Monday, March 11, 2024

Snakes on Poles

Let’s start with some fun facts.

Did you know that the 4th Sunday in Lent,

         as it is observed in the Church of England, our Mother Church,

                  is called Mothering Sunday?

It is the British equivalent of Mothers Day 

                  and has been celebrated as such since the 16th Century.

It occurred on this Sunday at the midpoint in Lent

         when the traditional Gospel lesson 

                  was the story of the loaves and fishes

Hence it was also called “Refreshment” Sunday

         because the multitudes were refreshed 

                                             with the food our Lord provided them.

 

So we are now just past the half way mark in Lent,

         and I might ask, how is your observance of a holy Lent going?

We will see the lengthening of days with signs of spring

         especially this evening !

                  the word Lent meaning lengthening.

 

From what  I have observed from the activities going on at St. Andrew’s,

         Lent here is a time for Refreshment going on.

So if for you personally what you have intended for your observing Lent

         may see to be lagging a bit here at this halfway point, 

                  God will provide.

 

And indeed God has.

        Let’s look at the scriptures for this Sunday because they bear that out.

 

The lesson from the Book of the Torah called Numbers

         recounts yet another time when the Israelites were in difficult straits

                           out there in the Lenten wilderness of the Sinai Desert.

It wasn’t easy wandering around in the desert for forty years,

         and this time they had a crisis of a plague of poisonous snakes,

                  and people were dying.

But God provided, 

         although it was somewhat strange what God provided – 

                  healing in the form of a serpent of bronze on a pole

         and all they had to do was to gaze on it

                                             and they would live.

 

Are you familiar with the Caduceus? 

          the symbol associated with doctors and the medical profession?

The most familiar depiction is of two intertwining snakes on a pole

                  topped with two wings.

There are a couple of different stories 

         about what that represents and how it came to be,

but the most relevant is the Greek myth of Asclepius. 

         Asclepius was a healer with his wife Hygenia 

                  and a daughter named Panacea. 

In Greek art Asclepius is depicted holding a staff 

                                                               with a snake entwined around it.

 

I have been privileged to explore the classical ruins 

         in Pergamum in Turkey, and Epidaurus in Greece, 

with their ancient temples and places of healing associated with Asclepius.

         These places even today 

                  have a discernable healing and peaceful quality about them.

 

Now don’t you think it most interesting 

         that there can be parallels drawn 

between this story about Asclepius

         and the story of Moses interceding for the people in prayer to God?

 

The people cry out with their need for healing

         and God’s mercy provides,

                  and the healing flows as freely 

         as that spontaneous, abundant, free flowing, generous mercy of God.

 

So let us turn to the Gospel reading for today:

         It starts in the middle of the conversation that Jesus was having 

                  with Nicodemus who came to him by night

         and was told that he must be born, not just from a physical mother,

                  but from the Source of all life.

 

And while Nicodemus is puzzling over this, Jesus tells him:

         “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,

         so must the Son of Man be lifted up…”

                           As indeed he would be – on a cross.

 

This would be for the ultimate healing – the healing of the sin sick soul,

         the healing that would carry you through death to life,

                  life with that eternal quality to it

                           eternally lively, never fading,

                  life in its fullest expression,

         the life of the Resurrection.

 

For God so loved the world that God gave God’s only Son,

         so that everyone who believes in him, who puts their trust in him,

                  may not perish

                           but have eternal life.

 

We may speak of God the Father and God the Son,

         but what is described in John, chapter 3,

                  is a process of birthing into new life,

                           of being birthed into new life,

                  by God who births us into new life – God as mother.

 

And here is the Gospel good news that we must never forget:

         “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world,

         but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

 

Know that in Greek the word that means saved also means healed.

 

The ultimate healing that we all need – the healing of the sin sick soul,

         the healing that can carry you through death to life,

                  requires only that you have faith, that you trust, 

         that you believe the word of God when your heart hears it.

