Sermon for 3 Lent at Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Mercer Island

Recall these words from the Epistle reading for today:
“The message about the cross is foolishness …
we proclaim Christ crucified,
a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles …”

What Christians were saying was the center of their faith 2,000 years ago
was hard to take by those around them in that place and culture,
just as much as it is today.
And if we take a closer look at what is in the Gospel for today,
with the talk about Temple sacrifice
and the significance of the death of Jesus,
again this kind of discussion
might seem like a stumbling block and foolishness.

So let’s tackle it!

The setting for this Gospel story is the time of the feast of the Passover,
and the feast of unleavened bread,
the time for purging out all the old leaven from the house,
- that’s the custom: get rid of all the old leaven -
and Jesus comes to the Temple, the House of God, in Jerusalem.

Now the Temple is the place where the sacrifices for sin are offered,
the life of animals exchanged for the life of the humans
for those who recognize that they have not kept the Covenant, or those 10 Commandments we have now read twice,
- and all the other commandments -
they haven’t been able to keep them all,
and are therefore deserving of death.

That is the point of the Law of the Covenant:
Keep the Commandments, and you choose life.
Deviate from the Commandments, and you are on the path to death.
And since humans are so devious, we deviate so much,
well, there we are, in need of the sacrifice to save our lives.

The cattle and sheep and doves at the Temple were there for one purpose,
to be slaughtered, a continuous effusion of blood,
and then to become meat on the table.
And in this gospel lesson Jesus comes and sets them free.

Startled and wide-eyed cattle and sheep
scattering and stampeding out of the Temple courts
into the streets of Jerusalem!
The flurry of wings!
I can almost hear Jesus yelling at them, “Run for your lives!”

Well, the idea of blood sacrifices
as substitutions for people whose lives are under sentence of death may seem strange and remote to us in our 21st Century culture
especially where our view of these animals
comes in sealed packaging arrayed in sanitary rows,
as steaks and standing rib roasts and lamb chops
and de-boned pigeon breast or thigh,
de-personalized bits and pieces of a once whole, live animal,
an animal whose life was sacrificed that you might live
through the nourishment derived from its flesh.

The Temple was the center of the religious practice of Jesus’ day,
the sign of God’s presence with the people,
and of God’s action in the Covenant and Law to save and make people holy.
And by 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.

We can look back just a few verses just prior to this Gospel lesson
into the end of Chapter 1 of John’s Gospel,
and you may recall the conversation Jesus was having with Nathaniel.

Jesus was describing himself for Nathaniel,
as a ladder connecting heaven and earth
with angels ascending and descending,
the very vision Jacob had
as he slept out in the open of a vast deserted place
with a stone for his pillow,
a place he then called Beth-El, the House of God.

Jesus is Beth-El, the House of God,
the vessel conveying the divine presence,
the One, whom to look at, is to see God.
It is his sacrifice, his blood
that will stand in the place of that endless line of creatures
facing their doom in the Temple courts.
Jesus is both Temple, the House of God, and sacrifice.

His disciples observed Jesus and the radical action he was taking
and they remembered the verse from Psalm 69,
“Zeal for your house consumes me.”
Zeal, fire, love, passion consumed him entirely
as is seen in his perfect union with the Father
so that in him one will is being expressed,
and therefore his Presence in the Temple in Jerusalem cleans it out, purifies it.
“Do you not know that your body
is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God?”
the Apostle Paul asks in his first letter to the Christians in Corinth.

Just as Jesus is the House of God,
so we in him are temples of God,
built to offer worship and praise to the Creator,
to overflow with the love of God.
This temple of our hearts, our being, is also in need of cleansing.

As Paul so aptly describes in his Epistle to the Romans,
our human struggle to be holy brings us to frustration.

We are not able of our own power and effort
to accomplish a perfect observance of the commandments of God,
the laws of God which demonstrate to us
the way of holiness and harmony with God.
Something else is dwelling in us, in our flesh and bones and spirits,
that frustrates our intention and effort.

Paul identifies this as sin,
defined as that which moves us off target in the path of holiness.
We are a vessel, a temple, of sin,
that which moves us away from harmony with God.

The condition of the temple within us may appear to be hopeless.
We may wonder at times
if this temple is in even worse shape
than the one Jesus found in Jerusalem.

Jesus said that it is what comes out of the heart that defiles a person,
and one look at just the words proceed out of our mouths,
and we can see the defilement
the defilement of words spoken in anger,
words with a sharp edge of sarcasm, criticism,
words meant to cut another down,
words that kill the life in another person.

