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Bargain Hunting Excitement (Larry's Nov 27 sermon)

2011-12-23T09:07:00.000-08:00

(In my rush to update our blog before Christmas, I unintentionally left out Larry Green's sermon, which kicked off Advent for us on Nov 27. Thank you for your message, Larry! - Danielle)

I hope all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving. This past weekend brings to mind a great tradition that my family had for the day after Thanksgiving as we would almost stay awake and could not wait to get to Rich’s and Davidson’s in downtown Atlanta. You see getting there early was extremely important because I had to ride the pink pig….non southerners have no clue but the pig was a train like thing that road around the ceiling of the Rich’s toy department and we had to go to Thompson Boland and Lee so I could see my feet in the e ray thing they had set up. So I will for the sake of it tell another story of some friends that I met recently who were even more serious than we were.

The alarm clock went off just like any other morning but instead of turning it off, Mary and Tom leaped out of bed and rushed to the bathroom. Tom quickly shaved and Mary hastily put on her make-up. Their movements were quick, intentional, and efficient. Their usually sluggish morning routine had turned into an Indy style pit stop. They were awake and alert because they were on a mission. It was the day after Thanksgiving otherwise known as Black Friday and they were headed to the mall to participate in the annual shopping spree to inaugurate the holiday season.

Shoppers across America not only woke up early on Friday morning but many of them stood in line all night in hopes of finding bargains by the cart-full. Computers and other electronic gadgetry were in big demand and marketing executives made sure that their store had plenty of enticing lures throughout the departments. This required some shoppers to develop intricate strategies to maximize their shopping time. Tara and Bobby had it all planned out. Bobby was assigned the purchase of an Insignia DVD player and Tara the marked down home computer system.

I wonder if Mary and Tom sprang out of bed the next Sunday morning with the same enthusiasm and intentionality that propelled them to the mall on Black Friday. Or, did Tara and Bobby wait all night at the front door of their church, if they attend, to reserve a seat up front, close to the pulpit. Ironically, when we have the proper motivation, we will do extraordinary things. Our bodies pump adrenalin through our muscles driving out even the faint touches of dreariness. We will rush from store to store after having gotten only a few hours sleep but on most Sunday mornings after a good nights sleep, we barely have enough staying power to keep awake through the Prayer for Illumination and Scripture Lesson. If the pastor does not force us to stand and sing the Song of Preparation we just might be in “la la” land before he finishes the introduction to his sermon. We say our spirit is willing but the flesh is weak but I wonder if the temptation for physical sleep is not an indication of another state of weariness

The writer of Mark inserts this morning's Scripture passage at the end of a rather lengthy teaching session. A disciple comments about the beauty of the Temple and Jesus uses the remark to remind his band of followers of the coming judgment of God against that house of worship. Stunned by his words, the disciples want to know more information. They want dates and places. They want a time line. Jesus provides his disciples with a rather vivid and detailed description of those events. He speaks about the coming siege and destruction of Jerusalem. He is telling them of the pending terror so that when they notice the first signs of the pending doom they will respond immediately. A crisis is coming and they must be ready.

He also warns his disciples that they will be persecuted for their faith. Jesus never attempts to sugar-coat the life of discipleship. They chose the hard way. They will not be able to later say that they had not been warned.

Jesus then reminds his followers that his message will be misinterpreted by many. They will attempt to lead people astray. They will offer creative ways of understanding his message. Their teaching will be attractive. It will fill in the gaps that seem to be missing. It will provide easy answers to difficult questions but the disciples are not be be fooled by these so called teachers.

He concludes his instructions by drawing on imagery used in the Old Testament to describe the coming Day of the Lord. The event will be proceeded by the increase of wars, earthquakes and famines. All creation will be shaken but in the midst of all this social, political, and ecological turmoil, they are to “be on guard,” “be alert” and “keep watch.” If we use a literal translation of the Greek text, his words appear very strange. The Greek term directly relates to the physical act of staying awake by not falling asleep. Literally, he seems to be saying, “when the heavens experience a cataclysmic upheaval; when the whole world is collapsing all around you, do not worry or panic and especially do not fall asleep.

This is not be the only time Jesus warns his disciples about succumbing to the temptation of sleep. On the night of his betrayal and arrest he uses the same term to encourage them to resist the feelings of weariness. In the darkness of the Garden, the use of the term appears more natural and appropriate. The disciples had endured a long week. They had walked many miles to come to the Holy City of Jerusalem. They had spent many long tension filled hours listening to Jesus answer the challenges and questions of the Pharisees. They were tired. They had just completed a Passover meal and their bodies wanted rest to digest the meal. They want to sleep but Jesus asks them to keep watch, to stay awake.

The use of the term, to stay awake, on the night of his arrest fits the setting but using it right after he tells his disciples about the coming destruction of civilization as they know it, appears out of place. How could a person even think about sleeping with the world in such a state of chaos? How could a person quietly lay there head upon a pillow and gentle close their eyes with such a threatening catastrophe looming?

His warning is more easily understood if we consider that even in the Garden, Jesus use it more for its figurative meaning than its literal. To understand the significance of this interpretation consider these questions. Why warn the disciples to stay awake if he was only using it in a literal sense? What difference does it make if they are awake when the solders come? He does not want the disciples to fight the solders. He does not want his followers to organize an escape plan. Jesus knows that the solders are to arrest him. So what does he mean by the term?

By his admonition, Jesus indicates that he wants his disciples to be more than just mentally and physically awake. He wants them to be spiritually awake so that they will understand the reality that is exploding around. He knows that they cannot control it. They do not have any influence upon it but he wants them to understand the theological meaning of the events that are about to transpire.

In his opening line of an autobiographic essay, the freshman wrote "Last year, I awoke from a coma that had lasted for 18 years. The coma was called 'my life.'" The young man then describe how a particularly gifted teacher had awakened him to a new reality. The teacher got into his face, grabbed him by the neck, shook him up and down, and made him take, for the first time in his life, an honest look at his life. That college freshman discovered that we can be physically awake but mentally asleep.

On the night of his betrayal the disciples were both physically, mentally and spiritually asleep. They did not understand anything that was happening even though Jesus had explained it to them many times. They may have been awakened from their physical sleep by the sounds of marching solders, but they were still slumbering in a spiritual sleep. Unable to comprehend the events, their faith collapsed into a sea of fear and they deserted Jesus.

The words of Jesus do not warn us to keep a physical vigilance but a spiritual one. Their message does warns us to resist the weariness of the world around us. We are not to become so immersed in the cultural values and lifestyles of our neighbors, friends and even family that we fall asleep to the spiritual reality that is unfolding before us. His message should compel us to discover the complex truth of living in the world but not being of it.

God's coming will not be proceeded by economic prosperity. God's coming will not inaugurate a period of peace and the cessation of wars. God's coming will not be marked by the eradication of hunger and disease.

C. S. Lewis once wrote,

God will invade. But I wonder whether people who ask God to interfere openly and directly in our world quite realize what it will be like when He does. When that happens, it is the end of the world. When the author walks onto the stage the play is over. God is going to invade, all right; but what is the good of saying you are on His side then, when you see the whole natural universe melting away like a dream and something else - something it never entered your head to conceive - comes crashing in; something so beautiful to some of us and so terrible to others that none of us will have any choice left?"¹

Jesus tells us to keep watch to stay awake.

Doorbells (Danielle's Dec 18 sermon)

2011-12-21T11:05:00.000-08:00

The doorbell used to be a very different thing. When I was little, I remember hearing it a lot, and I remember feeling a sense of expectation every time it rang: it could be anybody! A friend, a relative, a salesperson, a neighbor needing to borrow something or wanting to say “hi” – it could even be your minister. I remember ringing other people’s doorbells a lot: we dropped by to see our playmates, or we dropped in on our elders in the neighborhood, who gave us cookies and let us sit on their ‘good sofas’ in their ‘nice’ living rooms. We sold things door-to-door for choir and Girl Scouts. Doorbells were like instant messaging: they summoned people up, connected people, provided access to people you wanted to see. And homes were like public spaces that represented a person to the community and vice versa.

There are a lot of folks who still use their homes this way, and are really generous and open with guests and neighbors – even spontaneously. But we’re not a drop-in culture anymore. We’re in touch in other, more controllable, mobile ways, and our homes have become like havens: more private, more private, more private. In many homes now when the doorbell rings unexpectedly, people look up from what they’re doing and start asking questions: “Do you know who that could be? Have you ordered something? Check your cell phone - see if anyone’s called you.” I was at my parents’ home recently – the same people who had one of these open thresholds when I was a kid – when the doorbell rang and we all went off in our twenty-first century way, asking “Can you see whose car that is? Who would drop by at this time?” So I wondered out loud, “Could it be Mrs. Rosenfeld?” (she’s the elderly woman who lives next door) and my mom answered, “No, no - Mrs. Rosenfeld always texts before she comes over.”

I bet Mary would have liked to have gotten a text from this angel – just a little warning that he was on his way to her house. She would have seen some sort of suspicious, unidentifiable area code or a blocked number, and the message, “Greetings, favored 1! B there in 2 min 4 Annunciation.” Just enough time for this poor girl to bar the door, turn off all the lights, and jump under the covers, hoping that whoever this unidentified messenger was wouldn’t have any super-celestial way of getting inside. Forewarning cannot, however, stave off super-celestial powers and no sooner does Mary plunge beneath her blanket than she sees and feels light glowing through its threads. She senses the presence of something huge and terrifying in the room with her and she emerges, incrementally, from her shelter to find an awe-filled thing standing before her. A big humanish being. Not quite like a man or a woman. Luminescent. Whether the angel speaks out loud or speaks in Mary’s heart, its voice is clear, resonant, and fills her ears, leaving no room for thought with its message: “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.”

The angel is irresistibly holy and magnificent. It’s also frightful, bossy, and intrusive. It hasn’t called ahead of time. It hasn’t asked to come – it hasn’t even rung that iconic doorbell and here it is, not on Mary’s porch, not waiting on her “good sofa” in her “nice” living room, but right there in the middle of her space, messing up her house with its news of “favor” and “kingdoms” and “overshadowing.” The angel isn’t selling Mary something, it’s telling her something, whether she wants to hear it or not, and it represents a world totally outside of her comfort zone – the angel represents the world of God’s own being, which has a nice religious sound to it, but is, in fact, an overwhelming place. When we say “God’s own being,” we’re talking about the creative center of the cosmos, the power of everything that lives, the source of blinding light, the place from which the ground beneath our feet exploded, and now this huge, glowing thing wants to take Mary by the elbow and usher her into all that fire and wind and spirit and creative, redemptive, chaos. More than this, even – this huge glowing thing has come into Mary’s house to make of Mary a house for God, to house the creative power of the universe inside of her, despite all consequences. The Eastern churches use the word “God-bearer” to talk about what the angel is asking Mary to be. And what that means, essentially, is that Mary is being asked to be a universe-bearer. The angel is asking Mary to carry the heart of the world underneath her own heart.

This may have something to do with why we guard our own doors so closely. We’re not an inhospitable culture, but we have become a careful culture. The world is very, very big now, and we know it. Like Mary, we have a lot to be afraid of. When the doorbell rings, what could be on the other side of it? Could it be violence? Some person or some institution seeking to harm you, moving in darkness, operating out of hopelessness? Could it be need? Deprivation and inequity of material, emotional, and cognitive resources so profound it seems there is nothing one person could ever do to help? Could it be sickness? Entities making bodies and systems fight for integrity in ways that hurt? Maybe it’s this ambient anxiety that seems to be part and parcel of life these days, where markets and nations and parents perch on the edges of chairs, ready to react to any rumor, all suggestions, every possibility of conflict, loss, or concern.

Or maybe …it’s somebody who wants to love you, which can be just as threatening as violence, illness, or instability. Maybe outside of your door is another human being who wants to share part of herself with you in genuine friendship, romantic love, true neighborliness, or ministry. Maybe there’s a relationship outside your door that would require hard work, risk, and personal transformation. Maybe there’s an idea or new opportunity outside your door that would require you to stretch, to see the world differently, to change your mind and your perspective. It could be God outside of your door, present in any one of the scenarios we’ve just listed, with a message for you: “Greetings, favored one! Will you let me, and everything I love, into your home?”

Outside of your door, then, is the universe – with all its uncertainty, all its pain, all its baffling capacity for good and for evil – and like Mary, with each chime, each knock, each encounter between us and what is not us, we are being asked to bear it. There’s a temptation, therefore, to “hole up” and isolate ourselves from its assaults: the assault of information, noise, of other people and their needs, of global issues and back-yard issues. We try to create in our private space a peace that surpasses all else, and it’s not that we don’t want to share our peace with others – it’s just that we want to get a handle on things. We want to be able to expect or control our encounters with violence, illness, love, opportunity, even God. I can understand King David’s impulse in our reading from Samuel, this impulse to build a house to contain the thing out there: a prison for offenders, a hospital for the sick, a school for ideas and experiments, a church or a temple for God. But if none of those things will stay in their places – if we’re forced to live with the unexpected effects of instability, the discomfort of illness, the challenge of new ideas, the risks of love and opportunity, and the authentic engagement with all of these things that God wants us to have, we at least want to know when they’re coming. We want to know when the angel is going to show up, what he’s bringing with him, and how long he’s going to stay.

It certainly makes sense why the angel didn’t text, and didn’t ring Mary’s doorbell. He has brought the universe – all time, history, and place – to her house and placed it in her lap. He’s brought the reality of sin and the power of redemption to her house and placed it in her lap. He has brought the complete joy of birth and resurrection and the utter pain of death and crucifixion into her house and placed it in her lap. Many people would have found somewhere else to be, and quick.

Mary’s response is this: she opens her home. She may not understand exactly what the angel is telling her, but she accepts the promise of his greeting: first, that the message is a sign that she is favored, and second that God is with her. And Mary begins to embody the power of God made flesh. Mary becomes a house for God – and as a house, she ceases to be private, but becomes more than a public space: she becomes the center of the universe, and a threshold opening earth onto heaven.

And so heaven’s door is thrown wide open for us. God’s private space, God’s haven and sanctuary do not exist, and we are free to pass back and forth, with the angels, like children in the neighborhoods we remember. How vulnerable God is in this exchange – and how available to us is God’s strength … how complete is God’s presence with us, giving us everything we need to open our own doors and answer the call of all that awaits us on the other side of them. Jesus is the openness of God and he has come to unlock us and set us free.

You were ushered into God’s own being long ago with this young, confused and courageous mother of God. You are a favored one, the recipient of a message that you don’t have to fear because God is with you – both ringing and answering your doorbell. Everything you need to face the universe and to bear it – everything you need to heal it and to be healed – is sitting right in your lap, placed there by the One who created it all. And the house that God desires, the temple where God dwells, is in your very own heart.

Ending Matthew (Ray's commentary on our Nov 20 readings)

2011-12-21T11:04:00.003-08:00

TODAY’S GOSPEL (Matthew 25:31-46)

Ending a church year – ending our reading from Matthew

Sunday, November 20 is the end of the church year. A new church year begins on the First Sunday of Advent, the next Sunday, November 27. So on November 20 we end our year long reading from Matthew’s Gospel, and turn in Advent to begin reading from Mark’s Gospel.

The story of the first Palm Sunday is told in Matthew’s Gospel in chapter 21. This fall we have been reading the stories of what Jesus said and did in Jerusalem immediately after the first Palm Sunday. Near the beginning of Matthew’s Gospel, the teachings of Jesus in chapters 5 through 7 are so familiar and well-loved they have a popular holy nick-name, “The Sermon on the Mount.” One might call chapters 21-25 in Matthew the sermon in Jerusalem, or the sermon facing the cross.

The story of the cross begins in the next chapter

For in chapter 25 (from which we read on both November 13 and 20) we are on the threshold of the story of the cross of Jesus. That story begins in chapter 26. Bach opens the St. Matthew Passion with the anointing in Bethany, and then the Last Supper and then the arrest.

Christ the King asks us a question

We end our year long reading from Matthew’s Gospel on a high note, a very grand chord is sounded. It is Judgment Day, and Christ in Glory (which is always the glory of his self-giving love) asks us when did we feed the hungry and clothe the naked and give water to the thirsty and visit the sick and the prisoner, and welcome the stranger? And he makes the great statement that when we do it one of these, we do it to Jesus himself.

We feed the hungry at our Neighbors in Need dinner on Tuesday, November 15. Christ comes to dinner. Or making a meal for those at Deborah’s Place.

The kids in the parish through through the Heifer Project gave a camel to a family to give milk as well as transportation in a place where other kinds of animals might not survive.

We clothe the naked, bringing clothes to the church to give to Cathedral Shelter or St. Leonard’s – giving families and individuals Christmas gifts through the Cathedral Shelter.

We help people out of prison through St. Leonard’s Ministries in our diocese.

We welcome the stranger into St. Chrysostom’s.

We visit the sick at Northwestern Hospital – we send the clergy to bring prayer and the Holy Communion.

A quotation from Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa of Calcutta (1910-1997) often quoted this Gospel. My favorite quotation from Mother Teresa is this:

In Holy Communion we have Christ under the appearance of bread. In our work we find him under the appearance of flesh and blood. It is the same Christ. ‘I was hungry, I was naked, I was sick, I was homeless.’ Malcolm Muggeridge, Something Beautiful for God, 1971, page 74

In the middle ages, Christians loved to make lists of things – the Seven Deadly Sins, the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit. These six things – feeding the hungry, giving water to the thirsty, clothing the naked, visiting the sick, visiting the prisoner, welcoming the stranger – with the addition of giving a decent burial to the dead became known as the Seven Works of Mercy, or the Seven Works or Corporal (physical) Mercy.

Holiness of life is life lived close to Jesus

Holiness of life is life lived close to Jesus, in Holy Communion and in helping others – in loving servant ministry of others. We live close to him in reading his story, in coming to his table to be fed, in times of quiet prayer and in ways we serve through our volunteer work, our work, our giving. Welcoming others into the church.

OUR FIRST READING (Ezekiel 34: 11-16, 20-24) is the prophet’s great vision of God as the shepherd of the people of God. The prophet hears the voice of God saying God will seek the lost. There is also the vision of giving David as king, who be the people’s shepherd and feed them. At the time of Jesus, all

Israel

was looking for the coming of the new king sent from God, the “anointed one” (in Hebrew the Messiah, in Greek the Christ) the descendant of David. This for us was and is Jesus, born in Bethlehem, the city of David.

IN THE SECOND READING from the Letter of Paul to the Ephesians (1:15-23) Christ is head of the church.

The parable of the entrepreneurs (Danielle's Nov 13 sermon)

2011-12-21T11:04:00.002-08:00

Computer geeks have ruined us. I mean that seriously. Bill Gates has ruined us. Steve Jobs has ruined us. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, has ruined us, and not because we now spend all our free time looking at pictures of our high school friends' children's birthday parties. All of these insane geniuses have ruined us because our popular perception of them, the stories and legends we've created around them, the amazing scale of their specialized intellects, define for our culture what it means to be entrepreneurial.

Now it's always been the case that societies hold up their best and brightest. Our tradition has saints, after all - and if you think it’s hard to emulate them, when you consider our cultural saints, it gets downright overwhelming. Somebody like Bill Gates started writing code as a little kid and grew a company so big it ran up against anti-trust laws. Somebody like Jobs so revolutionized the way we process information that many of us can honestly look back two or three years and say that the way we think and act has been transformed by a cell phone. If that's what it means to be an entrepreneur, then we've got our work cut out for us. And this matters, because entrepreneurialism - the creativity, adventuresomeness, and fruitfulness that we associate with tech giants and designers and business moguls - is something every person of faith is called to.

Look at the three people in our parable today. Just as in the angry story about the wedding banquet that we read earlier this fall, Jesus tells this story to illustrate what the kingdom of God is like. And here the kingdom of God is like an investor who gives three entrepreneurs some seed money, some creative license, a vague deadline, and maintains high expectations.

You know now how it all cashes out: the first entrepreneur makes it work, just like the investor thought he would - that's why he was given the most capital. The second does fine, as expected, and is duly rewarded. The third entrepreneur caves. He crumbles. He doesn't have any good ideas, he doesn't have any training, he doesn't have time to do any research and can't think of anything game-changing to do with the seed money, so he defaults to maintaining the status quo and buries his talent - and his head - in the earth. The investor returns, and after he's oohed and aahed over the innovative and productive things entrepreneurs one and two have placed in his lap, he’s presented with a dirty bag of money that looks disappointingly familiar. Entrepreneur three can tell things aren't going well, so words start tripping and falling out of his mouth, "I was afraid, Mr. Investor! You're a little bit sketchy and everybody thinks you're kind of scary, so I thought if I just didn't risk the money, then we could all be happy - nothing ventured nothing lost, right?"

