

The most common questions we ask each other when we first meet: What’s your name and what do you do…meaning what do you do for a living?

Or if it’s a younger person…where do you go to school? What grade are you in?

I’ll never forget the night that I woke up sweating and in a panic.

It was about three weeks before the date that I had planned to quit working for Florida Public Rado.

I knew what I was doing was the right thing.

But I also had the fear…the panic…that if I was no longer a public radio reporter…if I no longer was identified with that role…then who was I?

Jesus asked the question: Who do you say that I am…and then answered Peter’s identity with a redefinition of what it means to be the Messiah.

And in Jesus’s words…there is a sense that even though he will undergo suffering…a new identity…a new thing… a new way will come.

Something better…something stronger…something that will not die.

That thing is Love.

The invitation before us then is:

what do we have to let go of?

What must die in order for us to fully live?

What in ourselves are we afraid to give up because it might mean we have to radically rethink who we are…and how we relate to one another?

What privileged status must we let go of?

What righteous anger keeps us from being able to live into and receive the Love of God that is around us?

What words of resentment spoken in whispers have caused more harm?

We’re living in a time when there is so much bitterness.

Our political leaders are stoking fires of tribalism.

They’re behavior is trickling down into the way we see and interact with each other.  

We need the grace of God to get us to turn away from the powerful pull of pettiness…hatred and hardness of heart and embrace the life of mercy, forgiveness, and love.

Jesus is challenging us to not let our egos separate us from the reconciling love of God.

I recently heard a prayer offered by the late Rev. Jean Dalby Clift…an Episcopal priest and psychologist...that I think gives us something to consider as we guard against those things that draw us away from God and each other:

O God of grace, give us your grace that we may not savor the evil in others in order to disguise the evil in ourselves.   

In the name of God…F/S/HS.

 


Monday, February 19, 2024

Covenant of Love

 


Well, it finally happened. 

I spent several hours on Friday struggling to get some kind of a coherent thought down on paper for my sermon. I managed to finish some time just before 9pm. I got it formatted as I like it. And then put it and me to bed. 

When the cat started yowling at 4am as he often does, I was awake enough to run through my head the start of my sermon. 

And I hated it. It just felt so forced and pulling at anything to get into talking about the story of Noah. 

I stayed in bed for another couple of hours, running things through my head. Finally, at about 6:30am, I got up, fed the cat, and went to the back room and opened a new document to start my sermon over. 

I've heard from other preachers that this does happen. And at least I'm not pitching it because of a tragedy that forces me to go in another direction. 

And I ended up touching in some ways on all the readings except for the Psalm! 

See what you think.

Texts: Genesis 9: 8-17; 1 Peter 3: 18-22; Mark 1: 9-15

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“God so loved the world that he put his bow in the sky and promised that no matter how much we did to deserve it…God would never wipe us out with a flood again.”

I know that’s not what the text says…but that is the basic promise God made to all of creation at the end of the story of the Great Flood.

I made ya.

I love ya.

You aggravate me.

But I’m never gonna lose my temper like this again.

The ancient people believed that the gods controlled the weather. They hadn’t learned anything of carbon footprints or jet streams.

Insurance companies still seem to think that tornadoes and floods are somehow “acts of God” as if God wants to wreck mobile home parks and swaths of cities and towns.

To be clear…like so many of the stories in Genesis…these are morality tales and human projections…not so much actual historical events.

But they do serve a purpose of helping us to gain an understanding about God and God’s relationship to us and each other.

Our early biblical ancestors must have felt as though God was some kind of vicious warrior.

An angry hunter coming after humanity with torrential rains.

But then God the warrior concludes the hunt by hanging up the bow…the bow and arrow…and declaring, “That’s enough.”

And what a way to end such a turbulent struggle!

What a beautiful symbol of God’s enduring and lasting covenant of love than to put that bow in the sky.

Don’t we all get excited when we see a rainbow?

