Protecting the Child

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
January 3, 2010; 2 Christmas, Year B
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Matthew 2:13-15,19-23) – Now after the wise men had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, "Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him." Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, "Out of Egypt I have called my son."

When Herod died, an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, "Get up, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who were seeking the child's life are dead." Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus was ruling over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. And after being warned in a dream, he went away to the district of Galilee. There he made his home in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, "He will be called a Nazorean."
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We rarely get to hear this story of the Holy Family's flight into Egypt. Some years, when Christmas happens earlier in the week, we don't have a Second Sunday of Christmas before January 6th, when Epiphany comes. If we do get a second Sunday between Christmas and Epiphany, some years we hear the story of the visit of the Magi; other years we get the story of the Family's visit to Jerusalem where they lose Jesus for a few days while he is in the Temple debating with the Rabbis; occasionally, rarely, we hear this story, about Joseph's leading his family away from trouble into a foreign land, and back.

Whenever I hear the story of the journey of Joseph, Mary and Jesus into Egypt, I always think of all of the refugees and immigrants throughout the world. So many families fleeing from violence or threat, famine and poverty. So many parents following their dreams, moving to a place of new hope for their families, a new start for their children.

This story awakens my imagination. I wonder about that sojourn into Egypt. I wonder what sort of welcome the Holy Family received in a foreign land. Did they have to hide and run from border guards? Were they living under threat of deportation? Did they suffer prejudice? Most certainly they sought hospitality among their own people, among the other Jews living in Egypt. Did the Egyptians treat them with respect? Could Joseph find work where they would pay him a just wage and not take advantage of his immigrant status?

I thought about Joseph and Mary last week when I visited with a young Mexican woman who had been repeatedly paid late for her work in a local restaurant, and when she was injured on the job, her employer fired her and paid half what she was owed with a hot check. People who visit regularly with our local immigrants hear these stories all the time. A September report that surveyed low-wage workers in three major cities found that nearly seven out of every ten workers interviewed had been cheated out of some their rightful pay in the previous work week. This was a survey covering all low-wage workers, not just immigrants. People take advantage of the weak and poor.

I thought about Jesus recently when I heard the story about a young man who grew up from age two in California and graduated from Harvard last May. His parents were unable to complete the complicated process for naturalization before he reached his eighteenth birthday, so he is now an illegal immigrant. He's lived in the U.S. virtually all his life, has a Harvard degree, and now, he can't work here. After graduation from Harvard, he had to move to his birthplace, Mexico, in order to get a job. I hear stories like that and I wonder what might have happened to Jesus if Joseph had stayed in Egypt?

Whenever I hear conversations and debates about immigration in the U.S., I always think about Mary and Joseph and Jesus fleeing from their home in Israel to find refuge as immigrants in Egypt. I yearn for laws and policies that would give today's Jose, Maria and Jesus the kind of respect, protection and opportunity that we would have wanted for the Holy Family during their sojourn in a foreign land.

Whenever I read this story, I am also struck by Joseph's leadership and the fateful decisions he makes. Two things stand out to me about the way Joseph makes these decisions. First – he decides in terms of the child. His first priority is the good and protection of the child. The second thing that stands out, is that he makes reference to his dreams, and uses his dreams as a source of wisdom and direction.

What would our society look like if we made children the first priority for our important decisions? What if we never let money or power or the comfort of adults be more important than the interests of children, now and in the future generations? Native American wisdom has a tradition that every important decision must be made with the interest of the seventh generation in mind. That's worth thinking about.

There's another way to access the good of the child when making decisions. Many people find their own personal direction with reference to what is sometimes called our "inner child." Books like John Bradshaw's Homecoming teach us how to get in touch with our inner child, a part of us which is our God-given personhood – who we are before we became limited, hurt and defined by others. ...before we became cynical, self-protective, pessimistic. That child is always present within us and within our culture and our world.

What does the child represent? The child is always new life, promise, possibility, tomorrow, change, challenge, hope. The new child is the creative present. God's great "Yes!"

That child is in you. No matter how stale, stuck, penned-in you may feel, no matter how routine or limited your life may seem, that original and God-blessed inner child is within you. We sing with the Christmas carol, "O holy child of Bethlehem, be born in us today," and we touch the divine child, the holy child within, that place of new life and promise and hope, the realization of unqualified love and security. That child is always present in you.

The child is also present in the church, in our society and in our culture. Its voice is often the spirit of challenge and change, of new ideas, new ways, new possibilities. It resonates to the energy of the quest: How can we make love more bountiful? How can we make life more abundant, for all?

Wherever the child is trying to be born, Herod is also present.

Herod resents the new reality coming to birth and tries to stop it, especially if that future means a change of power. Herod is our fear of new life and new ideas. Herod is the energy that tries to hold back the possibilities for our future. Herod lives inside you and in me. Herod is the inner voice who says, "you can't; you're no good; forget it." Herod is the voice that says "be afraid; be afraid of change; don't do anything differently; the way things are is the way things are supposed to be; we've never done it that way before."

Herod is no dreamer. Herod knows where the power is; where the bottom line is. Herod's self-interest is the status quo.

Herod is in each of us. Whenever we are more comfortable with the cold reality of the way things are than we are with dreaming of the way they could be, we are living in Herod's world. Herod tries to kill the child, the vulnerable hope of a new and better you, a new and better world.

It is so important to protect the child. Protect the child within you; protect the child within the world.

The Gospel says that the Spirit of God is always doing new things, bringing new life through divine creation, the unexpected, the surprise; not by power, but by love. Maybe that's why dreams figure so prominently in this story. When we are most vulnerable, least in control, most childlike, letting go in trust, when we are within the renewing gift of sleep – then dreams come.

Some say dreams are the child in us, speaking to us. Some say dreams are one of God's ways to communicate with us. It seems very likely that dreams are a way for the deepest part of us, to communicate with the rest of us.

When Joseph was faced with serious threats and important decisions, he paid close attention to his dreams; and by doing so, he discovered direction – life-giving direction that helped him protect the child.

