Traveling lighter

• Deuteronomy 26:1-11
• Romans 10:8b-13
• Luke 4:1-13
• Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16
  

In the summer of 1994 I walked from Yosemite Valley to Mount Whitney on the John Muir Trail.  It was 20 days in the wilderness, not 40.  And I wasn’t fasting.  I was carrying over fifty pounds of food, fuel, clothing and equipment on my back.  On the first day out, as I climbed the two thousand feet from Happy Isles to the top of Nevada Falls, with the weight of my pack making every step an effort and the pain in my hips, my shoulders and my neck almost reducing me to tears, I felt like I’d made a terrible mistake; and there was no way I was going to be able to keep this up for over 200 miles.  But I summoned up the will to fight through those thoughts, and as the day went on the climb became gentler, and I got deeper into the backcountry and left the crowds behind, and settled into a good, steady rhythm of walking and rest.  And the next day, and each day after that I got a little stronger, and the pack got a little lighter, and my doubts about completing the task I’d set myself grew less.  By the time a week had gone by, I had walked through Yosemite National Park, past Devil’s Postpile and Mammoth Mountain and was in the John Muir Wilderness heading toward Kings’ Canyon. 

It was a fairly remote section of the trail, and even though it was July I hadn’t seen another soul since the afternoon of the day before.  The particular morning I am thinking of was overcast and cool with a light rain falling, but I’d eaten a hot breakfast and had the right gear for the weather, and was feeling good.  I was hiking along at what I thought was a damn fine clip, when a slightly-built man, who appeared to be of East Indian origin, in shorts and running shoes, a windbreaker, and a fanny pack, passed me on the trail.  He did not stop to chat, and to this day I have no idea how he got there, or where he was going.  For all he know, he was out for a day trip from his lavish base camp, well-supplied by mule train, but the impression he left me with was of a wandering yogi, coursing through the mountains swift and free as an eagle.  And all of a sudden I was self-consciously aware of the great bulk of my backpack, and my lumbering pace, and I felt a bit of a fool.

Because one of the things you find when you try to get away from it all is that renouncing worldly goods and comforts can become as much a form of competition as getting goods and comforts often is.  It’s not that I set out on my hike to prove that I was better than anyone else.  It was something I was doing for myself, to prepare myself mentally and spiritually to embark on a whole new phase of my life.  After seven-and-a-half years of living an alternative lifestyle in intentional spiritual communities, I was about to move into the city and get an apartment and a job and to try out living like an ordinary American.  But my encounter with the runner on the trail showed me that, while my initial intention in making this journey might have been humble and true, my newfound strength and confidence as a wilderness traveler had begun to go to my head.

I was just a little too proud of my courage in enduring the loneliness and dangers of the trail; a little too proud of my austerity in living, for weeks at a time, with nothing but what I could carry on my back.  I was just a little too proud of the distance I was traveling and the time I was making as I went.  I had left behind the home I’d known, and did not yet know where I would find a new one, and for the time being I was free of the trammels and turmoil of life down there in the flatlands; I was free of grubbing for money and jostling shoulder-to-shoulder with the other rats in the race, and was feeling more than a little sorry for those poor saps who were not so free.  But when that man ran by me in his jogging shorts I saw that my burden was not as light as I imagined it to be.

We have a tradition in the modern West of romanticizing wilderness.  We like to imagine it as a pristine world apart, reflecting back to us a peace and purity that is the total opposite of the noisy, ugly, frantic cities where we live.  But the truth is we don’t know how to travel in the wild except by bringing our world with us, even if it’s only what carry on our backs and in our heads.  Long solitude in nature shows us the naked truth of our dependence on human society, and how deeply our acquired cultural values and personal neuroses are embedded in our souls.  But the haunting beauty and grandeur of wild places can also give us a sense of the transcendent ground of all personality and culture that is the mystery of God.  That awareness doesn’t free us from the need and responsibility of life in human community.  But it does often leave us feeling inspired and even impelled to go about living it differently.

 And this is something I think the Bible understands.  There are a lot of stories of wilderness journeys in the Bible, but they don’t idealize the wilderness as a place that is desirable in itself, a place one would want to stay, if one could.  Maybe it is in part because the wilderness in biblical lands is a stark, desert landscape, but in these stories it is what anthropologists call a “liminal space,” a place you go through on the way to a new way of being.   The desert, in these stories, is a place of preparation, of stripping away what is not essential, and learning hard lessons, so as to be capable of handling something new, a new way of living that is a gift from God.

