It's a given

Jeremiah 31:7-14
Ephesians 1:3-6,15-19a
 Matthew 2:1-12
Psalm 84 

The summer I was eighteen, I went on a 21-day course at the Hurricane Island Outward Bound School.  I had just decided to take a leave of absence from college, even though I was doing well academically.   But, you see, that was part of my difficulty.  Doing well in school a given, and had been ever since I arrived at kindergarten already knowing how to read.  I’d skipped second grade.  My high school awarded me various academic honors.  I’d received early admission to my first choice of colleges, and after a rocky freshman year I’d made the Dean’s list as a sophomore.  If I’d wanted any of these things I might have been proud of them, but I hadn’t.  It was just what came naturally to me. 

People called me “smart,” but I didn’t feel smart.  They people applauded my academic success, but it wasn’t anything I wanted.   I didn’t know what I wanted, or who I was, or what to do with my life, but I did know I wasn’t going to learn the answers to these questions from a book or in a classroom.  Luckily, my parents understood at least a little of this, and they packed me off to an outdoor education and adventure program to sail around the coastal wilderness of Maine. 

And there I got to experience myself in a way I never had before.  I’d grown up the third of four boys.  In fourteen years of school I’d always been the youngest person in my class, usually by a wide margin.  But on the Outward Bound course I was with other kids my own age—many of them were younger than me.  And while they were still in high school, or had just graduated, I’d already completed two years of college.  To them I wasn’t the smart kid; I was the strong one, the capable and mature one.  I found, for the first time in my life, to my complete surprise, that I was a leader.    

We often think of ourselves as molded into a set shape by the unchanging “givens” of our lives.   Our ethnic background and genetic makeup, our cultural traditions and national and religious identities, the circumstances of our families of origin and early life experiences, make us who we are.  So do the choices we have made, and the habits we have picked up, not to mention the mysterious ingrained qualities of temperament and those involuntary feelings and thoughts and behaviors that we sum up with the term “human nature.”  We put all those “givens” together in a story, a story we tell ourselves and others about us, and that is who we are.

But the gift that Christmas brings us is a new given.  It is given, not by the history of the past or the circumstances of the present but by the grace of God.  Christmas begins a new story of what it means to be human, a story of what we are destined to become in Jesus Christ.   One of the ways that the New Testament talks about the impact of this new story on our lives is to say that it is like finding out we were adopted.   To really accept the gift of the coming of Christ into the world is like learning that what we thought was given, about ourselves and our place in the world,  is incorrect at the most fundamental level.  We aren’t who we thought we were, because, really, we were adopted.  We are God’s adopted children.

When a new and unexpected story overtakes the one we take for granted it can be an unsettling, even a frightening experience.  In the gospel of Matthew, when the wise men from the East appear, asking to see the newborn king of the Jews, Herod is afraid.  He is afraid because, without even knowing it, these foreigners have stirred up a ghost that he has worked his whole life to put to rest.  For Herod, the old hope of a new king of Israel, from the royal line of David, was a quaint legend for old women and country rubes.  His game was Roman imperial politics and the rule of terror, and he’d played it well enough to hold on to power for close to forty years.  He’s murdered all his rivals, and outlived the others, and he’s ready to pass on his throne to his sons were ready to succeed him on, and now, these outlandish messengers appear with their dangerous fairy tale.

And “all Jerusalem,” says the gospel, is frightened with him.  Because Herod is not the kind of person you wanted to be around when he gets upset, but also because this is news they’d long ago decided they would never hear.  The chief priests and the scribes know very well that Herod is not from the lineage of David, is not even ethnically a Jew.   They know how deeply he is hated and feared by the common people of the land, but they have learned how to stay on his good side, and have done very well for themselves on his patronage and his cozy relationship with Rome.  They have their given role, soothing the people’s seething unrest, and placating Herod’s tendency to violent outbursts of repression.  And now the arrival of the Magi threatens to upset this fragile peace.

I think the author of Matthew knew exactly what he was doing, weaving all these political implications into his story.  It’s how he sets the stage for the conflict that will center on the ministry of Jesus and culminate in his death.  But this story also lifts the curtain on a new revelation of God, one that calls age-old “givens” of religion into question.  Because Matthew, of all the gospel authors, is the most explicit in grounding his story in the Scriptures.   He quotes the Hebrew Bible at every opportunity, showing how the details of Jesus’ life fulfill the sayings of the prophets.  We have an example of this in today’s Gospel lesson, when the scribes quote the book of Micah to tell Herod that the Messiah is to be born in Bethlehem. 