We too can dream of a better way to live. We can dream of a better world. We can care for the child – our own inner child and the generation of children living in our time. We can protect the child, and protect others who share the vulnerability of children, such as low-wage workers and immigrants.

Respect, protection, and hopeful dreams.

The message of Christmas is that God is with us – Immanuel. Every family, therefore, is a Holy Family. Every Child is a Christ-bearer. The child we protect and nurture is the new possibility that God is birthing among us for the healing of the world.

Arise dreamers. We have much to hope for. We have much to protect from Herod. And we have much to care for. It is a holy journey for all of us immigrants.
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(1) Broken Laws, Unprotected Workers, published by the Center for Urban Economic Development, U. of Illinois at Chicago; the National Employment Law Project; and UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment.
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The Mission of St. Paul's Episcopal Church is to explore and celebrate
God's infinite grace, acceptance and love.

For information about St. Paul's Episcopal Church and it's life and mission, please contact us at
P.O. Box 1190, Fayetteville, AR 72702, or call 479/442-7373
More sermons are posted on our web site: www.stpaulsfay.org
Visit our web partners at www.explorefaith.org

Your Christmas Gift

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
December 24, 2009; Christmas Eve
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Luke 2:1-14) – In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid; for see-- I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger." And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying,

"Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and on earth peace among those whom he favors!"
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At this summer's General Convention of the Episcopal Church, I spent long hours with a committee doing that tedious but necessary work of turning ideas into words that can open new life, new possibilities for our church. That kind of work is hard and honorable work. It often produces good results, but the process is as ugly as making sausage. Keep our friends and representatives in Washington in your prayers as they spend their time and talents in that hard work of turning ideas into words that can open new life, new possibilities for our nation, especially when it looks like making sausage.

In our shared committee work this summer, I was especially drawn to one person who sat directly across from me. Jeffrey Lee is the bishop of Chicago, and is remarkably centered, wise and generous. He makes me glad to be part of a church with such fine leaders.

This year Jeffrey's son Jonathan turned 21. Jonathan's reaching maturity now, as a strong, strapping young man, brought back memories for Jeffrey of Jonathan's birth 21 years ago. Jonathan was born prematurely, two months early. He weighed only two-and-one-half pounds – so tiny that Jeffrey could hold him in one hand like a teacup. Jonathan was lucky; he avoided so many of the difficulties of premature babies – he could breathe pretty well on his own; his parents could take him out of the warm, Lucite-box with all of its wires and tubes, and, from time to time, they could hold him, tightly bundled.

But Jonathan was born with one "circumstance, problem, or what some people might call a handicap." He was born without a left hand.

Jeffrey says that he's not one who remembers his dreams regularly, but he had a recurring dream during those days as they watched and cared for tiny Jonathan. In his dream there appeared a little blonde haired boy in an Easter suit – beautiful and perfect, with two hands. The image occurred repeatedly in Jeffrey's dreams, and became a companion for him on his journey, as Jeffrey speculated about what his son's life would be like. What will he be able to do? What will he not be able to do? How will the other kids treat him?

About a month after Jonathan's birth, Jeffrey was scheduled to preach, and he decided to tell some of this story, and to share the sense of grace that he had received from his dream and his interpretation of the dream's meaning. Jeffrey sensed that this dream image had been the fantasy version of his prefect son, the fantasy that had gestated in his mind all of those months while they waited on their child. The dream was telling him to let go of that fantasy, and to "receive the real gift of the child he was given." The child he was given was good and was to be loved just as he is. After all, in Jesus, God emptied the divine self to take on our imperfect humanity, in order to raise it all up into God's fullness of life.

Jeffrey and a good friend were in the habit of exchanging sermons with one another. Jeffrey says that this friend is one of those blessed people who knows him better than he knows himself. The friend wrote his own sermon telling about Jonathan's birth, about how his friend Jeffrey was dealing with it – about the dreams, about the interpretation. Then the friend said, "Jeffrey's wrong. It's not a perfect-fantasy Jonathan in the dream. It's a perfect-fantasy Jeffrey." Jeffrey realized, "He was right."

It seems that Jonathan's birth opened up something profound in Jeffrey's own self-consciousness and opened him to an important healing journey. Jeffrey realized that Jonathan was just fine. It was Jeffrey himself that God wanted to heal.

Most of his life, Jeffrey had believed that if he were only "smart enough, good enough, elegant enough, capable enough, hard working enough, enough enough..." that he would be okay, he would be acceptable, he would be safe. That belief is an ancient curse.

Most of us absorb the message that we need to be fixed, and that the responsibility is on us to fix ourselves. It's a lie. We are not projects to be fixed; we are mysteries to be lived. But most of us grow up getting messages that tell us that we can and we should fix ourselves. If we believe those messages, we will be deeply damaged. That belief is the big lie; the ancient curse.

The curse is amplified when it is falsely projected upon God, as if God is the cosmic CEO, and we dare not present ourselves without polishing our resume, cleaning up our act and perfecting our interview techniques before going through that door. Some of us were raised with deep suspicions that "God really is that demanding, angry judging figure behind the smoke and mirrors of Oz."

The story of Jesus unmasks that lie. In Jesus, we see God poured out into our human life – our earthy, human life with all of its flaws, limitations, tragedies and evils. God embraces it all, and gives back only love.

The Christmas story: A refugee family, outcast among the animals, their child born under suspicious circumstances – is God's version of a triumphant divine entry into our world. The Jesus story: A Jewish peasant who gets convicted of blasphemy and treason and is painfully executed in a public hanging before he can grow old – is God's embrace of our failed humanity. What does God do? Nothing but love - love expressed as compassion, mercy and forgiveness. Then God makes new life happen out of our suffering and wrong – resurrection.

The whole Christian message that begins with the announcement of the savior's birth this night, is the message that God loves us before we are even able to love ourselves. God pours out God's divine life into Jesus, and into every human life, and sees us as beautiful, perfect, in our Easter suit. God loves us through our doubts and failures; and even when we crucify him, God does nothing but love. When we need encouragement, God is the encourager. When we need forgiveness, God is the forgiver. When we need vision, God is the light.

