Rest and Relaxation

2 Samuel 7:1-14a
Psalm 89:20-37
Ephesians 2:11-22
Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

I’ve just come back from a week with my wife’s family at Cape Hatteras, on the Outer Banks of North Carolina.  My father-in-law first drove down there with Meg and her sister Cathy forty-three years ago this summer, and it has been his summer vacation destination ever since.  I myself have gone twelve or thirteen times, including every summer but one since our daughter was born, so the place has become deeply familiar, and infused with happy memories.  The rhythm of our days there is a simple one.  By family custom, television and radio are not allowed, and our days revolve around eating, sleeping, reading, games, and conversation, and being on the beach or in the waves.  It is a place where I let go of responsibilities, where the deadlines and demands of being a parish priest and householder and citizen drift away and I can rest.

I am grateful to have had this opportunity once again, and I thank everyone who helped hold down the fort here at St. John’s while I was away.  I know that not everyone is as fortunate as I am, and there may be some of you here today whose financial strictures or work or family responsibilities make it impossible for you to take a real vacation.  So I don’t want to sound like I’m complaining when I say that for everything that is idyllic about our annual trip to the Outer Banks, it is not all rest and recreation.  There is also a fair amount of stress and strain involved, most of which has to do with getting there and back again.  There are two days of travel on either end, one day each way at crowded airports, and one on crowded highways, days of long lines at the security checkpoint, at the boarding gate and the car rental counter, days of waiting for a turn in the bathroom on airplanes and in gas stations and convenience stores; days of traffic jams on I-95 and the Capitol Beltway, and at the Hampton Roads Bridge and Tunnel.

And in the midst of so many thousands of complete strangers, when you, like every one of them, is thinking only of getting where you want to go as quickly as possible, it’s easy to stop thinking of them as persons just like yourself.  It’s easy to relate to them only as obstacles, as particles of interference that are causing friction and slowing you down and standing in the way of the few precious days of rest and solitude that you so need and deserve.  It’s easy to forget that each of them only wants the same thing you do—to get to a place where they can stop moving and lay down their burdens and rest.

When the book of Second Samuel says that the Lord gave David rest it doesn’t just mean he got a break from work and travel.  It means that he won a lasting victory that brought an end to violence, danger, and insecurity.  That is how a people weary of constant war and oppression think about rest.  We hear how when David had defeated all his enemies, and was settled in his palace and on his throne, he thought of the God who had won all this for him and decided to build him a place of his own.  It’s something any pious person might have done, not unlike those who, 159 years ago a week from Friday, finding themselves safely and prosperously settled here in Petaluma, decided to found St. John’s Episcopal Church.

But then God comes into the story and tells David that his thinking is too small.  David wants to put a punctuation mark on his success with this grand gesture of piety, to say to the world “here is David’s temple, where we worship David’s God.”  But God wants it understood that the rest that he is working for is not for David, but for the whole nation of Israel.  God knows that the politics of nations and the fortunes of kings are built on shifting sands.  So God will keep working, keep building, making a house where his holy name will be established forever.  It will not be an edifice of cedar and stone, but of flesh and blood, the royal house of David, and the sons of David will also be the Sons of God.  Their glory will not be in their personal power and accomplishments, but in their embodiment of God’s covenant promise to the whole people of Israel, the promise of rest.

This is one of the great guiding ideas of the Hebrew Scriptures, and in its essence it is not about David or his offspring.  We don’t even get out of Second Samuel before it becomes clear that they are not going to come close to living up to the ideal.  What it is is an idea about God, about God’s determination not to sit on the shelf in some little sideshow tent called “religion” but rather to stay involved in Israel’s politics.  God promises to keep showing up in the nitty gritty places where human beings work out their differences, and address their shared problems, and shape their institutions, gently, firmly, unwaveringly coaxing, and cajoling, and enticing, all of us together toward rest. 

As time went on, it became harder, not easier, to see how God is working to establish his kingdom in human affairs.   But the idea didn’t fade out, it just got more nuanced.  The prophets revealed that the keynote of God’s politics was not power, but justice and compassion for the poor and suffering.  The Hebrew sages developed the notion of wisdom, the art of bringing one’s own actions and thoughts into accord with God’s ongoing work of creating the world.  And it is this nuanced picture of God’s steadfast love, working through a chosen person to move the whole society, even the whole world, toward its long-awaited rest, that comes suddenly and startlingly to life when people encounter Jesus.       

