Things Fall Apart...And It's OK

 

The Second Temple of Jerusalem by Alex Levin

Well, the scriptural hits keep coming in this post-election season. 

Nothing like having "The Little Apocalypse" in a very shortened version to work with for preaching after a week of announced nominees for Cabinet positions who are horribly unqualified and even dangerous. I mean, a guy who was under investigation by his own party for sex trafficking minors as the potential attorney general of the United States?! A man who is a rabid anti-vaxxer and claims to have a dead worm in his brain to lead the Department of Health and Human Services? A defense secretary who thinks our military is too "woke" because women are allowed into combat roles? And we're going to let a woman who has a warm relationship with one of our worst enemies be in charge of our national security? 

It's cartoonish and outlandish. And a dangerous game of chicken to see how far the Republican-controlled Senate will bend to the president-elect's will. 

The one upside from the Gospel reading: we know that, in the end, God didn't make the crucifixion the end of the story of Jesus. Nothing was easy, but eventually...goodness, Love, and light prevails. 

We just have to keep that hope alive and not give in or accept despair as the answer.

See what you think.

Texts: Mark 13:1-8, 1 Samuel 2:1-10, the Collect for Proper 28, BCP 236

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We’re going to try an exercise.

Close your eyes.

Take a breath in and let it out.

Now imagine a structure…a huge building.

It’s made of rocks the size of a Harley Davidson motorcycle.

There are magnificent gold-plated shields hanging in a decorative fashion on the walls.

There are huge towers.

People come in through arched entry ways…thirteen to fourteen feet high.

There are Corinthian columns and a series of several stone steps that lead into a courtyard the size of a football field.

Keep that structure in your mind.

 Now open your eyes.

That building…the temple of Jerusalem…captured the imagination of the disciples.

It was huge! It was so big…so powerful…and it was the central gathering place for all of Jerusalem.

It was a market place.

A place of worship.

It was the biggest Wow of all the Wows… the mightiest symbols of strength for the Jews who were living under the control of the Roman Empire.

This is the Temple Herod Antipas had constructed.

The first Jerusalem Temple… the one King Solomon had built…was wrecked by the Babylonians…many centuries earlier.

 

It took years and years to build it again.

So there was some pride among the Jewish disciples when they gazed upon this massive building.

And now Jesus says…it’s all coming down.

Everything.

Not one stone left on top of another stone.

This scene is what follows Jesus’ lecture on the greed of the treasury. 

And just like with the treasury…Mark tells us that Jesus is sitting opposite the Temple…as he predicts its demise.

The disciples have that pit in the stomach feeling when they hear all this from Jesus.

Perhaps some of us also felt a little queasy listening to how something so grand and prominent and important is destined for destruction.

It’s as if September 11^th…and the twin towers of the World Trade Center…came crashing to the earth again.

And Jesus says, “It’s OK. This needs to happen.”

But why?

This whole chapter in Mark’s Gospel is what scholars call “The Little Apocalypse.”

It gets that name because of all the language about earthquakes and upheaval and wars and such.

The word apocalypse means “revelation.”

And there’s a lot being revealed here.

So let’s pull back the curtain on the scripture and take a look at what was happening at the time that Mark was putting pen to papyrus.

That will give us some appreciation for this Gospel reading…and may give us some insights for our lives now in the 21^st century.

Scholars have dated Mark’s Gospel to just before the second destruction of the Temple about 70 CE.

There was a war between Jewish Zealots and the Roman Empire.

The Zealots were the rebel forces determine to overthrow their Roman oppressors.

Rome…which had more might and military was also in the throes of chaos with internal battles occurring in their power structure.

Because Rome wasn’t always well organized…the Zealots would win the occasional battle.

But their main focus became protecting the Temple in Jerusalem.

And there was heavy recruitment to join the Zealots in defending the Temple.

The community hearing Mark’s Gospel were living in this time.

They were among those being asked to take up arms.

So this conflict and these realities were the constant news feed happening on the street.

When Jesus talks about hearing of “wars and rumor of wars” that’s what was in the air.

And the Jesus of Mark…was not a warrior of the Zealot-kind.

Jesus was…and is… a countercultural figure.

His mission didn’t involve picking up a sword as the answer to the oppressor.