We don't need to be fixed anymore than baby Jonathan did. We don't need to become something we aren't in order to be God's beloved. We are God's beloved. Period.

In the birth of Jesus, God the Holy Trinity goes into some divine committee work to turn the idea of God's love into the Word incarnate that opens up new life, new possibilities for everyone on earth. God invites us into a liberated life as God's beloved children. Just be who you are, regardless of the flaws. Do the best you can. Immerse yourself moment by moment into whatever life presents you. Let things be. Things are as they are whether one accepts them or not. So they may as well be accepted.

Some of us have one hand; others are inconveniently pregnant; some are forced to live with animals; sometimes we get crucified. The story of Jesus tells us that God is in all of it, loving and healing throughout. Let it be, and do your best. That's enough. We don't have to become the perfect blond-headed child in an Easter suit, because God already regards us that way. God loves you and me, as the old hymn says, "Just as I am."

So relax. Enjoy life. Let the child that is Christ in you be born today and reborn every day.

Here's your Christmas present from God: You are loved just as you are. You don't have to be smart enough, good enough, elegant enough, capable enough, hard working enough, enough enough... God loves you here and now, just as you are. Unqualified, eternal divine Love given freely to every human being. Unwrap that gift for yourself. It's yours for the claiming.

Merry Christmas!
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Listen to Bishop Lee's fine meditation at
http://www.episcopalcafe.com/video/2009/12/jeff_lee.html
It is one of many resources on the excellent web page episcopalcafe.com
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The Mission of St. Paul's Episcopal Church is to explore and celebrate
God's infinite grace, acceptance and love.

For information about St. Paul's Episcopal Church and it's life and mission, please contact us at
P.O. Box 1190, Fayetteville, AR 72702, or call 479/442-7373
More sermons are posted on our web site: www.stpaulsfay.org
Visit our web partners at www.explorefaith.org

A Blue Christmas Sermon

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
Monday, December 21, 2009; The Feast of St. Thomas
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(John 20:24-29) – Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with the other disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord." But he said to them, "Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe."

A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe." Thomas answered him, "My Lord and my God!" Jesus said to him, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe."
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Some of you may remember when my seminary classmate Barbara Crafton came to St. Paul's to do an Advent Quiet Day for us as a Tippy McMichael lecturer. I got the idea for writing regular email meditations from her popular "eMo's" as she calls them.

Barbara lives in New Jersey with her husband Richard Quaintance, nicknamed "Q", and with lots of cats, birds and flowers. She wrote yesterday following the big snowstorm that blanketed much of the northeast.

Here's what she said:
It was looking like snow yesterday, all right, and it was sounding like it on the radio, so we weren't surprised when it started coming down, nor when it got deeper and deeper every time we got up at night and looked out the window. This morning it was lovely, a thick frosting of white on every branch, the bamboo out back bent down to the ground under the weight of it.

What about church? The choir has been rehearing Advent Lessons and Carols for weeks, and Q and I were both to read. Would anybody but singers and readers attend? Well, if not, then not -- we would just have to sing and read to each other. But a small band of hardy souls filtered in. Most parishioners with children were coming for the pageant later today anyway, when surely the roads would have cleaned up a bit. And the simple service of ancient words and beautiful singing did what it always does, sweetly slowed our spirits so that we could feel our hope focus on the joy soon to come upon us again. Every year, the same: the infant Christ, every time. As long as I live, and no matter what happens, he will never weary me.

This year, a terrible sadness in the little church: a baby girl was stillborn on Friday. Her older sister and brother were in the pageant today, and there was the heartbroken father, come from the hospital to watch them. Oh, yes, life must go on. The other children need what they need, deserve all the love and regard they can get. This great sorrow doesn't change their sweetness, or alter the absoluteness of the claim they have on their parents. But he sat and watched as an angel gave Mary her baby. At least the Baby Jesus got a chance to grow to childhood, and then to adulthood. His little girl won't do that. He left with the children as soon as the pageant was over, out into the snow, their voices like flutes: When is Mommy coming home? And his still, silent little one on his mind as they walk, the cut-off little life that was not to be, so sudden, so wrong, so full of nothing but nevers. Never to be in a Christmas pageant. Never to see snow. Never to hold a little hand and walk out into it in wonder. Never. Nothing but nevers.

This very loss was mine, too, years ago. Just at this time of year, too: Christmas Eve, it was. People who have known it can help each other through it, if only because we know that nothing makes it go away and so we don't try to do that. Sometimes people try to spare us -- they don't mention it, try not to talk about babies to us, afraid it will "remind" us. But go ahead: remind us. It's not as if it's slipped our minds.

Such a terrible time of year for such a thing to happen, many people told me at the time. Oh, I don't know about that. This is a time of year when people are kind, when hope is in the air, a time when we are not afraid to love. This is a time of year when the past is hallowed in our imaginations, and we think with love of all those who loved us, all those whom we have loved. And this is the time of Mary, who loves her son as we love ours, even now, after all these years. Take care of my little one, I have said to her many times, until I get there myself. A foolish thought, I suppose, but who cares? This is a time of year when it's okay to be foolish, okay to cry, when it's not especially conspicuous to be a little blue. Oddly, this is a time of year when the dead seem very near us, and comfortingly so.

It will not always be this bad. It is now, but it will change as time goes on. You'll never forget -- why would you want to forget? -- but the loss will become part of your life and your life will become possible again. Not the same, but possible. And it will also be joyful again, later on, as absurd as that claim seems in the days immediately following such an unthinkable loss. I do not say all these things to the stricken mother and father, not all at once. There will be plenty of time for talk as time goes on. (1)
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This is the first Christmas for my family since the death of Kathy's father earlier this year. He was the patriarch, and the glue for that half of our family. Our son Gray is named for him. We're trying to change all of our holiday traditions now as we figure out new ways to connect without his home, without his presence. He feels so absent. It's hard. But when we serve some pulled-pork shoulder like he always did, and turn on some football on the TV, we'll feel his presence and his absence. And we'll use a recipe that was a favorite of Kathy's mom, Claire, whose been gone from us for so long. This is a time of year when the past is hallowed in our imaginations, and we think with love of all those who loved us, all those whom we have loved. Our tables becomes communion tables with food passed down to us from the souls of several generations.