The stories of the Gospel of Mark show Jesus confronting things about being human we would rather avoid.  And today we have another case of this, illustrated by the fact that when you try to go away on vacation, there’s a whole crowd of other people who go with you.  There is ultimately no peace, no rest for us, apart from the rest of everyone.  Jesus manifests this deep truth when he looks on the crowd and sees that they are like sheep without a shepherd.  His is not a detached observation, much less a calculation of opportunity—it is a realization of divine compassion, compassion that moves Jesus to the very core.

It is compassion that stirs him to act, to do something for these souls who are forgotten by their rulers and have lost their faith in God.   But he doesn’t organize them into an army, or a party, or a cult.  He doesn’t stir them up to violence or promise them power.  What he does do is to teach and to heal.  His teaching, according to Mark, is about the Kingdom of God, and he teaches it in parables.  He shows what the work of God in the world is like by comparing it to daily actions and ordinary things—a sower goes out to sow, a woman mixes leaven into the dough.  And in his healings Jesus doesn’t so much reach out to the sick as welcome them to him.  He goes among them, and they recognize the healing presence of God; they reach out in faith to touch it, even if it is only the fringe of his cloak, and by that faith and that touch they are healed.

As a community that carries on the work of Jesus, we are called to be more than a sanctuary, more than a quiet place apart from the world.  Which is not to say that we should not cultivate an atmosphere of prayerfulness and peace.  But the purpose of this sacred space is to be an arena for the practice of a deeper kind of politics than what usually passes for the word.  It is where we learn from the nitty-gritty of our relationships and the work we do together, to see the traces of God’s wisdom, justice, and compassion, so that we can teach others to see God’s work wherever it may appear.   We come in search of healing from the sickness of our souls, especially the illusions that we are separate from others, or in control of our salvation.  And when we touch the healing we seek, we sense in it a compelling invitation to the rest of the world, a call to live with all people as those with whom God dwells—a call to lead the world to its rest.    

Original grace

Genesis 1:1-5
Psalm 29
Acts 19:1-7
Mark 1:4-11

When I was in my early thirties, I decided to get baptized.  I’d been thinking about it for a few years, ever since I’d discovered that I couldn’t become a Zen Buddhist priest because I was actually a Christian.  And for a time I considered organizing a baptism for myself.  I could ask my father, an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, to perform the rite, and invite a few family members and friends to the shore of the Pacific Ocean, or the banks of the irrigation pond on the farm where I was working.  But the more I thought about it, and the more I learned about this strange thing called Christianity, the clearer it became that baptism wasn’t just something for me.  And it wasn’t about becoming a Christian in some general sense, or undergoing some kind of metaphysical change.   It was about becoming part of something made of flesh and blood.  It was about joining a community.

So it was only later, after attending Episcopal churches for a few years, and finding one in San Francisco where I felt I could belong, that I decided it was time.  So I signed up for a class, which involved going with a few other folks over to the Rector’s house for dinner and a conversation.  The only thing I remember well about that evening, besides the delicious catered meal, was that, along with a couple of us candidates who were adults, there was a young mother, who came on behalf of her infant daughter.  We were going around the table explaining why we were considering baptism at this time, and what we thought it might mean for us, and when it was the mother’s turn, she spoke about the importance of family tradition, and her desire to give her child a religious foundation for life. 

But then her voice rose and she got really quite passionate, as she began to lodge a strenuous objection to the doctrine of original sin.  She was outraged at the thought that her beautiful, perfect little child was somehow deep-dyed wicked at the core, and needed to have this congenital taint washed out of her, and to be born anew.  And the rest of us around the table, including the priest, had to agree, because, after all, when you put it like that, it really doesn’t make a lot of sense.   

Now I have some doubts about whether that young woman was reacting against real classical Christian doctrine, or a one-sided misinterpretation of it, but that’s not really the issue.  Because she had a point—if baptism is about the difference it makes to live our lives with God, but the accent is all on a heightened sense of worthlessness and guilt, then why bother?  Shouldn’t it be more about love and grace?  And if it is about a life lived in communion, of membership in a body, why focus such a harsh light of interrogation on the individual person?   It’s a distortion of perspective, and it yields a grotesque image, which is plain to see when the person in question is a child. 

This is a good example of why it's good to come to church, because in church we get to balance out our theological ideas about things like baptism with the actual practice.  We get to look into the face of a stranger, a newcomer to the community, and recognize ourselves.   The words we say and the actions we take when we baptize are about acknowledging what we all have in common.  They are about our shared humanity in God.   Baptism illuminates what it truly means to be human, but what it reveals is not a philosophical paradigm or a collective entity or a universal archetype, but the life and death of a person. 