In the story of the Exodus, Israel wanders in the wilderness and goes through various tests and trials in preparation for receiving the gift of the Law.  They then screw up, and screw up again, and so must undergo more testing, for a total of forty years, in order to be ready for the gift of the promised land.  And the Gospel of Luke tells how, after the Holy Spirit came down on Jesus at his baptism, that same Spirit led him out into the wilderness.  There he fasted for forty days and the devil came to him, to test him; to test his understanding of what it meant to be the beloved Son of God, and to see if he was ready to return to Galilee on the Spirit’s mission of proclaiming good news to the poor.

The church is the continuation that mission.  And that means sharing Jesus’ gift of the Holy Spirit, which we received in a singular way in our own baptism.  It means sharing in Jesus’ identity, as members of his body and brothers and sisters in the family of God.  The whole purpose of the worship of the church is to continually receive these gifts, to renew his spirit and identity in us, so we might play our part in Christ’s messianic mission to the world.  We do this every week in our celebration of the Eucharist.  Every Sunday is a little Easter, the centerpiece of which is the remembrance of Jesus passion, death and resurrection. Just as the spring is the annual renewal of the life of the earth, Easter is the annual renewal of our lives in the spirit and identity of Christ, by our participation in Jesus’ journey through death to new and inconceivably abundant life.

To prepare mentally and spiritually to make that journey with him, we observe a season of fasting and penitence, which the church has traditionally imagined as like a journey in the wilderness.  It is a time of surrendering superfluous luxuries and distractions to discover what is most essential in our practice and our faith.  It is a time to confront the ways we are tempted to use religion as a patch over our unhealed neuroses, and a prop to our unquestioned assumptions, an apology for our cultural values, and above all as a means to our own ends.  But this journey of Lent is not an end in itself.  It is not a process we control.  No one cares, least of all God, how strong our willpower is, how many desserts we have forgone, or how many hours we have logged in bible study, meditation, and prayer.  All that matters is that we are ready, when the journey is over, to receive the gift of a new life.    

       

Renewing the Covenant

Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25

Wisdom of Solomon 6:12-16

1 Thessalonians 4:13-18

Matthew 25:1-13

When Joshua gathers Israel together after their conquest of Canaan is complete, he talks to them about their ancestor Abraham.  He reminds them of how God came to Abraham in the land of his ancestors beyond the Euphrates River, and led him away from there, away from the gods of that land, and brought him here --to Canaan.  Joshua tells the people this story because he wants them to understand the real significance of the moment.  He is not only a great governor and military leader; he is also a prophet, one who speaks for God.   And he wants the Israelites to know that this is not just a great event in the history of their nation.  It is also a moment in the story of God.

For just as it was God who led Abraham on his great migration, and God who gave offspring to him and to Sarah, so also it is God who is bringing the story of his descendants to this new climax.  It was God who visited the plagues upon Egypt, and brought Israel out of slavery and into the wilderness.  It was God who spoke to them through Moses at the foot of Mount Sinai and said, “If you will obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my own possession among all the peoples,… a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”  And the people all answered together and said, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do.” 

After that generation of Israelites had passed away, and Moses himself was about to die, he called together their children in Moab on the other side of the Jordan.  He reminded them of their story, of all that God had done for their fathers and mothers, and Moses gave them a choice, a choice between life and death, blessing and curse, and he urged them to choose life, for themselves and their descendants.  And now it is Joshua’s turn to speak to their children, on behalf of the God who brought them across the Jordan, who defeated kings and armies and delivered walled cities into their hand, so that they might live in houses they didn’t build, and eat the fruit of vineyards they didn’t plant. 

And Joshua also gives them a choice.    They can serve the gods of Mesopotamia, or the gods of Egypt, or the gods of the Amorites, of the people of the land where they have come to dwell.  Or they can renew their covenant with the God of Israel, whose story is their story.  They have a choice, because God wants partners and co-workers, not slaves.  It’s a choice that every generation of Israel has to make for itself, in the light of its own risks and rewards, its own prospects for renewal of the faith community, and its own fateful consequences of failure.   

Most scholars agree that this story was written down in its current form long after the events that it describes, in a time when the people of Israel had been conquered and taken away to exile in Babylon.  So there is a bitter irony in that part of the story where Joshua warns them about what will happen if they forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods.  The people insist that they know what they are getting into, and that they will be faithful.  But the people who wrote this story, and the people who read it, knew that they hadn’t been, and that Joshua’s warnings had come true.  In this context they returned again to the stories of their covenant with God, looking for meaning in the disaster that had come upon them, and for a way out of their sense of guilt, and failure, and despair.  They sought to remember who they were, the sacred purpose for which God had called them into covenant.  In that remembering they found their freedom.  They saw that they still had a choice.