Protecting the Temple would not be the priority for Jesus.

His fight was to free people from power structures…including those of a temple that had become an exploitative system under the Roman authorities.

This is also another pivotal moment in the journey of Jesus to the cross.

He’s moving from acts of healing and his ministry…and now is delivering one last sermon to his followers about what is coming as they enter Jerusalem.

It’s going to be rocky.

It’s going to be scary.

People are going to be coming after you.

And it’s going to be OK.

He likens all of this to being like a woman in labor.

And any mother can tell you that labor is not the most joyful moment of pregnancy.

And as any person concerned with women’s healthcare can attest to…pregnancy can be a dicey and dangerous adventure…especially with the first child.

But once the labor is through…and the child is born… there is rejoicing.

There is new life… and a future.

These birth pangs…these endings…this tearing down of the Temple…Jesus says…

”Yeah. It’s gonna go down.

But don’t give up.

Don’t fall into the trap of hate and despair.

Keep your eyes and your heart open to love and hope.”

These aren’t simply saying platitudes he’s making up on the spot.

Just as Hannah sang her song of vindication against the mighty… Jesus’s words are meant to remind those listening to him of the warnings of their Jewish prophets…such as Zechariah.

Amy-Jill Levine…a New Testament scholar at Vanderbilt…notes that there’s nothing new about him warning of false prophets.

Those who pass themselves off as the self-proclaimed mouthpieces for God… existed before Jesus….written up in the Book of Deuteronomy.

These cautions from Jesus should not be new to us either.

If we have been gathering to worship…

if we have been receiving the sacrament of bread and wine in the faithful belief that we are being re-membered into the body of Christ…

then we have a place in this experience with Jesus of knowing that Love is the way toward life…and that light that keeps us moving in a Godward direction.

As our collect this morning says…are holy Scriptures are written for our learning.

We hear this Gospel, we read these words with the intention that we are to mark these words…learn from them…inwardly digest them.

Jesus offers these words of warning us so that we are not  blinded by the bright shiny objects.

We must be careful about putting too much stock into the things we think are great and powerful.

Finally…Jesus gives us these words as a preparation for how to live through moments that feel peculiar and unsettled.

We call that “liminal space.”

Liminal spaces are those times in our lives where things feel neither here nor there.

Grief is often described as a “liminal space.”

It can feel foggy…and strange.

Almost as if we’re moving at one speed while everything else around us is functioning at a different almost frenetic pace.

When we’re in that time…a place between what was and what is coming…we have Jesus telling us to understand that we will go through difficulties and hardships…but—as the poet Maya Angelou says—just like air…we will rise.

This is the promise of Jesus: that we are never alone.

And this is the promise of hope in everlasting life:

that no matter what…those who keep their eyes fixed on the love and light of God will not get lost in the dark and despair.

In the name of our One Holy and Undivided Trinity.

 

"Greed" A Sermon for 25B Pentecost, Proper 27

 

The United States Capitol Building after January 6, 2021

Stunned. That's how I felt on Election Night. I had fully anticipated us being in the same boat we were in back in November 2020 with the race simply too tight to call until four days later. I don't know how it is possible for the pollsters...who had projected a very tight race... to have gotten things so incredibly wrong. 

I also don't know how 70+ million Americans could think it is a good idea to put a man in the White House who has shown such clear disdain for the rule of law, the Constitution, who has 34 felony convinctions, is a convicted sexual predator, who has endangered the lives of law enforcement by sending an armed group of thugs to the Capitol in an attempted coup on January 6, 2021, who is cozy with our country's enemies such as Russia and North Korea, who wants to enact a national abortion ban against the will of the majority of the citizens...even Republicans, who has appointed justices to the Supreme Court who are rolling back or threatening to roll back long hard-fought civil rights for minorities especially LGBTQ+ people, who has threatened to deport immigrants including people who are here legally, who has committed horrible characterizations of some immigrants (Haitians), refers to Islamic countries as "shit hole countries," has disparaged military service members who were POWs (the late Sen. John McCain)....the list of insults and atrocities are frankly endless. How anyone who aspires to call themselves a "Christian" could vote for such a man is a cognitive disconnect beyond my comprehension. 

And yet....here we are. 