We are given the gift of language, speech, words,
the very thing God used for creation and life,
and we use it for destruction and death.
Words can be just as deadly as weapons of war,
and words proceed out of the heart,
which is the temple of the Living God.

Well, it IS Lent, a good time for spring house cleaning.
We need Jesus to do some cleansing in our own temples,
cleaning out whatever beasts may be lurking there,
and the moneychangers and livestock dealers comfortably seated there,
to send them startled and wide-eyed stampeding out.

But there is a difference between
Jesus entering uninvited into the Temple in Jerusalem
and Jesus entering our temple hearts.
Here he asks permission, so to speak.
Here we are wooed by the Holy Spirit to open the door and invite him in,
and to continue inviting him in.

There is good news and bad news.
The good news is that Jesus does the work in us to make us holy.
The bad news is that Jesus does the work in us,
and he does it effectively and thoroughly.

So if resistance comes up, we may wonder,
Will he take a whip to us like he did in the Temple in Jerusalem?

John the Baptist had said that the One coming after him
would baptize with fire,
that he had a winnowing fork and fan
to separate the chaff and burn it clean from us.
Violent imagery!
Will we too be consumed in his zeal?

Yes, it may be that what we have identified ourselves so closely with
will be burned away,
and what will remain will be identified as the true self.

And so the need for the old temple sacrifices of blood is gone.

We are not required to manage our own expurgation
for the sins that plague us and frustrate us
and make life miserable for us.

There was one sacrifice in the Temple, the House of God,
offered once and for all,
the full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice,
and we all eat of the flesh of that sacrifice week by week.

Does that shock your sensibilities?
Listen for that word sacrifice to come up as we continue with the liturgy.
Notice how often it appears.

But don’t we have to do something?
What is left for us to do?
There is a sacrifice that we can make:
the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving,
the offering of our selves, our souls and bodies,
as a reasonable, holy and living sacrifice,
by simply opening the door to receive what’s given.

Recall these words from the Epistle reading for today:
“The message about the cross is foolishness …
we proclaim Christ crucified,
a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles,
but to those who are called, both Jews and Gentiles,
Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom,
and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.”

Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.
Therefore let us keep the feast.

Transfiguration Sermon 2/22/09 at Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Mercer Island

Recall these words from the Epistle reading for today:
“Even if our gospel is veiled,
it is veiled to those who are perishing.
…the god of this world has blinded the(ir) minds…
to keep them from seeing the light
of the gospel of the glory of Christ,
who is the image of God.”

Those who do not see the light of the glory of Christ
are perishing.
But who CAN see this glory light of Christ?
It was only three of the twelve who were with Jesus
when this glory light was manifested to them,
and they saw what was not visible to the ordinary eye.

Seeing what is not visible to the ordinary eye…

Elisha saw the chariots of fire,
we heard in the Hebrew Bible reading just a few moments ago.
When Elijah, that leader of all prophets,
the one who showed up with Moses on the holy mountain
when Jesus appeared transfigured,
when Elijah passed out of his earthly existence
and was taken up into heaven,
Elisha, his faithful disciple,
the one who would pick up Elijah’s mantle
and carry on in the role of prophet,
Elisha saw the glory light.

He saw bright flashing light like fire as a means of conveyance
that had the swiftness of a chariot and horses
– the race car of ancient times.
The light flashed, the heavens opened, and Elijah was gone.

And all that was left was his mantle, his cloak,
lying there like Obi-Wan Kenobi’s cloak
before a stunned Darth Vader.

And Elisha picked up the mantle of Elijah that had fallen from him,
and went back and stood on the bank of the Jordan.
He took the mantle of Elijah that had fallen from him,
and struck the water, saying,
“Where is the Lord, the God of Elijah?”
When he had struck the water,
the water was parted to the one side and to the other,
and Elisha went over.

When the company of prophets who were at Jericho
saw him at a distance, they declared,
“The spirit of Elijah rest on Elisha.”

And later there is another example of
seeing what is not visible to the ordinary eye:
the story of Elisha in a besieged city
that was surrounded by a great army.

When the attendant of the man of God
rose early in the morning and went out,
an army with horses and chariots was all around the city.
His servant said, “Alas, master! What shall we do?”
He replied, “Do not be afraid,
for there are more with us than there are with them.”
Then Elisha prayed: “O Lord, please open his eyes that he may see:
So the Lord opened the eyes of the servant, and he saw;
the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.


More glory light of exceedingly great power and magnitude,
and a reality is revealed,
and there is seeing what is not visible to the ordinary eye:
chariots of fire ablaze with a light from the heavenly throne,
light from the Source of all light,
from the One who said Let Light Be on the first day of creation.

