Proper 22B

Prop 22B • 7 October 2012
Preached at Saint Mark's, Springfield, VT

I always find it ironic (amusing?) that we hear Jesus’ harsh teaching on divorce during the octave that we celebrate the life and ministry of Francis of Assisi, a thirteenth century Christian who changed the world in his day.

The Francis we often remember is the sentimental Francis, the mendicant who loved animals, birds, flowers and children. We enforce that image by blessing animals, as I have done for many years, including blessing those animals awaiting adoption at the Rutland County Humane Society, last year some 90 cats!

And so, with the liberty afforded a preacher, I am going to combine the two into one sermon.

First, Francis. The real Francis was a radical follower of Jesus. Coming from a wealthy family in Assisi, earning praise for his military achievement against the neighboring city of Perugia, Francis had it all: wealth, friends and fame.

One day it all changed. The contradictions between his heart and the way he lived his life were too much. During a time of grave illness Francis gave his whole being over to God, vowing to live with simplicity and purity the life of Jesus, even in Jesus’ sufferings.

His manner of living scandalized his family, threatened the rich of his town, and even challenged the power and ostentation of the pope. But finally in 1210 Pope Innocent the Third confirmed the simple Rule of Order of Friars Minor, a name Francis chose to emphasise his desire to be numbered among the ‘least’ of God’s servants.

Francis, el poverello, the small poor man, wanted to follow Jesus completely, live the Gospel way with no compromises. He remembered the sad story in the Gospels of the rich young man who came to Jesus. “How can I follow you” the man asked Jesus. Sell all you have, give to the poor, and them come and follow me, replied Jesus. The young man went away sad that day, for he was very rich.

Francis vowed to follow Jesus with all his heart, to own nothing except for his love of God and of the human family, and of the world God had made. He gathered around him some friends and started to go throughout the countryside preaching about the love of God for all. Barefoot, penniless he sought to care for the poor, the vulnerable and the weak. That was his life, because he believed that this was the life that Jesus lived.

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I share this story about radical discipleship because I think that the Gospel stories about Jesus and his followers always hold up love, reconciliation and faithfulness in a deep and life-transforming ways. If there are those who want to follow me let them take up their cross and follow. If any one what to save his or her life, they must be willing to die, to let go of everything. Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies it remains only a dry seed. But if it dies in the ground it will bear much fruit.

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And into this mixture, comes the unusual chasuble I wear this morning, given in loving memory of a priest who followed Jesus in surprising ways… a Texan who became a priest late in life, who ended up crossing racial divides. He was called to be rector of a small African-American congregation in North Carolina. When he died, his widow chose this chasuble because she felt it reflected who he was and a transforming moment in their lives. I wear it in his loving memory and also in thanksgiving of Archbishop Desmond Tutu whose birthday is today.

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One of the difficulties in reading scripture is the temptation to pick out a sentence, a paragraph, a teaching and ask it to stand alone, all by itself. The passage today about marriage is an example of this problem. (You should read all the comments flying back and forth this week from people facing this gospel reading! Let’s say it is a collective groan.) It is a passage, with others, that is used by people who want to maintain male dominance in the family, by those who want to exclude other faithful relations between people and by those who want to argue that no Christian can ever remarry after divorce. In reality this passage is not about marriage, even less about a systematic message of Jesus about marriage and family life.

In Mark’s Gospel Jesus tries time after time to set people free from the laws and traditions of the Elders, the Scribes and Pharisees, laws that burdened and oppressed people of Jesus’ day. Jesus disobeyed the traditions when they oppressed people. For someone trying to follow Jesus’ interpretation of Torah, they will find that his application was quite uneven at times.

Jesus healed on the Sabbath day, choosing mercy over strict obedience to the religious laws. He showed mercy on the Syrophonecian woman, and the Samaritan woman at the well – both non-kosher persons, people outside the social and moral responsibilities of the Jewish laws. Jesus let his disciples comb the fields of grain for something to eat on the Sabbath, telling his critics that the Sabbath was made for the people of God, not the people for the Sabbath.

The scriptures even say that Jesus, though he was rich, being the Son of God, for our sake became poor, emptying himself totally, that we might become rich in the love of God.

