Sunday, June 26, 2011

Sermon for 2 Pentecost 6/26/11

God said to Abraham, “Take your son,
your only son
Isaac,
whom you love,
and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering.”

Hearing again the story of Abraham and the sacrifice of Isaac
is not what most of us would want.
Yet here it is,
showing up on a fine summer Sunday morning
so that we have to look at it and not avoid it.

The horror of it all!
Do we really want to go there?
The horror of what is being asked by God for the testing of faith!
Would you read this to your children or grandchildren
as a bedtime story?
It is beyond all reasonableness.
Way beyond.
Reasonableness gets left out completely.
Is this what we’re in for – this sort of testing of faith?

If your mind works anything like mine does,
one might picture some horrific real life news stories
of aberrant parental behavior –
abuse and victimization and murder.
I’ve had to deal with that pastorally
and it’s the hardest work I have ever done.
And it leaves its mark.

Or all we need to think of is war –
the bizarre way in which we send our sons and daughters off
to be slaughtered
or to return home damaged in body and mind and spirit,
a huge cost, humanly speaking,
with dubious rewards.

Take, for instance, the poem by Wilfred Owen
used in Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem
which was an anti-war statement in exquisite music
about World War I:

"So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
And builded parapets and trenched there,
And stretched forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.
But the old man would not so,
but slew his son, -
And half the seed of Europe, one by one."

But that is not what this story of the Sacrifice of Isaac is about.

We have to back up and see how Abraham and Isaac come to this place;
we have to remember, or learn, the context for this story.
Otherwise it will make no sense,
and it will be abhorrent parental behavior of the worse kind.

Abraham, the one who would be know as the father of faith,
was called by God to engage in a comprehensive spiritual process
of personal transformation.
Actually we all are –
we all are called by God to engage in a comprehensive spiritual process
of personal transformation.

The thing with Abraham,
and why we have chapter after chapter of stories about him
in the book of Genesis,
is that Abraham listened and cooperated.
So God took him deeper and deeper into spiritual transformation
that would bring him to his full potential as a human being.

Get up and move to a whole new land and culture and people, God told him.
No matter that you are 75 years old.

And Abraham did so.

Look at the stars of the sky, God told him.
Countless, right?
So will your descendants be.
Despite the fact that you and Sarah have no children.

Well, Sarah thought and thought about that one.
If she was barren, how could they have even one child,
let alone a vast dynasty?
There’s the old custom of the surrogate.
Give Abraham Hagar, her slave girl, and claim the child as the heir.
Bad move.
Scripture records so clearly some really rocky family dynamics that happen because of that.
Ishmael was not the child of promise.

The next step in this spiritual process –
the travelers at the oak of Mamre,
angels of God
bringing the message that a year from now they would have a son.
Sarah laughed, and Abraham too. She was 90 years old, for goodness sake.
Nevertheless God was true to the promise.
And they named this impossible son Isaac,
a name that means laughter.

This is an important point,
that we have expectations about how things should work,
but God’s action is unique – the impossible happens.
God’s joke on us – and it’s a good joke, one we can laugh at too.

God was working with Abraham,
showing him a solid basis on which he could set his faith and trust.
With God the impossible happens, always surprising and unique.

See how the sacrifice was interwoven with all this prior history?

God was now taking Abraham to a place of final surrender.
Final surrender – for that is what faith ultimately is.
If Abraham was to become the prime example of faith,
it had to come to this:
to the place where the promise remained
but his expectations about this were surrendered,
and there only remained the unique actions of God.

Isaac, God was telling Abraham, is not for you.
Our children are not our own.

You may be familiar with these words of the poet Khalil Gilbran:

“Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
… You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.…"

Isaac was not Abraham’s to own.

Isaac in fact would get up off the altar
as though resurrected from the dead,
and would be the replacement for Abel,
who was slain by his brother over rivalry and envy because of a sacrifice
Abel who sacrificed to God from his flock of sheep
and a ram from someone’s flock of sheep having wandered off
God provided tangled hopelessly in a thicket,
waiting certain death from some predator,
now the unexpected action of God.