It doesn’t matter how young or old we are…that gorgeous spectrum of light…from the radiant reds to sometimes the palest purple…when we see a rainbow… we all gaze in awe and wonder.

It fills us with a sense of hope that after a thunderstorm…the sun will come back and dry up the puddles and warm our skin again.

Somewhere deep in our DNA we must know that a rainbow means the end of trouble…and a covenant of God’s abiding love.

Is it any wonder then that the rainbow has become a symbol for everything from peace and unity to LGBTQ pride and the celebration of the diversity of love.

It’s even the emblem of those engaged in the Kairos prison ministry program.

There’s such hope embedded in that colorful visual image.

This is God making good on the covenantal promise to be with us through every turbulent storm we encounter.

The word “covenant” suggests a stronger bond than just a simple agreement.

And in this case with Noah…it’s God acting as the more powerful one in the relationship to make a commitment to us and all of creation that I will not let my anger spill over into a murderous rage.

Even as much as God might have lost it with humanity in these early chapters of the Book of Genesis…there was still hope for humankind in saving Noah and Noah’s family…as well as many species and plants that God told Noah to take with him into the ark.

There was also much loss.

But out of those waters of the great flood….God made room for new life….a fresh start or something like a do-over for creation.

We could think of baptism in that same vein.

As it says in our Epistle reading from First Peter….baptism isn’t about washing away dirt from our skin.

It’s about bringing us into closer relationship with God…and the powerful force of Love that will not be kept down.

Bringing us into a new life.

When we have a baptism…the candidate or their parents and Godparents…make pledges to turn away from the things that reject God and destroy creation…and lean into the love of God…and making that the center point of our lives.

Through those waters of baptism…we are made one with the whole Body of Christ…. becoming joined to Jesus as our brother and friend.

Baptism brings us into a relationship with God where we…like Jesus…hear that we are God’s children…God’s beloveds…with whom God is well pleased.

It’s interesting to note that immediately after Jesus’s baptism…the Spirit takes him out into the wilderness.

I think that’s true of us as well.

It seems that once we’re blessed and marked as Christ’s own forever…. we get signed up for also contending with all the things Jesus contended with in his earthly ministry.

We get tested and tempted to seek things for selfish gain…rather than seeing ourselves as part of community.

We fail to see how the way we live and move and have our being affects all those around us…including our planet.

We become consumed with our individual rights that we are unwilling to make sacrifices that protect the individual rights of others.

We always hear the story of Jesus’s time in the wilderness on the First Sunday of Lent…and there’s a reason for that.

Lent is a time of wilderness testing.

This is the time for us to face those things…. those wild beasts in our lives…that have kept us occupied with trivial matters or in a cycle of self-reliance and shutting ourselves off from the power of God’s love.

The good news is that we are not left helpless and hopeless. Just as Jesus had angels waiting on him in his time in the wilderness…there are those around us who are sharing this same space…this same trip…heading down that path which leads us to the cross and ultimately to resurrected life.

All of us are in the same boat…the same ark….getting tossed about by whatever storms are coming our way.

Each of us has our own beasts that we are contending with in our lives.

But ultimately…we also all have the same God…the one savior Jesus…who has promised not to leave us abandoned.

Look to that one hope…that one beautiful rainbow of love.

Dare to open your heart enough to receive that love.

See it in the eyes of that neighbor…that friend…that companion on this journey through Lent.

And remember that you are not alone.

In the name of God…F/S/HS.

 

 

 

 


Thursday, February 15, 2024

Ash Valentine's Wednesday



Happy Birthday to me! The last time Ash Wednesday coincidied with Valentine's Day was on my 50th birthday.

And that same day...a 17 year-old entered Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida with an AR-15, and killed a bunch of students and teachers. 

And on this day...there was another shooting at the Super Bowl celebration in Kansas City. 

No. I didn't mention it in my sermon. At this point, I am feeling as though anything I say on that topic of gun violence directly is met with rolled eyes and furrowed brows. 