Many of us who are priests in the Episcopal Church had the unfortunate task of having to preach after such an election. For me, I felt the blood draining from my body because I am painfully aware of three things: 

1. I am queer and hence am quite concerned about the future of the country I call home; 

2. I am leading a church in a rosy-red part of South Georgia that is a tiny congregation who are not of one mind politically; and 

3. I have to be a priest to all of them...because I vowed to "love and serve the people among whom you work, caring alike for young and old, strong and weak, rich and poor." 

Tough stuff on a good day, friends.

I chose not to directly address the election itself. Again, given the above, I needed to find a way to speak to both groups, especially those who might be feeling on top of the world and proud that their side prevailed. Because such pride and self-satisfaction in this moment needs to look more closely at what it actually has done...closer to the ground...to that person sitting a few chairs over from them in the church. 

See what you think.

Text: Mark 12:28-34

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True confession time:

I have had a hard time coming up with a sermon for this week.

At our post-election day evening prayer service… I confessed that I wasn’t sure what I was going to say…as I kept looking at the scriptures for something to say.

And… as always…God shows up.

The Holy Spirit gives me that sharp elbow to the rib cage.

And as I sat in the pew at our opening Eucharist at diocesan convention…that big Jesus…looking out as the risen Christ the King…and hanging behind the altar of St. Anne’s wasn’t going to leave me comfortless…

Nor was he going to leave me mute.

It truly helped to be gathered together as a diocese committed to living hope…that was the theme of our convention.

That’s the bedrock of our faith…to continue to live in hope no matter what.

To see that hope is the light that we look to when we’re trying to stumble through a sometimes pea-soup foggy world.

It also helped me to turn toward the wisdom of those who are my friends and guides.

I am blessed by some great relationships that I had built in my short time in seminary…and clergy colleagues here in the diocese.

We all need to keep looking to those helpers in our lives.

And…of course…there’s always music.

And those musicians who preach through singing and drumming some of the best public theology.

One of my favorites is Bernice Johnson Reagon…the founder of the acapella singing group “Sweet Honey in the Rock.”

Reagon was born and raised in Albany, Georgia…and moved to Washington, D.C. where she began this group of women singers.

Their music was the soundtrack that made it possible for me to enter the Florida State Capitol building…and do my work of being that public radio reporter and witness to the things the powerful people do to the powerless.

And it was an equal opportunity mean fest on most days.

Meanness is non-partisan.

Sweet Honey’s music helped me pray…to find inner peace….in my head and heart…during those years when the church was not my home.

Their songs would also become the music loop in my head as I embarked on my journey back into the church.

They were my friends…my muses…that would lift up my spirits as I went from peak and valley…while God… the great potter… worked the clay of my soul.

As I was driving to Tifton this week…traveling along the roads dotted with farms that are harvesting cotton…and still struggling with what to do with the sermon for this Sunday…I decided to play one of my Sweet Honey in the Rock CDs.

And God…the great DJ…served up a song with lyrics that met the Gospel and the moment.

Bernice Johnson Reagon began singing:

“I been thinking ‘bout how to talk about greed.

I been wond’rin’ if I could sing about greed.

Tryin’ to find a way to talk about greed.”

 I looked again at our Gospel.

And I saw it: this is a story about greed.

What I believe Mark wants us to really see is that Jesus sits down “opposite the treasury” as he watched the crowd.

Commentators note that the treasury had these thirteen trumpet-shaped receptacles…and that as the people placed their coins in…they were to announce what they were giving.

So Jesus is sitting opposite this huge building and this parade of people…including the widow…who comes along and gives the two tiny coins that she has.

Jesus calls his disciples over. He starts to talk about greed.

He’s not simply doing a critique of the scribes and their robes and their pronouncements.

Jesus is opposite…opposing…the whole system of the treasury.

A system that has put this widow in a place of having to give up her last coins.

She is pinning her hope on this system…but this is a power structure that hasn’t done its part:

To care for the widows and orphans.

To clothe the naked.

To release the captives and free the oppressed.

Instead…as Jesus said in this Gospel: this system has devoured the widows’ houses.

He’s talking about greed.

Greed does terrible things to us.

It’s greed that makes people become callous and cruel.

And we are all susceptible to greed.

Even Sweet Honey’s song acknowledges that greed finds ways to sneak into us and corrupt us from within.