Isaac would rise from the altar,
and walk back with Abraham.
He would have flocks and herds, and dig deep wells for water.

Abraham would never see with the eyes of his body
the descendants countless as the stars
or the grains of sand on the seashore.
But he completed the spiritual process of going beyond his own thoughts,
his own awareness of what could happen.
He surrendered in trust to God’s promise.

And we have this heritage from him.
This is a huge archetypal story of our own spiritual process of faith.

Are we his children of faith?
Are we willing to be taken beyond our own thoughts?
Where is God taking us?
Beyond all reasonableness
Beyond all reasonableness, obviously, in our own lives,
but where God is taking us is into a process of becoming
our full potential as human beings.

God was working with Abraham,
showing him a solid basis on which he could truly set his faith and trust.
God shows us a solid basis in Jesus, whom Isaac foreshadows,
the One on whom we can truly set our faith and trust,
Son of Man and Lamb of God.

Faith is a crucial and essential element of life.

Will you let God take you beyond
your own littleness of reasonability?
The promise is made solid in Jesus
and fullness of life beyond expectation
is waiting for you.

Sunday, June 12, 2011

Reality Check

I really don’t think many of us realize the power of Jesus to transform lives. We use words like “salvation” and “grace” and “love,” but these words can seem tame, mild, gentle, all goodness with the implication of being soothing.

Yeshua in his earthly life was not usually soothing. Rather he was unsettling. He spoke with authority and not as the scribes whose authority was derivative from their educational credentials. This authority did not depend on any institution or master teacher certifying him, but instead flowed out of his being. It was authentic, and authenticity will trump credentials anytime. And authenticity will show up any hypocrisy in the vicinity. Hence Jesus was unsettling. However this authority is the basis of the power Yeshua expressed when he healed, liberated from demonic forces, fed thousands with a handful of bread, and called the dead back to life. Those around him witnessing these things were astonished to say the least. The gospels give accounts of people being more than awe-struck; they were knocked out of their senses, meaning that their world view had been massively dislodged by what they were experiencing through this man. What they previously had held as reality had suddenly been shattered, and they were left grasping at how to make sense and meaning out of what they had just experienced.

I look at the Church, broadly speaking, the way the Christian religion presents itself and is expressed by the general population, and I see it acting as though Jesus might as well be still buried in the tomb. The Resurrection is viewed as a triumph over death – Jesus’ triumph over his own death, followed by his ascension to heaven and the right hand of God the Father, where he is safely ensconced and removed from the scene here. No longer do we need to deal with the power of his authentic presence disrupting our lives and confronting our limited and limiting self understanding identified with family and occupation, economic status and associations, likes and dislikes, preferences and values.

The Gospel that we then preach is weak, the Resurrection as a mild exhortation to see the Risen Christ in others, which runs the danger of either naming all “nice-ness” as Christ-like or, upon encounter with difficult people, claiming that they challenge us to act Christ-like to them, to treat them as though they were who they obviously are not. That often is all I see of how the Church presents the Resurrection as significant for living out our daily lies.

What if Yeshua were alive and present today right here the way he was 2,000 years ago in Galilee and Judea? The comfortableness in which we practice the Christian religion would be directly challenged, and instead the possibility of real and immediate change in people’s lives would replace the hopeful idea of gradual spiritual growth manageably spread out over a lifetime. Then we would see clearly that salvation and grace are not self-generated by trying to improve ourselves morally and spiritually much the same way as we slowly accumulate savings for retirement. Then we would see clearly that it is God’s intervention with us that gives us life, shows us true Love and provides all the meaning we could want.