 

With the ancient healing cult of Asclepius

         there was an elaborate ritual that took place 

                                    in order to access the healing:

         drinking water from a special fountain, 

         navigating an underground tunnel to a chamber

         where you would sleep and dream 

                  and then tell your dream to the temple priest for interpretation,

         and a votive offering to be paid.

 

But the Gospel puts no qualifications on receiving other than receiving,

         which is an act of faith,

                  like simply placing your gaze on the snake on the pole.

 

The sad thing is that in their sin sickness 

                           people preferred darkness to light,

         because the darkness would hide what the light would expose.

 

But God, like a good mother, would much rather see her children happy,

         all freshened up from a bath after playing in the mud,

         filled with a nourishing dinner 

         and tucked into bed with hugs and kisses 

                                                               and soothing bedtime stories.

 

And here is the Good News! – 

this spiritual process at work within us 

is not our own effort and work,

but the work of the Spirit blowing where it will in us.

The work is being done for us.

 

And this is not even at our own initiative.

We are like babies here being born.

         We are hardly prepared for the life we are being born into in Jesus.

Jesus is the One who gives the new birth into the new creation, 

                  the Kingdom of Heaven.

 

God so loved the world that God gave the only begotten son

         that whosoever believes in him, trusts in him, has faith in him,

                  will have eternal life.

 

Now in physical birth there is a separation that occurs, 

                                                               a cutting the umbilical cord,

         marking a distinction being made between the child from the mother.

 

But in the birth from above, from the Source, from the Spirit,

         there is no separation.

         There are no spiritual belly buttons.

 

Rather – and just try to get your mind around this – 

                                             there is a state of continuous birth.

         Nothing separates from the Source.

The truth of the world is that it is born of God.

         This is the Kingdom of Heaven.

It is all of the one Life, of the One who said I am the Resurrection and the Life.

 

From the reading today from the Letter to the Ephesians, 

         these words say it all:

 

God, who is rich in mercy, 

out of the great love with which God loved us 

even when we were dead through our trespasses, 

made us alive together with Christ

-- by grace you have been saved—

and raised us up with him 

and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 

so that in the ages to come he might show 

the immeasurable riches of his grace 

in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 

For by grace you have been saved through faith, 

and this is not your own doing; 

it is the gift of God

-- not the result of works, so that no one may boast. 

For we are what God has made us, 

created [as we are] in Christ Jesus…

 

This is eternal life – to know, to experience, 

         to have heart knowledge of God, and the one sent, Jesus.

 

We each face another birth

         when we can then say that we are born again.

It is the birth that occurs at death,

         when the time is ripe for each of us.

 

This birth is natural.  It doesn’t require our understanding.

         It will happen in its time.

 

But we can already come to the realization of this new birth.

We can already know eternal life as being born of water and the Spirit,                 being in that eternal moment of creation in Jesus. 

Sunday, March 3, 2024

Bias is a Matter of Perspective

 Imagine the scene.

Jesus goes to the Temple in Jerusalem, the big cathedral in that day,

         and what does he find there, what does he see, 

                  where does his attention go?

Not to the Holy of Holies, 

         not to the altars of incense and of sacrifice 

                                                                        necessary for prayers to God,

         not to the clergy in procession or the Psalms being sung by the choir, 

but to the animals for sale there, animals doomed for sacrifice,

                  and to the money changing tables 

         where filthy Roman coins were exchanged for righteous shekels.

And what happens next is dramatic, disruptive and attention getting.

 

Sometimes the spiritual master has to go to drastic measures 

         to get our attention.

 

What was the purpose Jesus wanted to get across?

More than one thing, several actually, 

         in fact we could spend a lot of time 

                  plumbing the depths of this passage

                  and still have more to discover.

 

Put it this way.

Jesus was shifting the attention of the disciples that were with him,

         and of the people there at the Temple that day,

         and most especially the attention of the clergy and Jewish leaders.

 

Shifting their attention and their perspective.