It operates very much like what another theologian—Karl Barth—describes as “nothingness.”

Nothingness is Barth’s description of evil.

Nothingness has no form.

No shape.

No dimensions.

No taste.

No smell.

It’s just nothing.

And it’s a nothing that keeps looking for ways to become a “something.”

Like greed... “nothingness” …searches for ways to get into us.

And once it finds that opening…it infects the heart like a virus…and begins its work of turning us away from compassion and caring for one another into selfish and small people.

It closes us off and convinces us that we don’t need anybody else.

And then that leads to self-reliance alone…and suspicion of everyone else.

It’s the thing that keeps us constantly “othering” people.

And that leads to dismissing and dehumanizing people.

And it’s what makes us think that we must dominate people…and the planet…in order to feel that we’re important…or valued.

Nothingness wants to be something in us.

That need to dominate and possess?

That’s greed…selfish greed.

Our former presiding bishop Michael Curry said it best when he said that the opposite of Love is not hate; it’s selfishness.

And…as the good Bishop says…”If it’s not about Love…it’s not about God.”

God is not greedy.

God isn’t into domination.

God doesn’t favor one nation over and above the others.

Because God so loved the world…the whole world…that God sent down the Word made Flesh…Jesus…to live and dwell among us.

And Jesus came to minster to those who the greedy power structures and the Empire treated as expendables.

Jesus came to be the light in the world.

But he had to deal with the reality that even though the light had come into the world…people turned away from it.

Rejected it.

Even killed it.

Or so they thought.

Because we know that God didn’t let that light die forever.

It rose again….and it would then become flaming tongues of fire of those in the Upper Room.

Those who were huddled and scared in the face of their hostile and confusing world had their lights supercharged by the Holy Spirit.

That is the hope that was passed on to them…and they went out and despite brutal opposition…they didn’t keep it to themselves…and greedily keep the light from others.

No! They kept that light of Christ shining and sharing their lights in their darkened world.

Think about that symbolism of light from our baptisms.

Not only do we light the Christ candle…we also offer a candle to the newly baptized…inviting them to receive the light of Christ.

That is the outward and visible symbol of God’s grace for that child or adult to now share that gift of the light of Christ to the world.

Right now…in our world… in our church…we need a whole lot of lights shining.

We need to steal ourselves and protect ourselves from those  strong and incessant temptations:

The temptation to be too proud.

The temptation to be too depressed.

The temptation to isolate…want to hoard what we believe is ours…and not theirs…and participate in the rejection of “the other.”

The temptation to give in to hopelessness…and allow despair to make us lonely and swallow us whole.

We must be careful and kind…and not fall into the lure of greed and nothingness that’s wanting to take root and become manifest in us…and feed on our fears.

In all of this…we need to remember that we are still one body of Christ with its many and varied members…and different talents.

Now is the time to not only see the Christ in our selves and others…but to be that servant who says, “The spirit of the Lord is upon me…because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor… the captives…the blind…and to free the oppressed.”

That work must begin now…in this building…with each other. It is time for us to commit to that light-bearing movement of love.

Here. NOW!

In the name of our One Holy and Undivided Trinity.

 

The Society of Saints: A Sermon for All Saints' Sunday

I really don't have a whole lot to say as the lead up to this sermon. It was All Saints Sunday. Our Gospel was the unbinding of Lazarus. See what you think of where my feverish brain...with God working on me... went with this sermon. 

Text: John 11: 32-44

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We’re all familiar with the famous saints.

We know the name Saint Peter…the rock of the church.

Saint Phillip who baptized the Ethiopian eunuch.

Saint Stephen…the first chosen to be a deacon in the church and who suffered a brutal death that would lead to Saul’s conversion to be Saint Paul…one of the most influential writers of our early church.

And naturally…Saint Barnabas… our namesake and the Son of Encouragement.

We remember all those saints.

But there are plenty of names that also land in this saint category…and over time…we’ve added many names to roll call of saints on the church calendar.

For example…today is November third…which…if it weren’t All Saints Sunday…would be the date that the Episcopal Church remembers Richard Hooker…an English  priest of the late 16^th century…who is best known for his defense of the English Reformation under Queen Elizabeth the First.

