Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Sermon for Pentecost 7, Emmanuel, Mercer Island

First I have to say that it was on honor to be one of Jennifer’s presenters
            Tuesday evening at her ordination to the priesthood.
We had a number of Emmanuelites there
            assisting in the liturgy and supplying food for the reception.
It was truly a great occasion for the five being ordained
            and the gathering of congregations from around the diocese.
The focus of an ordination is on being called to serve in ministry
            following our Lord Jesus,
            and because the renewal of the baptismal covenant is also included
                                                                        in the liturgy,
we are reminded that we ALL are called to serve in ministry – ordained or lay.

For us seasoned clergy each ordination is also an opportunity
                        to renew our own ordination vows along with the ordinands,
            and I personally take this seriously.
And one part of those vows, a major part of those vows, is about Holy Scriptures.
I can quote from memory this vow:
            “I solemnly declare that I do believe
            the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments
            to be the Word of God, and to contain all things necessary to salvation…”
And the Bishop in the Examination asks the ordinands:
            “Will you be diligent in the reading and study of the Holy Scriptures,
            and in seeking the knowledge of such things
            as may make you a stronger and more able minister of Christ?”

Bishop Greg in his sermon also exhorted the ordinands:
            “Do not hinder the people you serve.”
Remember that with what I say next about the Gospel!
I have been ordained now for going on 30 years,
            and during that time I have seen some major changes in the church,
and I think that a lot of those changes were initiated, enabled and supported
            by the women ordained to the priesthood.
And I do believe that the presence of women in the priesthood
                        has enriched us all greatly.
One of the most hopeful things I have seen is an increase in awareness
            about the differences between “churchianity,” or ecclesiology,
            and a living, experienced faith that comes through
                        revelation by the Holy Spirit, the Resurrection Presence of Jesus.

With that in mind I have the boldness to now preach what I am about to say
                        about the Gospel reading for today
            as it has been revealed to me by the Resurrection Spirit of our Lord.

The Gospel reading for today is the third in a three week series
            from the 13th chapter of Matthew,
a whole long chapter of the parables of Jesus about the Kingdom of Heaven.
Parables of the Kingdom/Parables of Grace

The parables are always about the truth that is in Jesus,
that he is living out for us.
And the parables are stories about a process at work in us.
They are about our relationship with Jesus,
            the experience of the disciple in relationship to the Beloved.

In these parables watch out for the point of absurdity in each parable,
            and look also for the expression of abundance.

Today we have FIVE parables,
            five short, quick original pictures about the Kingdom of Heaven.
In each is absurdity, and in each is abundance.

“The Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed…”
            a small, tiny seed.
I’ve seen fields of mustard growing –
            four, maybe five feet tall, good size bushes.
But growing to become a tree?
            Not by any stretch of the imagination.            Absurd.
Yet the Kingdom grows way beyond expectation
and accommodates life, offering shelter, abundantly useful.

“The Kingdom of Heaven is like yeast…”
A woman takes the yeast and adds it to the flour for a batch of bread,
but she uses three times the amount of flour than usual.
She kneads the dough
and tucks it into a warm corner of the kitchen to rise.
What would you expect to have happened
when she comes back a couple of hours later?!
Someone once told me of a mistake she had made in her recipe
             when making bread.
She had put the bowl of dough in the warm oven to rise
      only to come back later to see the dough pushing against the oven door
             ready to ooze out into the rest of the kitchen.
Absurd abundance and expansiveness.

“The Kingdom of Heaven is like treasure hidden in a field…”
Now listen and tell me if this sounds like
recommended ethics for business transactions.
Someone discovers treasure in a field that does not belong to him.
So he obscures it from sight, so that others wouldn’t see it,
until he himself can gather his resources
and carry out the transaction necessary to buy the field,
so that he can then claim the treasure as his own.
Is Jesus recommending shady business deals, insider trading and the like?!
Absurd.

But the Kingdom is like the treasure,
something so valuable that when its presence is recognized
             it drives one to do whatever is necessary
to get that treasure. 
It becomes the ultimate carrot
so that we might be filled with such yearning for it
and be drawn into relentless pursuit of it.
The treasure is abundance;
the treasure is the Teacher, the Beloved, Jesus.

“Again the Kingdom of Heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls…”
Finally he finds what he has been looking for –
THE Pearl, the biggest, finest pearl in all creation.
This pearl is so valuable to the merchant, so precious, so beloved
that he must have it no matter that it takes all that he has
– house, car, computer, TV, clothes,
cash value of his pension fund and life insurance, everything.
Once he has that pearl, then what?
The pearl is useless for providing him life support
– he can’t eat it; it doesn’t supply shelter.
What an absurd action, what extravagant expense and waste!