But the biblical knowledge of the scribes wouldn’t have mattered if the Magi hadn’t come.   And the Magi are not scholars of the Hebrew scriptures.  They are Zoroastrian priests and astrologers from the country we now call Iran.  They have not come because of reading the scrolls of the prophets, but find their way into the story following a star.  From a thousand miles away, across great deserts and rivers and mountain ranges, across the frontiers of warring empires, the Magi saw God’s new sign.  By their esoteric wisdom, they knew it for what it was, and set out on the long and dangerous journey.  Carrying their precious offerings,  they followed the glory of the star until it led them to the greater glory of the face of the Beloved Son of God.  They gazed for few moments of wonder and adoration into that face, and then, just as mysteriously as they came, they were gone. 

But they are in the story long enough to reveal something essential about Christmas.  In the strange new light of their star, religion can no longer be a power struggle over givens.  Who has the royal blood, who owns Jerusalem and the Temple, who controls the interpretation of the Bible—the new given that is Christ is not concerned with anything like that.  Because Christmas is the point of departure for a pilgrimage of grace, a journey following the call of hope toward the face-to-face encounter with the glory of God.  

   

The New Testament is all about this journey, this grace-filled path that leads from glory to glory. It reveals a new kind of person, says the Letter to the Ephesians, living in a new kind of community, called the church. Many of us don’t think about the church this way.  We look at it and see a whole lot of givens—lectionary texts and liturgical calendars, prayer books and hymnals, old buildings of glass and wood and stone, committees and by-laws and denominational structures—all of it stamping us into a mold of givens from in the past.  But all of these things are really just accessories to the essential work of the church, the essential life of Christian people, which is praise and thanksgiving for the unfolding blessings of God.  We gather to remember a story, but it is God’s story that reveals who we really are,  what we are becoming more and more— God’s own adopted children.  And of all the things in this world that’s the only one that’s really a given.

   

Drinking the deep water

Sermon for the Renewal of Ministry and Welcoming of a New Rector

Epiphany Episcopal Church, Vacaville,  January 26, 2013

 

Jeremiah 17:7-8

Psalm 16:5-11

Romans 6:3-11

Mark 10:35-45

When I came back from vacation last summer, Mack and I met to check in about how things were going in his job search.  We discussed various openings that sounded promising, assisting clergy positions or combined parish-and-university positions in places as far-flung as Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Canada.  And then, somewhat shyly, he let me know that he was thinking of putting his name in for Epiphany Church in Vacaville.  He’d been there a couple of times recently as a Sunday supply priest and he said he felt a strong connection with the people there.  He liked their priorities, their commitment to hospitality and service.  He had a feeling that they liked him, too.   He’d learned that ever since his last visit the children of the parish had been asking “when is Father Mack coming back?” 

But he was also hesitant to apply and he wanted to know what I thought.  Would he, a newly-ordained priest with no professional parish ministry experience, even be considered to be rector of a congregation?  Or would people think he was being too big for his britches, ridiculous, out-of-touch?  As someone who came to ordained ministry by my own somewhat unorthodox route, I understood very well how he felt.  But I also felt he had people around him he could trust.  I suggested he contact Canon Britt at the Diocese, and tell her what he’d told me, because I trusted her to tell him honestly and directly whether he was over-reaching, and not to judge him harshly just for asking.

And I told him that I thought there was a time, maybe not all that long ago, when his application would not have been seriously considered.  But the church is in the midst of rapid and tumultuous change, and nothing is changing as fundamentally as our understanding of leadership.  For a long time the culture of leadership in the church was focused on the clergy, and it was a status-conscious culture.  I’ll never forget the first diocesan clergy conference I attended after I was ordained (not in this diocese, by the way), and the atmosphere of competitiveness, the subtle jockeying for position and prestige, was so thick you could cut it with a knife.  But as aware as the clergy in our church have been of their status relative to each other, that was nothing compared to the sensitivity that pervaded the whole church of the clergy’s prerogatives where the lay people were concerned.

But as I said to Mack last summer, and I say it again to all of us this evening, that is changing—it is changing fast.  The spiritual crisis of our times requires a different kind of leadership.  We need leaders who are decisive and courageous, resolute and inspired, but who are also vulnerable.  We need leaders who are not afraid to have emotions, and not just in the pulpit.  We need leaders who can listen, who can say that they don’t know the answer, who are willing to admit they’ve been wrong.  We need leaders who are willing to use all their gifts in the service of the gospel of Jesus Christ, including the gifts of their limitations.

And you, the people of Epiphany Church, have chosen that kind of leader.  In doing so, you are being true to the mission of your parish, a mission that begins with your name.  An epiphany is an experience of seeing the light, and the light that we celebrate tonight is not the reflected glory of your new rector.  It is the light of Christ, the light that each one of us receives through our baptism.   It is a light that shines in the face of an infant whose parents are bringing her to the font, to receive the Holy Spirit and be marked as Christ’s own forever, and the same light is in the eyes of an elder whose has spent the journey of a lifetime learning what it means to walk in newness of life.   It is a light that reveals the beauty of every person, a beauty that is not superficial attractiveness or charisma, but the deep beauty that flows from the precious and irreplaceable individuality that God gives to us all.