Life is hard. It is also beautiful. Chuck preached compellingly Sunday of the earthiness of that first Christmas, Mary with her awkward pregnancy, and the child Jesus with his untimely birth among the livestock.

Today is the darkest day of the year, the winter solstice. We tell the story of St. Thomas today, the apostle who missed Easter, who was out of step with the others' joy. He was grieving when they were partying. But Jesus came to him. Late, it seems, but truly. And he knew it was really Jesus by the presence of the wounds, the marks in his hand and side. It was still true that Jesus had died. The facts of the past are never changed. The wounds are still there, but now they don't haunt so much. They were given new meaning. Hope was resurrected in Thomas. "My God," he whispered.

We bring our wounds, our losses, our disappointments, our worries, our doubts, our hurts to this holy place tonight. We whisper, "My God," and ask for help. God honors our grief. God hears our hearts. The wounded healer reaches out his marked hands to us, and invites us to continue our life in hope.

Oh, yes, life must go on. There are other children of God who need what they need, and who deserve all the love and regard they can get. We are all children of God who need and deserve all the love and regard we can get, especially in the face of our deep losses. You'll never forget -- why would you want to forget? -- but the loss will become part of your life and your life will become possible again. Not the same, but possible. And it will also be joyful again. In this holy place, may we receive like children the gift of God's infinite, healing love. And may we look toward the future with hope.
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(1) Barbara Crafton, The Almost Daily eMo from Geranium Farm.org, Sunday, December 20, 2009
________________

The Mission of St. Paul's Episcopal Church is to explore and celebrate
God's infinite grace, acceptance and love.

For information about St. Paul's Episcopal Church and it's life and mission, please contact us at
P.O. Box 1190, Fayetteville, AR 72702, or call 479/442-7373
More sermons are posted on our web site: www.stpaulsfay.org
Visit our web partners at www.explorefaith.org

"You Brood of Vipers"

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
December 13, 2009; 3 Advent, Year B
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Luke 3:7-18) – John said to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits worthy of repentance. Do not begin to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our ancestor'; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire."

And the crowds asked him, "What then should we do?" In reply he said to them, "Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise." Even tax collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him, "Teacher, what should we do?" He said to them, "Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you." Soldiers also asked him, "And we, what should we do?" He said to them, "Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages."

As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, John answered all of them by saying, "I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire."
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The Lights of the Ozarks shine each night. Holiday music fills our air. People are decorating their homes and throwing parties. We're wearing bright clothes and holiday cheer is in the air. And we come to church to hear: "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?" What's up? Somebody doesn't seem to have the holiday spirit. How many Christmas cards have you received with an image of a gaunt, grizzle-bearded man in desert rags, saying "Season's Greetings from us and John the Baptist: 'You brood of vipers! The axe is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Merry Christmas!"

The church does this to us every year. The church insists that you can't get to the joyous birth at Bethlehem without going through the fiery prophet in the desert. Every Advent, in the midst of the exuberance that marks this time of year, the wisdom of the church throws John the Baptist at us.

John makes us uncomfortable. John cuts through the conversational niceties and gets to the hard truth. And people traveled from their Jerusalem comforts to hear him. People went into the wilderness to hear something unavailable in cosmopolitan Jerusalem, someone who speaks the truth.

It's risky to open yourself to deep truth. John's probing is like a surgeon's knife cutting into a tumor, or a skilled analyst penetrating our psychological defenses, or an honest friend telling you what no one else will.

There were good people who went out to hear John – nice people like us. He told them, "Do not be presumptuous before God. God sees through your pretensions. God is not impressed with your unearned privilege of place and status. God can create Episcopalians out of these rocks in the ground."

There were bad people who went out to hear John – sinners and tax collectors and prostitutes. People like us. And they heard him tell them, "I baptize you with water. You are washed clean. Start over fresh and pure. Begin again, and this time, be honest; don't cheat; share your good fortune with others."

Like every great prophet, John afflicted the comfortable and comforted the afflicted.

If you could endure the tirade about vipers and axes and fire – if you didn't leave but stuck around for the question and answer period, you would have heard some pretty straightforward advice. After the stormy sermon of fierce apocalyptic was over, people asked him, "What should we do?" John gave them specific, mundane ethical instruction. "Be generous. Be very generous. If you've got two coats give one of them away. Same thing with food."

The tax collectors asked, "What shall we do?" "Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you," he told them. The soldiers asked, "What shall we do?" "Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusations, and be satisfied with your wages."

I think it helps to know that in those days tax collecting and soldiering were unacceptable livelihoods for Jews. Their reputations would be comparable to today's prostitutes, or mafia thugs. The expected answer for a tax collector or soldier would have been, "Stop doing what you are doing! Change jobs! Get a real job; a moral job." In the Roman Empire, telling a tax collector, "Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you," is like telling a prostitute, "Don't rob from your customer's wallet."

This hard bitten, righteous prophet, who exposes sin and cries for repentance, is remarkably gentle on these outcasts. In fact, he's downright soft on these marginalized, semi-criminal types. Amazing. How rough he is on us good, upstanding Episcopalians, and how easy on the shameful.

John is a cold, sobering wet-rag to our Christmas preparations – exposing our pretensions, calling us good-folks presumptuous and proud. Challenging us, saying, "You're not so good as you think. Turn around. Look at your selfishness. Look at your pride. You can do better. You'd better do better. Be humble. Be generous. Be very generous. Or else!"

In so many ways, John's sermon is right on message with the words Jesus would speak some time later. Jesus also urged us to repent, and challenged us to forsake pride and to be generous. Like John, Jesus was harshest with those who were most confident of their own goodness, the presumptuous and privileged. Jesus also afflicted the comfortable and comforted the afflicted.