This is the Jesus that Francis came to love, and to whom he surrendered every ounce of his being: Jesus who loved the poor, the outcast, the sinner, the weak, the littlest child, the hungry of body and spirit, and those whose lives were laced with tears.

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In the Gospel for today Jesus was being challenged once again by the guardians of the religious law. Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife? asked the lawyers.

The religious laws governing family life in Jesus’ day were harsh. Women were seen by men — and supported by law — as chattel, as property. Children were often seen merely as economic resources.  Orphans and widows were condemned to poverty. Men made the laws, enforced the laws and benefited from them.

Only men could obtain permission to divorce their wife. Wives could not divorce their husbands. Marriage was a family or clan arrangement, not for love but for the economic benefit of the male and for guarantying property rights for the oldest son, or for overcoming animosity between two families. In a patriarchal culture, women, most of the time, were victims rather than companions of their husbands.

Jesus challenged the leaders of his day by pointing out how the laws were shaped by them to benefit them, and not for the sake of justice. What Jesus was doing in the story today was not spelling out a theology of marriage — it is critical to recognise this distinction — but rather trying to hold up the value of mercy and justice in all human relationships.

When Jesus called women and men to follow him, to be the vanguard with him of the Reign of God, he called them as people being transformed by forgiveness and love, called into relationships with God and with each other of service, humility and justice.

Any human relationship, any human institution supporting relationships, family and social structures, needs to be measured by these signs of human life in all its fullness. The way people relate to each other, the way men and women relate, the way adults and children relate, the way the rich and poor live together, the powerful and the weak: all come under the law of the Reign of God, to love God with all our mind, heart and being, and to love each other as we love ourselves.

There are no exceptions to this mercy, love and justice. There is no one outside of our responsibility to love and care for in merciful and just ways.

Marriage and family life can be as brutal as they can be a sign of God’s dream for all people. Our loves and friendships can be a sign of human insecurity and arrogance, even as they can be radical signs of the love and surrender, one to each other, faithfully keeping on the road as followers of Jesus. Francis knew this. And we can too.

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The religious leaders of Jesus’ day wanted cookie-cutter relationships, relationships they could control and judge. Jesus, on the other hand, invited women and men, young and old, rich and poor, to give of themselves to God, and through God to each other. He invites us to take the risks that are needed to discover more profoundly how deeply we are loved and how deeply, then, we can love each other.

Interestingly,  the story that immediately follows is the one about the time women were bringing their children to Jesus for his touch and blessing. The disciples, discounting the value of children, sternly criticized the women, telling them, in effect, not to bother Jesus. But Jesus, turning to his disciples with indignation, just as he turned to the Scribes and Pharisees, said, ‘You still are not getting it, are you?’

And Jesus gathered the little ones around him, held them, blessed them and said to all who could hear, ‘These little ones you have just rejected are signs of what life in God’s reign should be like; they are models of simplicity and trust.’

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Jesus loved, healed, forgave and celebrated people in his life. He related to them not from above or below, but alongside of them. He found honor and rich gifts in people that society had written off. He lived transparently and simply before all, was faithful even at high cost, shared the love of God even if this sharing cost him his life.

Francis in his own humble way caught this infectious love of God, and wanted to live it and share it completely, radically.

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We are not Francis of Assisi, most of us. But we are children of God, of the God who, through Jesus, wants to lead us into life in all of its fullness. He wants to invite us to learn and live in ways that bring joy and hope to others. He wants us to experience the healing and forgiveness that sets us free, and by which we can help others find their freedom from fear and guilt.

Most of all Jesus wants us to learn to live as beloved sisters and brothers, humbly, simply, joyfully, giving and receiving the gifts God has sown in our lives, trusting in the care of each other as we continue to be pilgrims, sowing the seeds of life and of justice in our needy world.

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Saint Francis left us a legacy of prayers. One simple one that can be used as a mantra is, My God and my all! The words to hymn 400 are from his Canticle to Brother Sun and Sister Moon. But the most famous prayer that is attributed to him is the prayer of peace, found on page 833 of the Prayer Book. I invite you to pray with with me, for this is the prayer that most closely mirrors to me not only his life but the one we are to lead as followers of Jesus.

Lord, make us instruments of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let us sow love;
where there is discord, union;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light:
where there is sadness, joy.

Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. 


Proper 20B

Proper 20B 23 September 2012
preached at Saint Mark's, Springfield, VT

The lectionary this morning provides us with an interesting contrast of lessons — the first two speak about wisdom and the gospel narrates the second of three predictions about the passion, followed by instruction about discipleship. When the texts are placed together, one can find a thread that links wisdom with discipleship.

The Letter of James draws heavily from the writings of Ben Sirach (in the apocrypha) and Wisdom, both of which witness to the practical morality expected of Jews in their personal, family and business lives. James is a concrete writer, however: the metaphors used in James are taken from the world around us rather than from revelation — think of the image of the person looking into a mirror we heard a few weeks ago who does or does not remember what the reflection is.

The segment in front of us invites us to look at the following sequence of opposites: Wisdom that is earthly brings forth bad fruits of conflicts, discrimination, disorder, and wickedness. In one’s inner life, this earthly wisdom causes selfishness, envy and greed.

Wisdom that comes from above brings forth good fruits of gentleness, mercy, impartiality, and peace. One’s inner life is pure and close to God. This purity and closeness produce peacefulness in the world and in one’s heart. This shalom imbues one’s life and integrity.

Clearly, the writer of the letter expects that we will opt for the second set of values. But I think the writer also realises that in our creatureliness, we often fall for the former set of values. And so our life journey consists of letting go of earthly wisdom for that which comes from above.

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The gospel of Mark shows us by example a group of people who have not yet obtained that wisdom from above. We have entered into the second teaching cycle of Mark’s gospel, the longest of the three. In it, Jesus will talk about the greatest and the least, the outsiders and insiders, the aggressors and victims, men and women, children and adults, and the rich and the poor. In short, he will cover all segments of his population — opposites which parts of the letter of James also addresses. The teaching, ‘The first will be last,’ frames this entire section.

At the same time that Jesus teaches about the strong and weak of his society, he also predicts his passion — here, for the second time. For the second time, the disciples respond with a very earthly, concrete wisdom (if we can dare call it that) — one that really is blind and deaf to what Jesus has just said. For the second time, they don’t get it. This time, they argue about who will be the greatest amongst them. They misunderstand that the cross calls them to a life of servanthood. They don’t understand that they are not being called to be part of a powerbase, but to be part of a community that redistributes power to the excluded and marginalised. They do not understand that taking up the cross means they will be the last and servant of all. Lastly, they do not understand Jesus’ wisdom, which is based in conscience.

Jesus’ teachings speak to a wisdom that runs counter to that of the world: the greatest are the least. Outsiders are welcome. Women and children in his society have value and integrity. The rich are poor and the poor are rich. In Jesus’ words, wisdom consists of reversals.

Of course, the disciples cannot understand these words — they miss so much in the gospel according to Mark. It is those on the margins, such as demons and unclean spirits who can see Jesus for who he really is and the disciples don’t. They are so outcast that they have no pretensions — they can see and call things are they are because they have nothing to lose; they have already lost everything.

We, though, have the gift of time and tradition to understand better what the biblical sense of wisdom meant and how we should embrace it. It’s only a question of our pretensions and ‘sophistication’ of getting in the way. Sometimes we need to let go of all that to see truly.

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The reclusive and prolific early 20th-century French author, Marcel Proust wrote, ‘We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no-one else can make for us, which no-one can spare us. For our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world.’

Discipleship to Christ invites us — demands us to make that journey through the wilderness. Whether as an individual or as a community, Christians have long known the value of spiritual, internal pilgrimage. Christians have also respected the work of a community.

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It is hard gaining wisdom, so perhaps it helps to start small.

One of my favourite French authors, André Gide, another early 20th-century writer, said, ‘The wise are those who marvel at everything.’ A major piece of our life of faith is to see the miraculous in the common, the wonders of the ordinary.

Perhaps that is why Jesus points our attention to a child. André Breton said that ‘childhood is the nearest thing to life.’ Robert Ellwood added, ‘A childlike sense of wonder is the key to understanding the mysteries of the esoteric universe.’