Well, it’s time to move beyond the insipid and vapid littleness of common understanding of resurrection, and stop ignoring the power that is present here and now in the Resurrection Jesus. It’s time to stop ignoring the third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, and realize that this Spirit is much more than a wispy ghost innocuously floating around us. This is Resurrection Presence of Jesus here with us, the One who can emerge out of invisibility and make our hair stand on end as the scales of our spiritual blindness drop away. “Surely God is in this place and I did not know it,” Jacob said out in the desert fleeing his brother whom he had heartlessly tricked. Surely God is in this place – in the desert of our hearts – and we do not know it.

Ignoring the reality of God’s presence to save and to heal, to transform and to reconcile is possibly the great sin of today’s Church, or the sin of a lot of us as a strategy to keep such power under control or at least at arm’s length. There is an antidote for this form of ignorance – meditation. Practice the ancient spiritual discipline of sitting and ceasing from our own actions and attitudes that create protective barriers between ourselves and the power of divine presence. Meditate and be with the truth of being and come to realize it is not your own being, a being you can own. Meditate and keep mediating and watch changes emerge in attitudes, reactivity, actions, and relationships. Meditate and discover the power of God, power expressed as Love. Meditate and encounter the Resurrection Spirit of Yeshua.

Keep meditating!

Sermon for Pentecost Sunday 6/12/11

First of all, I have a confession to make.
I tampered with the wording of the Collect for today,
and without your knowing I made you collaborators with me
by having everyone pray the collect out loud together.

But I did not change the original meaning expressed
by the collect for Pentecost – too much,
rather I think I made it more clear and applicable to the Church today.

This is a very ancient prayer from medieval times
that was incorporated into our prayer book.

“O God, who on this day taught the hearts of your faithful people
by sending to them the light of your Holy Spirit…”

Holy Spirit as Light, light for making right judgment, or discernment,
in all aspects of our lives.
The Holy Spirit gives the light of discerning awareness.

“Grant us by the same Spirit to have a right discernment in all things,
and evermore to rejoice in his holy comfort…”

That was the original word: comfort.
Yes, loving Jesus, wrap your arms around me,
and let me be comforted and comfortable.
But I would propose that we look at the Latin root of this word
and see what it means: literally, it means with strength,
com – with, fort - strength.
May we rejoice, not in being comforted, but in being strengthened.

Holy strength – it’s written all over the Pentecost event
that was just read from Acts, chapter 2.
Pentecost was not a quiet, comforting scene in that upper room
where 120 souls were gathered in prayer
waiting for the promised visitation,
not a quiet, comfortable scene when the 120 spontaneously combust
and they are blown out of that room and out onto the street
where they burst forth in a torrential flow of languages
speaking about God’s deeds of power.

I was reading in the newspaper
about local rivers and white water rafting this spring.
This year the flow of rivers swollen by an extra abundant snow melt
makes the river rafting far more exciting,
and far more dangerous.
Rivers that can swell larger than what would make for
an exciting white water adventure,
rivers that overflow their banks, break through levies,
and carry away all in their path.
So we have respect for the swollen rivers in the spring,
and especially this year.
The flow of this water is strong and irresistible.
Even more so is the Pentecostal outpouring of Holy Spirit,
unpredictable, surprising, powerful and overpowering.
The Spirit is poured out on all, the Resurrection Presence of Jesus.
The magnitude of Pentecost is huger than we can imagine –
more powerful than raging rivers.

We in the Church, inheritors of the Apostolic teachings and traditions,
are sitting on the greatest source of power ever known,
and we are ignoring it.
We are ignorant of just how powerful this resource is, a power and a strength
that can transform us internally
and revolutionize how we live.
There is more power in this ultimate resurrection appearance of Jesus
as Holy Spirit poured out on his faithful
than in all the raging rivers put together.
For this Pentecost power changed the lives of these people
and opened a flood of spiritual awakening
in those who encountered them.
3,000 were baptized that day,
Acts, chapter 2 continuing the account, tells us.
And that was just Day One.