But there is one big difference. Motivation. John motivated with threats and fear. "Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire." Change or be destroyed. Do good or burn. John anticipated that the coming Messiah would raise the same message, only with exponentially greater threat. "I baptize you with water... He will baptize you with Holy Spirit and fire." John's expectations for the Messiah: "His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire."

But that's not what happened. When Jesus came, he preached the same moral expectations as John – be humble, be generous, be honest – but the motivation for such good behavior was not threat or fear. It was love. God loves you, Jesus said. God loves you with a divine heart. God loved you first, so love God back. And then, let that flow out. Love yourself. Love your neighbor as yourself. It's all about love.

No ax. No winnowing fork. No fire. Instead of creating threats and fear, Jesus soaked up the threats and fear into his own body on the cross, and gave back only love. Forgiving love. Perfect love, which alone can cast out fear.

You may remember another story – when John was in prison and sent to ask of Jesus, "Are you the one?" It was a sincere question. After all, Jesus wasn't chopping and winnowing and burning. Jesus answered, "Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offence at me." It was all about love. Healing love; forgiving love.

We are on the way to the manger. But before we get there, the church expects us to face a bit of tough love in the wilderness. Let John the Baptist get your attention. Answer his questions. How are you being presumptuous, self-centered, indulgent or prideful? How are you ignoring the poor or participating in systems that oppress the weak? Repent! Chop those snakes out of your life and burn them up. Begin again, and this time be honest; don't cheat; share your good fortune with others.

In your wilderness make a path. A path for a baby. The path of love. Prepare a place in your heart, by thoughts and deeds of generous goodness. Prepare a place in our world, by acts of justice and generosity.

You brood of vipers! God loves you so much.
________________

The Mission of St. Paul's Episcopal Church is to explore and celebrate
God's infinite grace, acceptance and love.

For information about St. Paul's Episcopal Church and it's life and mission,
please contact us at:
P.O. Box 1190, Fayetteville, AR 72702, or call 479/442-7373
More sermons are posted on our web site: www.stpaulsfay.org
Visit our web partners at www.explorefaith.org

The Truth

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
November 22, 2009; Last Pentecost; Proper 29, Year B
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(John 18:33-37) – Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, "Are you the King of the Jews?" Jesus answered, "Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?" Pilate replied, "I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?" Jesus answered, "My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here." Pilate asked him, "So you are a king?" Jesus answered, "You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice."
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In 1919 a shattered Europe reeled from the vast death and destruction of what they had named "The Great War." The Russian revolution and rise of fascism sent shudders through the continent. In 1919 William Butler Yeats wrote a poem of apocalyptic timelessness, opening with these words:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity. (1)

In 2009 Yeats words seem to describe our own apocalyptic age, when things fall apart and the center does not hold; innocence is drowned, cynicism parades as wisdom and the worst in our world are full of passionate certainties and intensity.

I got an email from a friend this week. His presenting issue was an election for a bishop in his diocese. But he spoke of a wider malaise. "I'm actually pretty disgusted at the state of humanity in this country in general right now," he said. "The overall ethical fiber, no matter what phase you look at is shot. Things do not bode well in my opinion." His conclusion: "I fully expect us to elect the wrong bishop. Oh well!"

Around the year 30 of the Common Era, a young Jew stood beaten, bound, and trapped in front of the governor of a province in the Roman Empire. For his small circle of friends, their world was turning and turning in the widening gyre. The falcon could not hear the falconer. Things were falling apart and the center faced execution.

In apocalyptic times, fear seeps into us. We want something sound and secure to place our hope in. When the foundations are shaking, we turn anxiously searching for something with authority, something unshakable and true.

The scene with Jesus before Pilate shows us some options for truth. First, the characters in the scene. There are the scribes who have turned Jesus over to Pilate. There is Pilate the governor. But over his shoulder there is the ghost of Caesar, at whose pleasure Pilate rules. And there is Jesus. Each of these characters has a version of authority and truth that they follow.

The scribes are the people of the book. They study the scriptures and adhere to its teaching. They have redacted the teachings into 613 commandments, and they apply its laws with confidence that they know and follow God's will. According to the book, according to the law, they are certain: Jesus deserves death as a blasphemer.

People love objective truth – the truth of prescriptive authority. When in doubt, look it up. Search the scriptures; quote the Qur'an. Declare a moralism with absolute certainty. Then throw the book at them, secure in your truth. "The worst are full of passionate intensity."

Looming over the scene between Jesus and Pilate is the truth of power. For Caesar power is truth. Might makes right. If you can't buy the results you want, take it by force. Caesar's ghost hovers threateningly over this interrogation.

And there is Pilate. For a moment he looks like an investigator, trying to learn the facts, to ferret out information like a detective or scientist. But when it gets personal, when Jesus asks him to commit himself to the process, he retreats into the abstract towers of the Greek academy. "What is truth?" he asks rhetorically.

Three traditions of truth confront Jesus – the objective truth of the book; the truth that power claims; the abstract truth of the rational. None of these are the way of Jesus.

Listen instead to these words from 1852, spoken by the noted preacher Frederic W. Robertson in the elevated rhetoric of those days. You'll have to listen with some concentration. Preachers expected a lot from their listeners in 1852:

[Jesus] taught not by elaborate trains of argument, like a scribe or a philosopher: He uttered His truths rather as detached intuitions, recognized by intuition, to be judged only by being felt. For instance, “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.” “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” “Blessed are ye when men shall revile you, and persecute you.” Prove that - by force - by authority - by argument - you can not. It suffices that a man reply, “It is not so to me: it is more blessed to receive than it is to give.” You have no reply: if he be not of the truth, you can not make him hear Christ’s voice. The truth of Christ is true to the unselfish; a falsehood to the selfish. They that are of the truth, like Him, hear His voice: and if you ask the Christian’s proof of the truth of such things, he has no other than this: It is true to me, as any other intuitive truth is true; equals are equal, because my mind is so constituted that they seem so perforce. Purity is good, because my heart is so made that it feels it to be good.

