December 28, 2008: Feast of the Holy Family

 The wisdom of the ages is that families give us two things: they give us ROOTS and they give us WINGS. This piece of wisdom comes from about every ancient religion and philosophy in the world. They phrase it slightly differently, but the message is there, nonetheless.

 

Moreover, no family ever gets it right! We either are root bound or flighty. There is never a perfect balance. The achievement of balance is supposed to be the work of the individual as she or he lives out the life given to them. No individual, either, ever gets perfect balance...THAT is the goal of the spiritual life, and working with the Sacraments, and it's a life-long endeavor that ends on the other side of the grave.

 

Usually conservative, fearful families give us too many roots! We end up like a bonsai tree on top with a massive network of roots underneath! On the other hand, liberal, care-free families tend to give too much emphasis to wings, and we end up like a giant sequoia tree with the roots of a petunia! That's life!

 

Today, we celebrate the feast of the Holy Family: the matrix that nurtured the Christ. I notice it's interesting that they chose the readings that they did for this morning's worship. There is no conflict at all.

 

Prophecies at children's births. That's the Gospel. Old Simeon and Anna, keeping vigil in the Temple, where they blessed all the children brought for their naming and circumcision. They dream of wings and roots for the Child Jesus.

 

Simeon dreams of wings that he will soar and be a "light to the Gentiles," bringing them to the God of Israel, and He did! For you and I are here, this morning, worshiping the God of Israel, not a one of us Jews. Moreover, old Simeon saw that such a life would be upsetting of the apple cart of centuries, the ancient customs. His blessing opens the child to a new world order...messianic in character, that would affect all the earth.

 

Anna, the prophetess, also a "watcher" in the Temple, blessing with an eye to the mothers of the children, and she focuses on the roots, and what this child would do for his heritage. And her blessing roots him in Israel's golden past.

 

Yet, when we look at the interaction of Jesus and his family: with all the help we know they were given, through Mary's Visit from the Angel, the Immaculate Conception, Divine Revelation in a dream to Joseph and the Virgin Birth-----------we see that they rarely understood Jesus.

 

When he's lost in Jerusalem after their visit to the Temple for his Bar Mitzvah, they are mad as can be, Jesus is unconcerned: "Shouldn't I be about my Father's business?" I might have thought such things at 14, but if I had actually SAID them, my father would have had me "dancing around like a worm in hot ashes!"

 

When he's attending a wedding at Cana, and Mary wants him to do something, his response is something that would have earned me the back of my mother's hand!

 

At one point in his ministry, "his family" show up to have him put away, thinking him mad, according to the 3rd chapter of Mark's Gospel.

 

What we see is that "no family is perfect." They aren't supposed to be! You don't have to be the perfect parents for your children. Children, you don't have to be the perfect kids for your parents! We can't escape ALL of what the psychologists currently call the generational "dysfunctions" that have been given us. We pass on a lot, as a lot was passed on to us. It is enough that we try the best we can to be the best we can be. Sometimes we'll get it right, and sometimes we won't.

 

And the same is true of our "spiritual family" which God, in His infinite wisdom has given us: the Church. On the one hand, the roots given us go back to the dawn of time, and the Voice hovering over the primordial waters in creation, and the wings reach to the Mercy Seat and the Throne of Grace in God's Consuming Kingdom that ends all time.

 

But, in between, we live in a dysfunctional "spiritual family," that has gone to war over the Creed, lost Northern Africa, which had been the cradle of Christianity, to the Moslems because of nit-picking and hair-splitting in Trinitarian theology, marched out under papal banners in Crusades that left a trail of blood from the English Channel to the Nile! We've seen popes digging up their predecessor's bodies from graves and putting them on trial! We've seen the most hateful statements condemning fellow human beings in the name of the God of love. We've seen it all!

 

But that's what a family is! If any one of us looks far enough back in our family tree, we'll find the horse thief, the wife-beater, the murderer. It may be that if we look far enough into our OWN past, we'll find those things! When we look at the lineage of Jesus, as that family tree is told in Matthew and Luke, we see all sorts of odd characters, princes and prostitutes, kings and killers, wise and wicked–all dangling on the limbs of his genealogy.