Wrong. Entrepreneur number three misunderstood the creative task he was handed in the same way we are prone to misunderstand it. He misunderstood what it means to be a faithful entrepreneur. In an atmosphere like ours of professionalism and expertise, not only can doubt about our fitness for ministry, our resources for ministry, and our God-given gifts run rampant, but we can misidentify what ministry and what gifts actually look like. We imagine that entrepreneurialism is about producing flawless things. Without fail. With great élan. Fearlessly. Our popular culture has it that entrepreneurs look like the three "saints" mentioned earlier - the brains, bucks, and bossiness behind Microsoft, Apple, and social networking. Or we might acknowledge that entrepreneurialism happens on a smaller scale, but with no less astounding, complex things that require specialized intelligence, like that really great Dyson vacuum cleaner that can pivot around corners. The inventors and investors behind all of these things are entrepreneurial and all of them are smart and imaginative. But none of them are unique. Rather, they are working hard at tasks that belong to all people of faith, tasks that are the essence of entrepreneurialism: creative problem-solving, shared risk-taking, and partnership.

Creative problem-solving begins with a perceived opportunity, challenge, lack - or maybe even with something really good that could be made better. In the church family, faithful entrepreneurialism could be as simple as this: Scripture has to be read every Sunday. The communion must be prepared every Sunday. Children need to be taught every Sunday. So you enlist yourself in one of those rotations. Opportunity, challenge, lack ... solution. There’s more to add here, because there's more at stake than just signing up - that's a first step. But let’s look at other potentialities in our parish life that call for a spirit of faithful entrepreneurialism. Ray preached about stewardship last week and mentioned a time in the church when a beloved tutoring program moved to a new location and the parish wanted to continue serving others in our space. Neighbors in Need was born, with creativity, shared risk, and parntership.

We have another feeding ministry here that has been launched into the entrepreneurial moment. Over a decade ago a dedicated group of people saw an opportunity in the desire for an outreach program, in the challenge of women struggling with homelessness, and in the needs of a neighborhood agency who serves them. The creative solution they arrived at was Cooking for Deborah's Place, where members of our church shop for, cook, and deliver a Friday meal once a month to an overnight shelter where local women sleep in safety. As with any group a community developed around the ministry, and the woman at the center of it, our friend Noma Cave, died a little over one month ago. In the wake of her death, creative problem-solving, shared risk-taking, and parntership are the name of the game as the people who love this mission come together and explore questions like, "How do we move forward, practically?" "How do we deepen relationships with our companions in this work, and how do we meet the precious challenge of building new relationships, inviting new people into the ministry in a busy, time-challenged parish?" There is spirit and energy in this discussion. There is openness, welcome, and imagination. There is flexibility, as the group thinks about its mission and methods, and generosity as people who have served in the past come forward to help and as others, like the Neighbors in Need crew, lend support and thoughtfulness to their Deborah's Place friends.

But there’s a still more-important feature of this conversation that magnifies the character of faithful entrepreneurialism: the tools being used to do this are not tools of expertise, professionalism, or insane genius. They are mystical, but they're not mystifying. They are the fruits of the Spirit - the gifts of the Holy Spirit that we celebrate in baptism and that flourish in our baptismal ministries. Deborah's Place is named for the female judge, Deborah, whose story was proclaimed today, not because she was a brilliant strategist, but because she was courageous, decisive, and wise. And the ministry of Deborah's Place will continue at our church because our church is tenacious, compassionate, relationship-oriented, even sacrificial. These aren't things you learn in school. These aren't one-of-kind assets plunked in your cosmic piggy bank before birth that stack your deck ahead or behind of anybody else's. These are habits of virtue, patterns of a redeemed life that grow as a body grows - our body of Christ in which we discover holiness with one another.

But all of these fruits, gifts, virtues, and habits are not generic, either. In each life, some of them are special. Some of them are talents. Among us today are people who are remarkably good listeners. Some of you are remarkably patient. Some of you are driven to be kind. Some of you are unfailingly diligent. Some of you are peace-makers, bridge-builders, consensus-seekers, and some of you are agitators. You become a lector because you read well, and you join the altar guild because you want to help, but is it really about your voice and how well you clean a chalice, or is it about your deep appreciation and reverence for word and sacrament? Is it about your sensitivity to holy things? Have you ever been told that you are hospitable, patient, incisive, perceptive, detail-oriented or good at big-picture thinking? Gentle, assertive, passionate, or dedicated? Those are your talents. Those are the things that make us all human, that make us a good creation. In a eulogy for one of those famous entrepreneurs, Steve Jobs' sister didn't share that her brother was great at algorhythms. She said, "He loved beauty." Bill Gates doesn't work for Microsoft anymore ... he was receptive to criticisms of his charitable giving and established a transparent philanthropic foundation. So he's generous, but maybe his talent is really openness. And Mark Zuckerburg could use his abilities toward any number of ends, but he says again and again that what he really wants to do is connect people with one another. So yeah, he's smart, but his smarts make a difference because of his talent: an abiding interest in people. These are the kind of talents we're all given to some degree or another, and they're the things we're called to draw out of one another. So if nobody has, in fact, told you that you are discerning, or loyal, or curious, then you deserve to be told. We have to be able to listen to our own lives, but we’re bound to listen to each other's, as well - at the very least because we need every talent in this place to be a whole body, with all its members.

And the kingdom of God needs it, too. The kingdom of God is people by faithful entrepreneurs. It is a community of talent, where self is offered as the creative solution to the opportunities, challenges, and lack we encounter. It is a community where risk is shared and rewarded and partnerships are built in support and discernment. And where these things do not take place – where talent is buried and creativity, risk, and relationship founder, there is loss. We suffer the loss of each others’ talent and we suffer the diminishment of our own. So our true partner, our foundational relationship, must be with the One creator-problem-solver who risks loving us enough to leave this earth and this family to our care, to leave each one of us to the other’s concern, and who trusts our talents to build a kingdom. Let us pray.

Almighty God whose loving hand has given us everything. Grant us grace that we may honor you with our substance and be talented stewards of your kingdom of love. Through Christ our Lord, Amen.

Happy All Saints! (Ray's Nov 6 sermon)

2011-12-21T11:04:00.001-08:00

We celebrate today the feast of all the saints of God. Those of heroic virtue, the classic definition, whose name everybody knows like St. Francis. And the special genius of this day is to remember everyone, perhaps especially those whose names are forgotten by the world, who are known only to God. In the New Testament the word “saints” refers to the whole community, and today we celebrate the entire community of those who followed Jesus on earth as his disciples in their day, and who are now with him in heaven.

A day to have baptisms

Today is one of the four days of the Church Year the Prayer Book specifically asks us to have baptisms – along with Easter Eve, Pentecost and the Feast of the Baptism of Jesus.

And today Danielle will baptize Paul Anthony Saunders.

And the day we offer our pledges

And in our parish family life, today is the day we offer our pledges to support St. Chrysostom’s in the coming year, in 2012. May our pledges be a tangible sign of each one of us renewing our own baptismal promises – a tangible sign of our yes to follow Jesus as his disciples – to accept, trust, follow, obey.

In a few minutes in the baptismal rite we will all renew our baptismal promises to follow Jesus – to accept, trust, follow, obey God’s call to love, to loving service – and we will all promise to support this child in his life in Christ. May our pledges be a sign of that promise, an investment in carrying out that promise. .

What have you done?

The road between Chicago and the hills of western Massachusetts has been traveled many times. Early in the new year Eve and I will drive it, to move to our new house, when I retire as rector here.

In 1858 a farm boy, 21 years old, came to Chicago from the village of Northfield, Massachusetts. His name was D.L. Moody. In later years he founded the high school I went to, and my son went to, back in his home town. I love D.L. stories. Someone asked him in later years how he dared to preach since he had so little formal education. Mr. Moody said, “I did the best I could with the advantages I have had. What have you done with the advantages you’ve had?”

Just the question for today.

I want to speak very personally today about how much I love this parish. Oh, maybe an element of saying goodbye. But more, this is my personal list, from my heart, of what I love about this community of Christ’s in this place, this koinonia. You make your list in your heart and prayers.

Hospital: My life as a priest has been woven in the lives of parishioners as I have visited in the hospital, or at nursing homes, or at home. I remember many years ago Dr. Ferris at Trinity Church in Boston saying he felt most useful in the sickroom – that has been my experience. It is a great honor to bring prayer and Communion and to be there.

Children: And there has been the enormous gift of so many children and young families – here at weekly worship, coming for Communion or a blessing. There is nothing I love more than a baptism! The gift of so many children in parish and school calls us to work together, calls us to make it a win-win situation.

New: I have loved some new things we have done -- things that weren’t in anybody’s mind or soul and then the idea came and we tried it. When some years ago tutoring moved to the new LaSalle Cornerstone building there was a clear wish to have a hands on outreach project in these buildings and we came up with Neighbors in Need which we started at Thanksgiving 2005 with a dinner for the good Gospel number of 12 guests. And Noma from heaven is saying remember also Cooking for Deborah’s Place. Then there was the time Mary Ellen had the music person from the Episcopal School in Manhattan come and that sparked Charles’ songs. And my doing a weekly email letter and all the connections that has brought. A reminder to me and to all of us to be open to the Spirit and the new.

Friends: Clergy friends in this diocese have meant a great deal to me. Bishop Lee was here Tuesday for Ben’s ordination to the diaconate and how much our seminarians have meant – two of whom were sponsored for ordination by St. Chrysostom’s. And then my colleagues as associate rectors – what diverse and rich gifts of mind and heart and soul they have brought! That you, Danielle, have brought!

And I am grateful for my other colleagues on the staff here. Audrey Williams is a combination of efficiency and tact – how I value both her advice and her discretion. It is a measure of her gifts that during her time here, while working full time, and being a mom, she has earned both her bachelors and master of fine arts degrees.

Music: Eve and I have loved living in Chicago, and one thing we both love about the city is the banquet of music available. Both at Orchestra Hall – one of my favorite places in the world – and in this parish church with Richard and Roger. If somebody said to me, quick, give me three examples of excellence: I would shoot back, Rudolph Serkin at the piano and Pablo Casals on the cello at Marlboro when I was in high school, and Richard playing Bach.

Sacred space: I am mainly talking about people and ministries, and rightly so, for they are St. Chrysostom’s. But a lot of people have taken part in a real labor of love in restoring and maintaining these buildings. We have gone over five million dollars raised for renovations since the capital campaign began in 1998. This tally does not include additional sums raised by the Day School, for instance for their lovely new class rooms. There have been several wonderful bequests (important to remember the church) but a clear majority of these funds are from living members. There have been both things seen: saving the bell tower, the new courtyard, re-facing the wall on the south side of the courtyard, restoring the stained glass and lighting fixtures. This great organ. And things not visible to you here: We should have a behind the scenes tour some Sunday of the new boilers and the electrical system. And this year there is the challenge of the clean up after a surprise flood. Not a penny of this has ever been spent that was not voted by the vestry, nor has any check ever been signed except by the lay leadership.

The bell tower in scaffolding.

This is to speak of capital expenses by the parish, by you, but the annual giving of course is needed for heat and light and cleaning and repairs.

We sent to you something called a narrative budget this year. Danielle and I and stewardship chair Craig Korte figured out how much each staff person costs to be here – and then broad brush what we do with our time. Then we asked what the building costs and what is done in it. Craig crunched the numbers to give you a simple chart of how your gifts of money are spent in worship and education and pastoral care and outreach and so forth. I don’t particularly love pie charts but it is a pie chart of some things I do love and care about deeply and so do a lot of other people. Your gift of money heats an apartment so a non-frozen priest can be there to visit in the Intensive Care unit at Northwestern. Your gift of your gift of money pays for electric lights and plumbing for a twelve step program to meet.

Worship: I deeply love the worship in this place, and specifically this service of worship at this hour today: Baptism and Eucharist and Sermon – Word and Sacrament -- this is the very best we have. The Book of Common Prayer in action. It is the same at places of worship far bigger than we are – and far smaller -- almost word for word at the National Cathedral in Washington or Trinity Church, Wall Street or all sorts of places. Indeed when our pilgrimage was at Canterbury Cathedral several years ago the liturgy was almost word for word the same as today’s (there did not happen to be baptism). Almost word for word except the words in Spanish and Mayan – Tseltal -- in Yochib under a tin roof. This is not ours only, but this is us at our best, our heritage at its best, the best we have to offer, the best evangelical tool we have. To speak to people who have a deep hunger and thirst for the spiritual life.

Eve and I went to Symphony last Thursday evening, and as I was about to leave I picked up a small notebook, which happened to be from a conference called CREDO I attended some time ago – a conference for clergy which was very helpful and meant a great deal.

I just had it with me to jot down thoughts – perhaps I got the idea because we’ve happened to sit near our two different Chicago music critics recently.

Anyway, there I was

sitting in row F at Orchestra Hall

Thursday night just before 8

and I opened the notebook to a quotation

in my handwriting

someone at the conference must have had me write it down.

And I read these words from St. Anselm –

part of a prayer he wrote to God:

… admit me into the inner room of your love. (intra cubiculum amoris tut) .

St. Anselm of Canterbury 1033-1109

God does – does admit me --

God welcomes us in.

Water and bread and wine are signs of it –

God welcomes me into God’s inner room of God’s love,

And I am washed and welcomed and fed.

And so are you.

And the door is opened for every one.

Poverty: My own experience of poverty –

Ray Webster’s own poverty of spirit in today’s Gospel –

at this moment in my life

is what isn’t finished or didn’t work

or didn’t get tried

or went off track.

And there are those I mourn. .

God puts a small piece of bread in my hand

to be a sign of that body given in love for me

on a day in our history,

the body of he who experienced poverty of spirit –

a small piece of bread is put in my hand

to say God is here

and loves

and it is OK, it is OK,

and those I mourn are safe with God.

And my hunger is met by the blessed feeding

God gives me, gives you, each one –

And I am fed

by the abundance of God’s love in Jesus Christ.

(This sermon was preached by the Rev. Raymond Webster, Rector, in St. Chrysostom’s Church, Chicago, Illinois on Sunday, November 6, 2011 All Saints’ Sunday and Stewardship Sunday.)

"Il y a moi-meme" (Ray's Oct 23 sermon)

2011-12-21T11:04:00.000-08:00

Beginning with an invitation

It is an honor for me as rector of St. Chrysostom’s to invite you to Sunday, November 6 which on the calendar of the church is All Saints’ Sunday. All Saints’ Day is November 1 when our bishop will ordain Ben Varnum to the diaconate. The Prayer Book allows us to keep the Sunday after as the great festival – one of what the Prayer Book calls the Major Feast Days of the Church Year. All Saints’ is a majestic liturgy, when we celebrate the whole company of those who have followed Jesus as disciples, who believed in the Lord Jesus and followed him, in all the centuries and around the world, and who are now with him in heaven, held in the safe keeping of his love.

I invite you to make a pledge

All Saints is just the right day to invite you to make a pledge to support the ministry of Jesus Christ in this parish church in 2012. It is an old parish custom to invite the congregation to bring their pledge cards up to the altar along with those already received, to be offered to God with the bread and wine for the Eucharist.

November 6^th will also be a combined service. Our last on May 22^nd was such fun and joyous that we all thought we should do a combined 9 and 11 more often and we will on November 6th.

This will be the 19^th time I have been honored to invite this congregation to offer our pledges. Of course, I am inviting you to give for a year I will not be here -- I will be for two months of 2012 and then no longer rector and 900 miles away. The ministry of this great parish is far larger than any one of us, and will go on long after all of us in this church today are no longer here.

I am going on to a new chapter in my life and am very excited about that. I am sad at cutting old ties, but it is in the natural order of things. The parish is also going on to a new chapter and may that be marked by generosity and love. It is an honor for me to invite you to be a partner and stake-holder, a supporter, in that new chapter.

I invite you make your offering on November 6^th out of love for God, in thanksgiving, first and last for God’s love for you in Jesus Christ, for the riches of God’s grace, for all that is good and true and beautiful in your life.

Nothing I enjoy more than a baptism

Out of love for God. In this past day, in the past twenty four hours, I have had two baptisms. Nothing I enjoy more than a baptism. One of the greatest honors a priest has, is to baptize people. The majority are infants, although we are all delighted to baptize an adult and you will recall that a year ago in the summer I had my first baptisms by immersion – two adults I was to marry the next day. The Prayer Book not only allows baptism by immersion, if you read the fine print, it is choice number one!

Each candidate is presented by name to the Celebrant, or to an assisting
priest or deacon, who then immerses, or pours water upon, the
candidate, saying …

Given this picture of God

This past day’s baptisms were both infants, lovely little lives. I said the baby’s name and I baptize you in the Name of the Father – with a pour from my hand -- and of the Son – and again a very small sprinkle – and a third as I said and of the Holy Spirit.

Here in these names is the picture of God we are given in the Gospel of Jesus Christ – I mean as I say those words, or Danielle says them, or they are said in any of the languages of the world or have been said over two thousand years – we are given a picture of God in these names.

In the Name of the Father

“Father”, that incredibly human name, and as someone who is both a dad and a son I know precisely how human and fallible the word is. The word is meant as a sign of a relationship that our human loving of dads and moms mirrors. It is a deeply human name that means we are invited into a relationship with God that our human loving – made in God’s image and likeness – mirrors.

It is a deeply human name that is a sign that God loves you – not all human parents do, or are capable of doing that, or choose to do that. God always chooses to love each life.

and in the Name of the Son

We cannot see God. God so loved the world, that God sent God’s only begotten Son to show us what God is like. And what we see is God’s love for every human being born into this world. Every one.

Father and Son – these human words, these incredibly human words – speak of a love that is given and returned and Jesus shows the way, is the pioneer in showing us how to return love to the God who loves us.

Jesus did that completely on the cross, laying down his life for us. And Jesus calls to follow day by day on his way of love – loving God and loving others.

and in the Name of the Holy Spirit

The picture of God given us in the Gospel of Jesus Christ is incomplete without all three names. The Holy Spirit is the name of God living with us and within us – making our interior selves God’s temple and dwelling place. Giving us something of the love we see in Jesus so we may give it away. Paul wrote in the Letter to the Romans, the love of God is poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. Not a discrete Anglican sprinkle but poured, splashing in. And the Holy Spirit gives us rich gifts for loving God.

You are loved by God with a boundless immensity – loved by God whose Son laid down his life on the cross on a day in our history out of love for you – you and every single human life.

God calls us to glimpse that love and trust it – not completely understand, not know everything (although one of the great gifts God has given us is the human mind and we are to love God with our minds) – but trust and love.

It just took a minute for me to touch these small new lives with water and say these ancient words given to me to say:

I baptize you in the Name of God who is love in action, love that has come and taken on flesh in human history, love that is present with us, and given to us to give, love that is like wind that fills our sails, and like fire that melts our frozen hearts.

And these children and you and I are given rich gifts, immense gifts all sorts of gifts, often quite unexplored gifts, for loving God in worship and prayer and for loving other people.

That love is given to you. God gives it to you. God calls you to accept it and trust it and return it. You. And every single one.

Not one forgotten …

… even if the whole world has forgotten.

Thursday evening Eve and I went to the Chicago Symphony, and got there early – for a radiant performance of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony – and there were very few cars in the part of the garage where I like to park. “Il n’y a personne” I said to Eve. And she remembered years ago I said that when we went into a subway station in Paris and I had said, “Il n’y a personne” – nobody here – and a voice came “Il y a moi-même.” Hey, I’m here.

“Il y a moi-même.” Hey, I’m here. Yes you are.

And God sees you

The great message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is that there is a God, who does see each human being – who is present with each one, and sees each one and loves each one. In my time here at St. Chrysostom’s how often have I said how much I love the story in John 9 where Jesus, walking along the road, saw the blind beggar by the roadside – he saw him, he did not look the other way, the beggar was not invisible. Human beings make other human beings invisible in all sorts of ways, Ralph Ellison’s “The Invisible Man”-- God sees each one, even perhaps especially those forgotten by the world (in the Prayer Book’s phrase), those invisible to the world, those on the margins, those on the other side of the fences we human beings are always putting up. God’s eye is on the sparrow. Even the littlest. Especially the littlest.

And may someone who has been a priest a long time say that sometimes there are people who in the eyes of the world have every advantage, and in every sense are on the in of whatever one is to be in, in this city – and find themselves poor inside and empty inside and on the outside even from those they love. Oh it happens. And sometimes unable to see. Unable to see where to go, how to go, certainly unable to see God’s love for them.

God so loved that person and every other one in the world of God’s making that God gave his only begotten Son, to be born among us as a human being, who we could see and remember, whose story we could read, and hear the record of what he said and did, and in that hear and see the love God has for each one. For you.

Let us pray.

Come, Holy Spirit and give me light,

To see the love of God for me

And for each one, everyone, in Jesus Christ.

Come, Holy Spirit, help me hear

God’s call to follow Jesus day by day

On his way of loving God and others.

Give me wisdom and light to see the

Rich and special gifts you give each one of us

For loving on his way.

Give me trust in God’s love

At the very center of my life,

Give me wisdom to trust even when I cannot see.