Brother men, the truer you are, the humbler, the nobler, the more will you feel Christ to be your king. (2)

Jesus speaks truth in the first person . Jesus makes truth personal. "I am the way and the truth and the life." Then he tells his friends of the way and life of truth. Blessed are the pure in heart. Blessed are the meek. Blessed are the poor. Blessed are the peacemakers. Love one another. Love your neighbor as yourself. Turn the other cheek. Jesus makes concrete in a human life the truth of God. He reveals to us a God who is eternally a God of love and grace.

God loves us eternally. That is truth. God eternally wills the blessing of creation. That is truth. God works in and through us to make blessing. That's what Jesus tells us and shows us. If you get that, follow him. You'll be living in the truth. In Jesus, truth becomes a verb. "Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice."

So listen. Do you hear the hint of goodness or a sound of love? Hear it. Then use your intuition. Follow it.

The nineteenth century spiritual director Jean Pierre deCaussade said that the only duty we have is to do God's will in the present moment. He said further that God's will can only be three things: (1) to do some present duty; or (2) to enjoy some present opportunity; or (3) in the dark mystery of God, to suffer something for God's sake. Accept the circumstances of the present moment, and let your intuition tell you what God's will is. Then do it with perfect confidence. Either do some duty, enjoy some opportunity, or suffer something necessary, and live in peace. You are in perfect relationship with God and you are advancing God's kingdom insofar as it is within your means. DeCaussade's teaching is an eighteenth century version of today's maxim: WWJD. "What would Jesus do?" Do that.

Trust love and compassion, for those are the very being of God. Then do what your intuition tells you that God wills. Everyone who belongs to truth listens to the voice that speaks love and grace, eternally.

You can be a falcon who does hear the voice of the falconer. Love is the center that holds all things in its orbit. Justice and compassion are loosed upon the world. The blood from Jesus heals and restores innocence. Here is something worth giving your life to with a passionate intensity that heals and restores rather than uses and abuses. Brothers and sisters, the truer you are, the humbler, the nobler, the more will you feel Christ. And that is the truth.

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1. William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming. www.potw.org/archive/potw351.html
2. The Kingdom of the Truth, sermon by Frederic W. Robertson. www.fwrobertson.com/sermons/ser20.htm
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The Mission of St. Paul's Episcopal Church is to explore and celebrate
God's infinite grace, acceptance and love.

For information about St. Paul's Episcopal Church and it's life and mission, please contact us at
P.O. Box 1190, Fayetteville, AR 72702, or call 479/442-7373
More sermons are posted on our web site: www.stpaulsfay.org
Visit our web partners at www.explorefaith.org

The Story of Ruth and Naomi

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
November 8, 2009; 23 Pentecost; Proper 27, Year B
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Ruth 3:1-5; 4:13-17) – Naomi her mother-in-law said to her, "My daughter, I need to seek some security for you, so that it may be well with you. Now here is our kinsman Boaz, with whose young women you have been working. See, he is winnowing barley tonight at the threshing floor. Now wash and anoint yourself, and put on your best clothes and go down to the threshing floor; but do not make yourself known to the man until he has finished eating and drinking. When he lies down, observe the place where he lies; then, go and uncover his feet and lie down; and he will tell you what to do." She said to her, "All that you tell me I will do."

So Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife. When they came together, the LORD made her conceive, and she bore a son. Then the women said to Naomi, "Blessed be the LORD, who has not left you this day without next-of-kin; and may his name be renowned in Israel! He shall be to you a restorer of life and a nourisher of your old age; for your daughter-in-law who loves you, who is more to you than seven sons, has borne him." Then Naomi took the child and laid him in her bosom, and became his nurse. The women of the neighborhood gave him a name, saying, "A son has been born to Naomi." They named him Obed; he became the father of Jesse, the father of David.
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The Book of Ruth is a wonderful story about two women who claim a path of life in an imperfect world, and find God has been moving deep within their trials to bring blessing. Our first reading today was from a pivotal moment in the story, but I'm going to try to retell the whole narrative.

The story begins with famine in Bethlehem. Naomi and her husband must migrate to another country, to Moab, a perennial enemy and competitor of Israel. They start anew as immigrants in a strange country. They raise two sons who grow up to marry their local sweethearts.

But tragedy strikes and all three of the men of the family die. Naomi is destitute in a foreign land. In a patriarchal culture, without a man, she has no standing, no property, no protection. She has no food or shelter, s0 she determines to return to Bethlehem where she hopes she can renew her family ties. She urges her two Moabite daughters to seek similar refuge within their own families.

But her daughter-in-law Ruth refuses. Ruth's primary loyalty is toward her mother-in-law. Ruth expresses a kind of fidelity that is so deep, so matter-of-fact, that to her there wasn't even a choice to be made. Naomi tries to argue and reason with Ruth. But from Ruth's perspective, there is nothing to talk about. Her fidelity toward Naomi is simply what it is. "You are my mother-in-law. I love you. I am staying with you. That's that." Or more poetically, from the King James Version, "Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God." These two women are from different tribes, different nations. They are not blood kin. But Naomi and Ruth manifest fidelity, family at its best. Ruth aligns her fate to this destitute widow rather than seeking her own welfare among her own people. The women find safe harbor within their relationship.

There is a Hebrew word that describes this relationship. Hesed. It means steadfast love, kindness, loyalty, fidelity; caring for another who is in need within the context of relationship. Over and over hesed is a word used to describe God's steadfast love for us. Ruth sticks with Naomi just because that's the way she is; she has hesed for Naomi, steadfast love. God sticks with us just because that's the way God is; God has hesed for us, steadfast love. Fidelity, kindness, loyalty. God says to us, "You are my children. I love you. I am staying with you no matter what. That's that."

Hesed is expressed within established relationships. Family and church are great teaching grounds for hesed. In family and church we learn to live with people we didn't choose. We are stuck with each other, just like God is stuck with us. So we live with a certain loyalty and fidelity toward the other, because that's the way it is. We belong to each other.