And now the three disciples with Jesus on the mountain
- Peter, James and John -
seeing what is not visible to the ordinary eye:
Jesus, transfigured before them,
and his clothes became dazzling white,
more white, brighter than is earthly possible,
Jesus himself so radiantly bright with uncreated Light from the Source
that it shines right through his clothes.
No amount of clothing will veil this radiance, this glory light.

And they saw the light of the Gospel,
the glory of Christ, who is the image of God,
the glory light.

Now, I can’t imagine anyone remembering what I preached last year
about the Transfiguration,
but this of what I said then bears repeating:
This glory light, this radiance of Uncreated Light
is the NORMATIVE state for Jesus.
He was surrounded by this Light all the time.
This was not something he took on at that particular moment
to dazzle the eyes of Peter, James and John.
Rather the eyes of the disciples were unveiled in order to be able to see
what has always been there, to see the Truth of what Jesus is like.
Jesus opened the spiritual eyes of his disciples
so that they could see the Uncreated Light;
it was a transfiguration of consciousness,
a transfiguration of their consciousness.

And so Paul says in 2 Corinthians, today’s Epistle reading,
that this gospel truth of glory light is veiled,
and people are blind and perishing not seeing that.
The Radiance of God is all around us all the time,
but WE DON’T SEE IT.
Is this not strange? How can we miss it?
Should we not all fall on our faces before the Glory Light of God?

We perish without that Light, but our vision is veiled.

A Sufi story is told about the 70,000 Veils
that separate Allah, God, the One Reality,
from the world of matter and of sense.
And every soul passes before its birth through these 70,000 veils.
The inner half of these are veils of light;
the outer half, veils of darkness.
For every one of the veils of light passed through,
in this journey towards birth,
the soul puts off a divine quality;
and for every one of the dark veils,
it puts on an earthly quality.
Thus the child is born weeping,
for the soul knows its separation from Allah, the One Reality.
And when the child cries in its sleep,
it is because the soul remembers something of what it has lost.

And so, we can see, how dull minded we are, how blind spiritually we are
- for the most part -
since we do not see the chariots of fire, we do not see this glory light
that is supposedly all around us.

But then Paul reminds us
of what is at the heart of our Gospel of Jesus Christ
that it is God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,”
who has shone this light in our hearts – not our eyes!
to give the light of knowledge,
the knowledge of this glory light, actualized and experienced,
revealed to us in the face of Jesus.

It is God’s action of grace and revelation that effects the unveiling
- good news that this is not left up to us alone!

I like to point out that in meditation
we sit ceasing from our own actions,
clouded as they are with our vision limited by so many veils,
we sit with open hearts, so that we can see with the heart
the revelation that can come,
we sit with open hearts as an expression of faith and trust
and it is the transformation of consciousness that occurs,
a transfiguration of consciousness.

Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 3:18 a few verses before today’s epistle:
And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord
as though reflected in a mirror,
are being transformed into the same image
from one degree of glory to another;
for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.

And so may I offer this to you?
Hear these words as the words of Jesus speaking revelation to you:
“The light is all around you.
The light is within you.
The light is the life that I am.
The light is the enlightenment which no one lacks. …
Awaken in my light. …
Hear my word within.
Receive the radiance that I am.
Open your hearts with awe and love to my presence.
Pour out the gifts of my heart from one to another.
You are the illumined ones.
In you, my image arises as radiance, peace, and offering. …
You are to be my presence to one another.
Honor my beauty in one another.
Respond to my heart in one another.
Recognize me in one another.
See what I have given you.
I give you one another to empower the awakening of each in my light.
You are my presence, not merely something of the eye …
I have given each of you to be the dwelling of my radiant awakening
and shining forth.
You are my heart in the world. …
You are the ones through whom my heart is to be recognized and demonstrated.
When you have come to recognize me fully radiant in one another,
and to honor and offer thanksgiving to me there,
you will have awakened to the freedom which I have intended for you.
You are my light.”

Introductory Seminar Update

The introductory seminar on Feb. 20 and 21 at Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Mercer Island, will now offer child care. When making a reservation please indicate if child care is needed. See details on the seminar below.

Common Difficulties in Meditation Practice

We all need encouragement and support for continued faithfulness in the daily practice of prayer and meditation. That is why meditating with a group and having an available instructor as resource for your spiritual practice is so foundational for what we think of as spiritual growth. I want to address briefly here a couple of areas of concern that are often viewed as difficulties in meditation practice, and what lies beneath them.