And may I make my offering of love –

In love and thanks and joy –

The offering of my heart. Amen.

(This sermon was preached by the Rev. Raymond Webster, Rector, in St. Chrysostom’s Church, Chicago, Illinois, on Sunday, October 23, 2011, the Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost.)

Ray's Oct. 23 commentary

2011-10-21T06:27:00.000-07:00

The first reading is Deuteronomy 34:1-12

We began reading the story of Moses, back on Sunday, August 21, from the first chapter of the Book of Exodus. Today we come to the end of the story of Moses – to the story of the death of Moses – in the last chapter of the Book of Deuteronomy.

This is the ending of the fifth book of the Bible – the ending of the five books which are the Torah for our Jewish brothers and sisters.

In the timeline or chronology of the first five books of the Bible, the people of Israel have been out in the wilderness for forty years since they were freed from slavery in Egypt.

They are within sight of the promised land, about to enter the promised land.

Moses, who God called to be the leader of the people, who God made use of as God’s instrument to bring the people into freedom, is not going to enter the promised land. That will be for another leader, Joshua.

The people of Israel had been slaves in Egypt, and over the forty years in the wilderness they had been formed as a free people. Not a perfect people. Not a people who didn’t make mistakes. But they had learned the skills needed to survive and be free. They were formed as a people.

So God will form you and me as disciples of Jesus – our primary identity.

Moses laid hands on Joshua, the leader who would bring the people into the promised land. The bishop will ordain Ben Varnum to the transitional diaconate on November 1 here in St. Chrysostom’s. The moment of ordination is when the bishops lays his (or her) hands on the ordinand’s head. This is the ancient custom directly out of the Hebrew Bible.

Joshua is described as full of the spirit of wisdom. So may we all be. I remember that in Thomas Aquinas the first gift of the Holy Spirit is wisdom. This comes from Isaiah 11:2 where wisdom is the first of the list of gifts of the Spirit, the list which became the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit.

The last verses of the first lesson are a wonderful tribute to Moses. For me the most moving phrase is that the Lord knew Moses face to face: Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face is the translation in the King James Version.

When we come before God, God is unseen, as though hidden in the cloud, that great image from these readings from the Hebrew Bible. Yet we know the face of God in Jesus Christ. And a great theme of these readings is the presence of God with us – unseen but with us. Who loves us.

Today’s Gospel reading is from Matthew 22:34-46.

We are coming close to the end of our reading from Matthew’s Gospel. Our last reading will be on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, the Last Sunday after Pentecost from Matthew 25, the great passage that when we feed the hungry or give water to the thirsty, or visit the sick or the prisoner, or welcome the stranger, or clothe the naked, we serve Christ himself.

And in chapter 26 we begin the story of the cross of Jesus. Johann Sebastian Bach began the St. Matthew Passion with the first story in chapter 26, the anointing of Jesus. Then comes the Last Supper and the prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane and then the arrest of Jesus. This is only four chapters away. Three chapters to our final reading from Matthew (in Advent we begin reading from Mark).

In today’s great passage Jesus is asked which commandment is the greatest and Jesus gives the summary of the law, quoting two verses from Deuteronomy. I know by heart the King James translation, found in the Book of Common Prayer, page 324:

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with
all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great
commandment. And the second is like unto it: Thou shalt
love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments
hang all the Law and the Prophets.

And here is a clear call to us to follow Jesus as his disciples on his way of self-giving love: loving God and loving one another.

God's things (sermon on Matthew 22)

2011-10-21T06:26:00.000-07:00

If you got your hands on one of the oldest prayer books, put together in the sixteenth century, you would find a service of baptism with these instructions: “The pastors … should oft admonish the people, that they defer not the baptism of infants any longer than the Sunday, or other holy day, next after the child be born ….” (Gibson, The First and Second Prayer Books of Edward VI, 242). In other words, for many, many years in our church when you had a baby you were expected to bring him or her to the font the very next time that the congregation gathered publicly – no more than 6 or 7 days later. Now there were practical reasons for this in Elizabethan England: infant mortality was such that people were encouraged to baptize their children swiftly. And also, parish registers, the big books where we still keep track of all of your baptisms, were the primary way of recording any birth in a given town. But … in the hearts and minds of those people, and in our imaginations as we read those old instructions years and years since, there’s a spiritual reason far surpassing the practical. It’s put best by a new mother I know who said, “I wish we could go straight from the hospital to the church to baptize my son – I just want to give him back to God.”

As the parent of a toddler, I now think about that mother’s moving words in an entirely disillusioned way – I would actually like God to do some babysitting for me every day around 5:00 PM. But what she was trying to express – and I think you all know this and have felt it in some way about some person or thing in your life – was a deep sense of thankfulness. More than that, though. What this new parent felt, what somebody newly in love feels, even what somebody who experiences a loss, tragedy, or has to adapt to any kind of “new normal” might feel, is a life-altering sense of gratuity. That everything we have right now, right this minute, is an astounding, shocking gift. That we don’t merit anything: we can’t earn the right to be loved just as we don’t deserve to be unloved; we can’t earn the right to do work that suits us just as we don’t deserve to be jobless or without a calling in life; we can’t earn the right to health just as we don’t deserve to be sick or injured. We can’t earn the right to be alive, and we certainly don’t deserve to have our lives diminished by the powers of sin. All of this is kind of a mind-bender, I realize, but the point, again, is gratuity. Grace. We are creatures surrounded on all sides by beautiful and terrifying gifts that come our way whether we want them or not. There is nothing we can do to change that; what we can change is whether we know it and what we do about it. And that’s what Jesus and his opponents are talking about today.

There’s no friendly conversation between these two parties. You hear it right there in Matthew’s telling of the story: the legal experts and the teachers who hate the empire get together with this other group of people who have befriended it in order to trap Jesus in the perfect riddle – a riddle we still don’t know what to do with today. One of them poses the question: is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor or not? If Jesus says ‘no’ he offends the Herodians, the friends of the empire. If he says ‘yes’ he offends the Pharisees, its critics. Both groups can make his life miserable. Being divine and all, Jesus knows what’s going on, so he gives the perfect response to the perfect riddle. “Show me the money,” he says. And then he looks to the mark on the coin, the imprint that the money bears. “That’s Caesar’s face on this coin. So I guess it’s his. Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.”

So the takeaway here could be that Jesus is too clever by half. He effortlessly avoids the trap, making these people look silly in the process. And in doing so, he gives anyone who wants to dismiss this story the answer that they need: Jesus is dealing shrewdly with troublemakers and is not trying to tell us what to do with our money. End of story – let’s move on to the next parable.

If that’s your take on it you would be sort of right. Jesus isn’t telling us what to do with our money here … because he’s telling us what to do with our entire lives. His response to his opponents operates on a couple of levels. One level is a statement that is smart and gets him out of a bind. The other level is a challenge that can inspire attraction, repulsion, or curiosity in those who hear it: give to the emperor what belongs to the emperor. Give to God what belongs to God. And whose, by the way, are you?

We could spend an entire morning talking about what it does or doesn’t mean to belong to an empire, or what an empire looks like in our time. But a more important question for at this moment is do we belong to God, and what does that mean for us? This is where the knowing and doing enter the picture, because the definite answer is, Yes. You belong to God. And there are two ways we can talk about that. First, you exist. Everything that lives, everything that has breath is part of God’s ongoing creative process that has never, ever ended. The seven days of creation aren’t finite – they’re eternal, and we are as fresh and as surprising to God as Adam and Eve when they were brand new. You are one of God’s things in the same, immediate sort of way that they were. You belong to God.

Second, some of you were given back to God – when you were too young to take vows or make promises for yourself, the people entrusted with your care acknowledged in a public ceremony who the author of your life really is. A few of you out there did this on your own – you came to the waters of baptism as an adult and spoke for yourself, publicly, stating, in effect, “I am not my own.” And what happens to us in baptism? What do we do to drive that point home? We name you, we wash you, but we also seal you: we mark you as Christ’s own forever, making a sign on your forehead that represents the permanent, indelible mark on your soul that can never, ever be taken away. Just as Jesus asked to see the coin, if he were to ask to see you – if you stepped forward and he asked whose mark was on you, he would see his own cross shining back at him. You belong to God.

So it’s not up to you to decide that – it’s up to you to know it. Then it’s up to you to live like it. And what does that entail? Again, there are two ways to talk about this. Knowing that you belong to God and living like it entails both a loosing and a binding. It is freeing and it is obligating. Think about all of the things that want to claim us: work is often the first thing that comes to mind. Right behind work is money, and hunkering over money is empire – not nation states, per se, but the coalescence of all of the forces in the world that seem irresistible, and all-determining, and trap people in ways of life that are unsustainable. And on a micro-level, each of us has some other Caesar vying for us: unhealthy relationships, addiction, perfectionism, anxiety, or indifference. Those things are real, and your experience of them is real, but their claim on you is a lie. It’s an illusion. You belong to God, with no option for lease or mortgage. You are marked as Christ’s own. He sets you free to walk through this world not as a captive, but as a child of God.

Yet freedom isn’t the same thing as independence. You belong to God and so you do God’s work, which is to take care of all of these amazing gifts. Again, it’s as though we never left the garden, and God is showing us this new world, every day, entrusting it to our care. All of this hit home for me in a big way this past summer, when my son and I visited parishioners high up on the top of a nearby apartment building. Joshua was supposed to be swimming, but was running laps around the roof, and as I chased him around the corner of the poolhouse for the first time, I stopped dead in my tracks: all around us I could suddenly see the city shooting up toward heaven, so solid; so magic; so crawling with life, stretching out one side as far as a person could see while on the other side this magnificent lake, this primeval body of water that used to cover the very earth beneath our feet right now spread itself out to unseen shores with more cities where more human lives were moving and changing and beginning and ending, and then in the middle of all of it was this one little child, and I realized, “Oh my God. None of this is ours. These buildings, the very work of our hands – none of it belongs to us. These beaches, these planes, these cars and churches and hospitals. These trees and fish and people. All of this is such a gift. All of this is pure gratuity. Even this little boy, this little person who consumes my life – even he doesn’t belong to me. I am just somebody God is using to hold him right now. It all belongs to God.”

When you know that you are God’s – when you can really feel it - the only response is to care. To care for God’s gifts, to steward God’s city, to hold God’s people. And that is what living like you belong to God entails. You treat everything that surrounds you – this place, this earth, the people you’ve been given, and your own body – as though you were holding it all lightly, like you hold a newborn baby, tending to it all for God. Confident but gentle, seeking only the good, recognizing in all else a fellow creature, or a fellow creation, undeniably aware that you and all that you behold are God’s things.

Let us pray: O God, whose gifts surround us and whose grace is the very breath in our lungs: open our eyes to the truth about our lives and to the depth of our calling in you so that the good things you have made might be yours and yours alone, for all the world to know. In God’s holy name we pray, Amen.

Sermon preached by the Rev. Danielle Thompson at St. Chrysostom's Episcopal Church in Chicago, IL on Sunday, Oct. 16, 2011.

Our angry God?

2011-10-07T09:30:00.000-07:00

God is not all sweetness and light. This week’s story of the Golden Calf (Exodus 32) and the Parable of the Wedding Banquet (Matthew 22) feature an angry God and an angry king who represents God. Passages of Scripture that depict God’s “wrath” appear throughout both the Old and New Testaments – and Christians have never had an easy time grappling with them!

Biblical scholar Gary A. Herion puts the two classic questions around our angry God well:

In the “wrath” stories, is God really mad, or are the biblical authors just using figures of speech?
If God is really mad, is it a part of God’s personality, “co-equal” to Love, or is it a passing phase?

Here’s a few guidelines to help us puzzle through these issues:

Passion v. Pathos: Passion describes loose, uncontrolled, radiant emotion that we might call “irrational.” Pathos is emotion directed toward a particular situation, and is related to ethos, which has to do with moral norms. In Scripture, God’s anger has the character of pathos and is provoked mainly by covenant-breaking: human straying and acts of injustice. In Exodus, God’s pathos is directed toward Moses when he initially refuses to stand up to the Egyptians, and toward the Egyptians when they persecute the Israelites. More than any other Ancient Near Eastern deity, the Hebrew God is no capricious, nor is Yahweh inherently wrathful.

Angry Kings: God is often depicted as a king in the Old and New Testaments, not only because the metaphor is apt (God is Lord over Israel), but because metaphors themselves allowed pious Jewish people to avoid using the divine name. Ancient Near Eastern kings often expressed their “wrath” formally, in writing. When a king wrote that he was angry, he was being provoked by an external event – something that required him to exercise his power and express his displeasure in a way that offered no apologies. Wrath was his “royal prerogative.” Could the same be said for God’s wrath in Scripture?

Wrath in the New Testament: In Matthew, which we will read in worship until late November, God is never depicted as wrathful. John the Baptist does, however, mention a “day of wrath.” This day, ironically, is when God will conquer all wrath. The adversity that humans experience just by being alive – not because God, in God’s wrath, punishes misdeeds – will be no more.

New Testament wrath is more at home in Revelation, where, again, it is associated less with God and more with a coming day of judgment and setting-right. Wrath, therefore, is never some free-floating thing but is occasioned by injustice and broken relationships.

Bibliography: Freedman, David Noel, ed. The Anchor Bible Dictionary, v.6 (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 989-998.

(Danielle Thompson)

Looking ahead to Exodus 20 (commentary by Ray Webster)

2011-09-28T10:24:00.000-07:00

St. Catherine’s Monastery at the foot of Mount Sinai
The first reading is Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20

Moses led the people of Israel in the wilderness to the mountain where Moses had encountered God in the Burning Bush.

A word about Mount Sinai and St. Catherine’s Monastery

We do not know which mountain was the Mount Sinai in the Book of Exodus. Tradition identifies it as Mount Sinai in the Sinai peninsula, pictured below (in a photo from Wikipedia). Whether or not this was the actual mountain climbed by Moses, it is typical of the region.

And I note that at the bottom of the photo you will see the ancient Greek Orthodox Monastery of St. Catherine’s. St. Catherine’s was so very much out in the middle of nowhere, that it was by-passed by wars and internal church disputes, with the result that it is a major treasure house of Byzantine art and manuscripts. St. Catherine’s web site is: www.sinaimonastery.com/en/index.php?lid=1

One of the most ancient manuscripts of the Bible came from St. Catherine’s, and is known as the Codex Sinaticus, or Sinai edition as it were, and it too has its own web site: http://codexsinaiticus.org/en/

Well, whether or not the mountain which today bears the name Mount Sinai was the actual one Moses climbed – what the Greek Orthodox tradition calls by the wonderful phrase the God trodden mountain – it is certainly typical of the region.

God gives Moses the Ten Commandments

In chapter 19 of the Book of Exodus, God called Moses up the mountain. A thick cloud descended on the mountain, that great image of the presence of God – an image I find especially appropriate for God who exists and is with us, is unseen, as though within the cloud. And in today’s lesson we have the Ten Commandments given by God. All ten are in the lesson, although the passage has been abbreviated. has been pointed out over the centuries, the first four of the Ten Commandments have to do with God, and the next six to do with our ethics.

The first

The first commandment is that the God who brought us out of slavery, who delivered us is to be our only God. No other gods. This one only. Not even number one – but the only one.

The second

Number two is that we are not to make any idols or worship any. Only God, and that God is not seen.

Whether or not this commandment meant or means for Christians to not make art showing Biblical characters or Christ has been a hot topic of controversy over the centuries. In the church we have a copy of an icon of St. John Chrysostom from Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. The reason it came from the 9^th century when he lived at the beginning of the 5^th is that in between there were the iconoclasts, the icon breakers. A reason St. Catherine’s in Sinai is such a treasure trove is that it was so off the beaten track the iconoclasts apparently forgot about it. But then the Greek Orthodox decided that because Christ took on human flesh and blood – was incarnate – it was OK to make representations of him.

At the top of this post is a great icon of Christ from St. Catherine’s, which I deeply love:

The third

We are not to misuse the Name of God. Take the Name in vain, swearing. (The Quaker hesitation to take an oath is based on another quote from Jesus, let your yes be a yes and your no be a no – two American presidents affirmed rather than swore).

The fourth

We are to remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. In Exodus the explanation is given that God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh. In the explanation in Deuteronomy 5 there is the interesting statement that it is because you were slaves in Egypt and God brought you out and therefore told you to keep this. It is to be a day of Sabbath, a day of rest, a day remembering God the deliverer. Sabbath is to be time with God – a key part of a spiritual life, a life of discipleship.

The fifth

Honor your father and your mother.

The sixth

You shall not murder. (A very good example that translation involves interpretation, for the King James Version is famously Thou shalt not kill.)

The seventh

You shall not commit adultery.

The eighth

You shall not steal.

The ninth

You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

The tenth

You shall not covet what is your neighbor’s.

Here is the great foundation of the Law – the ethics of Israel.

The summary of the Law

Jesus summed up it with two quotes from Deuteronomy in Matthew, that you shall love the love your God and your neighbor as yourself. On these two hang all the law and the prophets of Israel. There is a very familiar quotation of this in the Book of Common Prayer on page 324:

Hear what our Lord Jesus Christ saith: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.

(Ray Webster)

Poured Out

2011-09-28T10:18:00.000-07:00

Sept. 25 sermon on Philippians 2:1-13

Susan is a mother of four. Every breakfast, lunch, and dinner, she piles a table with food, corrals her kids in one room, wrangles them into seats, and loads their plates. Once everybody is served, she wanders around the table with a milk jug in her hand, filling empty glasses, topping off half-full glasses, cutting everybody off at thirds because milk is expensive, and these kids drink it like water. Susan never sits. When all is done and the children run away, she clears the table and gets down to dishes. She eats leftovers as she works. If you knew her, you would see that she is tired. You'd be able to tell that something is missing, something is too much, some piece of Susan is getting lost in the shuffle of her life. She tells herself, "This is just how it is - I've got a lot of kids, I've got a lot to do," but she knows other mothers, other fathers who seem to take it all in stride - or, at least they laugh a little more than she does. All around her the world grinds on, and Susan feels as though she's being poured out, day by day, like that gallon of milk.

Depending on where she goes looking for it, Susan might not find a lot of help in the Christian tradition where "pouring out" is concerned. The idea that self-effacement, self-erasure, or self-abnegation is required to be a disciple is one that's been taught and preached in many times and places. There are popular understandings of the idea: the lyrics to a catchy devotional song repeat, "Less of me and more of him." A famous hymn gets at this idea some with the chorus, "Have thine own way" and the image of a person being like malleable clay. The apostle Paul wrote of himself, more than once, "I am being poured out like a drink offering.”

It's often around Paul's letters that issues about self-sacrifice come up. Paul writes to a lot of people that are being persecuted, so that accounts for some of it. But Paul's christology - his teaching about who Jesus is and how Jesus works - can be hard to understand. Today, he writes to a small church in Greece, and recites his own hymn that describes what it's like to have the mind of Christ: "he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness ..." Paul continues, "he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death - even death on a cross."

For many people who first heard Paul’s words this song wasn't just telling a story about Jesus. It solved a huge theological problem. The very earliest Christians may have known people who actually knew Jesus, but they didn't have any sort of a developed way of thinking about how it was that he was God. They relied on people like Paul, on the stories about Jesus that became our Gospels, and on their experiences of the Holy Spirit in worship to help them understand who this man was and what he meant for them. So here, in this song, was a clue: Jesus emptied himself and took on human form. He purged himself of all divine attributes like knowing everything, seeing everything, or having all power, and took on the limitations of human knowledge, human sight, and human power. In doing so, he suffered. He poured himself out. He became something other than what he was and gave up what he had a right to in order to save us. If you follow this - and, quite frankly, we're diving in to some deep stuff here - it means that Jesus didn't simply die once on the cross to release us from our sins ... he sacrificed his essential self at his birth by being incarnated and becoming a person.

So that's a very clever way to solve a metaphysical quandary. You pour out the God, fill up on human, and you've got a God-man. It explained how two such opposite things as divine and human being could be united in one person. It explained confusing things, like how Jesus didn't save himself from being killed.

But it sends you down a tricky road if you're looking to be a disciple - because Paul is telling us to be like this, right? Paul wants us to have the same mind in us that was in Christ. So here begins not only a theological tradition - a particular way of thinking about how Jesus is God - but an attitude tradition. Here begins a way of thinking about how Christians should regard themselves and their suffering that has hard consequences. For it suggests to be like Jesus we have to empty ourselves - we have to pour ourselves out. And if, for Jesus, that meant that he sacrificed his identity, giving up his divine self in order to live for us, then how can we be concerned with maintaining our selves? How can you count yourself as a person worth preservation or protection if self-emptying, being poured out, is the defining pattern of life in Christ?