So Ruth, the young widowed Moabite follows her older Jewish mother-in-law Naomi to Israel, to Bethlehem. And Naomi devises a plan for securing their survival in this marginal and threatening situation.

Naomi knows the system. So she creates a survival strategy for the women. We all live in systems. To thrive, you got to understand the system and know how to maneuver in it. If you work the system well, follow its rules, there are ways to produce a good outcome – generosity and virtue. Naomi works the system actively and appropriately, with courage and wit.

Naomi has to coach Ruth about how to negotiate the customs of the system in a land that is foreign to Ruth. The system says that land is passed through the sons. If a male landowner dies without leaving a male heir, the next-of-kin has a right to claim the land so it will remain in the family, and an obligation to marry the widow in order to bear offspring to continue the name and the family line.

Naomi coaches the Moabite, and tells Ruth to go to her kinsman Boaz. "Wash and anoint yourself and put on your best clothes," she says. Ruth is to wait until Boaz retires to sleep, and to join him there. The text says, "When Boaz had eaten and drunk, and he was in a contented mood, he went to lie down at the end of the heap of grain" on the threshing floor. Following Naomi's instructions, Ruth "came stealthily and uncovered his feet, and lay down. At midnight the man was startled, and turned over, and there, lying at his feet, was a woman! He said, 'Who are you?' And she answered, 'I am Ruth your servant; spread your cloak over your servant, for you are next-of-kin."

To spread one's cloak is an act to symbolize a proposal for marriage. Ruth tells Boaz that this is his right as next-of-kin. In the warmth of this intimate moment, Naomi's strategy works. Boaz agrees to fulfill this duty, but informs Ruth that there is another kinsman who has a prior claim. In the next scene, Boaz goes to the city gate where justice is administered in order to give the other claimant his rights. The other wants the property, but not the responsibility of raising an heir. Boaz legally secures his rights as next-of-kin and marries Ruth. The story comes full circle with the birth of Obed, a name meaning "servant." In a beautiful image, the infant is laid in the arms of his grandmother Naomi who nurses the child. Out of death has come new life.

One more thing. Obed will become the grandfather of David, the greatest king of Israel, whose beginnings can be traced to the faithful actions of his Moabite great-grandmother, Ruth.

There are two underlying narratives going on here. Most importantly, there is the quiet presence of God, working in the background. I'll get back to that in a moment. But there is also an underlying political narrative here.

Many scholars believe that this story was written with some proximity to the days of Ezra and Nehemiah, when the exiles were returning to rebuild Jerusalem. Nehemiah pursued a policy of ethnic cleansing, banning inter-marriage between Jews and non-Jews, and breaking apart the families that had already inter-married, sending away the foreign spouses to their countries of origin, Moabites and others. Some believe that the book about Ruth the Moabite was written as protest literature to counter the policies of Ezra and Nehemiah. Others suggest that this story has a message for our time when migration and immigration have become a contentious issue. The senior pastor of Wellesley Congregational Church, Martin Copenhaver suggests a maxim for this story, "Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained the great-grandmother of a king."

I'm particularly drawn to this story as a metaphor for the quiet presence and work of God. In this narrative, God is quietly in the background. The focus is on the women and Boaz and their choices. God never directly intervenes. But God's hand is behind the plot. While mentioned only in passing, God is the glue in this story.

God is present in all corners of life. There is no place where God's work is not in process: in the loss of livelihood and the fate of transient immigrants; in the journey into a strange place and the putting down of new roots; as young children grow up and marry; in joy and tragedy; as death claims some and as wise planning seeks a survival plan; in deep loyalty and love; through risks in the field and self-interest in the courts; something new is born. "The wily wisdom of the old woman and the courage of the young combine with the generous heart of an older man; ...an old and broken heart is healed. Tenacious faith in God proves trustworthy.

"God works every day. God labors on the ground, in the heart, among the folk, and through life circumstances. God weaves simple gestures, feelings, decisions, and actions in ways that bring good things. All this arises despite loss and trouble, opposition and tyranny, displacement and pain. That is huge. It shakes the powerful... It elevates the tender and dirt-real lives of the many." (G. Malcolm Sinclair)

God is at work in Ruth, the poor, childless foreigner. By now that shouldn't be surprising to us. It is a major biblical theme that God works through the most unlikely people – outsiders, strangers, and outcasts. And even through you and me.

God, unseen but never absent; the glue of life, full of surprises and keeper of ultimate promises.

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Acknowledgment: Much thanks for the help I got for this sermon from the WJK series, Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 4, 2009. This week's commentaries were written by Marcia Mount Shoop, Martin B. Copenhaver, Frank M. Yamada, and G. Malcolm Sinclair. Many of the ideas and phrases for this sermon come from this fine resource.
__________________________________________________________

The Mission of St. Paul's Episcopal Church is to explore and celebrate
God's infinite grace, acceptance and love.

For information about St. Paul's Episcopal Church and it's life and mission,
please contact us at
P.O. Box 1190, Fayetteville, AR 72702, or call 479/442-7373
More sermons are posted on our web site: www.stpaulsfay.org
Visit our web partners at www.explorefaith.org

From General Desire to Specific Commitment

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas October 24, 2009; 21 Pentecost; Proper 25, Year B Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Mark 10:46-52) – Jesus and his disciples came to Jericho. As he and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving Jericho, Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the roadside. When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!" Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, "Son of David, have mercy on me!" Jesus stood still and said, "Call him here." And they called the blind man, saying to him, "Take heart; get up, he is calling you." So throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus. Then Jesus said to him, "What do you want me to do for you?" The blind man said to him, "My teacher, let me see again." Jesus said to him, "Go; your faith has made you well." Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way. __________________________________________________________________

Jesus asks Bartimaeus, "What do you want me to do for you?"

How would you answer that question? What if Jesus walked up to you right now, spoke your name, and asked, "What do you want me to do for you?" How would you answer?