The first is something I’m sure we have all had ample experience with: sleepiness. Sleepiness in meditation comes in a variety of forms: outright napping, a dullness of awareness, lethargy, fogginess, tiredness. Attentiveness and wakefulness are lacking at these times. Meditation is “sitting awake.” So what do these forms of sleepiness show us?

They can be symptomatic of the culture in which we live and the speed with which we are expected to work and the volume we are expected to accomplish. Within the setting of instantaneous communication where we expect to get what we demand in short order, we then rush through the workday trying to keep ahead of the growing pile in the in-basket, or ballooning number of emails coming at us on our blackberries or iPhones, or laundry piling up because we can’t remember when the last day off was. We sit down to meditate and promptly take a nap. Or drowsiness can show us how out of touch we are with our bodies, that we would escape into sleep rather than sit awake with what is there. We may be using sleepiness as avoidance expressing our reluctance to look at what is there in meditation, just as we would experience laziness and reluctance in facing difficult tasks. Sleepiness that comes from tiredness means we need more rest, but sleepiness can also come from resistance when we don’t want to face, remember or experience something. This indicates fear and wanting to avoid difficulty. We may not want to face loneliness, grief, emptiness or loss of control.

Look at sleepiness with compassion. The body is tired. Are you so busy that you do not get enough rest? Are you afraid to rest. In rest we become quiet. Are you afraid of the silence you would have to face in rest and no activity. Is there an inner judge driving you, telling you that you are lazy? The inactivity of meditation is anything but being lazy! Sleepiness in meditation can serve to bring us to compassionate observation of the driven quality of our lives in avoidance of the silence in which we would have to face the truth of ourselves.

Then there is the flip side to sleepiness – restlessness. Like drowsiness, restlessness can come as a response to something we don’t want to feel. There is both a restlessness of body and a restlessness of mind. In both cases meditation becomes scattered, and it is difficult for attention to remain in the present moment. Again as with sleepiness, observe the restlessness without condemnation or judgment. Examine what it feels like. What does it do as you sit open to it? Be with the restlessness of mind without getting caught up in its story, noting simply how it bounces around. Trust that the restlessness is temporary, and the conditions that feed it will inevitably change. Restlessness, I am coming to discover, is a jumbled series of thoughts, emotions and sensations, nothing solid or fixed, transitory and insubstantial. And it appears that restlessness just might be symptomatic of a blockage of free creativity waiting to be expressed in our lives, an unexpected gift for us to discover.

Behind all the stuff that comes up during meditation – the emotions, the agenda of the mind – is fear, fear that is a grasping for something we think we desperately need, and fear that is both a contraction away from the reality of life around us with all its suffering, and also a contraction away from the love of God that is there whether asked for or not. That unqualified love is so vast it is perceived as impersonal and threatening to swallow us up. That love eclipses our ego identification and renders it inane and inconsequential. It IS fearful to fall into the hands of the Living God, for God is Love.

The ability of meditation to bring wholeness and healing comes as we are enabled to recognize where in our lives we are contracting away from that wholeness. When we are not contracted we discover that the body and mind have a natural wholeness and expansiveness, that are characterized by joy, clarity, a sense of well being, confidence and a deep sense of knowing. Keep meditating!

Blessings in the Lamb,
Beverly

Epiphany 2009 Message

[sermon preached at Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Mercer Island, January 11]

I had the joy and delight of being with my grandsons during Christmas,
and I explained to Jude, my oldest grandson,
that at Christmas we were actually celebrating somebody’s birthday
– Jesus!
And on his birthday, we give gifts to each other.
Jesus would have wanted it that way, I think,
seeing Christ in one another in this offering of gifts of love to others.

The wise men, the Magi were the first to bring birthday presents to Jesus:
gold, frankincense and myrrh.
This is not just a nice story about visiting dignitaries being added
to the lovely tableau of the manger scene, the Christmas crèche.
This is an event of enormous political and cultural and moral consequence.

The story starts with huge assumptions about who the Christ Child was:
the wise men from the East assume the sign in the heavens
indicate the birth of a king.
King Herod assumes a political rival to his throne.

Herod is frightened, and given who Herod was and what he was like,
if Herod was upset,
all the rest of Jerusalem had good cause also be frightened.
This was a ruler know for his ruthless use of power.

No good could come of this; innocent lives would be lost,
sacrificed to the continuation of power and political control.
The wise men, the Magi come to Bethlehem and find Jesus and his mother
and give their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh,
gifts fit for a king,
but as it turns out, gifts they handed over to a humble family
that could hardly look royal.
And so it was that these expensive gifts
probably provided the means by which
Joseph was able to take Mary and the baby Jesus to Egypt
in order to escape Herod’s purge of Bethlehem,
the slaughter of the innocents.
The slaughter of innocents
as the backdrop for our Lord’s nativity,
he who would at his maturity take on all the world’s suffering
and bear it himself on the Cross.