That reformation gave us the Church of England of today and the First Book of Common Prayer.

Hooker was both a parish priest and a distinguished scholar.

He described the church as not being just an assembly…but a society.

For Hooker…an assembly was a gathering of people who would do acts of public worship together.

But a society went beyond the time gathered in worship.

A society of people not only took in the words of scriptural revelation…the ancient traditions…applying reason and experience to all of it…

And would take those good things back into the community…bringing their experience out…because they had been gathered in the name of Christ.

This idea of commemorating the saints and then—by extension all the faithful departed—dates back to the early Middle Ages…during the times of Christian martyrs. The feast day as we’ve come to know it in the Episcopal Church seems connected to festivals held in Ireland and then made more general to all of Europe under Pope Gregory the Fourth.

And while saints were generally thought of as people of faith who did amazing and heroic things in the name of Christ…the truth is that many of the people we remember in the church were ordinary people...who responded to circumstances in their life and times out faith and conviction to do what is right.

Think about our diocesan saint Anna Alexander.

She wasn’t someone who wrote heady tomes or did amazing works of bravery.

But what she did do is build a school and a church in a coastal Georgia community and… despite the obstacles put in her way due to racism and prejudice…she persisted.

And her faith kept her going…kept her pursuing the goal to educate the children in Pennick and give them a pathway to greater possibilities.

She did all of that as a deaconess in the church at a time when the diocese of Georgia had sidelined their black church members.

Or consider Jonathan Myrick Daniels…remembered as one of the martyrs of the civil rights movement in Alabama.

Daniels was a seminarian and was known to be a bit of a hot head.

He graduated from Virginia Military Institute…but he struggled to figure out the direction for his life.

It was at an Easter service in 1962 at Church of the Advent in Boston that he felt called to the ordained priesthood. 

While in seminary…and listening to the Magnificat being sung at Evening Prayer…Jonathan Daniels knew he needed to respond to Dr. Martin Luther King’s call to join the struggle for racial equality in Alabama.

He marched… he lived with and tutored black children…and brought their families into the segregated Episcopal Churches of Alabama.

He died…tragically…getting shot while defending a young black teenager named Ruby Sales from a white gun man.

She survived that day…but the experience left her mute for about six months.

But because she saw the love of a white man cut down by the hate of another white man…Ruby Sales earned a Master’s in Divinity and now teaches and lectures on the need for redemptive healing and deliverance from a culture that is centered on whiteness.

Not white people: but the whiteness that keeps us so divided and deluded and refusing to do the work that will set us all free.

Like Jesus calling Lazarus out of the tomb and saying, “Unbind him,” we need to be free to tell all the stories of our people…and not just the ones we want to hear.

I imagine there will be a time when Ruby Sales passes on to the next realm that we might see her memory honored along with Jonathan Daniels.

These are the ordinary people who rose and are still rising to meet these times that we are living in today and walking faithfully with God as they do the work that needs to be done.

There are hundreds of other stories…people who will never have their names written up in a history book… who are doing that work Richard Hooker to be the society of the church.

Their names and their stories…the memory of who they were and what they did to make a difference in the lives of others…still lives on through us who knew them.

When we think about the way their lives intersected with ours… it recalls for us their relationship…as a friend or family member…and how they showed us something or taught us something that helped give us a glimpse of making earth a little more like our vision of heaven.

In a few minutes…we will be saying aloud the names of those who have died and gone on to take their place in the great cloud of witnesses that surrounds us.

I’m going to ask that we do something a little different than what we’ve done in the past.

There’s a custom I have seen when I have attended Jewish services.

As they read the roll of those who have died or are marking the anniversary of death…the family members or friends who have an attachment to that name stand up so that the congregation can bear witness to their grief.

It also is a visual reminder that we don’t do this life alone when we see the others who are standing with us.

So today…I’m going to ask that as you hear the name of your loved one…your friend…that person you enjoyed being with but see no more…as you hear that name…please stand and remain standing until the prayer is finished.

Mother Teresa once said, “God did not call me to be successful; God called me to be faithful.”

As we each strive to walk with God as a society of believers…and not just an assembly…may we look to those good lessons we’ve learned from the saints to do our work of making a better world here on earth.

In the name of our one Holy and Undivided Trinity.