How each would respond to his outrageous actions

         would reveal where they were coming from in their own thinking.

Their bias would clearly be revealed in how they reacted.

 

His disciples linked his actions to the Psalms and the Prophets.

         Jesus was a new prophet calling the people to an energized zeal 

                  for the purity that was called for within the Temple courts.

His actions affirmed their hopes for a Messiah 

         who would lead with boldness and strength.

That’s what the disciples were looking for.

 

The Jewish leaders wanted more signs to spell out clearly who he was.

         They had to think about the fragile balance that needed maintaining                            between themselves and the Romans

         so that, at least in name, they could maintain their positions of ruling

                  without bringing a heavy military response down upon them all.

So it was important that they had more signs 

                                             to confirm that Jesus was legit,

         or so that they would have grounds to outlaw this wild man

         and shut down his growing but suspect influence on the people.

 

You see, each were looking at Jesus from their own perspective,

         from their own mindset, from their own bias.

 

Recently I had been listening to a podcast 

                                    from the Center for Action and Contemplation

         with Brian McLaren, a very good writer and spiritual voice

                  addressing issues for those of us 

                           who are trying to live a Christian life of faith

in a culture that frequently sees Christians 

         either as right wing fundamentalists 

                  who want to impose strict moral codes on everyone else

         or as anachronistic and irrelevant in a secular world.

Everyone has their own perspective, 

         and currently those different perspectives can get polarized quickly                            when different viewpoint meet up with each other and clash.

 

In this podcast Brian McLaren took several episodes to discuss

         what he had as the basis for his book,

                   Why Don’t They Get It? 

                  Overcoming Bias in Others (and Yourself).

To quote McLaren:

“We all have filters, [such as] 

What do I already believe? 

Does this … idea or … information confirm what I already think? 

Does it fit in the frame I’ve already constructed?

My brain (without my conscious awareness, 

                  and certainly without my permission) 

makes incredibly quick decisions 

as it evaluates incoming information or ideas. 

Ideas that fit in are easy and convenient to accept,

and they give me pleasure 

         because they confirm what I already think.

But ideas that don’t fit easily will require me to think, 

         and think twice, 

         and maybe even rethink some of my long-held assumptions. 

That kind of thinking is hard work. 

It requires a lot of time and energy.

… Wanting to save me from that extra reframing work, 

         my brain presses a “reject” or “delete” button 

         when a new idea presents itself. 

“I’ll stick with my current frame, thank you very much,” it says. 

… People can't see what they can’t see. 

Their biases get in the way, surrounding them like a high wall, 

         trapping them in ignorance, deception, and illusion.          

No amount of reasoning and argument will get through to them, 

unless we first learn how to break down the walls of bias …”

 

McLaren’s book contains a list of 13 different types of biases 

         that are very subtle to awareness, but also very pervasive.

These are not the kinds of bias you would expect, such as 

         those biases that have to do with race, gender identity, politics.

I will spare you the whole list of 13 hidden biases 

                                             (this is not a 13 point sermon!)

         but I will share some because when I read the list 

         I immediately saw a mirror held up in front of me.

And I also know that you too may recognize yourself in this list.

So we can use this as an apt Lenten self-reflection exercise.

 

1 Confirmation Bias: We judge new ideas based on the ease with which they fit in with and confirm the only standards we have: 

         [which are] old ideas, old information, and trusted authorities. 

As a result, our framing story, belief system, or paradigm 

         excludes whatever doesn’t fit.

2 Community Bias: It’s almost impossible to see what our community

                  our tribe, group, cultural identity

          doesn’t, can’t, or won’t see. [This is cultural bias.]

3 Competency Bias: How can we know how much (or how little) 

         we know about any given topic or issue?

         And we certainly can’t know how much (or little) others know

                                                                        on this matter. 

[We assume our own knowledge level to be adequate 

         for whatever we are judging.]

 

4 Consciousness Bias: Some things simply can’t be seen 

         from where I am right now. 