This is a critique that feminist and liberation theologians who write about poor or oppressed groups of people have leveled against the idea of Jesus' self-emptying because it's been used in the past to keep people "in their place." You want to fight for freedom and equality? Well Jesus took the form of a servant. You want to think more highly of yourself? Jesus humbled himself. You can even set the big issues of marginalized groups of people aside, and we all know somebody whose personal faith tells them that it's ok if they suffer because Jesus suffered; or they won't stick up for themselves because Jesus was lowly and meek. There are Susan’s in this world who brush aside this horrifying feeling that they are losing themselves because nothing has convinced them that they are worth finding.

It may not seem like this is something a gathering of people like us would have such trouble with. Mainline Christians - people who are not Roman Catholic or Orthodox or Protestant Fundamentalists - don't really go in for self-abnegation or self-obliteration these days. A lot of us may even be here this morning because of that. I, for one, was drawn to a tradition like ours because I hated feeling like I was such a lump of clay, needing to be molded into another shape. I hated being guilty all of the time and having the sense that I should be poured out and something else should be poured into me.

But here, this gathering of friends and neighbors, this larger community outside these walls? We just do self-emptying a little differently. We pour ourselves out every day like drink offerings on all kinds of altars. Ask the attorney crouched over a brief at 3:00 AM whether she knows about self-emptying. Ask the parent for whom "stay-at-home" means board meetings and sports and fundraisers and committees and rarely setting foot inside the four walls of a house. Ask the analyst and trader as their stomachs plummet with the economy. Ask the person who worries that she has to perform well enough at work or at parties or who worries that he has to look good enough and have good enough things in order to be loved whether they know what it feels like to have self pouring out of you like milk, or to feel self draining out of you like water.

In August, I attended a conference where a presenter told the story of sitting with a group of leaders of huge churches, all of whom confessed that their personal lives were falling apart. They found it hard to pray, they worked all the time, and they couldn't remember why they had gotten into ministry in the first place. They were depleted, completely drained. These men and women had vision, direction, talent, prestige, money - and they were totally bereft.

At the same conference, an international aid worker told the story of a pastor in Ethiopia during a time of state persecution of the church. Like the apostle Paul, he had no family but wandered the countryside tending to these little churches, taking whatever food or money was given to him. He was captured one day while preaching and thrown in prison. Three times he was scheduled to be executed, and each time the electrical apparatus failed, so finally he was released and banished from the village. On his way out of town, this aid worker met him, and knowing that the man had just escaped death, asked where he was going. "I'm on my way to preach a funeral," the pastor nodded, and locked arms with another friend as they took off over the hill. This pastor was wounded, threatened, probably physically hungry - but he was full.

And that's the thing. He was full. The Ethiopian pastor was living in an immediate and perspective-enhancing situation and was being spiritually fed in a way that allowed him to go out, day by day, and offer himself to the world without losing himself. He was a character - he was full and vibrant, not erased or effaced, and yet he gave of himself, he donated his spirit freely. He could pour himself out because he was constantly drinking something in.

That's the thing about Jesus' self-emptying, too. The idea that Jesus sacrificed a part of himself to be like us results in a tidy theological package, but shies away from the bold claim of our faith that Jesus offered his whole self on behalf of humanity. His self-emptying was a giving of his whole self, God giving everything for us. Jesus didn't empty himself of God; he poured all of himself out in love and service for us because he was drinking freely from his Father all of the time.

So then there's us, and our self-emptying. We may not always feel like Jesus calls us to self-abnegation, but our lives often look like we're in a race to pour ourselves out. We work hard, we meet all sorts of obligations, we keep up the pace and give time, money, and energy to all kinds of people in all kinds of ways. But we can't pour ourselves out without drinking something in. To be sure, God always gives us the grace we need to keep going - but that's manna for the day, which you can't store up. That's water from the rock, which is a miracle - a temporary solution to the problem of thirst. We're come here, to places like this, because we're thirsty, and because we're hungry, and we need something that lasts. Week after week we come back because we believe that in these books and these prayers and this music and this food and this fellowship we will find living water and bread from heaven. And we must. We must find it here. God has brought us together to feed us, and being a disciple doesn't mean starving yourself to emptiness - it means eating God's food while your appetite for it grows and grows and grows.

God doesn’t want you to hoard yourself or measure yourself out sparingly. God does want all of you – but God wants you to give yourself for the things that give you life; and God wants you, not the husk of you that’s left after you’ve been emptied out. And many of us probably want that too: we want to give ourselves to God, or at least we want to start to understand what that look likes. But it’s our selves we give to God, standing up like the resurrection people we are. There is a message of comfort for everybody who feels like Susan, that even when you lose yourself you’re never lost by God. But there’s a message of hope that is stronger: there is food and drink that will keep you full, and when you find it, you can give as freely as you receive.

(The Rev. Danielle Thompson, preacher)

Kenosis, anyone?

2011-09-23T07:10:00.000-07:00

Normally, Ray and I spend a lot of time digging around in the Gospels. Then this past summer, we decided to focus on the Old Testament readings about Creation, Abraham’s family, and Moses. So what about those poor Epistles (“letters”)? What about those twisty-turny passages of Scripture snuck in-between the two big readings that are sometimes so theologically opaque and sometimes so amazingly on-point?

This Sunday is the perfect opportunity to let the Epistle shine. Paul’s Letter to the Philippians (members of a church in Philippi – today Filippoi, Greece). Philippians is actually a sort of love story: in Paul’s words you can detect the depth of friendship between him and the church, despite some conflict. But you can also read about the depth of love that Jesus has for the world in the portion of Chapter 2 that we read this week, which is sometimes called “The Kenotic Hymn.”

Excerpt from Philippians 2:1-13:

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,

who, though he was in the form of God,

did not regard equality with God

as something to be exploited,

but emptied himself,

taking the form of a slave,

being born in human likeness.

And being found in human form,

he humbled himself

and became obedient to the point of death--

even death on a cross.

Therefore God also highly exalted him

and gave him the name

that is above every name,

so that at the name of Jesus

every knee should bend,

in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

and every tongue should confess

that Jesus Christ is Lord,

to the glory of God the Father.

Why is this called a Hymn?

In certain passages of Scripture, notably in Paul’s letters and in the Gospel of Luke, it’s possible to pick up on sayings, phrases, and repeated statements that have a different ring to them. People who study the history and effect of worship (liturgical scholars) can identify some of these passages as hymns, liturgical responses or statements, doxologies (formal expressions of praise), etc. Though we don’t know for sure whether Philippians 2:5-11 was actually a hymn, it may be an example of a component of early Christian worship buried in our Scripture.

What is “Kenotic”?

Kenotic refers to kenosis, a Greek word that denotes emptying. The classic idea here is that Jesus emptied himself of divine attributes in order to assume human form. It’s a way to describe the Incarnation, or how God became human. A modified version of kenosis – and one that I think is more helpful – suggests that Jesus didn’t actually shed himself of divinity, but had an attitude of complete humility. Humility here has more to do with regarding others as great rather than regarding yourself as insufficient. Jesus emptied himself of self-regard and self-seeking, pouring himself out in love and service to others.

The opposite of kenosis is pleroma, which means “fullness.” Having emptied himself in service to others, Jesus was nevertheless full of God’s grace.

Why does it matter?

Philippians is about patterns. Paul in general is about patterns. Jesus is a template and we pattern our life on him not by looking at what he did and imitating it, but by joining ourselves to him and becoming one body with him. Baptism is the way we begin to do this and the Eucharist sustains us in it. But the pattern of that life is emptying and filling; kenosis and pleroma; death and resurrection. We begin to see Jesus’ life laid over everything and we begin to feel our own lives taking its shape: emptying and filling; kenosis and pleroma; death and resurrection.

(Danielle Thompson)

The Bible text of the Gospel lesson is from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA, and used by permission.

Bread that the Lord has given (September 18 sermon by Raymond Webster)

2011-09-23T07:00:00.001-07:00

Exodus 16The people are free. In our first reading today (Exodus 16:2-15), we find the Hebrew people on the other side of the Red Sea. Free.

We have been reading these past Sundays the stories of how God acted in history to deliver the Jewish people, to save them slavery. It is the Passover story, the formative story of Judaism. We have been remembering these stories, and they echo in all sorts of ways in the stories of Jesus, which we also remember. And as we remember, God draws near to us and speaks God’s Word.

We have remembered how God spoke from the Burning Bush and sent Moses to stand before Pharaoh and say, “Let my people go” – those words of such importance in the history of Chicago and Illinois and our country -- biblical words fundamental to the abolition of slavery. In classic Christian theology, we believe God has created each human being and each is of infinite value – and the church is called to be a voice for the value and God given rights – “endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.” As Moses spoke God’s Word “Let my people go” the church in our time is to speak that Word, God’s Word of the value and dignity of each one.

And then how Pharaoh refused to let the people go, and God sent the ten plagues on Egypt.

And then how God had them sacrifice a lamb and sprinkle the blood on the doorposts so the angel would pass over the houses of the Hebrew slaves the night of that most terrible of the ten plagues, the last and most terrible, the killing of the first born in Egypt. And then Pharaoh let them go.

And then changed his mind, and went after them, and the Hebrews found themselves at the shore of the Red Sea – trapped, stuck – and God parted the waters and they walked through on dry land. The Egyptian horsemen followed, and the waters closed over them.

And the people stood on the further shore, free. God had delivered the people. We read this story last Sunday, the great passage we read every year at the Easter Vigil (the one lesson we are required to read at the Easter Vigil) for it looks to how God acted in history in Jesus Christ to save us from sin and death. And last Sunday we also read the great song of thankfulness of Moses and Miriam – I love the detail that Miriam took up her tambourine to sing -- God has thrown the horse and its rider into the sea.

And today we come to the very next story. The people are free. Saved by God. Safe. Free. And what happens?

They wake up to the fact that they are out in the middle of nowhere, totally ill equipped to live in the wilderness, unprepared for this survival exercise they find themselves on.

And they complained. OK, they were hungry. Always good to begin with our real needs and who we really are and what we really need. They were human beings who were hungry, and had no food and not a clue as to how to get any.

They would learn how to get food. Over the next forty years wandering in the wilderness they would learn. A whole new generation or two would be raised up who learned how to survive. Their parents had learned how to survive as slaves. Never downplay the skills and sacrifices needed to survive in what must have been often degrading and terrifying situations. But now they were embarking on a whole new training course as a people.

For the moment, where they honestly were was scared and angry and clueless and they complained.

And God who saved them, provided food. I have no idea how God did this – I know what quails are, and they appeared all over the place at night, but the manna is a mysterious substance. Well, what manna was, this was not the way God was going to do it over the long run. This was a miracle of feeding just for the moment. There is a detail in the story that I love -- the detail that if they tried to keep the manna – take a doggy bag home for the next day – it would go bad. I love the earthy King James Version that someone kept and it bred worms and stank. (Exodus 16:20) This was not something to store into barns, there weren’t any barns, this wasn’t for the long run, this was not how it was going to be.

The miracle for the long run would be the people learning how to feed themselves, how to be free and feed themselves. God would inspire them to do that, inspire their leaders to learn how to do that – maybe Moses’ long time as a shepherd precisely out in the middle of nowhere gave him knowledge and skills for teaching the people how to get food, how to take care of animals who would provide food.

And God who provided food in the wilderness would also provide the deepest feeding we need – the rich bread of the Word we find in all the ensuing stories and poetry and hymns of the Scriptures. God would feed. And form God’s people by God’s Word, by feeding them, feeding us, feeding us today.

God who had acted in history to free them and save them, would now form them.

God will form us as disciples of Jesus

Just so, God who has acted in history in Jesus Christ to save us, will form us as disciples of Jesus.

You may well say, whoa, wait a minute. Did you just say I am a disciple of Jesus? I thought that was Peter and John and Matthew, two thousand years ago.

Yes, it was. They were the first disciples. Jesus called them to follow him.

And I believe deeply God calls you to follow Jesus just as truly.

God calls us to follow Jesus day by day on his way of self-giving love, as his disciples.

By the Holy Spirit dwelling in each one of us, God gives each one rich gifts for discipleship. Gives you rich gifts.

I always remember that in Thomas Aquinas the first gift of the Holy Spirit is wisdom, the wisdom to know we are loved by God, the wisdom to know how to love.

What does it mean to be a disciple of Jesus?

I am trying to make a list of what makes a disciple. Perhaps it is my French Cartesian side.

There is a whole movement in parishes of our diocese at this time to make a simple list of the basics of being an Anglican. I am a big fan of this movement and the clergy and parishes involved and of the Rev. Clarence Langdon is who is sort of godfather of this movement! And this list is my contribution, although I am quick to add that what is on the list is from the Bible – the Bible is on the list! – and from the Prayer Book and our tradition.

Making a list, checking it more than twice, in order to invite you to the discipleship God call you to embrace. The mission of our parish is to make disciples. So what does discipleship mean?

Being a disciple means listening to the Word of God. Listening to the Bible read here in church, listening to what the preacher hears, listening to what you hear within you. I believe the Holy Spirit dwelling inside you (that inner place within your mind and heart is the Temple of the Spirit) will light up images and words and passages. Or give you things to wrestle with, like Jacob wrestling through the night with God.

One of the great principles of the Reformation was to put the Bible in the hands of the laity, to read and meditate on and pray about, and listen for God’s Word to you of how much God loves you. May the Holy Spirit give you light and wisdom to glimpse that and trust it. And offer God thanks and love in return.

Being a disciple means coming regularly to Holy Communion. Here God feeds us, both in the bread, and in the entire liturgy – music and prayers and word. Here the bread is placed in our hands as a tangible sign that God is with us, present with us, loving us with the love we see in Jesus – the love that is the bread of my life.

Being a disciple means regularly asking God’s forgiveness which we do in the prayer of confession and being forgiven.

On this day we remember the Hebrew people out in the wilderness without a clue as to how to feed themselves, we remember the great theme running through the Hebrew Bible and into the Gospel teachings of Jesus and the New Testament, the consistent theme of helping those who are hungry, feeding the widow and orphan, feeding the helpless. An essential part of being a disciple of Jesus is helping others – serving Christ as we serve those in need (Matthew 25). May we have wisdom and vision to broaden that to the myriad ways human beings can be helped, from shelters to hospices to hospitals to schools.

One of the mysteries of human life is that when we help others we are fed ourselves.

Discipleship means our ethical and political choices. In our tradition we value freedom to make those choices as a positive spiritual value – we are called to be mature free disciples, with consciences formed by worship and prayer and reading the Word of God. The Holy Spirit living within us will guide our consciences. In a modern democracy, it is not for the church organization to tell people who to vote for, but it is for the preacher to say that these decisions are part of our discipleship. Part of our responsibility. And our tradition tells us we are free to make those decisions. This obviously opens us to diversity of opinion in the church which I believe is healthy in a free society and church.

Being a disciple means discerning, listening for, looking for what God wants us to do and to be. How am I obedient to the call to follow Jesus on his way of self-giving love as a free and mature person?

Being a disciples mean taking our share in building the community of the church – gathered by God here around Jesus’ table and altar. Sharing joys and sorrows, welcoming the newcomer.

Being a disciple means our giving.

It means building a home, whether single or with four kids – a place of refuge and renewal, a place of hospitality. (When I say that, I am using “home” in its widest sense – many urban people practice hospitality within their residence, others elsewhere – that is simply a personal choice). May the place we live be sometimes a place of prayer. Remember that in the Sermon on the Mount here in Matthew Jesus said when you pray go into your room and shut the door.

Being a disciple means finding places to be still and quiet and pray. It can be anywhere. God will be there with you, hidden as though within the cloud, yes. And truly there.

Being a disciples means taking care of oneself – discipleship can be a long distance run (and I pray it will be for you). Discipleship may mean laying down our life, as Bonhoeffer did, like a fire fighter. If that hour comes may God give us courage and strength. God may also call us to the long distance run. On the way we need to find the things that feed us – the things we have a sense God makes use of to feed us. The beauty of the world – art, music, poetry – sport, running along the lakefront in the early morning. You are free to make your own list, find your own things, free to be open to the Spirit leading you to what feeds, to things that feed you, to things by which God feeds you.

How much God loves you. Loves you and me and invites us to a way of life – our mission is to extend the invitation to this way of life. To follow Jesus as his disciple day by day. And to trust at the very center of who we are – faith at the center -- God’s love for us in him, love which nothing can break.

(This sermon was preached by the Rev. Raymond Webster, Rector, in St. Chrysostom’s Church, Chicago, Illinois on Sunday, September 18, 2011, the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost.)

image found at http://fineartamerica.com/featured/3-bread-from-heaven-nigel-wynter.html)

How does God feed us? (Sermon prep for Sept. 18 by Ray Webster)

2011-09-14T09:40:00.000-07:00

The first reading is Exodus 16:2-15

I always like to step back and look at the setting of Bible stories. We come in today on the people of Israel after the Exodus.

God has acted in history to set them free. The great formative foundational action by God has taken place. The Hebrew people are no longer slaves in Egypt. They are free people on the other side of the Red Sea and you would think wow, they should be dancing in the desert, and singing the Hallelujah Chorus. Wrong.

They were not happy. They were mad. They were complaining.

What they were remembering was not what God did but the good old days back in Egypt, when they were taken care of or at least thought they were being taken care of.

And their complaining is clearly directed at Moses and his brother Aaron, who led them out here into the middle of nowhere. Where they were hungry.

Of course the “good old days” back in Egypt were under the conditions of slavery, which did mean one got minimal food to survive – as long as one’s master wanted one to survive.

This very human complaining would characterize the people of Israel for good deal of there early freedom.

What the people of Israel did NOT say was OK we are free, what does God want us to do and to be? It would take forty years in the wilderness to sort that out.

God had acted to free them – but the people are strikingly hazy about who God is and where God is and what God might be doing, let alone wanting them to do.

But now the writer tells us God fed them in the wilderness. God sent meat in the evening (quails in the New Revised Standard Version) and bread in the morning – the mysterious manna in the wilderness.

God gave bread to the people to eat.

How does God feed us, here in Chicago today? What is the bread we are given?

There is the Bible. By means of the Scriptures God speaks to us the Word God has for us – always, at its center, the word of God’s love for each person. Each one. No one left out.

God feeds us in the Eucharist in which the bread and wine are the great signs of God’s presence with us and love for us in Jesus Christ.

God feeds us when we go to God in times of quiet prayer, as Jesus did throughout his ministry.

When we think and pray about a decision or an opinion, I believe God by the Holy Spirit dwelling within us (I love the Quaker image of the Inner Light) guides our consciences. I also believe God gives us the strength and courage and wisdom and love to carry what we are given to carry and do what we are given to do.

In Thomas Aquinas wisdom is the first of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and I believe God gives us the wisdom to love.

These are all ways God feeds us on our journey in Chicago today.

The second reading is from the Letter of Paul to the Philippians 1:21-30

We begin today reading from Paul’s letter to the Christian church in Philippi. Paul calls them to live in a manner of life worthy of the Gospel of Christ, and to face persecution as Paul has faced persecution.

The Gospel reading is from Matthew 20:1-16.

The setting of these stories of Jesus teaching his disciples is his journey from the north of Israel down to the city of Jerusalem.

Last week Jesus spoke strongly about forgiving. From the cross Jesus would pray, “Father, forgive them” – giving us in those words, and in the words of the Lord’s Prayer, that prayer to make our own.

Today he gives us this earthy teaching – relevant to any of his communities – that the newcomer is loved and welcomed by God just as much as the old timer who has borne the burden of the day.

For the wages given to each disciple is the friendship and love of God in Jesus Christ and God does not ration that out.

It strikes me that in our first reading about God feeding the people in the wilderness, and the Gospel reading about the wages paid to God’s servants by God, the great fundamental accent is on what God is doing.

Good to step back periodically in the life of the church to ask what God is up to? God is up to a whole lot – loving each person. The newcomer. The old timer. The outsider (how Jesus went to such effort to reach the outsider). The people on the “in” (Saul of Tarsus was educated on the “in”) and the people of the “outs” (like a tax collector named Levi who took the new name Matthew, which is the name given to this Gospel from which we are reading). And you and me.

(Ray Webster)

Freedom and Forgiveness (sermon prep for Sept. 11 by Ray Webster)

2011-09-07T18:56:00.000-07:00

The first reading is Exodus 14:19-31

To set the scene once again in the Book of Exodus: the Jewish people were slaves in Egypt. God sent Moses to stand before Pharaoh and tell Pharaoh to let the people go.

When Pharaoh finally did let the people go, they headed east, toward home, back in Israel.

We come in on the story today at the dramatic moment when Pharoah had changed his mind, and decided to go after the Hebrews with his army, to bring them back into slavery or kill them.

The people of Israel are led by a pillar of cloud during the day, which burned at night to light up the sky. The cloud is one of the great images of the presence of God in the Hebrew Bible. A reminder that in this story God was acting in history to set the people free and on their journey into freedom – and here at this dramatic moment – God was with the people.

When the people came to the sea, Moses stretched out his hand over the water, and the water parted, and the people went through on dry land.

Then Pharaoh and his chariots came through the same way, and the water closed over them.

And the people were free.