Remember, the parables are about the truth that Jesus is living out.
And they are stories about a process at work in us,
about our relationship with Jesus,
            the experience of the disciple in relationship to the Beloved.

Now notice, in this parable
the Kingdom of Heaven is like the merchant, not the pearl.
So who is the merchant?  Jesus is the merchant.
Then what or who is the pearl?
So often this parable is read to mean
that WE are to be like the merchant seeking the pearl of great price,
                         the pearl being the Kingdom of God or Jesus.
But is that really what this parable is saying?

Or is it saying more consistently with the other parables around it
that it is God seeking extravagantly, generously, with great yearning love
                 for that which God sees as being of inestimable value?
Who then is the pearl?
You are.
The Kingdom of Heaven, through the grace of Jesus, seeks you out
to have, to draw you in to itself,
to be purchased, bought with a price, to be saved.
Absurd abundance, grace poured out for our joy.
Finally, the fifth parable:
“The Kingdom of Heaven is like a net…”
not like the fishermen, but the net.
The net gathers into it everything in its path.
Those doing the fishing can’t say to the net,
“We’re just collecting halibut today, thank you.”
The net will catch whatever is there, and it may not just be fish.
It may even be possible to come up with
an old boot or tire entangled in the net.
The net is by nature absurdly non-discriminatory.
In the net we may find an abundance
of what we were not necessarily seeking.
So then there is this sorting through of the good and the bad.
And the Greek words here, please understand, have no moral implication
as we may want to jump to conclusions about.
The words good and bad here mean in their basic meaning
what is profitable and useful
and what is spoiled, rotten, no longer any good, of any use.

This is a parable about our relationship with Jesus?
Yes, a parable of grace and inclusiveness.
And then the process of purification takes place.

And now, because I take so seriously my ordination vow
            of being diligent in the reading and study of the Holy Scriptures,
I must inform you that there has been an unfortunate mistranslation
            in the last verse of the Gospel reading:
"Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven
is like the master of a household
who brings out – no, who throws out – of his treasure
what is new and what is old."

The process of discipleship with Jesus,
            which is the same for both clergy and laity,
takes us through a profound reorientation out of the mindset of the world
            into the absurd abundance of the Kingdom of Heaven
                        in all its joy and love and mercy and grace.
Everything previous to the Kingdom, previous to Jesus, goes – tossed out.

The Apostle Paul in the reading from Romans today
makes this profound statement:
            For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels,
            nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers,
            nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation,
            will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Nothing
  – good, bad, or indifferent, church traditions and customs, or ordination status –             
             can stand in the way of that love of God that Jesus embodies.

This, I declare to you, is the radical meaning of these Kingdom parables,
            parables which are at the heart of discipleship with Jesus.

This is what we are to be about here – lay or ordained.

            Those who have ears to hear let them listen to what the Spirit is saying.

Sunday, July 6, 2014

Sermon for July 6 at Emmanuel Episcopal Church

"Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens,
and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me;
for I am gentle and humble in heart,
and you will find rest for your souls.
For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."

Beautiful words of the Gospel this morning,
welcome words, words of great comfort.
How we long to hear these words spoken by Jesus,
            how good they are to hear,
especially with five funerals in the last month,
                        that have left many of us with heavy hearts.

Come to me, all you that are weary,
and I will give you rest.

But let’s look at these beautiful workds in their context,
            that is, how they fit in with the words that come before them,
and that will show us even more
about what these beautiful words mean.

In other words, it’s not just rest, getting some R and R, taking a vacation,
            that these words are all about.
No, there is a lot more than meets the eye.

These words come at the end of a whole chapter about controversy
over just who Jesus was, and who John the Baptist was.

Some saw them both as great prophets,
but those with the theological backgrounds had lots of considerations, because, first of all,
John the Baptist was this strange man
coming out of the Judean desert
with bits of grasshopper wings and dribbles of honey
in his untrimmed beard,
preaching sermons full of fire and brimstone and name calling.

Then Jesus comes along,
having called a tax-collector,
a collaborator with an oppressive foreign regime,
to be one of his disciples,
eating and drinking with all sorts of low life. 