But if I keep growing, maturing, and developing, 

         someday I will be able to see what is now inaccessible to me.

Unless it is raised to the conscious level, we don’t see it.

5 Catastrophe or Normalcy Bias: I can remember dramatic catastrophes 

         but not notice gradual decline (or improvement).

[In other words, we will recall negative events in our history,

         and tend to overlook the long, slow progress or decline 

         that had a more lasting effect upon us.]

6 Contact Bias: When I don’t have intense and sustained personal contact          with “the other,” 

                  my prejudices and false assumptions go unchallenged.

And the last one: Cash Bias: It’s hard for me to see something

         when my way of making a living requires me not to see it.

[Our financial status colors the way we look at others 

         in a different financial status – either to the very rich or very poor.]

So here we are with a mirror for examining biases 

                                    we didn’t even know we had!

We now have some freedom to look deeper

         and ponder how these discoveries of bias

               have impacted our own decision making and our relationships.

The mirror that is held up before us here 

         plays the same role as Jesus purging the Temple.

His actions, as I said earlier, get the attention of everyone around him,

         and their reactions all reveal their biases,

and the reader of the Gospel would get this too.

         Am I shocked by what Jesus did?  Why am I shocked?

         What do I now see about myself?

         What can I repent of?         What can I let go of?

 

Now back to the Gospel story.

Everyone had their back story and incipient bias 

                                                               about what Jesus was doing,

         but what does Jesus say next?

“Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”

 

But at that time nobody got what he meant 

         until after his death and then the big surprise, the Resurrection.

 

In the action of clearing the temple of the sacrificial animals 

                  necessary for the practice of the religion, 

Jesus is making a radical shift, 

a radical shift away from the Temple and the whole religious enterprise 

to himself, his own body, 

as the Temple, the Holy of Holies, the House of God.

Jesus, the Lamb of God, would become both Temple, the House of God, 

                           and the sacrifice.

 

There was only one sacrifice in that Temple, 

offered once and for all, 

full, perfect and sufficient, 

         as it says in the word of Scripture and the Book of Common Prayer

and we all eat of the flesh of that sacrifice 

                                                               in the Holy Communion.  

 

Now, is that a shock to our sensibilities?

                  Pay attention to that as we continue this liturgy,

                           and especially to the Eucharistic Prayer.

         What bias might that uncover for you  now?

Sunday, February 18, 2024

Desert Spirituality

 We often think of Lent as a special time for deepening our spiritual practice 

         and being more self disciplined about what we know 

                                    is spiritually beneficial for us.

 

The first Sunday of Lent we always get the same Gospel story:

                  Jesus spending forty days in the wilderness, 

                  Jesus facing temptations, or perhaps better translated testing.

 

Let’s look at the Gospel for today.

 

In Mark’s Gospel we get the short version: 

         it only mentions being in the wilderness 40 days

         and being tempted, but Mark does not list the temptations

But this account adds a new bit of information not found in Matthew or Luke:

         “he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.”

 

Immediately after his baptism, immediately after the heavens part 

and the Spirit as a dove descends and the voice comes from heaven, 

         immediately after that Jesus then is impelled 

                  with great force by the Spirit 

out into the desert, out into the wilderness.

 

The desert is the place where you might see wildlife, 

                                                      the undomesticated critters,

         and you are away from the tamed environment, the cultivated fields, 

subjugated by the force of human culture.

 

The desert has always been seen as 

                  the place where the environment is outside our control,

but also the place of encounter with God

                  where one could do a clean reset of perspective.

 

The Holy Spirit drives Jesus into the desert

         for retreat time to consolidate his ministry         

                  that is about to commence.

In this location, then, the temptations are significant 

         because of their relationship to ministry.

                  These are not personal temptations 

                           like being tempted to eat chocolates during Lent

                           or the temptation to engage in convenient moral shortcuts.

The temptations Jesus faced in the desert had to do with 

         testing how he would minister.