In place of the Psalm for Sunday, we can read together Exodus 15:1b-11, 20-21 The Songs of Moses and of Miriam, a song or canticle of praise to God for setting the people free.

We give thanks for freedom. For me, freedom is an important theological idea. God is the creator of all human beings, and because of that, every human life is of infinite value before God, and belongs ultimately to God, and has certain basic human rights.

Freedom of thought and inquiry and speech are not only civic virtues, they are important in the life of the church.

We remember the legacy of the story of Moses and of the Exodus in the modern search for human freedom. Moses standing before Pharaoh to say, Let my people go, has echoed profoundly in the history of Chicago and Illinois and America, in the fight to end slavery, in the Civil War, in the modern civil rights movement.

Today’s first reading is a substantive part of a reading which the Book of Common Prayer requires us to read at the Easter Vigil.

For the story of God acting in history to save the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt looks to the Easter story – the story of how God acted in history to set all people free from sin and death, in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

God who brought the people of Israel through the Red Sea waters on dry land, has brought us in Christ through death into the new life. We have the promise and hope of new life with Jesus in heaven, at our end – the promise that our end will be with him.

And here on our journey through life, we enter the new life loved by God in Jesus Christ, all gift, all grace.

We remember today’s reading from Exodus vividly at Easter in the opening verse of the Easter hymn, Hymn 199:

Come ye faithful, raise the strain of triumphant gladness!

God hath brought his Israel into joy from sadness:

loosed from Pharaoh’s bitter yoke Jacob’s sons and daughters,

led them with unmoistened foot through the Red Sea waters.

The profound connection of this first reading with Easter is singularly appropriate, as by chance this Sunday will be the tenth anniversary of 9/11.

The second reading is from the Letter of Paul to the Romans 14:1-12.

Also by chance, our second reading from the Letter of Paul to the Romans 14:1-12 contains a great passage quoted in the opening words of the funeral service in the Book of Common Prayer:

For none of us has life in himself,
and none becomes his own master when he dies.
For if we have life, we are alive in the Lord,
and if we die, we die in the Lord.
So, then, whether we live or die,
we are the Lord's possession. (Book of Common Prayer, page 491)

The Gospel reading is Matthew 18:21-35.

Then in Matthew 18:21-35 there is Jesus’ great call to us to forgive, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.

(Raymond Webster)

A Moving Talk (August 28 sermon by Ray Webster)

2011-09-02T13:40:00.000-07:00

Rabbi Herman Schaalman is the dean of rabbis in the city of Chicago, rabbi emeritus of Emanuel Congregation up on Sheridan Road. Rabbi was a Lenten speaker several times here in St. Chrysostom’s, and on a memorable occasion he spoke in the church about how he was speaking as a rabbi – not as a convert – but as a guest who we respected for who he was.

I am glad and proud that could be said of St. Chrysostom’s Chicago, although it can also be said of other of our neighbors at this time in history. Rabbi Schaalman led a Jewish service for Cardinal Bernardin in Holy Name Cathedral.

It is important to me that we respect and honor Jewish people. I think it is being true to the best of who we are – to try to understand and listen to and respect people of different Christian communities and also people of other faiths, Jewish and Muslim and Buddhist. The best of who we are is tolerant and understanding.

Rabbi’s talk left our community deeply moved, sitting in the church in silence. Complete silence. I have heard about that happening at musical concerts although I am not sure I have ever experienced it. At concerts enthuasiasts normally are ready to applaud and shout the instant the final note sounds. But this was an authentic moment of being deeply moved, and there was simply silence. I thought to myself, well, let it just be for a while, and then I suggested we read the 23^rd Psalm together.

The students took off their shoes

Before his talk, when I introduced Rabbi Schaalman, I remembered the story that when James Muilenburg the great teacher of the Hebrew Bible, of the Okld Testament, gave his last lecture at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, the students from Hebnrew Union across Broadway who came took off their shoes at the door, for where the Word of God was being read and studied and commented on and listened to was – and always is – holy ground.

That comes of course from today’s story of God telling Moses to take off his shoes before the Burning Bush, for where he was standing, on the mountain, on Mount Sinai, was holy ground: the place of encounter with God, the place of hearing the voice of God, the word of God.

Where we read the Bible, where we tell the stories of Jesus – it can be here in church, it can be at a service in the lobby of a senior residence, it can be by a hospital bed, it can be in our living room, we are on holy ground. And we listen for God speaking to us. The United Church of Christ has a motto, God is still speaking. God is. Not normally, I believe, in an audible voice. But normally by means of the ancient words of Scripture. Not all of them, not always, but by means of the words and images of Scripture.

When we hear how valued we are, how loved by God, it is holy ground.

When we hear how each person, each human being, each human life is valued by God, it is holy ground.

When we break human dividing lines – when we say let my people go, let this person go, let me go, it is holy ground.

When we see a human need and try to help it is holy ground. I believe God the Holy Spirit dwelling in us lights up our understanding to enable to see a need, and then to look for ways to help.

When we go to the quiet place of prayer, which can be anywhere, it is holy ground.

When we love someone, it is holy ground. When we love God and trust God loves us, it is holy ground.

The encounter with God can be anywhere. Moses was out in the middle of nowhere when God encountered him in the Burning Bush. This long unfolding story of the Old Testament and into our New is about God’s presence with human beings and love given to us – to everyone, no one left out.

The message God had for Moses was that God was sending him back to Egypt to stand before Pharaoh and him to let the people go.

It is to Moses’ credit, that when Moses heard this, he stayed put in his bare feet before the Burning Bush . When Jonah got a similar message – to go to Ninevah – Jonah promptly bought a ticket on a boat headed in the opposite direction.

Moses asked a question

Moses asked a question. The Bible is full of questions – it is never wrong to ask questions, to seek and inquire. Indeed the place of inquiry and learning and discovery can well be holy ground, where something beautiful or something that will help people is found.

OK, if I go back to Egypt to the Hebrew people and say God has sent me to lead you into freedom -- what , God, is your Name? Who shall I say is, er, calling?

God answered with the majestic mysterious words “I AM who I AM”, “I AM.” There is a vast literature of study about these words over the centuries.

It is important to be who we are, not to try to be somebody else. It is important to remember where we came from, ands also important to be true to the rich gifts God has given each one of us. For oh yes, God has indeed given you those gift. .

If we are true to the gifts we are given, of course we may end up somewhere quite different from where we started. That is the American way!

When I was a teenager I picked up an Anglican devotional book, a book of prayers. It had advice about preparing for saying one’s confession, and one of the sins listed was moving above or thinking about moving above one’s station in life. Very Victorian English. Not American at all (not modern British either for that matter).

Bishop Wylie – my rector who some of you knew later as Bishop of Northern Michigan – asked to see it. He said most of these things including that one were not sins and more or less told me to get rid of the book, which I did, and stick to St. Francis de Sales. .

It is important to be true to who we are. And what each person is, is greatly loved by God – for that is who God is by God’s eternal nature.

Jesus had to be true to who he was

Jesus told his disciples that he must go south to the city of Jerusalem. He could not run away from his mission. He had to be true to who he was, his very nature – for both nas Son of God and as a human being, he could not run away, he had to face what came in self-giving love, trusting in the love of the Father holding him, sending him, receiving him back.

Just so we who are so loved, are to face what comes in self-giving love. That is who we are.

The decision Jesus had to make was a real decision – a deeply human decision. Today’s Gospel crackles with the tension of the decision and when Simon Peter tried to talk Jesus out of it, he got a famous and very humanly angry response from Jesus not to tempt him. Not to tempt him to run away.

(This sermon was preached by the Rev. Raymond Webster, Rector, in St. Chrysostom’s Church, Chicago, Illinois on Sunday, August 28, 2011, the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost.)

God speaks and calls: sermon prep for August 21 (by Ray Webster)

2011-08-30T19:25:00.001-07:00

First reading: Exodus 3:1-15

God speaks to Moses from the Burning Bush

After killing an Egyptian who was mistreating a Hebrew slave, Moses fled into the wilderness. He became a shepherd with the tribe of Jethro, and married Jethro’s daughter.

Today we have the great story of God calling Moses from the bush that “was blazing, yet it was not consumed.”

God called to him out of the bush, "Moses, Moses!" And he said, "Here I am." Then he said, "Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground." He said further, "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob."
So the direct link is established between the God who revealed God’s self to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and the God who was now revealing himself to Moses.
God was taking the initiative to act, to free the people from slavery in Egypt and bring them into the Promised Land.
God told that when the people were free, Moses was to bring them back to this mountain.

I believe God speaks to us today

I believe God does speak to us. We may well not hear the audible voice of God! We most probably will not.
One of the ways I believe God speaks to us, is by means of the stories and words of Scripture. God the Holy Spirit dwelling within us, will give light and understanding to speak to us by means of images and words of the Bible.
God also may speak to us by means of the worship of the church – by means of music and art and architecture.
God also may speak to us in the situations of daily life, which touch our conscience and call us to do something – or to refrain from doing something.
The Quaker tradition reminds us that God speaks in the silence. The Holy Spirit may use times of silence to speak in the silence within us.

What is God’s Name?

Then we come to this great and mysterious passage about the Name of God.
But Moses said to God, "If I come to the Israelites and say to them, 'The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,' and they ask me, 'What is his name?' what shall I say to them?" God said to Moses, "I AM Who I AM." He said further, "Thus you shall say to the Israelites, 'I AM has sent me to you.'"
You can see the echo of these words, when Jesus in John’s Gospel refers to himself seven times in the great “I am” statements – perhaps the most famous and well loved, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”
And then God speaks to Moses in verse 15:
God also said to Moses, "Thus you shall say to the Israelites, 'The LORD, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you': This is my name forever, and this my title for all generations."

Saying the LORD instead of God’s Name

It is a tradition in English Christian translations of the Bible -- following Jewish practice – to write the word LORD where in the original Hebrew there appeared the Name of God. The original is four consonants – no one is quite sure how to pronounce them. Among other things, it has been the custom in Judaism for centuries not to speak them!
In the French Jerusalem Bible, the great modern French translation of the Bible, the word is given Yahweh. I confess that much as I love that version, which I think on the whole is a very great work of art, I have a deep uneasiness about breaking the ancient tradition of not trying to speak that name.
For one thing, I grew up in a heavily Jewish community. Classmates would not only not try to say that ancient name, they would write the English word God as G-d!
For another quite different reason, as a Christian I speak the Names of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Jesus and Trinity. Breaking the ancient silence to speak the Names open up to us -- revealed -- in Jesus Christ.

God has sent Moses on a great mission

The hidden God of Israel has revealed God’s very self, to send Moses on a great mission – to stand before Pharaoh and speak God’s word of freedom.

Gospel: Matthew 16:21-28

The turning point in the story

We come today in our summer-long reading through of Matthew’s Gospel to a great dramatic turning point in the story. Jesus tells his disciples that he intends to go down to Jerusalem, where he will almost certainly be arrested and killed. Not only does he intend to go – he must go.

Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.

Must

.. must …I do not believe that it was in any way God’s will that God’s innocent Child Jesus suffer. I believe what was (and is) the will of the Father was that Jesus face what was coming in self-giving love, and not run away.
I believe that is what you and I who follow Jesus also must do.
In the tension of moment, Simon Peter took (Jesus) aside and began to rebuke him, saying, "God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you." But he turned and said to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan!”
Well, that was the tension speaking. I do not believe Jesus thought Peter was Satan. But Peter was tempting him to run away.

Jesus calls his disciples – including you and me

Then Jesus called his disciples and calls you and me, his disciples today, to follow him on his way of self-giving love.
Then Jesus told his disciples, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

(Raymond Webster)
________________________________________________________________________
The Bible texts of the Old Testament, Epistle and Gospel lessons are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA, and used by permission.

What's in a name? (August 21 sermon by Deacon Larry Green)

2011-08-30T19:24:00.000-07:00

What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name

would smell as sweet.”

– William Shakespeare, 1564-1616, British poet and playwright.

We have heard some great stories thus far this summer and I now give you

Exodus.

Since we have started using the Revised Common Lectionary, one of the interesting

benefits would hear snippets of one story this week, and then snippets of another

story next week.

But we get to hear larger chunks from some of the great stories of the Old

Testament.

“

Back when we were using the old lectionary, which is located at the back of our

Prayer Book, The new lectionary allows us to follow a story, week by week, pretty

much through its entirety.

And One of the faithful bible study participants has made this point before. But this

continuity allows us to notice some things we might have missed otherwise.

For example, it’s surprising how many people we meet in those stories who one day

come to a crossroads in their life, they make what is often a significant and difficult

Choice and as a result they are given a new name. Now, I’m not talking about a

superficial change of names, like what I went through when I decided that I

preferred to be called Larry Anthony Green rather than Larry Anthony Cornelius

Green. Because the kids called me AC Spark plug or sparky.

That a meaningless change because, as Butch Coolidge, a character in the movie

Pulp Fiction, correctly observes, that because we are Americans, our names don’t

mean squat.

But in the Old Testament, it was a different matter altogether; very often a

person’s really name meant something, and it could signify something about their

relationship with God.

For example, in one of those stories we encounter a man named Abram (“exalted father”)

who becomes Abraham (“father of a multitude”), when he decides that he can trust

that God will make him the ancestor of a great nation, even though he and his wife

are old and childless.

And then there was Jacob (“holder of the heel” or “supplanter”), who tricked his

aging and blind father into giving him the blessing that rightfully belonged to his

older twin brother Esau (“hairy”). One evening, Jacob wrestles all night long with a mysterious

stranger who turns out to be God’s himself. And for his stubbornness, and courage,

Jacob is rewarded with a new name, Israel (“strives with God”), and a permanent

limp.

Many years later, the descendants of Abraham and Jacob have settled in Egypt,

when one of Jacob’s sons, Joseph (“he will add”) was a high official in Pharaoh’s court.

And for a period of time – maybe several hundred years – the descendants of

Joseph flourish in Egypt;

I mean, they do well for themselves. But, as our first reading from Exodus

describes, “a new [Pharaoh] arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph,” who

doesn’t remember how Joseph saved the country from famine. And this new

Pharaoh is appalled at how large the Hebrew population has become, and

is afraid of the power their numbers represent. And so he contrives to control them

with forced labor and harsh taskmasters, and reduce their numbers by ordering the

Hebrew midwives to kill all of the newborn male children.

But two of the midwives, Shiphrah (“beautiful”) and Puah (we don’t know what her

name means; she must have been an American), have other ideas, and contrive

their own plan to allow the male babies to live. And the mother of one of these little

baby boys, puts her son into a basket and launches him, like a little tiny Ark, upon

the Nile River. Some time later, a daughter of the Pharaoh retrieves the baby, and

realizes that it is one of the Hebrew children. And because it seems to be in the nature of children to disobey their parents, she arranges for a Hebrew wet-nurse to take care of the baby boy until it is weaned, when she takes the boy into her own household, and names him Moses (“drawn up” or “drawn out

of the water” or “deliver”). And it turns out to be a pretty good name for the boy,

because he grows up to deliver the Hebrew people from their slavery in Egypt, and

lead them, through and beyond the waters of the Red Sea, to a new land that will

be their own.

Later still – and we hear about this in today’s gospel reading – Jesus gives one of

his disciples, Simon (“he has heard”), a new nickname: Peter (“stone” or “rock”).

One priest I know described him as the original Rocky, or Rocky I. But Simon isn’t

given this new name because he is rock-like in the ordinary sense – except that he

sank like a rock when he tried to walk on water – but rather because he shares

some of the characteristics of his famous, but equally flawed, forebears, Abraham

and Jacob and Moses: that is, Simon has an unflagging trust in God.

And he has an imagination. After all, he was the only one of the Disciples who even

tried to walk on water. And, as we heard in today’s gospel reading, he’s the one

who knows the answer to Jesus’ question “Who do you say that I am?” And Simon’s

response is: “You’re not John (“God is gracious”) the Baptist, or Elijah (“my God is

Yahweh”), or Jeremiah (“God has uplifted”).

You’re not the forerunner of the one who is to come. You are the one who is to

come. You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” BINGO! And as a prize for

answering what may be the most important theological question of his life, Simon

gets ... a nickname!

It may be worth noting, as I have done before, that “Messiah” and “Son of the

living God” don’t mean exactly the same for Peter as they do for us. And they

probably didn’t mean the same thing for Simon as it did for Jesus. But Simon was

close enough! – the horseshoe may not have encircled the state, it was close

enough to count. And this prompts Jesus to declare: “On this rock I will build my church!” But it’s not, mind you, on the “rock” of Peter’s flawed personality or faith, but on the rock of his recognition of the Messiah.

Because this is, after all,the irreducible minimum of the Christian faith – this is

what makes us the people of God – that we recognize who is ruler of our lives, and

know that his name is Jesus (“God is salvation”).

But what does it mean that we understand who Jesus is? It must be important,

because, as Jesus declares, “the gates of Hades will not prevail against” those who

possess that understanding. It means, I think, that death – of body, mind and spirit

– and the fear of death, no longer has any power over the people of God. And this

is the message we are given to proclaim: that death has been conquered by life. That was the message given by God to Abraham, and by Moses to the Pharaoh, and by Jesus to everyone he encountered.

And this is the message we are to proclaim. And we, as the people of God, are

entrusted with the keys – which I take to mean the message, the proclamation, the good news – that can free people from the sting and fear of death.

But do we use those keys? It took Simon Peter quite a while before he knew what it

all meant. But, because he had a good imagination – and faith needs imagination to

be complete – one afternoon he had a dream. And in that dream, a veritable

banquet was spread before him; a banquet of foods forbidden by the Jewish

dietary laws. And in his dream, God commanded that Simon Peter should eat. And

when he awoke from that puzzling dream, Simon Peter was given an opportunity to

choose whether a certain Gentile family should be welcomed into the young

Christian church, or kept out. (Up until that point, only Jews were being encouraged

to join the church.) And, luckily for us, he used those keys to open the door to the

church, rather than lock it. And so, these are our ancestors in the faith: Abraham,

who was the aging, and sometimes incredulous, patriarch of many nations; Jacob,

who cheated his family and wrestled with God; Moses, who was condemned to

death but drawn out of the water; and Peter, who never met a Messiah he didn’t

eventually deny knowing. They are God’s “rocks” of faith and imagination:

And what do they ask of us today? What message do they want us to hear?

Probably, it’s something like this: “You who come after us, are like us. You are not

perfect; you may even have been cruel or deceitful or cowardly. But God has

chosen you to convey his blessings, and he frees you from the slavery to fear and

uncertainty. No longer do you need to make bricks for Pharaoh – or whatever his

name may be for us today – because you know that there is more to

life than making more money than your neighbor. And no longer do you need to

obey Pharaoh, when he orders you to harm someone, or to cook the books, or tell

lies about the pension fund to his employees. And you especially don’t have to stay

in Pharaoh’s country club, if it excludes any of God’s beloved children. And know

this: there is only one king for you: the Messiah, the Son of the Living God. And

once you recognize him, you will find that you too have the keys –

the power – to open the gate for others; to draw them out of whatever it is that

keeps them from the freedom and life God wants all of us to have.”

Well, because we are all God’s people now, we can have a new name. And it’s up to

us to decide what that name will be. And what that name will mean. And what that

names says about us, and our character. We have a new name. And we have faith.

And we have imagination. We are the “rocks” of God’s kingdom, and into our hands

God has placed the keys to his kingdom. What remains for us is to go out into the

world, and act like God’s rocks, and use those keys well – for “whatever [we] bind

on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever [we] loose on earth will be loosed

in heaven.”

This sermon was preached by the Rev. Larry Green on August 21, 2011 at St. Chrysostom's Episcopal Church in Chicago, IL.

Coming attraction: "What's in a name?"

2011-08-18T20:11:00.000-07:00

This upcoming Sunday, Deacon Larry Green will preach at all services. Here's a sneak peek:

What’s in a name? "That which we call a rose by any other name

would smell as sweet.”

– William Shakespeare, 1564-1616, British poet and playwright.

We have heard some great stories thus far this summer and I now give you Exodus.

Since we have started using the Revised Common Lectionary, one of the interesting

benefits would hear snippets of one story this week, and then snippets of another

story next week. But we get to hear larger chunks from some of the great stories of the Old

Testament. (By Larry Green)

More than Survivors (August 14 sermon)

2011-08-15T09:12:00.000-07:00

(The readings for the day were from Genesis 45, where Joseph reveals his identity to his brothers; Romans 11 where Paul affirms God's mercy, and Matthew 15, where a Gentile woman teaches us about the kingdom of God.)

Many of you know Audrey, who's part of our staff team in the church. Well, she and I just discovered that we both love a television series called "I Survived." Each episode shows how real, everyday people found themselves in terrifying, near-death scenarios and came out on the other side. Audrey and I went back and forth for a while this week about the girl who was attacked by a shark and the waitress who escaped an armed robbery (all the while Ray is standing by politely nodding) and we both agreed that the reason we like the show has nothing to do with the terrifying, near-death scenarios, but with the way the people tell their stories.