 

Families, if the memory is LONG, contain all the patterns of ugliness that are common to humanity. BUT, THEY ALSO contain the flicker of hope that these patterns don't have to be repeated. Each one of us has within us the hope, the desire and the capability to move beyond where we've been.

 

Was Great Uncle Shemuel a horse thief? So what? The family doesn't have to forever be a family of horse thieves! There is greater potential there. Have you, in your recent or distant past, been a horse thief? So what? You don't have to define yourself as a horse thief forever! You have greater potential. A universe is waiting for you to grow into it!

 

Our spiritual family, the Church, places before us, every day of our lives, a vision of all we can be, as we wend our way through the world to the Throne of Grace.

 

Let us, each, approach the Table of the Prince of Peace today, from where we will receive into ourselves the Body and the Blood of Christ, Himself, enabling us to actualize the potential available to us, to be men and women of Great Possibility. And may God bless you all. +

Sermon for December 14, Advent 3. B

 

In the Gospel, John the Baptist found it hard to say exactly who he was, and found it easier to say who he was NOT. There is wisdom in that. Were he to have said, "I am the Voice of Deliverance!" he would have probably got a big head, and pride would have overtaken him. As it was, he said, "I'm NOT the Christ; I'm not even the light! I'm not Elijah nor am I a prophet…I guess I'm just a voice in the desert…" St. Paul encourages each of us to say, "I am NOT perfect! I am NOT particularly holy, and I am NOT blameless"—for that is GOD'S job, to make us those things, in time and eternity. Ours is to recognize what we lack and pray for it. And in that way, we can be open to the Power of the One Who CAN make us holy, and lead us in goodness. It is so important to humility to know what we are not. It is when we are truly humble, accepting our insignificance that God can work through us, placing the Spirit upon us to help others heal and find freedom. As we approach the manger, low as it is, we have to learn to kneel, let us pray for humility and tenderness.

 

This is the major issue of Advent: attaining humility, which means learning how "not to be full of ourselves!" For when we are "full of ourselves," we have no room for the Greatness of God to enter, and Christmas (the season for which we are preparing) is the season of God's Greatness coming to us–Immanuel–God with us. To sense God's Presence we need to be smaller of ego than we usually are.

 

There is a wonderful lesson in one of the churches of Jerusalem–I think it's the Holy Sepulcher. The door is so small that one has to bend down to enter the church. The point is that we have to become small to appreciate the Greatness of the Mystery we might encounter inside that church. One has to learn to fall on his knees in order to stand in awe. Now, I wish I could say that was what was behind the design of the church; it wasn't. Actually the priests were horrified that arrogant Crusaders were acting like they owned the place, and were riding their horses into the church, so the monks fixed that! The lowered the doors so low than no horse could get in, but they also lowered the door so low that a human being has to bow, significantly, to enter. It was later, reflecting on this phenomenon, that they saw that something profound had happened...by accident or perhaps by a Greater Design by a Greater Designer! For now, EVERYONE must make himself or herself small to enter. And such is the nature of all true encounter with God.

 

Humility is about paying attention to others. Have you thought of that? When we are "full of ourselves" we don't pay much attention to others, UNLESS they can help or aid us in some way. But, the humble person pays attention to what's happening around him, and sees what others need, and can step into the breach and supply the need. Moses was considered to be the "humblest" or "meekest" man to have ever lived–so says Numbers 12. How do we know? Well, he PAID ATTENTION! How long do you suppose he had to watch that bush burning before he realized it wasn't burning? Hours? All day? Who knows how long he stood there, but FINALLY as it dawns on him that something miraculous is happening, THEN the Voice comes: Take off your shoes, you are on holy ground!" God appears when attention is paid, and those who are not humble only pay attention to themselves! So...with this season. We try to become less "full of ourselves" so that we can sense the Holy, the Presence, the Sacred in our lives.