Some of us here at St. John’s had an experience of the power of remembering our story just the other night.  At the urging of the vestry I’ve called together a group of four people from our 8 o’clock service and four from the 10 o’clock, to work together on a vision for liturgy and music in our parish.  We gathered last Tuesday night, and I decided that a good place to begin would be to remember the story of how we got to where we are today.  I put a time-line up on the wall, and we began to fill it in with what we could remember of how we used to worship in the past.  We called forth a few sketchy details of times long ago, but mainly we focused on the journey that began in early January 2007 with the rebirth of the Episcopal Church in Petaluma from the ashes of schism. 

Now nothing gets Christians into a lather like their opinions about what music to sing in church, or what words to say.  The fact that our two Sunday services have settled into patterns that are fairly distinct in tone and style makes some people worry that we are two different congregations working at cross purposes.  Others think that the way these services are now is the way they will always be, which can be good news or bad, depending on their point of view.  But going back and remembering the turning points that got us to where we are, the circumstances and persons who shaped the choices that we made, helped our Worship Committee see that our context is always changing.  It reminded us that we have to revisit those choices frequently, and continually make them again.   It also helped us remember that we are one people with one story, and that underlying our differences of liturgy and music is our common effort to be faithful to the mission for which God called this parish back to life. 

That is what it means to be in a covenant.  And at the heart of a covenant is a story.  The story of the rebirth of St. John’s, Petaluma is a powerful one, and like many of you, it attracted me and moved me to become part of it.   And because it is a covenant story, God has enabled us to accomplish a great deal together.  We re-established communion with the Diocese of Northern California and the Episcopal Church.  We reclaimed the historic parish property on its behalf.  We showed that this congregation could include gays and lesbians, affirming their full personhood, and their gifts for leadership in the church.  We grew in numbers and in strength to the point where we now can stand on our own as a parish, and we have discerned God’s call to me to become the Rector.

And as I have considered whether to accept that call, it has become clear that there is a real choice for me to make.  What is at stake is not merely the question of what’s best for me and my family, or even what’s best for the parish.  This moment is about making a new commitment to being in covenant with God.  It means recommitting to the story of the resurrection of St. John’s, not as something we did and can now sit back and enjoy, but as something God did so we could remember who we are.  What has happened here is a sign that we belong, not just in this building, or to this denomination, but to the covenant people of Jesus Christ.  Our life together is a sign of his death and resurrection, and it is as his body that we are sent on the mission of his Gospel. 

So I had to ask whether I was ready to renew my commitment to that mission, as God is renewing it in this community.  Could I take new risks for the sake of inclusion, to welcome our neighbors who are still kept out of this church by barriers of language or culture or physical disability?  Could I embrace a broader vision of renewal, going to work with other churches and faith communities and partners in Petaluma to recover our common story and do what we can in our modest way to rebuild a covenant society?  These were questions I had to put not only to myself but to the Discernment Committee and the Vestry.  And now I put them to you.   As for me and my house, we will stay here at St. John’s, Petaluma and serve the Lord, as long, and as well, as we are able.

         

The one who wasn't there

Acts 5:27-32
Psalm 150
Revelation 1:4-8
John 20:19-31

Twenty years ago I was living in a Zen Buddhist monastery in the mountains near Big Sur.  One of my jobs there was to be the ceremonial attendant to the abbot of the monastery.  There were various aspects to this position, and one of them was that when the monks wanted to have a private conversation with the abbot about their religious practice, what we called in Zen jargon “dokusan,” they would come to me.  I would write their name down in a little notebook that I kept tucked away in the sleeve of my kimono, and every morning, he would ask to know who was on the list.  I would pull out my notebook and tell him and then he would tell me which person or persons he wanted to see. 

After we offered incense in the meditation hall, he would return to his cabin, and I would walk quietly along behind the row of monks, sitting very still facing the wall, and when I came to the one I wanted I would lean over and whisper, “Dokusan.”  Then I would lead the way to the waiting room outside the abbot’s cabin, where we would wait for the sound of the bell that meant he was ready.  The monk would ring my little answering bell, and go in. 

After a while I learned which of the monks took a long time in Dokusan, presumably because they had lots of questions, and which ones were finished after only a few minutes, and which ones would no sooner finish and be scratched off the list than they would ask to be added to it again.  I got to see how the abbot would sometimes pass over certain names and ask to see those who were further down on the list.  Then one day, as we were nearing the end of the three-month training period, the abbot asked me if I thought everyone had come to him for Dokusan at least once.  I thought about it for a minute and said I thought maybe Lynnette had not, but he reminded me that in fact she had, way back in January.  I leafed back through old pages of my notebook, and searched my memory a little longer and then I said that I guessed he’d seen everyone.