And so we enter the Epiphany season in the church year.

Epiphany is a key concept in being a Christian, a disciple of Jesus,
Epiphany as a key concept in living a Christian life.
Epiphany is, I would say, how we do that.

So what does the word Epiphany mean? –
making manifest, bringing to light, showing forth.

In the Epiphany season, then, the emphasis is on Light,
Jesus as the Light of the World,
and that Light shining brightly in a dark, dark world,
a world desperately in need of Light.

Jesus is the Light to the nations – and notice the plural.
Not just to his own people, where he happened to live,
but to all peoples, tribes, and nations.

On the Feast of the Epiphany the Magi represent the nations.
So we see that Jesus, and what he offered, was
beyond one country, one people, and one religion.
What he brought is something universal.

Do you know where the first churches were?
where the first Christians lived?
The first “church” was in Egypt – the Egyptians make that claim.
They take great pride in the fact
that they offered hospitality and sanctuary
to the Holy Family as displaced refugees.

There are many beautiful legends among the Coptic churches of Egypt
about Jesus and the Holy Family sojourning there,
about their travels around Egypt
and miracles attributed to Jesus as a toddler.
Jesus as a light to the nations even as a toddler!

There is the Light of the World, and then there is being lights to the world,
about our engagement with Epiphany, our role as disciples.
This is about our witness regarding Jesus.

Now this presupposes that we know the One about whom we testify.
This presupposes that we are aware that His Light is in us.

This is VERY important,
because knowing Jesus,
knowing his liberation, his salvation, his mercy, his grace,
is not just for our own sake, my own well-being, my benefit alone,
but for the sake of the whole world, the whole created order,
for the sake of every living, breathing thing.

The Light of the World is not our exclusive possession,
as though we could even think that we could possess it.

This Light being manifest to the world, this Epiphany of God,
is for the sake of Jew and Gentile alike,
such as in a call to reconciliation and peace,
peace in that very part of the world.

Manifesting the Light of Christ is essential
for the sake of all victims of prejudice and discrimination,
so that this Light might shine as a beacon in the world’s darkness.
This Light is for the sake of healing and unity,
for the poor, the homeless, the hungry and the abandoned,
for the sick and the dying,
for those in power, in positions of leadership and authority.

Wherever there is human need,
wherever there is despair from lack of hope,
wherever there are cries of loneliness and suffering,
there is the obligation to share the good news we have been graced with.

To know Jesus is not just about our own individual relationships.
You and I cannot be separated from the rest of creation.
If I truly know Jesus then I have no leave
not to be a Light-bearer.

You might remember that
every time you see the acolytes carrying candles
in the Gospel procession.
If you get near the Gospel, and the message it conveys,
and the person it is talking about, Jesus,
then you are going to get lit like a candle,
and despite yourself you will be giving off light.
Being an Epiphany Light-bearer is not an option.
It’s part of the package.


Now, in the Epiphany carols,
we can find instances of singing about bringing gifts to the cradle.
The obvious one is “We three kings…”

In “Brightest and best of the stars of the morning”
various precious gifts are offered,
but verse 4 tells what is even more precious:
Vainly we offer each ample oblation,
vainly with gifts would his favor secure,
richer by far is the heart’s adoration,
dearer to God are the prayers of the poor.

Likewise in the carol, “In the bleak midwinter,” verse 4
What can I give him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
if I were a wise man, I would do my part;
yet what I can I give him – give my heart.

The best gift to bring to Jesus is one’s self,
openness of heart, willingness to listen to the Lord.
so that we may KNOW him
and thus be lights manifesting -

Come to communion bearing your gift, your offering
of yourself, your intention, your willingness.

And receive his gift for you – his very self,
offered to you in this very concrete way through bread and wine.

Jesus himself, through the Holy Spirit, will teach you
all you need to know about being a Light-bearer.
Jesus himself, through the Holy Spirit, will be the Light
that shines through you, operating at his agency,
not hampered by our ignorance
or our resistance or our screw-ups.

I find immense good news about this promise
in the words of St. Paul in the epistle reading from Ephesians for today:
(verse 7) Of this gospel I have become a servant
according to the gift of God’s grace that was given me
by the working of God’s power.

See? Even the work we do, the service, the ministry is not our own,
but according to the gift of grace
and God’s power providing the energy source.
That’s a pretty good deal.

So let us bring the gift of our heart to the Christ Child,
the heart more valued by the Lord
than gold, frankincense and myrrh.