Jesus certainly did not fit the observance of worship of God
or keeping of Torah, the Law,
as did those highly respected religious leaders,
like the clergy and the theologians
and congregational lay leaders
known for the examples of how they lived upstanding lives.

But nevertheless what Jesus was saying and doing
galvanized many into following him about
to hear him preach and watch him heal.
And lives were being transformed,
people were being healed
and liberated in ways that opened their understanding
to experiencing the Kingdom of God present in their midst,
while at the same time those
who were so much in tune with their practice of faith
were taking affront with what was going on
as irregular, immoral and uncontrolled.
So Jesus says,
"I give thanks to you, Father, Lord of the heaven and of the earth,
            because you have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent
            and have revealed them to infants;
yes, Father, for it was delightful, this that was coming to be before you."

So we could say that it's not head knowledge
that the wise and intelligent have,
            but what can be called “heart” knowledge,
                        that is able to comprehend and take in the revelation of God.

“…revealed them to infants…” he said.
The word here is not just implying having child-like faith.
This is the word for new born babies,
            those who have just experienced a MAJOR paradigm shift,
                                    - we could say -
            popping out into a whole new world of experiences
                        for which they do not have any words,
                        no way to express what it is they are experiencing yet.
Those who followed Jesus around listening to what he said,
            to all the outlandish things he was saying in parables,
            got jolted into whole new ways of looking at things.

They were shedding all the overlays of enculturation, of sophistication,
            of all the commonly held beliefs about how life is supposed to work.
They were going through a MAJOR paradigm shift
            about what their religion and faith practice was all about,
all revealed through Jesus.            Infants in this new way of seeing the world.

So Jesus says,
"All things have been handed over to me by my Father;
and no one knows the Son except the Father,
and no one knows the Father except the Son
            and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him."

And this is the direct context for the familiar words that follow.
This is how the Son reveals the Father to us.

"Come to me, all the ones laboring and having been burdened,
            - those spent with labor, exhausted -
and I will give you rest.
            - I will cause you to pause, to rest, to come to a stop.

Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me;
for I am meek and humble in heart,                        What? Meek!  Jesus meek?
In Greek the word meek means unassuming, gentle, kind, forgiving, humane
                        and so totally absorbed in Divine Presence
that there is no violence at all within him -
And - humble, lowly,
meaning that there is no pride or focus on self in Jesus,
and so he opens the way, give accessibility to the Father -
and you will find rest for your souls.
            - in the Greek literally it is a place of rest
            where? in Jesus' heart, where there is open access to him -
For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."

Rest is promised.
We have dreams of Jesus soothing our brow,
            taking our hand and patting it, saying,
            "There, there. Put your feet up."

Rest is promised, but strange way to get rest:
"Take my yoke upon you…"
            Take up a yoke, instrument for bearing more work and burden.

Take my yoke … and learn from me…"
            maqete - learn, disciple,
                                    enter into discipleship with me.

This is how the Son reveals the Father to us.
Through the learning process of a yoke, our submission.
            Oooh, a hard word for us to hear,
                        yet with much truth to be revealed in submission.
By submitting to a yoke of obedience,
one will have the Kingdom of God open into your awareness.

But this yoke is not a yoke of work or effort, of striving and exhaustion,
           
So the rest Jesus offers
            is in a yoke of obedience and with a burden to carry;
            it is in discipleship
                        which, he says, will lead to rest and refreshment

Why do we make it such work then?
We don't get it about discipleship;
            we make it a heavy load.

The Gospel passage for today is about the heart of discipleship,
            and the point is that it's not hard,
            and it's actually refreshing and restful.

Submission and discipleship is actually very liberating.

By now it should be apparent
that the access point is the heart, not the head,
because we are speaking paradoxes here, not logical sense.
It has to be revealed to us by the Spirit of Jesus through grace
            a whole new perspective on this vale of tears that we live in.

We all can to some degree or another identify with
St. Paul’s classic description of the human predicament
described in the Epistle lesson for today.

To paraphrase, I want to do what is right, but find that I can’t,
because there is such disharmony within me
that one part of me is at war with another part of me.
Paul realizes that it is only through intervention beyond himself
that he is saved out of all that. 

“The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free
from the law of sin and of death.”
The yoke of the Spirit of life in Jesus has set you free
from the wearisome burden of struggle
to extricate yourself from the deadening and life-draining labor
                                                             of living life all on one’s own.

“Come to me, all you that are weary…
…my yoke is easy…”

It comes to me that this is all another way of saying,
            “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and its righteousness,
            and all these things shall be added unto you.”