“No,” he answered, “I never saw Jim.”

“Jim…”  I tried to remember whether Jim had ever asked to be on the list, horrified at the thought that he might have, and that I’d forgotten to write his name down, but now that I thought about it, I had to say that the abbot was right—Jim never did ask for Dokusan.  I felt a little embarrassed that I hadn’t noticed, but to tell you the truth I wasn’t really surprised.  To tell the truth, I never had been able to figure out why Jim was even at the monastery.  He didn’t talk a lot, and when he did say something it wasn’t about any of the customary topics of Zen student conversation.  Usually his comments struck me as kind of sarcastic, the sorts of things that might have been said by a fairly conventional American guy in his early thirties who unaccountably found himself living in a Zen Buddhist monastery in California.  The only thing you could really say with certainty about Jim was that he liked to run.  Every afternoon, in the break time after work and before the evening service, you’d see him heading off by himself, with his trademark limping stride, running up the road that led out of the canyon.

Every religious community develops a kind of common culture, with unspoken rules of behavior and a shared language that holds its members together and helps them feel like they belong.  And every one I’ve been a part of, and there have been quite a few over the years, also seems to have at least one person like Jim. They are the people who don’t seem to fit the mold—who don’t do what everyone else does, or talk about the things everyone else talks about.  The motivations that drew them to the community, and keep them there, are anybody’s guess.  And yet they stick around, sometimes long after other people who seem more natural suited for the place have moved on.  And if the community is a healthy one, it accepts them, and allows them to stay as long as they feel they need to be there.

In John’s Gospel, when the risen Christ appears to his disciples on Easter night, he blesses them with the power of his resurrection.  This power will enable them to overcome their fear and the loss of their leader, and become the nucleus of an enduring and expanding community.  Jesus leaves them the inheritance of his Peace, the Peace that comes from a noble purpose and a shared mission.  He breathes upon them the Holy Spirit, with its freedom to choose forgiveness over the endless replication of hurt.  But one of the disciples is not there to receive the blessing.  Thomas is out and about, on some errand of his own.  And when he returns, and the others try to tell him about what they saw and heard, Thomas is not convinced.

If you think about it, the following days must have been uncomfortable for everyone.  I imagine the disciples who were witnesses to the resurrection must have been unable to contain their excitement, as they told and retold their particular experiences of the shared event.  Perhaps there were conversations that went on long into the night as they remembered the things that Jesus had said and done, all the way up to, and including, his death.  Much that had been puzzling, or even frightening, to them at the time it happened, they could now reinterpret and make clear in the light of his resurrection.  Yet all the while, their enthusiasm would have had to have been dampened at least a little by the presence of Thomas, the left-out one, the one who hadn’t been there, and wasn’t sure that he believed.  And it must have been pretty hard for Thomas, too.

But they stayed together.  Thomas didn’t leave, and the other disciples didn’t cast him out.  And that is a testimony to kind of community that the Holy Spirit creates.  It is a community that is sent in Peace, a community born out of an act of forgiveness, and there is room in it for people like Thomas.  There was a place for Thomas even though nobody knew whether the day he was holding out for would ever come.   When it does come, it is a week later.  It is once again the first day of the week, the day of the renewal of creation, and you could say that the appearance of Jesus to Thomas is an image of the ongoing resurrection of Christ in the life of the church.  The Holy Spirit renews the church again and again, Sunday by Sunday, year by year, century by century, by renewing the relationships between her members, transforming estrangement into belonging with the power of forgiveness.

But, just in case we find ourselves thinking that this transformation is simply the process by which the eccentric and contrary people in the church get over it, and learn to conform to the culture of the majority, this story also tells us that it is Thomas, and people like him, who sometimes have the most intimate and concrete understanding of the human wounds of Christ.  And it is precisely because Thomas knows Jesus in this way that he is the first to recognize him as Lord and God.

All of us are Thomas, at least some of the time, and if we are to keep Christ alive in our midst, we need to keep our relationship with Thomas open and active.  Our own doubt, our own refusal to accept someone else’s word for the truth, our own demand for first-hand personal knowledge of the risen Christ, and desire for a God who comes to meet us in our embodied experience of human suffering—these are essential aspects of a dynamic and living faith.  Likewise, our capacity to respect others who question the received truth, who refuse a neat and tidy confession of faith, our ongoing relationship with people whose religion is different from ours, or who don’t seem to have any religion at all, is what creates a community where Christ himself can visit, not once, but again and again and again.