 

John the Baptist, like Moses, is not "full of himself." Rather, he is well aware that he isn't much out of the ordinary. "I'm NOT the Christ, I'm NOT the Light, I'm NOT Elijah, I'm NOT the prophet." So when he was asked to state who he really was, he said, "I guess I'm a voice in the wilderness." I want to suggest to you that we are all "voices in the wilderness." Do you know who the first "biblical voice in the wilderness" was? It was Hagar with her son Ishmael, just after they had been thrown out of Sarah's house, in a fit of jealousy. Abraham had dismissed them with a skin of water, and nothing else. And there they were, in the wilderness, preparing to die. Hagar took her child and put him under a bush to protect him from the heat of the sun, and sat and watched as he wailed. And she, herself, cried out from her place in the wilderness. And, guess what? God appeared, and showed her a well, and led her out of the wilderness to safety. We are told by early commentators, both Jewish and Christian, that when we "cry out from our place in the wilderness" that God appears for us, too, and brings help and leads us to safety. But, we have to cry out from our poverty...not from our "being full of ourselves." Sarah cried out for help....she did NOT cry out curses on Sarah or Abraham. She cried out for help for her son. She recognized her poverty, and prayed for help.

 

Advent is about recognizing our lack, and asking for God's Grace to fill us with His Strength, His Love–other words for Grace. To know our own lack, and call out, is to open ourselves to God's Greatness so He can come to us and fill us...Immanuel...God with us. And when we are filled with God, we have an "innate radar" that hears others crying out from their place in the wilderness...and as we go to them, we bear God to those people. It is in this sense that our lives can be blessings for the earth. So let us pray to be small enough to kneel at the manger to be filled with the Greatness of the One Who will transform us into benedictions of goodness and peace for our world. And may God bless you all. +

Sermon for December 8, 2008. Immaculate Conception.Holy Day of Obligation

Today's feast honors the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. That dogma states that Mary was born WITHOUT ORIGINAL SIN.

 

What does that mean? What IS original sin?

 

Certain of the Church Fathers spoke of the "original sin" as a refusal to go through "time." Humanity wanted to "grab now" what was in store for it, rather than go through the process of growing into it. So, our ancestors, symbolized as Adam/Eve, "broke out of time," tried to take a short cut to spiritual depth—an attempt to have spiritual depth apart from God, in a sense, or at least apart from His process for us..........in brief, then, it is a sin of "presumption," which the Fathers classified as a sin against "hope." I.e., a failure to "trust" God's promise...

 

And Mary, born without "original sin"—without the distance from our "spiritual source" which despair brings and nurtures and fosters, SHE is the chosen one to stand FOR hope....she is the one who teaches us to trust. She knows, with a deep down knowledge that God is trustworthy, and that His will for good things for us will triumph.

 

She kept that hope throughout her life...a life that wasn't an easy one. She always trusted, even when things looked bleak. And through her trust, the Christ of God was born into the world, and through her trust, the Church found its birth in the Upper Room. And now, we entrust ourselves to her prayers for us, asking her to keep us always in prayer so that our "trust" will be as strong as hers.

 

So, today is a feast of hope. We hope that in this world of war and hate, peace may triumph. And we won't give up that hope. We hope that in this world where lies and cheating are often the norm, that Truth will stand and overcome. And we will not give up that hope. So, today, as children of Mary and brothers and sisters of the Christ, we come to God and pray, make us, too, channels of your peace and strength and truth in a world that needs peace and strength and truth so desperately. And may God bless you all.

Sermon, December 7, 2008, Advent 2.B

The readings are about "preparing the way," making the path smooth.

 

Isaiah 40: "Comfort, give comfort" begins the poem which we all know and love due to Handel's "Messiah." In it, Isaiah describes the "leveling of hills and the filling in of valleys." This is a reference to what was, at that time, "the red carpet treatment." Before asphalt, the roads that converged  on a city were all muddy and hard to traverse. This was especially so the nearer to the city gate one came, for there, ALL the little cart tracks and major roads came together, and it was such a "rough ride," that even royalty would have to get out of their "well-padded" conveyances, and walk for fear of injury, unless the townspeople honored them by coming out and leveling out the ruts and cart tracks to make a smooth ride. Here, the poet/prophet envisions God asking the prophet to do this for the slaves returning from their captivity in Babylon–broken people coming home.

 

The Gospel is about John the Baptist preparing the people to expect the coming of the Christ of God, who will bring sinners back to religion and the pagan Gentiles to a knowledge of the One, True God of Israel.

 

And St. Paul tells us how to live our lives in preparation for the Lord's  return. So...we have lots of Preparation for the "returning folk" of the world.

 

God for the returning exiles.
Christ for the returning of sinners.
And WE prepare for the return of the Christ...