Temptations, trials, testing

they were a part of the desert experience for Jesus, 

and for us too.

 

Lent provides us with a more stripped down environment at church

         to facilitate a clean reset in our outlook on life,

                                             our perspective.

 

There are always some temptations that come up for any congregation 

         and, I would speculate, St. Andrew’s is no exception.

You might contemplate what the temptations are here for St. Andrew’s.

 

Temptation, defined biblically, means being put to the test.

         What puts you to the test here?

                           … individually and as a faith community?

I give you that question to ponder.

 

The temptations were a test for Jesus in the wilderness,

         and so are the temptations we face – tests.

They are our teachers there to test us regarding our humility,

                  to test if we get it about our dependence on God’s grace,

         and also a reminder that we are to love one another as we love ourselves,

or to put it another way, 

         to have love for ourselves, warts and all,

                  so that we can more faithfully love one another, 

                                    with their warts and all.

 

So Mark’s Gospel, 

the shortest and most concise and efficient in wording of the gospels,

         simply comments that Jesus was tested,

but adds that he was with the wild beasts and the angels waited on him.

“…with the wild beasts…”

         He was not in the cultural setting of the city or the nation 

                  or even his religion.

         He was in the primary environment of creation, nature, untamed,

                  as God created it.

         This was the setting for the Gospel, the good news, 

                the teaching he would bring,

         and that teaching would undercut the religious culture of his time.

This has profound implications,

         because the Gospel, the message and meaning of Jesus,

                  his life, his death, his resurrection

         would go beyond his own religious tradition,

and it will not be limited to the institutional structure of any denomination

         that tags itself as Christian.

  

Jesus, the Eternal Christ, was and is always way beyond that,

                  much more expansive and  universal,

and our worship is a pale reflection of his spiritual presence in the world.

 

Jesus was out in the desert with the wild beasts “…and with the angels…”

         This primary environment of creation included all things created,

                  seen and unseen, as we say in the creed, visible and invisible.

with angels attending, like in Luke’s Gospel at his birth,

         ministering to him with the same great interest and investment,

                  as Jesus, so to speak, gave birth to his ministry,

                  his time of preparation complete now.

And the angels returning as he prayed in the garden of Gethsemane.

 

And Jesus would emerge from the desert walking in the will of the Father,

         in full union with the Father and in harmony with all the created order

         and all the created order would serve him.

                  Fish would swim into the net at his word, when he told 

                           the fishermen to cast the net over the other side of the boat.

                  Water would support his walking on it.

                  Bread would expand to feed thousands.

                  Bodies would heal.

                  Eyes that had never seen would be completed in their creation

                           so that they could fulfill their function of vision.

 

Mark is saying (one could read between the lines),

         “Look out, world.  Here comes Jesus, 

                  and he’s going to blow you away.”

 

The desert is the place away from the domesticated environment; 

                  it is the place where the environment is outside our control,

it is the place of encounter with God.

 

And so, the desert is often the place where the best spiritual work is done.

Lent is a form of spiritual desert, 

a season of time provided for us 

to set things up for encounter with God.

It is good to be driven by the Spirit into such a conducive environment 

for awakening to God at work within us.

 

This is the most important point to note:

         it is the Spirit of Jesus who is at work within us.

Take courage, disciples here at St. Andrew’s. 

Your Lord, your Savior is with you.

         Make good use of this season of Lent.

Quickly I will highlight:

         the Lent series after the service this morning,

         and there’s Morning Prayer Monday through Friday, for prayer,

         a Thursday evening book study,

         and a Wednesday morning Bible study, for life long learning,

and you could look at expanding almsgiving,

and what you might fast from – it doesn’t have to be food.

         You could fast from complaining or from beating up on yourself.

 

Go for it.  Let yourself be put to the test this Lent.

    That would be one of the best things 

            you could do for yourself spiritually.

 

So as the exhortation from  Ash Wednesday states, 

I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, 

to the observance of a holy Lent.