Think about the unbridled wonder of children when let loose. My brother and I had more fun playing outside in the small brook that bisected our backyard from the lawn and the woods. In the rather swampy woods, we would spend hours, running on top what we called ‘heffalumps’ (those mushy grass mounds at tree trunks), trying not to fall in the water. We’d play hide-and-seek in the grape arbor near the brook. The outdoors contained endless possibilities for discovery and delight. Those hours spent outside cultivated a life-long enjoyment of God’s creation, which has led me as an adult to learn how better to care for it as we increasingly burden it with our excesses. Maybe it is that sense of wonder I seek as I return again and again to walk the mountains of Vermont and on the Long Trail.

I think that no matter how difficult and awful a child’s external life might be, a child still has incredibly resiliency. I remember pictures of children playing among the ruins of Sarajevo, or even today in Lebanon or Palestine. Children have the amazing capacity to find things in which to delight despite it all.

What things delighted you as a child? Where did you tap into the wonder that so characterises a child’s awe at something new? What made you giggle? Where, as a child, did you find God in the world around you?

I think one of Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s greatest strengths is that, despite his having seen the worst that humanity can do to itself, he still can giggle like an imp. He hasn’t lost the childlike wonder in God’s creation and world. Maybe it is because he was so sickly as an infant (with polio among other things) that his grandfather gave him the name, ‘Mpilo,’ or ‘life.’ Tutu has lived out that hopeful name and has translated his wonder of God’s creation into an amazing life-journey of being a ‘rabble-rouser for peace.’

By finding the ability to marvel at what the world might consider small might help us gain wisdom. For gaining wisdom is actually coming closer to God. If we remember that Wisdom in early Christian thought was the Holy Spirit, then by seeking God in the daily and small things of life will enable us to find God in the harder parts of life and as we come closer to God, we find Wisdom.

Ultimately we quest for Shalom, an integrated life of integrity. Wisdom becomes one of the paths on which we walk in that search for wholeness and completeness. As we receive Wisdom, then we are also better able to take on the hard work of being one of Jesus’ disciples, which involves participating in the great reversals that Jesus so often preached, wherein the poor become rich, the weak strong, the last first, and where we are able to take up our cross and follow Jesus.

Proper 19B

Proper 19B • 16 September 2012

preached at Saint Mark’s, Springfield VT

‘The tongue is a fire.’ How prescient these words seem.  We have witnessed this week how our country’s concept of freedom of speech has managed literally to turn the Middle East aflame with tragic loss in the process. What one man’s tongue (and film) has managed to wreak simply reinforces what the letter of James states: ‘No one can tame the tongue — a restless evil, full of deadly poison.’

Not that this little sermon can tame the tongue, but may it not turn the tongue into fire, evil or poison. But the gift of speech certainly can become a cross we bear if we do not use it properly.

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We have arrived at the midpoint of Mark’s story. The first half began by heralding a ‘Way’ and closed with a question addressed to the disciples and the reader: ‘Do you not yet understand?’ (8.21). The second half opens ‘on the Way,’ with yet another query: ‘Who do you say that I am?’ In this second half of the gospel, the ‘way of the cross’ will be explained by object lessons, both positive and negative, framed by two stories in which the blind receive sight — first in Bethsaida (8.22-26) and in Jericho (10.45-52).

The first half of the gospel ends on the depressing note that the disciples’ eyes, ears and heart have failed them. They have not understood what Jesus has been trying to teach them on the Way. It is no accident, then, that the second half of the gospel opens with the story of a blind man receiving his sight, which counters the disciples’ inability to see who Jesus is.

In short order, Jesus restores hearing and speech to a deaf-mute man, he restores sight to a blind man, he casts out a deaf and dumb spirit and he heals another blind man who follows him. These final four healings suggest that if Jesus can ‘make the deaf hear and the dumb speak’ and help the blind ‘see clearly’ then there is hope for the disciples. As an aside, for the preacher and listener, who may have wondered why week after week the lectionary recounts different healing stories, now the gospel writer’s agenda becomes clearer.

So when Jesus asks the blind man at Bethsaida, ‘Do you see anything?’ his question actually has prophetic echoes for the conversation that takes place in the portion of today’s gospel reading. ‘Sight’ emerges as a central metaphor for faith in Mark.