And I have other fish to fry at the moment. Starting with getting people to stop looking only at their flaws and failures...and the trouble with "other people" and begin to see that they are truly loved by God.

Text: Matthew 6:1-6; 16-21

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There’s something awkward about having Ash Wednesday land on the same day as Valentine’s Day.

As the rest of the culture is exchanging cards, flowers, and chocolates…as they’re going out for an outrageously overpriced dinner for two at a restaurant…we’re here.

In the church sanctuary.

Getting marked with an ashen cross on our foreheads…

being reminded of our mortality.

Wow! Such romance, right?

But…y’know…this isn’t the only time we’re asked to stand at a 90 or even 180-degree angle from popular culture.

Stores put up Christmas ornaments…setting up those huge light-up reindeers at the end of the store aisles…while still hawking smiling jack o’lanterns and black and orange Halloween decorations….and paper turkeys for Thanksgiving.

While HalloThanksMas is happening around us in every marketplace…we come into our churches on Sunday and remember our loved ones on All Saints’ Day…then wait patiently through Advent to celebrate the inbreaking of God through Jesus at Christmas.

So…in other words…being out of step with the culture is kind of old hat for Christianity.

It’s easy to fall into thinking that such a solemn day as Ash Wednesday is a time for us to be sober…and sad.

One of my priest friends pointed out how we…the church leaders…pile it on when we pray an opening collect that talks about “acknowledging our wretchedness” as if we need to make THAT the focus for Lent.

For some of us…we spend so much time in our everyday lives seeing our “wretchedness” or hearing about how awful we are…that we fail to hear that first part of the same collect.

God “hates nothing” that God has made and forgives the sins…whatever they may be…of those who have turned to God.

Honestly…if you’re here today…those of you in person and any of you watching online…then take THAT in:

God doesn’t hate you or me.

God forgives you and me of any of shortcomings.

Because God is Love…and wants to Love you and me.

That’s the Valentine from God to us…that we are and always will be God’s beloved children.

Our biblical ancestor…the prophet Joel…has the line about “rending our hearts and not our clothing.”

The rending of clothing in biblical times was about a person expressing intense sorrow and grief.

But rather than ripping our clothes…Joel tells us…and the psalmist confirms for us….that what God seeks is for us to open our hearts…pour out whatever grievances we have…and allow God to do the work of loving us.

Through our grief.

Through our feelings of inadequacy.

Through our embarrassments.

And through whatever wounds we carry that keep us from being able to give and receive love.

This is the God who is “full of compassion and mercy, slow to anger and of great kindness.” (Ps.103:8)

God says, “Come to me you who are weary and I will give you rest. Please let me love you.”

That’s what Ash Wednesday should be about.

A time for us to recognize that God showed us God’s love by meeting us on the ground… in our own circumstances… through the life and ministry and mission of Jesus…who we call Christ.

And what we hear from Jesus’s words in our Gospel is to take this time to get right within ourselves…as opposed to making a show of how righteous we are to others.

Think about some of what he says in our Gospel…particularly about prayer.

He talks about not making a public display of prayer…but rather going into your room and shut the door to pray.

This is again an invitation to go into our hearts…our own rooms…and make that prayer to God….

Your kingdom come

Your will be done

 On earth as it is in heaven.

It was once the custom of the church that those who were catechumens…people who were preparing to be baptized…would spend the time from Ash Wednesday to the Easter Vigil…separated from their church community to study…fast…and pray.

They were…in a sense…forced to live in the wilderness for forty days.

But what God is looking for from us is not so extreme…or adding one more thing to do to our plates.

What God is seeking is our heart….our open hearts….to allow God’s love to meet us in that place….so that God can help us to be the best versions of ourselves for a world that blithely ignores those seeking to know that they matter.

As you hear the prayer of an invitation to a Holy Lent…remember: God hates nothing…

God forgives our shortcomings…

and in the tracing of that cross on our foreheads…we are reminded that we are God’s dust…

God’s children…

God’s beloved.

In the name of God…F/S/HS