 

So, our readings are all about "preparing the way."

 

How does a bird in preparing for the vital days of spring and summer prepare a nest? First, those nests are well-attached, for they are perched 50 feet off the ground, on "foundations" of branches that move violently in the wind, and they are made of strong materials, sticks, not leaves, for leaves are more quickly biodegradable than sticks, and they don't want their happy home turning to dust over night! And, the sticks are well-placed for strength, and  often sparkling things catch their eye, and end up woven among the branches. So much for birds: what can we say? Even bird-brains know how to make strong houses in precarious places! But, at least, from what we can observe, the birds build from instinct, with materials, not with personal values.

 

But, how about us? How do we prepare a home? What is the "foundation" on which we build? What are the non-material resources that we use to make our home?  I ask this, this weekend, for these are the very same things that "prepare the way" for Christ's advent into our world.

 

Warmth (Heating/air conditioning and personal warmth, and knowing when to give the cool glass of water in His Name, Windows and electricity, and the Light that understanding can bring to a family, Plumbing, and the refreshment that forgiveness brings, a Kitchen stove, and the nurturance that profound love and charity bring, a Time out corner and richness that responsibility and honesty can bring to a home and a neighborhood. and the caring that having a time out area signifies, with the security that true caring imparts, a Safe or a vault that can signify how we need to protect what we treasure, which is why we also have smoke alarms in our children's rooms.

 

What we are seeing are symbols–our homes are filled with symbols, our lives are filled with them, and they all point us to what it means to "prepare the way" of the Lord. For it is in cultivating personal warmth and generosity, it is in deepening our understanding of each other, it is in developing our skills of forgiveness, which in turn, deepens our ability to be truly loving and charitable people, andin our ability to be caring, honest responsible people who treasure the gifts of others that "prepares the way of the Lord." How?

 

Well, it prepares our children to recognize the face of Christ shining through the face of the neighbor. They don't learn that by memorizing a Bible verse. They learn that by watching us. Such a life prepares our co-workers to recognize the undeserved mercy of God by our smiling forgiveness and our listening ear. They don't learn that from "witness talks" or sermons; they learn it from watching us and how we treat them. It prepares our neighbors to recognize the eternal presence that treasures them and values them when they see us treasuring THEIR children as we coach them in Little League, and tutor them in after school programs. They don't learn this from tracts we put under their doors, they learn if from watching us live. And when they see us standing for the weak, and working for the rights of others, they are prepared to see the God who never gives up on us. And when we come regularly to weekly worship, they learn where we get our strength.

 

AND, it is in the cultivation of these very values and practices that we "smooth the way" for the Lord of Advent to be Birthed in the manger of our heart over and over again. Have you noticed that God rarely comes on donkeys these days!

 

Now, all of this is so darn simple and obvious that you are probably saying to yourselves, "I could give this good a sermon without ever having gone to seminary! True. You could. I'm not here to be superior to you, you (well not you personally, but a community of Christians in Kansas where I'm from) in the name of Christians everywhere, called me to stand up every week and to remind us all of what we don't want to hear. And as I talk, I'm reminding MYSELF, first of all. I don't know about you, but I've met some folk in the last fifteen years or so, that I don't understand at all, and would wonder about my sanity if I DID! Several things have happened to me in my life that I find it very hard to forgive, and I say I've forgiven, BUT, I hold the memory in my "treasury vault," so that IF I ever need to use it, I can bring it out and go for the jugular! So, I need to hear these readings from Isaiah and from Mark, too, and I need to think about the stuff I've put before all of us to pay attention to. None of us is perfect, that's why we have free confessionals in Churches and why psychiatrists have far more expensive couches in their offices! I like to think of the words of Dear Abby, who was quoting a Church Father who I was too lazy to look up–she wrote: "Churches are not museums for saints, they are hospitals for sinners." Today's readings remind us that they are also "schools" for preparing us to make openings for the coming of the Lord into our world. Only the God and the prophet could smooth those ruts leading from Babylon to Jerusalem; and only we can smooth ours, with His help.

 

Let's take what's left of this Advent season to "give Christ the red carpet treatment" into our lives. Let the manger of our hearts be ready for Him to come to us in ever new and surprising ways, thus making of our lives benedictions of goodness and hope in our world. And may God bless you all.+