When we baptize someone we call her by name, because the relationship of the baptized to the baptized is a relationship of persons, each one of whom is utterly unique, unprecedented, with a face and a path and a story unlike anyone’s who’s ever lived before.  But we also baptize everyone in the name of Jesus, the only Son, the human person whose life and death and resurrection shows us how each one of our stories, and all our stories together, are the story of God.   Now people are always looking for new and different ways to get that point across, ways that they think will be more direct, approachable, or user-friendly.  But the best way, I think, certainly the time-tested way, is to come together to listen to the story of Jesus.

There are different versions, and some of the versions have prologues.  For the last three weeks or so we’ve been listening to bits and pieces of those.  But all the versions agree that the main story begins with baptism.  A man named John appeared in the wilderness by the Jordan River, telling people that God was about to make a new start with everyone, so they’d better get ready.  And apparently a lot of them agreed that a new start was necessary.  I gather things weren’t going all that well in Judea and Jerusalem, because the inhabitants of those places out in droves to meet John, and they confessed all the things they had done to participate in the violence and injustice, the callous self-righteousness and self-promotion, the self-indulgence and escapism that plagued society at large. 

And as a sign of their desire to put all that behind them and make a new start with God, they waded out into the river, and John put them under with loving ferocity, pushed them down into the dark, cold, turbid water and held them there until they started to feel fear, started to really know just how close they were to nothingness, and how much they would give for just one breath of air.  And then the force of John’s strong hands reversed direction and lifted their faces up out of the water into light and breath and freedom.

And one of those, the story says, who came to be baptized, was Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.  He heard John’s call to repent, a word that in our minds is linked with guilt.  But Jesus had nothing to confess.  His repentance must have been driven by something else: compassion, maybe, for his people; a sense of responsibility; a desire to be part of the movement of renewal; a longing for God.  In any case, Jesus gave himself over into the hands of John and went down into the river.  And when he came up everything changed. 

It wasn’t that he had changed—nothing had been added to him or taken away.  It was more like God changed.  God who had been hidden, far away in heaven, threw back the curtains.  God who had been silent, spoke.  God’s elusive Spirit, the maker of justice, the wisdom of creation, the vision of truth, came over him with wings of peace.  In that moment Jesus knew who he really was, and what he had to do.  Because this God of grace and love was not for him, but in him.  The immortal, invisible God had a visible, mortal face, and it was his face.

In this story of the beginning we can already glimpse the pattern of the whole: a life of repentance (or maybe we should call it “atonement”) for the sickness and suffering of the world, that is not preoccupied with sin and guilt, but abounding in solidarity, compassion, and joy; a personal revelation of God’s grace and intimate love; a movement of the Spirit, pouring out active, creative, healing, and liberating communication.   This is the pattern of the whole story of Jesus, and the fact that we can see the pattern right at the beginning is no mistake, because baptism is where his story converges with our own. 

Baptism is where our lives are incorporated into Jesus’ pattern, and that is why it matters, even if it happened to you as an infant, and you can’t remember a thing about it.  If there was even one person present that day that looked at you in your little white gown, kicking your legs and crying, and saw a recipient of God’s grace and love, it had its intended effect.  Because the choice that matters in our baptism is not our choice, just as it is not we who created the heavens and earth, or who gave us birth, or we who redeems our lives from death.  But though baptism is the revelation to the world of God’s life in us, conscious cooperation with that life is something we do choose day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment.

Revolution of compassion

Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24

Psalm 100

Ephesians 1:15-23

Matthew 25:31-46

Some of us here at St. John’s have been meeting since September to study a book about Jesus.  Not Jesus as the author supposes he might have been, but Jesus as people have imagined him, in every era of Christian civilization: Jesus as they have honored and adored him; Jesus, who one way or another has held the key for them to know who God is, and what is good, and beautiful, and true. 

Reimagining Jesus is what Christians have always done.  It’s a process that was already well under way when the four Gospels were written, as you can easily see by comparing them.  Each one presents a different picture of what he said and did, how he died, and what happened to him after that, because each of them arose in a different community.  These little groups that became the church took the traditions that had been handed down to them about him and shaped them to speak to their hopes and fears, their needs, their experiences of the Spirit of Christ, and the signs he showed them of God’s kingdom.   Of course, those differences only serve to make the main character of the stories that much more compelling.  So while we find four distinctive images of Jesus in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, we have no doubt that they are all about the same person.

Jews, Muslims, and Buddhists, even atheists and agnostics, are curious about the person who inspired those stories.  Many admire his teachings and try to understand him better by making comparisons with other prophets, saints, and sages.  But what animates Christian faith is something more than curiosity and admiration.  It is more than the search for an accurate portrait of a historical figure.  It is something more even than the willingness to believe certain things about Jesus.  The heart of Christian faith in Jesus is the desire to know him as he is.  It is living and creative, because it is love infused with hope for oneself and for the world.   