Moving from a physical level to a spiritual level, Mark now has Jesus asks his disciples who do they say that he is. He wants to know for whom do they see him. They answer with the appropriate people, but Peter takes things a step deeper when he uses the politically loaded term, ‘messiah.’ It sounds like a good answer — this word, ‘messiah,’ speaks clearly of the presence of God with the people in justice and peace.

However, at the time of Jesus, there were conflicting ideas about the messiah and what it would mean not only for the Jews but also for the Romans and unbelievers. Thus, Peter’s use of this term fails to clarify matters and Jesus tells him to be quiet.

Jesus then tells the disciples what this messiah must undergo. He has read and reflected on the prophets, especially Isaiah. Jesus sees himself as the beloved son and servant of God, which means, in the tradition of the prophets, he must also suffer because of his obedience to God’s word and will. The truth is named and brought to light; Jesus will die.

It is too much for Peter. And Peter’s reaction is too much for Jesus. Their exchange escalates into a shouting match of rebukes, ending with Jesus naming Peter as ‘satan.’ Perhaps it is because Jesus senses that Peter has remained loyal to the secular and traditional understanding of messiah, the one who prevails over the enemy through righteous force, rather than this new messiah who will overcome through humility.

But, at what a price! For this messiah will overcome the powers-that-be through crucifixion, a vicious, sadistic and humiliating torture, meted out for those whom the Roman empire wished to silence, those who had no family or friends to support them, or those whose family and friends understood that pubic support of the punished would end up in similar punishment for themselves.

We return implicitly to Jesus’ question to the blind man at Bethsaida, ‘Do you see anything?’ We do. We see the suffering Christ, the saviour whom we follow and the cross, a cross that we must take up ourselves. On a normal day, the idea of doing likewise holds scant appeal because it seems so costly.

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Taking up one’s cross is costly unto itself but made worse by all the cultural overlays added to it. Taking up one’s cross has come to mean assuming all sorts of inhuman and human-created problems that I can’t imagine a loving and creating God wanting us to take on.

The widower is furious at God for having made his wife, dying of cancer, suffer. He wants to punish God for making him carry this cross and so he turns away, in his anger, never again to talk with God. He cannot see that his wife’s death was not a case of God ‘letting him down’ or making him carry a special burden; his wife’s death as awful as it was, nonetheless, is part of what it means to be a finite creature.

The woman, whose husband beats her at night in his alcoholic-induced rage, when her friends point out to her that she needn’t live this way, shrugs her shoulders and mutters something about it being her ‘special cross to bear.’ She cannot see that the God who created her would not willingly cause her to suffer as proof of her faithfulness.

The child who lives in the streets, doing tricks, inhaling glue, figures that somewhere along the line he must have done something wrong and God is punishing him, that this current bleak life is his cross, whatever that means.

I reject those interpretations of what ‘taking up one’s cross’ means. I do believe that ‘taking up one’s cross’ can mean sacrifice, particularly in terms of acting in the interest of the common good and not one’s self interest. I believe that taking up one’s cross means faithfully living out as best as one can the promises made at baptism.

Or consider Micah’s call to ‘Do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with your God.’ Or ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind and you shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ To live out any of these exhortations involves plenty of denying oneself and taking up a cross.

Taking up one’s cross means using the gift of speech not to harm but to heal, to build peace, to speak of God. That evil tongue of which James wrote can speak good and actually be used for the common good. Still, taking up one’s cross means challenging someone who makes a racist or sexist comment or joke, or speaking truths that others may not want to hear. Bringing about God’s kingdom, in terms of complete relationships, can often be a cross.

The action of taking up one’s cross then becomes paradoxical because, ‘the hard wood of the cross is best for feeding the fire of love,” in the words of one ancient writer. The cross reminds us that all love is sacrificial: that is (in the original meaning of the word), it is what makes things holy.  Love makes holy everything it touches, even the cross.

As long as there are disciples of Jesus willing to take up the cross and follow, the evil of crucifixion will become the place of witness, of the reconciling love of God … where the tragedy, betrayal and foolishness represented by the cross become wisdom, and through God’s love become life and hope for us all.
Perhaps then we will see, truly see… and then speak of God’s love. (1)


END NOTE
(1)  The exegetical portion of the sermon borrows heavily from Ched Myers et al, “Say to this Mountain”: Mark’s Story of Discipleship (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1996), 99-103.