See, on "I Survived," the survivors are the ones who narrate events. Three people take turns telling what happened to them from beginning to end, then reflect on why they think they made it out of their situation. And while you're sitting there with your jaw on the floor, wondering what in the world you would do if your boat capsized in the middle of the ocean, or you were kidnapped by armed rebels and held for ransom, here is this person who it really happened to, sitting up straight, clean and dressed and not falling apart, recounting their trials honestly, in full emotional detail, and attempting to make some meaning of why they survived and what has happened since. I'm absolutely sucked in to these stories, and I'm more than absolutely fascinated by what I take to be these individuals' unbelievable, unimaginable, sheer human resilience.

Now we're all resilient. You couldn’t get out of bed every day if you weren't. Resilience describes how a person deals with change, challenge, disappointment, trauma, upset - how she or he is able to recover or return from a sentinel event. I've heard resiliency described as "bounce-back," but the peppiness of that term doesn't honor the range of things that draw on our reservoirs of resilience. Everyday disappointments and ailments require resilience, but when we think about people who are truly resilient, we imagine children who suffer trauma and loss and continue to hope and love - or who are bullied, but continue to try and to study and to dream. We imagine people who are diagnosed with diseases and face treatments that are painful and mysterious and that reorganize one's whole life and identity. For the rest of my life, when I hear the word "resilient," I will think of families I knew as a hospital chaplain who sped into the ER at three-AM, sat in a cubicle clutching a cup of coffee, and walked away a few hours later, bereft of a person who was alive when they woke up that morning. They were actually able to physically stand, say good-bye to us, and to go home. You can add any number of things to the list - but we all have an idea, we have all lived the kind of resilience that is possible at the extremes of human experience.

In fact, we've got an example of it right in front of us this morning: Joseph shows greater resilience than any other person we've met in Genesis this summer. Everything starts out okay for the poor guy - better than okay! He's Jacob's favorite son … but dad doesn't do a great job of hiding it. To make matters worse, Joseph is a bit oblivious. He dreams his whole family will bow down to him one day, and instead of writing this interesting little item down in his papyrus diary, he opens up his mouth and lets everybody in on the secret. His older, stronger, even less appropriate brothers first throw him in a pit, then get enterprising and decide to sell him as a slave. Later on, when they're feeling remorseful, they remember that he pleaded in anguish to be set free and return home with them.

But Joseph is resilient! He takes in the reality of what's happened to him, he adjusts, and he moves forward. He does so well and is so resourceful and responsible that he rises to a place of prominence in his master's household and gains admiration and esteem. Yet with all that positive attention comes the wrong kind of attention. Joseph's accused of a crime he didn't commit and ends up in the Egyptian slave prison we heard about last week. From low to high to lower.

While he's in prison, though, Joseph repeats the pattern of resilience and recalibration that served him so well as a slave, and again rises to a place of responsibility and respect. He interprets the dream of Pharaoh's cupbearer, and when that man goes back to the palace, he recommends Joseph to the ruler. Pharaoh himself is so pleased with Joseph that he appoints him "steward" of all of Egypt, responsible for every human being, every rock, every stalk of grain that Pharaoh oversees. The scene where Pharaoh restores Joseph, when he gives him back the dignity that people have been trying to rob him of his whole life, is beautiful - it's like Cinderella sliding her foot into a glass slipper: Pharaoh covers Joseph in fine garments, heaps gold chains around his neck, and puts him in the chariot of his second-in-command. He makes everybody take a knee in front of Joseph. Resilient Joseph is, literally, rehabilitated.

But to what end? Joseph has withstood hardship that rivals anything we can imagine: betrayal, abandonment, forced labor, libel, imprisonment. And now it looks like he's gotten back more than he ever had. But in truth, there's still something out there, a daily stressor siphoning resources out of Joseph's resilience reservoir, demanding that he respond, adapt, assimilate every hour of his life. Think about this: Joseph was put in the chariot of Pharaoh's second-in-command. So what happened to the other guy? Where's the chariot's former occupant? Joseph met the cupbearer in slave prison, where that man was chucked at the whim of an all-powerful, capricious ruler. Joseph's security depends on the will of a person who could change his mind in an instant, and Joseph's life up until this point hasn't shown him that bosses - or brothers - can be trusted. Now Joseph has to be resilient because he has to withstand living in constant fear. He has to be able to function - and function well - knowing that the rug can be pulled out from under him at any moment.

This is where resilience needs a boost. Resilience is the power of survival, and survival is basic. Before anything can get better for you, you've got to get through it. You have to survive. The theological importance of resilience can't be underestimated: it's part of creation, it's part of sustenance - of ongoing life; it's part of persistence and endurance, and it's a gift. But we're created, sustained, we persist and endure because we are made for redemption. That is our end. Resilience is how we survive, but redemption is how we thrive, and we are meant to thrive.

Thriving is hard, though, because in our lives we learn all the same lessons that Joseph does. We learn that people can hurt us. We learn that people who were here today can be gone tomorrow. We learn that nature and commerce and our own bodies can turn on us in a second. And if we look to things that are shifting - to things that are subject to change, like Pharaoh's mind - we learn to live like we're always looking over our shoulders; like we are always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Be it others' approval, be it outward signs of success, be it the permanence of the structures and institutions around us, if we place all of our trust in those things, it will take every bit of our resilience just to pray that they will still be there tomorrow.

What makes the difference then? How do you make the leap of faith from resilience to redemption, from surviving to thriving? How do you go from living life cautiously, with your nails dug in - especially if you've been hurt - to living life redemptively, with your hands wide open - especially if you've been hurt?

I get a glimpse of that difference when I see young children hope and love as though they can’t help it in the face of disappointment. Or when I would see or hear from those families in the hospital about how their lives were unfolding in the wake of grief. I glimpse the difference in people here who share stories of divorce or illness, or challenges with family and employment and trust gone awry. In these instances the difference is in meaning-making. It's in being able to perceive how God may be moving and creating not only in resilience but in the aftermath of everything that requires us to be resilient. And meaning-making is more than a matter of interpretation - it's part of how God puts something new into the world. The people who talk about the terrifying things that have happened to them on the television show "I Survived" all have something to say about this, from having a very vague notion that they’re alive because there is something left for them to do, to having new relationships, new insights, a new sense of purpose or mission or new ability to help others that wasn't there before. In the face of challenges, they have been resilient but their eyes have been open to all of the points of light piercing the darkness and pulling life together again in bright new constellations. By the grace of God they have perceived a new story being told and have wandered into it by faith, with trust.

And when this happens, something changes. When we ask God for the strength to see new possibilities where doors were closed, to form new relationships where others were broken, to cultivate different abilities when limitations set in, we change, the world changes, and that is redemptive. When a person asks God to make meaning where there was once chaos, that is the difference between hanging on - survival alone - and between a world reborn - thriving. That is us partnering with God to turn the stuff of our lives into the stuff of miracles. That is God's healing, renewing work alive today as it was in the beginning.

Which is why we don't have to totally despair about Joseph. Because however fearful he may be, however hampered by past hurt and present limitation, he has started this process of meaning-making. There’s a famine in the land, and today Joseph’s brothers have come to Egypt for food. They have no idea that the man in front of them is the boy that they discarded, and Joseph has a choice. He can survive, and have nothing to do with them. He can even be generous and send them away with food, but never reveal who he is. Nobody would judge him for that. Instead, he perceives an opportunity. He probes them to find out if they’re sorry, to find out how they are caring for his father and other brother, and in the end, Joseph cannot help but choose reconciliation and create a space of redemption in the world around him that never existed before. When he reveals himself, his brothers try to apologize to him, but he shoots for the sky, way beyond their single, fateful misdeed to its ultimate outcome: a relationship of affection that never existed between him and them, a supply of food for a hungry nation, lives preserved and renewed out of events that could have been just "hardships." Later on, he explains it like this: "even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good."

The difference between resiliency alone and redemption born of resiliency is a matter of trust and freedom and openness. It’s a matter of praying the one prayer that this woman utters in our Gospel today, “Lord, help me,” and believing that God is flooding you and me and all the earth with redemptive possibility even when we can’t see it. It’s resurrection in the fullest sense of the word: coming back to life each day, and breaking life open with the astounding possibility of each day. And it happens because the same God who gives us the strength to survive gives us the power to thrive.

Sermon preached by the Reverend Danielle Thompson at St. Chrysostom's Episcopal Church in Chicago, IL on Sunday, August 14, 2011.

Joseph's many RE's (sermon prep for August 14)

2011-08-13T12:06:00.000-07:00

For this Sunday's lesson, read Genesis 45:1-15 at http://bible.oremus.org

Or we could call it, "RE-garding Joseph." This time around with the story of Jacob's youngest son, I was struck by the number of "RE" words that characterize it. Take a look:

RE-venge: As we heard last week, Joseph's brothers were less than affectionate. After years of Jacob playing favorites (remember the multi-colored coat?), Joseph did some vision-casting that had them and their father bowing down to him. Their solution: throw the boy in a pit and sell him to an Egypt-bound caravan, of course.

RE-covery & RE-play: So Joseph ends up as an indentured laborer in Egypt. But he does well. Everywhere he goes, blessing follows; everything he touches, God turns to gold. Potiphar, a powerful man, notices this and puts him in charge of his household. When Potiphar's wife tries and fails to seduce him, she accuses Joseph of the same, and he ends up back in the pit - this time, prison.

RE-storation & RE-habilitation: Joseph again rises to a position of responsibility and esteem in prison. He interprets the dreams of one of Pharaoh's servants who recommends Joseph's services to the ruler when he is released. Pharaoh brings Joseph to him, heeds his interpretation and advice, and raises him to a position of great importance and influence. The scene where Joseph is vested with the symbols of his new office has us recalling the coat of many colors with which his father clothed him in childhood.

RE-versal: Joseph's brothers travel to Egypt to buy food for their famine-stricken family. They visit the Pharaoh's right-hand guy, having no idea that he's the boy they sold into slavery. One noticeable part of the story here is Joseph's weeping. Four times he breaks down crying in his exchanges with his brothers. First, when he overhears them expressing remorse; second, when he meets the young brother he never knew, Benjamin ...

RE-veal: Third, when RE-veals his identity to his brothers in this week's reading and ...

RE-conciliation: Fourth, when they ask his forgiveness. And after that, the story goes, "his brothers talked with him."

The RE-word that is the backdrop for all of these is RE-demption. When he is RE-united with his brothers, Joseph's own meaning-making becomes most heart-breaking part of the story. "No!" he pleads with the men who betrayed him, tears blurring his vision, "You didn't do this! You may have had destruction in your hearts, but God's intention, God's vision is so strong, it obliterated your darkness and brought all of us into the light ... and we didn't even know it was happening." Everybody - not just the boy - got dragged out of the pit in this situation. Joseph was RE-scued, but all was redeemed.

(by the way, "Re" or "Ra" was an Egyptian god - I didn't think about that until just now!)

(Danielle Thompson)

The Faithfulness of Joseph (August 7 sermon by Ray Webster)

2011-08-13T11:57:00.000-07:00

The readings for this Sunday were form Genesis 37, Romans 10, and Matthew 14.

BEGINNING THE STORY OF JOSEPH

Today at eight o’clock we celebrate the Baptism of Hank MacMahon. Hank has been a regular attender at the eight since his birth this year, and is very much a part of the eight o’clock worshipping community.

May Hank always know a welcome

By his Baptism, may Hank always know a welcome at the Lord’s Table.

We have the gift of many small children in this parish.

May Hank – may each one, may each person of any age -- always know that he is a part of the community God gathers around the Table of Jesus.

Growing up in that community, may Hank learn about God’s love for him in Jesus Christ – the boundless radiant light of God’s love given to him completely, nothing held back. And that nothing can separate Hank from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Nothing. Baptism is a great sign of the gift of union with Christ which nothing can break. Sometimes we lose sight of it, sometimes it seems there is only the darkness and fog – but the gift is always there of God’s presence with us and love for us in Christ.

Baptism is the great sign the gift of God’s presence and love has been given. This Feast of Bread and Wine is the great sign the gift is given to you and me and Hank and anyone here and now, on the way.

May Hank grow up knowing the Scriptures, knowing the stories of the Bible – that ancient collection of very different books, which I believe God makes use of to speak to us in contemporary ways. “The word is very near you” – Two of the basic principles of the English Reformation were (and remain) that the Bible be given into the hands of God’s people and written in the language understood by the people.

A story of betrayal and loss

On this joyous day of Hank’s Baptism it is something of a jolt that our first Bible story (Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28) is a story of betrayal and loss. But these are our family stories – the stories of the descendants of Abraham and Sarah, who, in the context of Genesis, were the first people to believe in God. Sometimes our family stories are not happy and sometimes mistakes are made. And the Word of God to us through these stories is a the word of redemption and forgiveness and resurrection. Today story is about a very great mistake, an evil act of jealousy and betrayal.

Joseph’s older brothers were jealous of him. He was the youngest son of Jacob, who was getting old. He was the son of Jacob’s beloved wife Rachel (the older brothers were the sons of other mothers). Jacob loved this youngest child and let his favoritism show. They sold him into slavery. They sold him to a passing caravan, who in turn sold him as a slave down in Egypt. And they cooked up a story for their father about how he was killed by an animal. And Joseph was gone.

This truly terrible story set in motion a whole series of events that would change the history of this family, and of world history, of our history as believers and Christians.

For the story tells how the Jewish people ended up living in Egypt. And then were enslaved.

And then God acted in history to save the people from slavery. God brought the people into freedom, and led them through the wilderness and finally into the Promised Land.

This was the formative story of Judaism, remembered at Passover.

We Christians remember it too, and remember how God acted in history in Jesus Christ to save all people, and to bring us into the Promised Land of life with God in him, here on our earthly pilgrimage, and at our end into the Promised Land of heaven.

And it began with today’s truly terrible story of a pack of jealous brothers letting their jealousy get the better of them, and selling the boy – aged seventeen we are told – into slavery.

And then in slavery, Joseph ended up in a slave jail. I pretend no expertise on Egyptian slavery, but I strongly suspect there is nowhere to go much lower than an ancient Egyptian slave jail.

The story took a surprise turn

Genesis tells us Joseph was thirty when the story took a surprise turn. Joseph spent from seventeen to thirty as a slave in Egypt. That was his education. I suspect it taught him a lot about survival.

The surprise was that another slave who had been in jail with Joseph, was a servant of Pharaoh and when Pharaoh told about being troubled with dreams, of having a bad time in the night, the slave suggested talking to Joseph. Who told Pharaoh plainly that what Pharaoh saw coming, and perhaps could not face, was famine.

And Pharaoh put Joseph in charge of getting the country ready for famine – setting aside enough food.

The New York Times printed on its front page last Tuesday a picture of a child starving in the famine of Somalia.

The Biblical ethic calls us – God calls us as disciples of Jesus -- to show compassion and mercy and try to help and feed the hungry.

The Biblical ethic – from the opening of this first book of Genesis – is that God made that starving child, God makes every human life, and every one ultimately belongs to God, and the human community, the church, the people of Israel, along with all people of good will have a responsibility to help. To do what is right and just.

Back home, Joseph’s father and brothers heard about Egypt having food and the brothers went down to ask for help.

And found themselves before Joseph. Joseph’s education between seventeen and thirty as a slave in Egypt and in a slave jail would have ensured that the person before them would have looked 100% Egyptian. “Assimilated” might not be the right word – “worked over” might fit the facts better. If you walk into the Egyptian exhibits at the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago, there is a very tall statue of King Tutenkamen, the Pharaoh. When Joseph’s brothers came into the hall before their long lost brother, this is more or less what they would have seen before them.

Joseph eventually helped them – a story for another day -- and they brought the whole family down into Egypt. After the years went by, and Joseph had died and there was a new Pharaoh who had no memory of Joseph’s contribution enslaved the Jewish people.

And God sent Moses to stand before this new Pharaoh, and say “Let my people go.”

Words which would echo in American history. And remind us of a lawyer with a practice in Springfield, Illinois who would speak for freedom and against slavery, and lead our country through a terrible war between brothers into ending slavery.

We read this story at Easter

We read the story of the Exodus, of how God acted in our human history to bring God’s people into freedom, at Easter, at the great Vigil. It is a formative story of our faith and looks to the great story, the story for every day of baptism, the story of for every Sunday (for Sundays are always a feast of the resurrection), the Easter story – that story that God acted in human history by sending Jesus Christ to bring every one – no one left out – back to God, into life with God.

God calls us to trust in the presence of God with us, and the love of God for us – for you, me, each one. And to trust that at our end God will bring us home to life, held in the love we see in Christ.

(This sermon was preached by the Rev. Raymond Webster, Rector, in St. Chrysostom’s Church, Chicago, Illinois, on Sunday, August 7, 2011, the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost.)

The Gospel text is from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA, and used by permission.

Faith remains: the story of Joseph (Ray Webster's sermon prep for August 7)

2011-08-13T11:47:00.000-07:00

First reading: Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28

Beginning the story of Joseph

This Sunday we read the beginning of the great story of Joseph. The story of Joseph is dramatic and interesting in and of itself, but his story also sets the scene for the stories of Moses and of the Exodus. Joseph’s story tells how the Jewish people ended up living down in Egypt, where they were enslaved. Then we are given the great story of how God acted in history to save the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt. This story is remembered in Judaism at Passover. It is the formative story of Judaism. It is remembered and echoed at the heart of the story of Jesus Christ.

Setting the story: the eleven sons of Jacob

Two weeks ago, you will remember that we read the story of Jacob’s marriage to Leah, and then to Rachel. Ethics had not yet developed the concept of having only one wife. Jacob had twelve sons by his two wives and two slave girls. At the time of this story, Joseph was seventeen, and there were ten older brothers. One brother younger than Joseph will later figure in the story, Benjamin. Have you ever heard a youngest child referred to as the “Benjamin” of the family? Joseph and Benjamin were the sons of Jacob’s beloved wife Rachel.

Jealousy and betrayal

Now Israel …

Remember that Jacob was given the name Israel by God --

Now Israel loved Joseph more than any other of his children, because he was the son of his old age;

It is a beloved detail of the King James translation of the Bible in the 17^th century, that Jacob gave his beloved Joseph a coat of many colors. In this translation it is a more prosaic long robe with sleeves. At any rate, Jacob clearly treated Joseph as a favorite and that made Joseph’s older brothers envious and angry.

Joseph loses everything – except his faith

Most of the brothers decided to kill Joseph and they threw him in a pit. The eldest brother Reuben tried to save Joseph, but the brothers took Joseph out of the pit and sold him to traders, into slavery down in Egypt.

Joseph lost everything – his freedom, family, homeland, language, possessions, and found himself a slave.

The one thing he had was his faith in God.

Second reading: Romans 10:5-15: The word is near you

We are reading from the Letter of Paul to the Romans and come to the great statement:

"The word is near you,

on your lips and in your heart"

(that is, the word of faith that we proclaim);
One of the great principles of the Reformation was that the Bible be given into the hands of the people, translated into the language of the people. In that extremely practical sense the word is indeed near each one of us. It is intended for each one, not for some special elite, but for every one.

(Ray Webster)

A tall order (July 31 sermon)

2011-08-03T09:37:00.000-07:00

(The readings for the day were from Genesis 32, where Jacob wrestles with God; Romans 9, where Paul wrestles with his understanding of the church; and Matthew 14 where Jesus feeds the crowds)

A few weeks ago I got an email from a friend, which said, "I'm reading Howard Schultz's book, and it reminds me of the church." Now if you don't recognize his name right away, believe me - you'll be surprised to find out who Howard Schultz is. He's not a minister, or a professor, or a self-help guru. Howard Schultz is the founder and CEO of Starbucks. The coffee company. And he hits the nail on the head when it comes to the problem of the church in our time.

He's not trying to do this, of course. The name "God" doesn't make one appearance in Schultz's book. In no way does he attempt to describe the challenges faced by the body of Christ in the twenty-first century - and why would he? Onward is a business memoir, plain and simple. The weird thing is, Schultz's story of a company brought back from the edge is undeniably religious. And it's something we need to pay attention to not just because it's instructive, but because it calls all of us in the church on the carpet.

Some background information matters here. For one, what was the problem with Starbucks? Well on the surface, it looked like two things: runaway growth and a bad economy. Do you remember when it suddenly seemed like every other building you passed had a little green mermaid plastered to its window? I've actually been in a Starbucks and looked out, across the street directly into another Starbucks. (People joke about that, but it actually happened to me!) No matter how much you love iced green tea or decaf Pike Place, you know intuitively that there's something wrong with that. And three years ago now, right about the time when all of the deep, negative issues that come with that sort of unsustainable growth began to be unbearable for Starbucks, the economy tanked. Everything went into a tailspin, and people stopped buying expensive coffee.