James and John come to Jesus on the road to Jerusalem and they ask to be given a special favor, to be exalted with Jesus to a place of glory and power.  But what they don’t understand is that the glory that they seek is not in some high and lofty place where only special people get to go.  If they really want to share in Christ’s glory, they will have to find it where Jesus did, in the world God made, with the people God loves.  Jesus came to reveal God’s glory and power, and the people who thought they had special access to it, the religious and political leaders, could not see it.  It was the fishermen, the tax collectors and the prostitutes, the sick and the blind, the ones who suffered and the ones who sinned, who saw the light.

They say that the river you can see is only a small part of the whole river, and that, in the gravels and rock formations underneath and beside the surface river there flows an even larger body of water.  Jeremiah says that the one who trusts in the Lord is like a tree planted by the river, and it is that deep underground water of God’s faithfulness that such a person drinks.  Jesus came to baptize us in that river, and a church that is true to the mission of Jesus is a church that drinks from the deep river of God’s faithfulness that flows through the whole world.

I know that Mack understands this.  He will be good leader for you because he will encourage and support you to trust in that river, and to be in service to that world.  He will help you to share the light of Christ with others.  But you will not share it because it is a precious commodity that you own, that you are willing, because you are such holy and virtuous people, to dole out to a world sunk in darkness.  You will share it the way a tree shares the abundance of the sunlight that sparkles on the surface of the river, dancing in it, passing it through your leaves, turning it into flowers, and fragrance, and fruit.   

You can be that kind of church, or I should say “we,” because all our churches face the same challenges, and we all face them together, but the key, as Jeremiah said, is trust.  Mack trusted you enough to ask to be your rector.  You trusted him enough to call him, and that is a very good beginning.  But it is only the beginning of your new, shared ministry, a ministry that can be fruitful if there is trust. 

We need to trust our own gifts and our own authority.  Here again, Mack can help you, because he has had to struggle over many years to trust his.  He had to overcome the internal and external voice of prejudice that said he was not qualified for Christ’s ministry because of his sexual orientation, so he can help you to learn that the gifts that God has entrusted to you are meant to be shared, no matter what obstacles stand in your way. 

We also must trust each other.  We have to trust each other enough to speak the truth of what is in our hearts, even when it makes us vulnerable.  We need to trust enough to listen to what the other has to say, even when it makes us uncomfortable.  We have to trust enough to allow each other to take risks, and make mistakes, and to ask for and offer forgiveness.

And above all we must trust God.  We need to trust that God speaks, and to be disciplined about learning to listen; to trust in our shared mission, and know that God has not called the church into being for no purpose.  We have to trust that God has a plan and a direction for us to follow, even when we feel lost, and uncertain which way we should go.  We have to trust that the deep river of God’s faithfulness will be there to sustain us even when the surface has dried to a trickle.  We are baptized into a ministry of trust, and this trust is itself the fruit the world hungers for more than ever.  It is the light we see, it is the light we are, it is the light we are meant to share.    

The light of dawn

Isaiah 60:1-6
Ephesians 3:1-12
Matthew 2:1-12
Psalm 72:1-7,10-14

In the seven summers before I got married I took long backpacking trips in the High Sierras of California.  John Muir called those mountains “the range of light,” and for me, as for him, that name evokes many images in the mind’s eye, memories of cloudscapes and waterfalls, of flowery meadows in the sun, and evening alpenglow on granite towers high above the trees.   And when I hear the words of Isaiah about the dawn, I think of a time my father and I camped amid the rocks above the shore of a small alpine lake.  It was the last night of a ten-day hike, and, as I usually did when the skies were clear, I did not pitch my tent but slept in the open. 

The first time I woke up it was deep night.  There was no moon and it was as if there was no world but the stars, and the light of stars, shimmering like snow on the ground.   When I woke up for good it was the early dawn, and though sunrise was still far off, I felt surprisingly refreshed.  I sat up in my sleeping bag and watched the pale light creep over the sky, slowly stealing away the stars.  In that light, the earth came into view again, a blackness at the jagged edge of the horizon.  On those stark heights a cold wind awakened and blew down through a world of dim shapes and deep shadows.  I sat like that for an hour or more, listening to the silence and seeing the color gradually come back to the earth.  At last, with surprising suddenness, the sun cleared the ridge, flooding the hollow of the mountains with warmth and light, unveiling the beauty of the world’s morning.   