In the great chapter on Christian love in First Corinthians, Saint Paul writes “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then [we will see] face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.”  Our desire to know Jesus is one with our hope of knowing ourselves and others as we truly are, as we are known and loved by God.  And when we look at those men and women who have cultivated that desire, and have committed more and more of themselves to the fulfillment of that hope, what we see is transformation. 

There is a story, perhaps apocryphal, that on his deathbed Lenin made this confession to a childhood friend who was a priest:

“I have made a mistake. No doubt . . . many people who were oppressed had to be freed, but our method let loose new forms of oppression and murder. You know it, and it is my deadly nightmare to feel smothered in this ocean of blood of innumerable victims. What was needed to save Russia—but now it is too late—was a dozen like Francis of Assisi.”

Whether or not this story is historically accurate, it rings true.  Because it says that no movement to transform the world will ever truly succeed unless it awakens in human beings the hope that they themselves can fundamentally change, and the power to do it.

The hope of taking revenge on their oppressors is not enough; the hope of taking control of the factory, or of the land, or even the simple hope of having enough to eat, are not enough.  These motivations will carry a revolution for a while.  But if it does not have at its heart a persuasive image of the ultimate purpose of being human, the movement will falter and lose its way.  It will be another promise broken, another dream that turned into a nightmare.   On the other hand, I know of one revolutionary movement that has kept going for two thousand years.  In spite of all its sad and shameful history of selling out and settling for less, of complacency and outright crime, it is still able, with regularity, to turn ordinary people into Francis or Clare of Assisi, into Oscar Romero, or Martin Luther King, Jr.  It can do this because it still carries within it, as its source and reason for being, the living image of Jesus and the desire to know and be known by him.

We have this image because of communities like the one that created the Gospel of Matthew, who saw in Jesus Christ what they most wanted to become, and found in him the power to transform the world.  The irony is that they had nothing of what we would account as power.  They were members of a marginal and vilified ethnic group, the Jews, who had fought and lost disastrously a war to free their nation from the tyranny of Rome.  And this particular little congregation was doubly marginalized.   Because their proclamation that the crucified Jesus of Nazareth was the resurrected Messiah of Israel, and their practice of including Gentiles among them as equals, were scandalous to their fellow Jews.  And though the Gospel never explicitly says so, it leaves clues in the text that they had been thrown out of the synagogue. 

But these painful events did not make them discouraged; they actually strengthened and amplified their hope.  They only confirmed that the things that Jesus had said were true, and that he had said those things for them.  The stories said Jesus promised to return in the glory and power of God, though about that day or hour no one could know.  But they also said that he would be with them where ever two or three were gathered in his Name, and that he would be with them until the end of the age. 

And the stories told them another thing about how Jesus would be present, a promise that was also a warning.  Because they were going to have to live for the time being in a mixed up world, a world like a field of wheat with weeds growing in it.  And they were always going to be tempted to take sides in that world’s arguments.  They were going to hear that there were nations of sheep and nations of goats, people who were favored, and entitled to kill to get what they wanted, and people who were cursed, and deserved whatever they got.  But Jesus told them that the whole human race was mixed up, that every nation was sheep and goats mixed together, and no one could sort them out until the very end, and, by the way, it would be up to him to do the sorting. 

But so they wouldn’t lose hope for the world, and become passive and turn inward, he gave them an image of himself, so they could pick him out in the crowd.  Jesus left us with an image of the ultimate purpose of being human, the same image that God showed him.  And it was not a self-image.  It was an image of God’s beloved, the key to the transformation of the world, and it was not a charismatic healer, a sinless savior, a spiritually enlightened being in a white robe and sandals.  Before he gave himself up to death on the cross, Jesus told us to seek him in the old man in the nursing home whom nobody comes to visit, to desire him in the pierced and tattooed girl on the

sidewalk with her placard and her dog, to love him in the ISIS fighter shaking his rifle and shouting “Death to the Infidels”, to care for him in the Guatemalan child on the bus to the immigrant detention center.

The violence of Matthew’s language of judgment disturbs us, but its purpose is to warn us.  Having lived through the horrors of total war, and the pain of religious schism, Matthew’s community knew well what also need to know—that any vision of our future based on the might of the strong, the wisdom of the intelligent, the purity of the self-righteous, or the prosperity of the rich, will sooner or later prove to be demonic.  And I hope that this threat of darkness won’t keep us from also seeing the light—the light of judgment that Jesus and Francis of Assisi and so many others saw and were transformed by—that when we stand with the weak, the hated, the powerless and destitute and share their hope, we take the part of God in the world.