This is when Schultz became the CEO of Starbucks for a second time. And the story he tells of risk and leadership, the way he paints a picture of this moment where Starbucks had to figure something out or that mermaid was sunk, has all of the dramatic, biblical flair of Jacob on the edge of a stream, in all-night hand-to-hand combat with God in human form. You would never guess it from your lectionary insert today, but the reason Jacob sends his family on ahead of him, the reason he's struggling and sleepless, the reason he demands to receive a blessing is that he, too, is in crisis. He’s in immediate, stomach-chewing danger from none other than Esau, the older brother whose inheritance he stole. Jacob ran away from home because Esau wanted to murder him; he's spent years and years at his uncle's place, has a family and some cows and some servants ... but now it’s time to go home. God calls Jacob to return to his kindred with everything he has - only it means crossing paths with Esau. And Esau hasn't done so badly for himself, either. In fact, when Jacob sends a messenger to warn Esau that he's approaching, the message he gets back is this: "Esau is coming. And he has four hundred men with him."

Four hundred armed warriors sort of makes angry shareholders look like another day at the office. And Jacob and Esau's bad economy - the give and take, the market of respect, compassion, and brotherly love that could exist between them - is every bit as uncertain as ours. But it has to change for the story to work. See, in order to be one of these Old Testament patriarchs - in order to be a father of Israel, like Jacob is - you have to live in the land that God promised to Abraham. At this point the story, Jacob can't carry on the family line and be living with his uncle, in a foreign place. He has to go home and claim his inheritance. So, as Ray noted last week, in order to pass faith in God on to untold generations of people through his descendants, Jacob has to get back, regardless of Esau. A whole kind of future depends on it.

But Esau isn't the moment of truth in all of this. The crucial step in Jacob's whole business of saving his family and his future is discovering who he really is. The thing that prepares Jacob to face Esau and prepares him to assume the responsibility of leadership is learning his true identity. Jacob is alone, in the dead of night, afraid of his brother, and God is suddenly there in human form, as though to say, "Don't wrestle with your brother – wrestle with what really matters." And Jacob shows up. Jacob puts up such a fight that God has to stop playing fair and wound him in the thigh in order to break it up. Because he has grappled so hard - because when he was pressed, Jacob pressed back - God gives him a new name, Israel, which means "one who strives with God" or "God strives." So Jacob becomes Israel, and Israel becomes who she will be, a people, including us, whose faith is built on a dynamic, restless, intimate, and ever-evolving relationship with God – with “what really matters.” Jacob limps away, marked not by loss but by the victory of knowing who he really is.

In the end, this was Howard Schultz' victory, too. During sleepless nights and early mornings as he wrestled with our seemingly god-like economy, the thing Schultz kept returning to was identity. In order to get back home, get back where it needed to be, Starbucks needed to know who it actually was. The company had lost its way and forfeited its soul in the pursuit of programs and products and more and more and more, and was in desperate need of what we might call a "come to Jesus" moment. In the book, this is where the real religion begins: the first word Schultz can think of to depict the essence of Starbucks is "love." He follows that up with "respect and dignity. Passion … Compassion, community. Authenticity." He says that if home is the "first place" in a person's life and work is a "second place," then a place like a coffeehouse is a "third place," where people can connect with one another and reconnect with themselves." His new mission statement begins, "To inspire and nurture the human spirit." And finally, Schultz cites an article from the Wall Street Journal written in the midst of 600 store closings, which observed that Starbucks stores are like "secular chapels" where "ritual abounds." The journalist lamented, "I don't go to Starbucks much. I don't go to the Baptist church, either. But I'm glad that we've got one just about everywhere."

Howard Schultz is obviously dramatic. But he's not wrong. Or rather, he's not wrong about the niche that Starbucks is filling, but he is wrong about how they're filling it. Starbucks' coffee is amazing. Starbucks' employees are lovely and are treated fairly. But Starbucks is selling you something, and that something is the idea of love, community, authenticity. Starbucks is banking - quite literally - on the fact that you long for these things, and the problem they faced a few years ago was that they'd forgotten what human beings lack. They were blind to our tender, emotional demands and were supplying something we didn't need. That was the problem with Starbucks.

The problem with the church is that we've forgotten that, too. For decades now the buzz has been declining numbers in all traditions, congregations losing members to death, life transitions, distraction, or disinterest and not replacing them. To this day, every issue of The Christian Century, a magazine that represents mainline Protestantism, or America, which represents a similar group of Roman Catholics, has some article about who's attending, who's not attending, why this is happening, and what we can do to stop it. People worry especially about the next generation of Christians, which is why the National Study of Youth and Religion, a huge project undertaken by scholars within the last few years, was so devastating with its insight that two-thirds of teenagers believe in God and have positive feelings toward church ... but only eight percent of them think that religion has anything to do with their everyday lives. One author, writing on the study, blamed the situation on what she calls "moralistic therapeutic deism" - the tendency of many churches to promote being nice, being friendly, and feeling good about yourself above being just, being honest, and working like a dog for the kingdom of heaven. But it can be more than this. It can be feeling trapped in ways of doing things that don't make sense anymore. It can be the pressure of an increasingly complicated world that is outpacing an institution that appears to be about the preservation of tradition only. Or it can be that the church tries to mirror that complicated world too much with too narrow of a focus on growth, too many activities, too much flux, too little silence and peace, so that its true identity, it's core essence, gets lost out there with everything else in a sea of soccer games, office parties, and mocha frappucinos.

One church in our own diocese felt this sense of stagnancy and desperation acutely and decided to explore it. Church of the Holy Spirit, an hour north of here in Lake Forest, took a survey - the same one we did - and uncovered a deep sense of untouched spiritual longing. Their rector responded by coming up with events and programs and classes and activities ... and still, nothing worked. So the church did something risky to pull itself back from the edge. They took another survey, which inventoried not their satisfaction with the parish, but their thoughts about God, their relationship with Jesus, their felt sense of the Holy Spirit, and their life of prayer. It was a hard thing to do. The language of this survey was more evangelical than anything most of us are used to, and it felt too private to many people to answer questions about their interior life of faith. But this is the thing that worked - actually, a better way to say it is that this is the thing that put the church to work. For the last eighteen months groups within Holy Spirit have been studying the Baptismal Covenant and the Bible and their own hearts; they've been trying to pray before meetings and incorporate spiritual practices into their daily routines; they've written spiritual autobiographies and participated in classes called "God sightings" where they try to figure out where and how grace is working in their lives and in the world around them. Not everybody is on board, and not everybody has been totally blown over, but parishioners who've committed themselves to this process report that they are experiencing something they’ve never experienced before.

Church of the Holy Spirit in Lake Forest is not us. The way the challenges of the church in the twenty-first century present themselves to it are different than how they present themselves here. But the overall situation is the same. And whatever we do to meet it now or at any time in our future is likewise the same: we have to discover our true identity. We have to find out who we really are. The good news is that like Holy Spirit, like Jacob, but unlike Starbucks, what we have is the real deal. Real love. Real community. Real relationship. Starbucks has a word for you that changes with each season, each campaign, each shift in the market - God's word for you is always the same: Yes. Starbucks closes - in the dead of night, on holidays, when the weather is bad. God is with you, even when you are searching for God's presence and not finding it ... you are assured that God is there. Starbucks wants to engage you in an economy of exchange, but what God has for you is free: freely given, freely received, free to all. Which is, finally, the last point - Starbucks doesn't have to serve you, but God wants nothing more than to fill your body with food. Jesus saw the crowds, had mercy on them and created substance, created nourishment out of almost nothing at all. We are those crowds, coming to him in need of everything, wondering how there could possibly be something for us here, yet after we eat with him, we’re not only satisfied - we become him. We become his hands and feet and heart and mouth so that the people we are when we are limping away from our encounter with God in this person are people who are changed, equipped, and empowered. People who have tasted and drunken something ... real.

That is who we really are. How we live it and what difference it makes for our life together and for every other life we touch will be our great victory. May God, who has given us the will to do these things give us the grace and power to perform them.

Sermon preached by the Reverend Danielle Thompson at St. Chrysostom's Episcopal Church in Chicago, IL on Sunday, July 31, 2011.

Cited:

Dean, Kenda Creasy. Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenager Is Telling the American Church (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).

Schultz, Howard. Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing its Soul (New York: Rodale Books, 2011).

Read the Reverend Jay Sidebotham’s story of Church of the Holy Spirit, “Don’t Shoot the Messenger! Or, How We Raised Our Episcopal Spiritual Expectations” at http://makingexcellentdisciples.wordpress.com/2011/07/26/dont-shoot-the-messenger-or-how-we-raised-our-episcopal-spiritual-expectations/.

What's in a cliche? (sermon prep for July 31)

2011-07-28T11:23:00.000-07:00

One of my closest friends is a long-time hospital chaplain. Whenever he would tell me a story of a particular tragic death, or a family that had experienced an unusual amount of loss or violence, he'd always end with, "I really wrestled with God over that one."

It was one of those things that went in one ear and out the other. "Wrestling with God" is such a familiar phrase that it washes over you when you hear it. But my friend wasn't that sort of guy: he wasn't trite, he wasn't particularly sunny, and he definitely wasn't theologically unsophisticated. So one day I asked him, "What do you mean when you say 'I wrestled with God'? What does that look like for you?"

"We go back and forth," he stated, matter-of-factly. "Like in a relationship."

In our story this week, Jacob sets the bar for wrestling with God. Read Genesis 32:22-31 at www.oremus.org, then walk through it piece by piece here:

Background: Jacob has been living for many years with his father-in-law Laban, and has been told by God to go back to where he came from. One big problem: he's got to cross paths with his brother Esau to get there. Jacob was living with Laban in the first place because Esau wanted to kill him. Oops.

Jacob has made preparations to meet Esau, including sending him gifts and dividing his family, servants, and livestock up so that if one group were attacked the other would survive (let's not even go into the way he plays favorites here). When we meet Jacob at 32:22, he's sent everybody on ahead of him and stayed behind, camped beside a stream (this looks a lot like where we found him when he was running from Esau in chapter 28).

He wrestles with "a man": Yes, it's God. God meets Jacob in the form of a human man and physically grapples with him until daybreak.

How do we know it's God? The story stands between two appearances of God at Beth-el (as noted, in chapter 28 and again in chapter 35). Interpretation of this passage has identified the assailant as God from the earliest times. Jacob knows that he is wrestling with God and shows us that by demanding a blessing from the man. Finally, the blessing comes in the form of a new name that only God has the power to give.

He asks for a blessing: Blessings are for real in the Old Testament. They are objective, permanent, active things that have power apart from the giver and the recipient. That's why Isaac can't take back the blessing he gives to Jacob, thinking he's Esau. When Jacob asks for a blessing, he's not asking for the man's goodwill, for the man to make a gesture over his head, or for the man to promise him something. He's asking for an immediate, verifiable, powerful transformation of some sort. He wants something new, now.

He receives a new name: What he gets is a new name, Israel, which in the version of the text that we read this week (NRSV), means either "the one who strives with God" or "God strives." That is, of course, exactly what has passed between the two. Jacob struggled with God, but so did God really, truly struggle with Jacob - so much so that in the end God had to stop playing fair and strike Jacob's hip.

How is the new name a blessing? It's not, really. The blessing is what the name marks, which is the bond between Jacob and God that has been forged and cemented in this struggle. In the words of my friend, they've gone back and forth, just like you do in a relationship. God has challenged Jacob to muster everything that he has within him in this wrestling match, right at a time when Jacob needs everything that the has in him to face his brother, Esau. Jacob walks away with a limp not because he failed, but because he was so strong and so tenacious that God had to do something extreme to call him off. He's now marked as a "striver" rather than a loser.

And here's the blessing for all of us. Jacob was forced to block out everything that he was afraid of - his brother, losing his family, losing his possessions - and take his fight to the source: God. When it was over, he had nothing left to fear and had gained the blessing of a powerful relationship with the one who is all power and all blessing. The biblical commentator Terence Fretheim writes that struggling with God "in the night" provides "a gracious rehearsal for the actual life circumstance." He continues, "To go through it with God before we go through it with others provides resources of strength and blessing for whatever lies in the wings of life" (NISB v.1, 1994, 569).

Sermon prep for July 17: poetic justice?

2011-07-20T11:55:00.001-07:00

Commentary by Ray Webster

First reading: Genesis 29:15-28 Jacob marries

These great stories from Genesis tell us the story of the descendants of Abraham – our ancestors in faith, the first people (in the telling of it in Genesis) to believe in God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Today we come to the story of Jacob’s marriage. People are often startled by Jacob’s behavior in Genesis. He tricked his brother Esau out of his birth right, and now Jacob finds himself with a prospective father-in-law who tricks him in turn.

Robert Alter writes:

It has been clearly recognized since late antiquity that the whole story of the switched brides is a meting out of poetic justice to Jacob – the deceiver deceived, deprived by darkness of the sense of sight as his father is by blindness, relying, like his father, on the misleading sense of touch. The Midrash Bereishit Rabba vividly represents the correspondence between the two episodes: “And all that night he cried out to he, ‘Rachel!’ and she answered him. In the morning, ‘and, …look, she was Leah.” He said to her, ‘Why did you deceive me, daughter of a deceiver? Didn’t I call out Rachel in the night, and you answered me?’ She said, ‘There is never a bad barber who doesn’t have disciples. Isn’t this how your father cried out Esau, and you answered him?’”

Robert Alter, The Five Books of Moses W.W. Norton & Company: New York, 2004, pages 155-156

Laban tricks Jacob into marrying his daughter Leah, and then his daughter Rachel – the one Jacob loved. In the unfolding story in Genesis, Leah is the mother of six of Jacob’s sons: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar and Zebulun. Jacob had two more sons by the slave girl Bilhah: Dan and Naphtali. And then two by another slave girl: Gad and Asher.

Then Rachel would have a son, Joseph, whose story we will read – and then another, the youngest, Benjamin. These were the twelve sons of Jacob who was also called Israel, and the ancestors of the twelve tribes of Israel.

By the way, I highly recommend Robert Alter’s highly praised translation of and commentary on the first five books of the Bible: The Five Books of Moses, quoted above.

Second reading: Letter of Paul to the Romans 8:26-39

When my home rector as a student, Bishop Wylie, died, many years ago, he left instructions that my old boss in New York, Bishop Rockwell, preach on Romans 8 – this great majestic chapter from the Letter of Paul to the Romans. Part of these words are indeed often read at funerals in the Episcopal Church and they are fitting statements of the central Christian belief in the resurrection in Jesus Christ.

Our passage this week starts with a less familiar verse – much less often read – but of equal importance.

The Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.

There are times when we do not know what to say to God. Either the situation is too tough. Or sometimes are hearts are too full. The Holy Spirit, who is God dwelling within us, speaks in the silence within, too deep for words, in love.

And then come these great words of Christian faith and hope:

What then are we to say about these things?

These things that happen to us, that happen in this life. What are we to say about death and loss?

If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? Who will bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us.

And then these great words. In many ways they are the center of my faith:

Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? … No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

Jesus put before the crowds another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches."

The mustard seed is tiny, but a great plant grows out of it. Just so the kingdom of heaven – the sovereignty of God’s love in our lives, and our trust in that love – can be as small, as tiny, as a mustard seed but out of grows something great. Our lives. Our Christian lives. The life of the Christian community.

For the Kingdom (sermon from July 17)

2011-07-19T14:00:00.000-07:00

(The readings for July 17 were from Genesis 28, Psalm 139, Romans 8, and Matthew 13)

If you're ever in the South, you'll notice there aren't a lot of really old places. There are venerable, elegant banks and state buildings, and if you head out of the city you'll find some plantations to tour, but your neighbor isn't going to be living in a home from the early 19th century. Each town won't have the little clapboard houses of the first settlers like you find in New England or New York state. And the reason is simple and practical: there was a war there. Only 150 years ago, which is a little blip on the cosmic time-line, the American South was a disaster zone. During the Civil War, towns and downtowns and farms and fields were leveled and burned and changed forever in more ways than a landscape can tell, and in more ways than people can remember. Today, if you shoot through Atlanta on Interstate-75, you're going to see success: tall buildings, thousands of cars, bridges and apartments that are new and shiny with this unbelievably cheery sun lighting it all up. But if you were running from Atlanta in 1864, it would have looked just like that scene from Gone with the Wind, where Rhett Butler is racing a horse and wagon through walls of flame as Sherman's army burns everything to the ground. Atlanta, a real place you can see today, looked like a furnace of fire.

When Jesus talks about wheat and chaff and the furnace of fire today, he's talking about a real place, too. South of Jerusalem there's valley called Gehenna that captured the imagination of Jesus' friends the way a haunted house captures ours. The valley was once home to people who worshipped a god called Molech, and by Jesus' time ideas about the horrible things their cult had done were part of popular lore. People may have burned trash there and Roman soldiers may have practiced cremation there, so evoking Gehenna brought up for everyone images not only of fire, but of ritually unclean and morally abhorrent things. In the Bible, Gehenna stands for everything that’s opposite to the kingdom of God, and to say a person would end up there meant that the more God's kingdom comes, the more God's will is done on earth as it is in heaven, the more painful life will be for those who are opposed to God's will.

So in the parable today, the one we just read about the wheat and the chaff, we could say that Jesus is being descriptive. He’s describing how people who are committed to bad things would experience the coming of something good. Which is easier to hear than if he were being entirely prescriptive about it - we don't want him to be saying here, "Bad people are going to live in a bad place forever and ever" which is our own popular idea about hell. Because if you believe the latest research, a lot of us here today are uncomfortable with the notion of eternal punishment - either we don't think about it, or we just don't buy it. A few years ago a huge scholarly study found that while 74% of Americans believe in an afterlife and believe in heaven, only 58% believe in hell (Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, June 2008). And that statistically significant sample of people who believe in heaven without believing in hell looks awfully like us. Many are Episcopalians, Lutherans and Presbyterians, Reformed Jews, or members of the United Church of Christ. Many live in urban areas where they meet lots of different types of people, or they have lots of education or work experience, so they've been exposed to different types of ideas. The sociologists and theologians who published the study had some thoughts about why hell has dropped off the map for so many people, and it seems to boil down to a couple of things.

First, the difference between who goes to heaven and who goes to hell is often cast in terms of belief or non-belief. Do you believe in God? Do you believe Jesus is God? Good - heaven's up that ladder over there. No God? No Jesus? Sorry. But people today see that their neighbors and their family members are good and kind and live according to God's will even if they are Buddhist or Muslim or atheist, and they're not willing to consign them to a Judeo-Christian underworld. The second thing is that the difference between who goes to heaven and who goes to hell is often cast in terms of doing good or doing bad. But we understand that being human is complex. Institutions and systems and states can lock all kinds of people in bad behaviors; sick families, sick circumstances can create sick individuals; what one group of people thinks is good another thinks is bad; and besides, our religion teaches us to love and to forgive. Who wants to walk down Michigan Avenue, looking at all those people around you like they're a waving field of grain, and decide "this one's in and this one's out ... she's wheat and he's chaff ... he's going to get punished, and she's going to be with God."

Here's the thing. That's what happens when we decide what hell is. That's what happens when humans do the choosing: we look at all of the people around us and since we can't possibly know about a person's soul, we decide who's good and who's bad based on things that aren't eternal. Like the servants in today's parable, we want to get in there and do a weeding even if it means that healthy plants get ripped up in the process. That's how you get a Holocaust or a Bosnia or a Rwanda. That's how you get prejudice and apartheid. But if you know better, if you’re rightfully sensitive to the evil that happens when we start deciding who is saved and who is lost, you end up with the problem of what to do with evil at all. How do we talk about it? How do we discern what it is? How do we teach our children and grandchildren about life in this world? And if it does make itself known to you - if, God forbid, something terrible happens to you or someone you love, or to the place where you live, like it did for us almost a decade ago, how do you suddenly make sense in a Christian way of this thing we're afraid to touch with a thirty foot pole? We don't even like to hear Jesus talk about it.

This is the part where we need God. Not for clues about what eternal punishment looks like, because God doesn't actually give us a lot of concrete information about any place called hell in the Bible. God does, however, give us tons of clues about what the kingdom of heaven looks like. And salvation - making your home with God - depends on being for God's kingdom. When we look to Jesus, we see that "God's kingdom" means health, sight, abundance, rest, reconciliation, peace, and unselfish love. But it comes at a cost. Those things don't just happen - they have to be prayed for and worked for, and there’s plenty in this world that is against them. You know it when you see it - you know that in God's kingdom children are safe, and you know that people who hurt children are not for the kingdom. You know that in God's kingdom people are governed wisely, and you know that leaders who abuse their people are not for the kingdom. You know that in God's kingdom people are judged by their hearts, and you know that those who judge by any other standard are not for the kingdom.