So what’s with us here?
The Church in its institutional structure and liturgical rites
has attempted to convey the Gospel of Jesus Christ to a world of hurt.
We have good words and sacraments
and a framework for living together as a faith community.
But what the Church presents is incapable of holding and containing
the Resurrection Spirit of Jesus,
let alone even the Name of the transcending Presence of God.
There is no way here that we can meaningfully “celebrate” Pentecost,
or even come close to what it is all about.
This is beyond our words, our imagining, and most of all, beyond our control.

From the Gospel reading for today:
Jesus is standing in the temple in Jerusalem on a great feast day, proclaiming:
“Let anyone who is thirsty come to me,
and let the one who believes in me drink.
As the scripture has said,
‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’”
Now he said this about the Spirit,
which believers in him were to receive…
So for us here today
looking either perplexed or dumbfounded by the Pentecost story
trying to relate it to our own reality,
how about starting with just basic thirst?
Do we have something we are thirsty for?
How about love?
However we understand love or whatever we think about it,
is there not this primal desire for love?
In the greatest kind of love of all Jesus offers himself to those who are thirsting,
to those whose hearts are dry as deserts.
He offers Holy Spirit not only to fill, but to overflow and become rivers,
the loving Presence of Jesus that cannot be contained.

So, let us come thirsting for this love.
The love that is given so freely
is not emotional, sentimental, soft hearted kindness.
We may prefer the taste of such love,
like preferring a sweet nectar to a glass full of medicine.
The medicine is better for us even if it tastes bitter.
We tend to prefer that niceness, comfort and good feelings
be our experience of God,
rather than encounter a love
that communicates truth about our own spiritual condition
and God's transcendent limitlessness.
But that kind of love overwhelms and touches us
in a far deeper way that messes with our previously comfortable lives, but messes with that in a hugely beneficial way.

In the Gospel reading Jesus cries out, “All who are thirsty come and drink,
and out of your inner most being will flow rivers of living water.”
This Living Water is the abundant pouring out of the Spirit, Holy Spirit,
as the Resurrection Presence of Jesus.
This living water is love in action
flowing without thought of self or self-interest,
flowing generously and abundantly,
flowing outward like water.
Notice that water flows spontaneously and without self-interest.
Water always flows towards the lowest place,
fills that,
then continues to overflow to all the other low places.
Wherever in our lives there are low places,
places of grief, hurt, need, suffering, isolation, misery,
the Living Water of God’s Love as Holy Spirit flows in,
and when that low place is filled
it then floods out.
We may come out of thirst to God,
being open just a little
or strongly crying out to God because we feel so keenly the inner pain.
We are invited to drink,
but beware!
When we drink of this water
our spiritual thirst will be filled – yes!
But then we had better not try to stop the flow just at that point of satisfaction.
Someone said drinking the living water of the Spirit
is like trying to drink from a fire hose.
But no, rather drinking the living water of the Spirit,
whether we gulp or sip gingerly, we then become the fire hose.
Then the overflow starts,
and then we become useful to God,
then we begin to fulfill our purpose for being created.
We are capable of far more than we can imagine.
We do not realize half the potential within us.

We have been coming here week after week, year after year,
being feed at the table,
and then going our way immediately forgetful
that we have a river ready to burst its banks and flood the world
with this same love with which we have been fed and saved.

Okay, here’s a more gentle, comforting illustration
one to help us respond to the tsunami of the Holy Spirit of Pentecost,
something possibly within our scope of response.

One of God’s saints said to consider a flower:
“When a flower is only a bud,
its colorful petals cannot be seen
nor its fragrance inhaled.
But when it opens, all the petals show and it spreads a lovely perfume.
We have the same capacity within us – infinite capacity –
but are still in a closed state. [still a bud]
We need to open like the flower…”

Ask Jesus to reveal himself to you as Holy Spirit within you,
so that you may grow and open to your full strength and potential
empowered by his Love.

And may we rejoice, not in being comforted, but in being strengthened.