Today the church comes from Christmas, the birth of Jesus under the stable lantern and the starry sky, and arrives at the Epiphany, the breaking out of the Christ-event into the world-at-large.  By the likely date of the composition of the gospel of Matthew, the news of Jesus Christ had broken out of its family of origin, so to speak.  It had spread from Palestine, by the efforts of apostles like Paul, throughout the synagogues of the Jewish diaspora, to Arabia and Syria, Asia Minor, and North Africa, and on around the Mediterranean.  Strangely, Jesus’ own people, the Jews, largely rejected the proclamation.  In the main it was gentiles who greeted it with enthusiasm. 

In the synagogues of places like Damascus and Antioch, Ephesus and Corinth, there were a lot of non-Jews, religious seekers of pagan background, who came on the Sabbath to hear the scriptures and to pray to Israel’s God.  To these gentiles the knowledge of that God was like the rising of the sun.  It filled heaven with a light of clarity and peace, that they had never known before.  It revealed the world in its true colors, as a harmonious and unified creation, where every drop of water and every grain of sand came into being together and was sustained by the power of a single loving will. 

But before the sun rises, you’ll remember, there is the pale light of dawn, a light that sharpens the contrast between earth and heaven, and reveals a world of dim shapes and dark shadows.  The God of the Hebrew Scriptures was a god of justice and compassion, a god who hates evil and hears the cries of the poor and the oppressed.  This was not a remote ideal principle of Oneness, like the God of the philosophers.  This was a God who cared, deeply, achingly, for his people, and promised to deliver them from grip of suffering and death.

The Gentiles came to the synagogue and heard that this promise now included them.  They heard that God’s own Son, the anointed righteous king of the Jews, had come.   They heard that he’d been crucified, and every barrier to God’s inclusive love had died with him.   They heard he’d been raised from the dead, to reveal God’s hidden plan of salvation which held a central place for them.  And they embraced this message, and a new community began to form at the periphery of the synagogue, a community in which Jews and Gentiles, men and women, slaves and free persons, sought the grace to live as equal citizens of a new people of God.

 In the eyes of these followers of Jesus, their community was itself a sign that he is the messiah, and that the promised deliverance had begun.   They heard anew the ancient prophecies of the dawning of a new age, when all nations would come and offer tribute and worship to the one true and living God.  In the light of that dawn, they began to hear the scriptures in a whole new way, to see things that weren’t visible before, and find new meaning in familiar stories.   They also told new stories, stories about Jesus.  They repeated things they’d heard about him, the things he did, and the things he said.  They told new converts and new generations about his life and death and as they spoke their imaginations were full of the light of the scriptures, the Hebrew Scriptures, which were the only scriptures that they had.

Today some of the spiritual descendants of these gentiles, here at St. John’s, along with about 700 other people around our diocese, are beginning a project to read the entire Bible by the end of the year.  Every day we will read three chapters and psalm from the Hebrew Bible, the so-called Old Testament, and one chapter from the New.   Reading in this way, we will restore a connection that has been too often and too cruelly broken, the connection between Israel’s God and the one that Christians worship as his Son.   Our reading will echo the experience of those first gentile believers who came to the synagogue to hear the glorious truth that God is one. 

This is a courageous undertaking.  Not just because the Bible is a long book and a year is a short time in which to read it all, nor just because it takes some effort to understand even a little part of it.   But because it is a book that is full of light.  It contains the light of stars, as when Abram stands outside his tent in the desert night and God says, “look up and count them—so many will your descendants be.”  It is full of the light of evening, and morning, and of that dark hour just before dawn, when the world is a place of dim forms and dark shadows, a light that reveals the darkness of history and the coldness of the human heart.  And it is a book that is full of the light of God, like the glory atop Mount Sinai, which no one can see and live.

But like those other gentiles, the wise men from the East, these adventurers will not set out empty-handed.  They bring something with them.  For one thing, they bring the understanding that not all the world’s light is contained in a book.  The wise men followed the leading of a star, and it is worth noting that it is when they took a detour to consult the experts in biblical interpretation, that they almost ruined everything. 

The wise men carry gifts, and we also bring rare treasures on this year of journeying.  The gift of life experience, of remembering what we have seen, of lessons learned and choices that cannot be undone.  We bring the gift of feeling deeply—hot anger, belly laughter, love, joy, envy, malice, gratitude, world-weariness that sinks into the bones, and every other emotion there can be.  We bring gifts of intellect, and imagination, and wonder—even the gift of doubting that it is true.  And none of us would be daring to take this "Bible Challenge" if we did not possess in some small measure the supreme gift, the gift that makes us shine, that makes us radiant with the glory that has risen over us like the dawn—the gift of the willingness to give ourselves, to offer what we have brought, to lay it down of our own free will, for nothing more nor less than love.