As people of faith, we believe that God's kingdom is here now, but is also coming. We pray that one day it will be all-in-all - that every child will be safe, that all communities will know peace, and that all hearts will be united with God and with one another. And when that happens, the person who's committed to anything else, be it hurting other people, hurting the land, even hurting his or her-self will experience the pain and suffering that comes when there's a radical paradigm shift. If you were a slaveowner in Atlanta in 1864 and you lost your home, your farm, your laborers and your status as a powerful person when the army rolled in, you would weep and you would gnash your teeth. And not only you - as St. Paul says in the second reading today, the whole creation would groan along with you, because your paradigm shift, the change you’d be forced to make, would cost everyone. God wants slaves to be free, but God doesn't want a city to burn. God might want people to take action against injustice, but God hurts for the young soldier who has to draw his weapon.

So here's the other part where we need God. With God, that burning city, that furnace of fire isn't the final word. It isn't the end of things. That slaveowner's reckoning, that soldier's memories of war, the conflict inscribed in that very land is only one part of the story. Because repentance is possible, redemption is promised, and God will never leave us. Look at this story of Jacob today, who’s fleeing from his brother, who’s afraid and goes to sleep in this insignificant place only to discover that he has found heaven. That no matter where he is and what happens to him, God will be there, and God will bring him home. Our whole Bible is this story of forgiveness and reconciliation and hope that everything will be with God. And just as God promises to bless the world through Jacob, God promises to save the world through Jesus. It doesn't happen all at once, it may not even happen in the course of a lifetime, and it doesn't happen easily. But it's the work we're given to do - not saying what's out, but drawing everything in. And again, as Paul says, to wait with patience and hope for things that we can’t see now, for it will be our salvation and it will be our joy.

Jacob's Ladder

2011-07-14T08:22:00.000-07:00

On a fun note, July 17's reading from Genesis features Jacob's ladder (probably more like a "stairway to heaven," which is its own kind of fun). Did you ever make one of these as a kid? I may give it a shot this weekend: http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Jacob%27s-Ladder-out-of-String

Sermon prep for July 17: really? Do we have to go there?

2011-07-14T08:18:00.000-07:00

Jesus grasps Adam and Eve's wrists and liberates them from Sheol

Ray and I have committed to preaching about Genesis this summer as a way to provide consistency, and also to explore some really fascinating stories. But when you get a Gospel reading like the one appointed for July 17, it’s hard to stay focused on Jacob and Esau. The parable of “the weeds among the wheat” ends with this statement of Jesus in Matthew 13:

Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. ⁴¹The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, ⁴²and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Great.

If you read all of Matthew 13, you’ll find that Jesus’ explanation of his parable (above) comes at his disciples’ request – after he’s already moved on and told a few less “colorful” parables. They are dying to know what this one means, just as the servants in the parable are dying to rip up the weeds, and just as we are dying to figure out what to do with these uncomfortable words and images.

Nobody really gets what they want here. The servants are told to wait and let the reapers sort things out. Jesus’ disciples hear his explanation, but are then treated to another parable that includes fiery furnaces and gnashing teeth. We’re left with the two hard conclusions, plus a cultural context of our own that doesn’t deal well with either of them: first, sorting out the good from the bad isn’t our problem, just like it wasn’t the servants’; second, God will do the sorting and it ain’t gonna end well for everybody.

Again, great.

A lot of the scholarship I read wants to make only these points, that God is in control of this situation and you and I shouldn’t be wandering around worrying about who’s wheat and who’s a weed. When left to our own devices, we do a pretty bad job at that. God’s judgments are about hearts – not skin color, social status, sexual orientation, how well one is able to meet a variety of expectations, etc – so there’s comfort in knowing that God is in charge. I totally agree.

But frankly, that reading of these parables is skewed toward comfort – true, authentic comfort, but comfort none-the-less. It avoids the part where a sorting actually occurs. It avoids the part about hell. And as a Christian and a preacher, I feel called to handle those things … but preferably at arm’s length. With tongs. Wearing a hazmat suit. Is that an option?

So the sermon this week will have to deal with punishment – more specifically, a place of punishment called “hell” in older translations of the Bible. And we’ll also need to talk about a place of refreshment called “heaven,” which is where Jacob’s ladder reaches up to in the reading from Genesis. I honestly don’t know how far I’ll get or how deep I’ll be able to go in 10-12 minutes. But this is a part of our inheritance that we have to engage, and a sermon is one way to do that creatively, honestly, and – this is important – communally.

(See the posting below for some background on terms used for “hell” in the Bible.)

H-E-double-hockey-sticks

2011-07-14T08:12:00.000-07:00

The place we call "hell" goes by a few different names in the Bible:

Hades: the Greek place of the dead. Souls in Hades were called “shades.” It’s sort of a neutral place, but by the time of Homer and Pythagoras people were developing ideas about rewards and punishments in Hades.

Sheol: in early Jewish thought, Sheol is an underworld/nether-region. It was the common place of the dead, where all led an “unenviable,” and “gloomy” existence. The Septuagint (early Greek version of the Old Testament) called Sheol “Hades” because of the similarity between the two places. As ideas about resurrection developed, Sheol/Hades became a temporary abode of dead, where souls waited to be brought back to bodily life. One interesting view held that bodies went to Sheol/Hades and souls went to heaven, and were united in a general resurrection.

In the Bible, Sheol/Hades isn’t necessarily a place of punishment, but a place of safe-keeping for the dead. It and Death will be thrown into the lake of fire at the resurrection (Rev. 20:13).

Gehenna: This is the bad one. Gehenna refers to the Valley of Hinnom outside of Jerusalem, where folklore held that people who worshiped the god Molech sacrificed children. It is also thought that trash (and corpses) were burned there consistently. This appears to be a medieval rabbinic tradition, and there’s not a lot of archaeological evidence to support it. Regardless, in the imagination of people in Jesus’ time (and following), this was a place where bad things happened. Gehenna names all that is opposed to God’s kingdom.

Matthew chapters 5, 10, 18, and 23 all mention Gehenna, as well as Mark 9, Luke 12, and James 3.

Hell: a word with Germanic/Norse origins. In folklore/legend there was a place called “Hel” that was the abode of the dead and a figure named Hel who ruled there. The King James Version of the Bible translated Hades, Gehenna, and Sheol all as “hell.”

(For more information on all of the above, see The Anchor Bible Dictionary, a series of dense reference volumes edited by David Noel Freedman and a million of his closest friends – published by Doubleday, 1992.)

Birth order blues (sermon from July 10)

2011-07-11T10:29:00.000-07:00

Jakob Steinhardt, Jacob and Esau

(The readings for July 10 were from Genesis 25, Psalm 119 (105-112), Romans 8, and Matthew 13)

We all know about oldest children. Esau's not quite your stereotypically conscientious, over-responsible, people-pleasing firstborn, but anybody who has one of those types for a brother or sister knows that the notion of a birthright is still kicking around in our day and age. Ever have a teacher, or a coach, or a minister call you by your older sibling's name, or ever have to listen to adults tell stories about what a great student he was, or what a great runner she was, or what a joy it was to have so-and-so in confirmation class? Did you ever sense, like Jacob and Esau both did, that somebody was playing favorites in your family? That mom or dad liked one of you best, for whatever reason, or that the adults who were supposed to love you equally sided with the kid who was more like them, or more like who they wanted to be? That one of you was the chosen one?

That's one reason why this story's hard to stomach. From the very beginning we see not only two brothers at each others' necks, but a whole family dividing up. Isaac and Rebekah each have a favorite child. On the one hand, Esau's a great hunter, so Isaac favors him because he really likes eating game. Sounds practical enough, but it's hard to avoid the image of Esau as a very handsome, very athletic, very masculine guy who fulfills a certain active, physical ideal of what a man should be, and Isaac is just really proud to be the father of such a commanding person. Whereas Jacob is quieter. We're told that Jacob prefers to live in tents, which means he farms, he cooks, he hangs close to home. He's probably with his mother more, but even so we don't know why Rebekah favors him. Maybe it's because he's the youngest, and she has a mother's sensitivity to her more vulnerable child - which, by not having the birthright, he is by default. Or maybe it's that oracle, that thing God spoke to her before the boys were ever born: "Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples born of you shall be divided; the one shall be stronger than the other, the elder shall serve the younger." In which case, she isn't siding with the more vulnerable child at all - she's siding with God, who seems to be saying that Jacob is the one that God chooses and that God will use to do special things.

So there's the real problem with this story. God appears to be playing favorites. God appears to be acting inequitably. And this favoritism, this siding on the side of Jacob then becomes part of a whole biblical tradition: Jacob's children will become Israel ... and Esau's children will become the kingdom of Edom, which for many years is Israel's bitter enemy. There's so much strife between these two nations that prophets will write about it, and years later our Apostle Paul will pick up their writings and ponder a phrase that many of us have heard before and that sends chills up the spine of anyone who cares about fairness: Paul repeats the words of God in the prophet Malachi, "Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated."

I don't like that phrase. Nobody likes that phrase, because it doesn't make any sense to us. It doesn't sound like our God. Like I said, we care about fairness. You don't give a cookie to one kid and a carrot to another; you don't let the guy on steroids into the hall of fame. And we care about equality: no person is worth more than another. So where does God get off loving Jacob best? Where do the prophets and Paul get off inscribing this into our religion? Where are we left if our God isn't the all-loving, all-accepting, all-favoring parent that we want God to be?

How about another question: why do we care? Why does it matter who God loves best? Recently, a group of us at the church had a pretty passionate discussion about a joking nickname some Lutherans, Episcopalians, and other Protestants use to describe themselves: "the frozen chosen." And none of that passion was around the frozen part, the part that suggests that we're reserved or rigid or chilly - it was around the word "chosen" and the idea that we might view ourselves as God's elect, or even as an elite group within our own society - an in-crowd, set apart from the rest of the world. The people who hated the nickname hated it because it sounded exclusivist and superior - so their hatred was in the right place. But the energy there, the empathy, the reason we cared so much about the word "chosen" is because we all know what it's like not to be chosen. No matter how great things have turned out for you, no matter how well you are loved or how secure your situation seems, you have been picked last for the kickball team. You have been turned down for a date. You have lost a job, or a 401K, or a marriage, or somebody you loved. You may have lost hope. At those times, you feel left out. Left out of the blessing, left out of the promise. Or chosen, but for the wrong things. Singled out to carry burdens that are too heavy. And the idea that God might have something to do with all this is unbearable.

Because what we want from God is love, a love we say is bigger than anything we can imagine, that nothing or nobody else could give us, and we don't want to be left out of that, let alone anyone else. We believe our God is the one who takes away the sin of the world - not a chosen few. We believe our God is the one who draws all things unto God - not one or two or twenty things. We believe our God is the one who renews the entire creation - not a tree here and a mountain there, and this or that particular, chosen human being.

And we're right. In fact, that's what the prophet Malachi and Paul are trying to get their brains around. Because while we’re worried about God being too choosy, too small, they’re confused by the fact that God seems to be expansive, and so freely choosing. They're looking for cause and effect: be good, and God will favor you; follow the law, and God will reward you; be the oldest son, and you will inherit the earth. And to them, that looks like love and hate. But God’s love they can't quite figure out. Israel survives the invasions and wars and exile that her neighbors - like Edom - don't, but Israel doesn’t feel like she's being rewarded for anything. And yet God loves her, a group of people who are defeated and dispersed and just as disobedient as any of us. Paul is working in this brand new church, among these brand new people called Christians and sees that pagans - non-law-abiding, non-Jewish people of all stripes ... us, essentially - are being brought into the communion of God's chosen people and are claiming God as their own. And he knows it's right! So he looks at the story of these two brothers, Jacob and Esau, and thinks, "Well, if God can choose a youngest son, a quiet man, a person whose father prefers his older brother - a person who stands to be left out - and make of him a great nation, then I guess God can choose anybody! I guess God is big enough and free enough to love the entire world!"

Which is good news for us. It's good news for us when we are weak and when we are hurt, because God chooses us; it is good news for us when we are the outsider, because God chooses us. It's good for the younger sibling in each of us who is longing to be seen and for the older sibling in each of us who is always striving to measure up.

But it's challenging news. For one thing, if God loves all of us and chooses every one of us to be blessed and to share in God's promises, then we have a lot of siblings we didn't count on. We have a whole world full of brothers and sisters who are also chosen, in which case fairness and equality melt away and what we are called to is radical, invested love, care, and concern for one another. Which is hard.

And finally, it’s challenging because if God loves all of us and chooses every one of us to be blessed and share in God’s promises, then we have to pay attention. It means that God is reaching out for us all the time and we have to be humble enough and willing enough to hear that voice. Like the good soil in Jesus’ parable we’ll want to be deep enough and still enough to grow.

Perhaps the best news of all, then, the thing we see in Jacob and Malachi and Paul is no matter who and where you are, God will find a way to let you know that you are chosen. God will bless you and will make you a blessing, and will use you to keep a promise to the entire world.

(This sermon was preached by Danielle Thompson at St. Chrysostom's Episcopal Church in Chicago, IL on Sunday, July 3, 2011)

Grapes?

2011-07-06T11:12:00.000-07:00

I really wanted to work some green into our blog design in honor of the Season after Pentecost - and with a nod to my churchmates Richard Hoskins and Eve Webster who have been making green things grow this summer.

But the really green templates made me feel a little nauseated. So I went with grapes, which are green with the added benefit of being holy.

Hope you like it!

Below: Beautiful churchyard, mediocre photography ...

Sermon prep for July 10: a tale of two brothers

2011-07-06T10:47:00.000-07:00

Read Genesis 25:19-34 at http://bible.oremus.org/.

You don’t have to know what “Edom” means to get what this week’s reading from Genesis is about. Jacob and Esau are fighting from day one, and in a moment of mindless vulnerability, Esau gives something of value to Jacob – from the looks of things, Jacob one-ups him. And if you’ve heard the rest of the story (see Genesis 27), you know that it doesn’t stop here. Big problems are ahead.

As relatable as a story of filial struggle is, let’s look at the context of this story specifically:

Who are Isaac and Rebekah?: Isaac is Abraham’s son – not his only son, but his “promised” son, born to his wife Sarah (Ishmael, the son of Abraham and Sarah’s servant Hagar, was sent away with his mother in Genesis 21). Isaac married Rebekah, whom he loved. We see in this week’s Scripture that the two parents played favorites: Isaac loved Esau because he was a great hunter and Rebekah loved Jacob.

What’s up with the heel?: The Hebrew word for heel is eikov (it also “because of” or “following from,” as in “on the heels of …”), which is like the name Ya’akov (Jacob – James in English). Jacob is so named because he was born right after his brother, and was grabbing Esau’s heel. Eventually, the name came to mean “one who supplants” because of the idea – borne out in the image of one person gripping another’s heel – that the older brother would serve the younger one.

Later on in Genesis 38, there’s a pretty heavy story about Judah (one of Jacob’s sons) and his daughter-in-law Tamar. As Tamar is giving birth to twins, one sticks his arm out and a string is tied around it so that everybody will know who the older son is – but then he pulls his arm back in and the other twin makes his escape. The midwife cries, “What a breach you have made for yourself!” and the son is named Perez, which means “breach” or “breakthrough” (peretz). Perez – who actively seizes the position of elder son – ends up in the line of David, and in the line of Jesus by way of Mary’s husband Joseph.

Okay – what is Edom?: Edom means “red,” and became a nickname for Esau after he sold his birthright for Jacob’s lentil stew (“that red stuff”). There is a tradition that Esau overtook the area south of Judah, which became the kingdom of Edom. Edom was powerful and autonomous until it was seized by the Israelite kings Saul and David. When the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II attacked Judah, the Edomites helped him plunder the land and kill its inhabitants.

The point is this: the two nations referred to in verse 23 are Israel and Edom … and they don’t like each other.

But the point of the story of Jacob is that through him – that is, through Israel – all nations will come to know God: “all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and in your offspring” (Gen. 28:14). And the way to get there will not be through enmity, but through reconciliation.

(Danielle Thompson)

Isaac and Rebekah: A Love Story (sermon from July 3)

2011-07-06T10:38:00.000-07:00

(The readings for July 3 were from Genesis 24, Song of Solomon 2, Romans 7, and Matthew 11)

I remember, as a teenager, walking down the street behind my grandparents and noticing that they were holding hands and whispering to one another. They'd been married forty-something years at that point; they had three children and eight grandchildren and did everything together. So of course I knew that they loved one another, but that was the first time I realized that they were in love with each other. I hadn't known they shared such an abiding affection. Seeing this private exchange changed the way I thought about them - and about my family, and my own hope of love - forever.

Though it has a specific place in my grandparents' story, that image of a long-married couple holding hands is sort of iconic - it's the kind of thing love stories are made of, and we encounter scenes like it again and again when we talk about the great relationships we have known, or when we celebrate weddings and anniversaries. These narratives about what romantic love looks like - our love stories - actually do something for us: they show us what we want. We want to believe that people aren't randomly thrown together in time, but are meant to find one another. We want to believe that our relationships have a bigger purpose, or participate in something bigger than ourselves: Love, with a capital "L." And we want to believe that this kind of love is possible - for us, and for all people.

This sense of a greater meaning and purpose in love is all over the story of Isaac and Rebekah. In fact, what we're getting when we hear it today isn't even a straight-forward telling of their tale - it's the interpretive, hopeful re-telling of their story by Abraham's servant, who's just discovered Rebekah, wants to take her home to Isaac, and is blown out of the water by how all of the pieces have fallen into place so that these two people can come together exactly as they're supposed to.

Granted, this guy has a definite stake in the idea that Isaac and Rebekah are meant for one another. He's charged with finding a wife for his master's son, and since God has promised Abraham that his descendants will be as numerous as the stars of the sky, this nameless servant ends up being the trustee of untold generations. So he prays, asking God for more than a hint, more than a sign pointing him to the right woman - he asks for the right woman to walk up to him, wave her hands in front of his face, and shout, "It's me! I'm the one!" And according to the story, she does. Rebekah falls perfectly in line with the servant's vision before he's done visioning it, and everybody seems to agree that something promising - if not something special - is going on here.

If you think about the story of Isaac more broadly, you may recall that something like this has happened around him before. Last week, in fact, we heard about a time when he was a boy and his father, Abraham, was about to sacrifice him, when at the very last moment, a ram appeared on the scene, clearly provided by God to stand in for the beloved child. Rebekah's appearance has that same sense of redemptive promise, that same sense of divine provision, but with an important message about fulfillment. For when she gets close to the fields and sees Isaac walking toward her, we get another one of those iconic love story moments: Rebekah sees Isaac, Isaac meets Rebekah, and it's love at first sight. He takes her home, she becomes the matriarch of the family, and he loves her. Their relationship doesn't satisfy or propitiate anything - it isn't sacrificial. It's a constructive and positive sacrament of human love at the center of this ongoing biblical narrative. And as the story says, it was comforting, which in the language of the Bible doesn't mean that it was therapeutic - it means that it was strong and durable and protective, like a fort surrounding this primeval human family.

And if you know anything about this primeval human family, you know that they need something like a fort - they need all the help they can get. When we talk about pre-marital counseling, Ray always jokes about the geneagram, a sort of family tree where you use different shapes and symbols to track the things that happen in the life of a family system - which ends up being a lot of difficult things: deaths, separations, divorces, childlessness, or rifts between parents and children. If we were to do a geneagram for Abraham's family, I'm not even sure where we'd start ... how do you chart Hagar and Ishmael, a son and mother forced to leave their home and wander in the desert? How do you chart Isaac and Abraham with that ram? How do you chart Isaac's son Jacob deceiving his father and brother, or his sons selling their brother, Joseph, into slavery in Egypt? It all sounds really epic and terrible, but if we dig deeply into our own families, we find this-millennium versions of some of the same stuff. Alienation, betrayal, conflict, and death still wind themselves like a snake around the branches of our family trees, and disappointment is the fruit of many a relationship that hangs there, be it between siblings, parents and children, or life partners.

Which is why it matters that when we hear the story of Isaac and Rebekah today, thousands of years after it happened, this unambiguous picture of their love is preserved for us. For we receive it not merely as a love story, but as the story of our own people, the family through which God's blessing opens out onto the whole world: "in the calling of Israel to be a people, in the word spoken through the prophets, and above all in the word made flesh." The descendants of Isaac and Rebekah are Jacob and Joseph, but also Moses, David, and a man named Jesus who sends the roots and the canopy of this family tree shooting out into all the world, picking up all families and all relationships - drawing all of creation into the close of God's embrace, where at the center of things is included this simple, eternal testament to human relationship: "Rebekah became Isaac's wife, and he loved her."

That's not quite kismet - it's actually what we call redemption. And it justifies everything that our love stories tell us that we want to believe in: a sense of meaning and purpose, participation in something larger than ourselves, and the righteous belief that we can love and be loved despite any evidence to the contrary. God created in the power of love and we were created to love as the primary act of our existence. Creation continues by means of love and uses all kinds of human love to do its work. Believe in the love that God has for you and that you are due simply by virtue of being here; believe in the love that you are called to give; and remember that inscribed in the tale of your own human family, there is an ancient and endearing love story.

(This sermon was preached by Danielle Thompson at St. Chrysostom's Episcopal Church in Chicago, IL on Sunday, July 3, 2011)