When I imagined that scenario for myself, my answer came immediately. Maybe it's a shallow, materialistic answer, but this is what exploded from my consciousness as I imagined being asked that question from Jesus, "Lowell, what do you want me to do for you?" I want enough money pledged to St. Paul's so we don't have to go through the sweat and anxiety we went through last year when we made program cuts, froze salaries, and I nearly was faced with the awful prospect of having to lose someone on our staff. That's the worry that can keep me awake at night.

In a way I was embarrassed by my answer. There's a bigger part of me that wants world peace and an end to poverty, suffering and injustice. On the larger scale of things my anxiety seems pretty petty. But that's what it was.

I find that I am worrying. The economy is bad. Many of our parishioners are suffering. Some have lost their jobs. Non-profits everywhere are bleeding. "Please let that cup pass-over us, Lord." That is my prayer right this moment. At least that's what blurted out from my anxiety when I let myself be asked the question, "What do you want me to do for you?"

Then I sat with it for a while, and there was a deeper need that bubbled up from below my anxiety. A need for trust. A desire to be able to trust. Jesus asks me a second time, "What do you want me to do for you?" Something a bit deeper answers, "I want to trust. I want to trust God so deeply that I know that you will provide whatever is necessary, and my staff and congregation and I can rest securely in that." That answer comes from place below my earlier anxiety. Then I begin to remember. I remember a few stories when I've looked at dead ends, trusted nonetheless, and somehow, things worked out. I remember again, it's not my doing, but God's.

So, I know my anxiety, and I sense a deeper desire; a desire to be more trusting. But I know that there is another step necessary. It's not enough to want to be more trusting. I know I really have to do something specific to commit to trusting; something concrete that expresses my trust in God.

Killian Noe has worked with heroin and crack addicts for years. She says that those who make the transformation from the drug culture to a whole new way of life are the ones who "move from a GENERAL DESIRE to be drug free to SPECIFIC COMMITMENTS and practices." In their program in Washington D.C., they teach addicts to make specific commitments to practices: to commit to get up each day; to go to a job; to live in community where they share their struggles and triumphs with one another; to take each paycheck and put one-third into savings, one-third toward rent, and one-third for other expenses; and to pray. They teach every person in their re-hab program how to pray conversationally to God, and how to contemplate, using Centering Prayer. Their specific commitments to these practices help them overcome the impulses that otherwise have threatened their lives. Killian Noe says that unless they move from the general desire to be drug free to some specific commitments and practices, there is no transformation, they always return to their destructive former behaviors. (1)

What to you want Jesus to do for you? If Jesus were in front of you right now, called you by name, and asked, "What do you want me to do for you?", how would you answer?
I want to be well. I want to be happy. I want my marriage to work. I want my children to thrive. I want to find a job. I want to pay my bills. I want more meaningful work. I want more time. I want some peace and quiet. I want some friends.
What do you want? What do you want Jesus to do for you?

Then comes the followup question. This question comes from Jesus and is directed at you. "What specific commitments or practices will you make to transform your desire into reality?"

Killian Noe tells about running into a colleague in their inner-city work. He looked exhausted and pale. So she asked him, "How are you, really?"

In the few moments we were together, he allowed, "My wife is struggling with debilitating pain, my teenage daughter is flunking out of school, my aging parents need to move out of their home into assisted living, and my ministry has suffered cutbacks in funding for the critical needs I care about." He went on to say, "I'm feeling so overwhelmed and exhausted by all the demands on my life right now that I've decided to increase my prayer time from one hour a day to two hours a day." (2)

That's a specific commitment and practice which will open him to the transforming power of the Spirit to address his experience of exhaustion, powerlessness and worry.

I have a general desire to be healthy and well – so I know I need to make a specific commitment to a practice of exercise and good diet, and prayer. I want to be happy – so I know I need to make a specific commitment to count my blessings and to react with acceptance and hope to the challenges of my life, and prayer. I want my marriage to work – so I know I need to take time to talk with my spouse and to plan creative time together, and prayer. With every desire in our lives there is a corresponding set of commitments and practices that can move us from mere general desire to the life-giving energy of genuine transformation.

Bartimaeus was stuck. He had been sitting there on the side of the road for years, blindly begging every day for a few coins from those who passed by. He was in a rut. But it was a familiar rut. And with time, a familiar rut can become comfortable. Predictable. At least he was getting by. "Alms. Alms for the blind."

But he hears of a new rabbi. Some say he might be the Messiah, the Son of David. Who knows? When the rabbi's entourage passes by, Bartimaeus decides to work the angle, to play to the new Messiah. "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!" Jesus' handlers tell Bartimaeus to shut up. That's the moment when he could have quit. That's the moment when Bartimaeus could have said to himself, "Ha. He's no messiah. He's just like the rest." And retreated to his comfortable rut. "Alms. Alms for the blind."

But no. Something else happened inside Bartimaeus. He changed. He stretched. He took a chance. He moved from the general desire to be free to a specific commitment. He challenged Jesus. "If you are the Messiah, answer me!" He cried again, "Son of David, have mercy on me!"

This second cry gets Jesus' attention. There is something different about this second cry. It is the appeal of the committed. It is also the plea of the powerless. It is a cry of trust. "Son of David, have mercy on me!" Jesus stops.

This time the others say, "Get up, he is calling you." The text says that he throws off his cloak. I wonder about that. Is that coat something like his security blanket? Or maybe the cover he uses to shield himself from others? Or possibly it is his old identity, the ragged coat of a beggar? Whatever it is, he throws it off and runs!

Jesus looks at him through his blind eyes, and asks him directly: "What do you want me to do for you?" He knows what he wants and he is fully committed to his answer. "My teacher, let me see again." He has committed to be a student of Jesus, whom he calls "My teacher." He has committed to see from Jesus' perspective; to see anew, through the teacher's eyes. And Bartimaeus is given vision. He sees. He leaves his cloak by the roadside. And he follows Jesus on the way. They are headed to Jerusalem. They are headed to the cross.

Jesus calls for you. He grasps your attention. He looks at you directly, and he asks: "What do you want me to do for you?"

What is your answer? What are you willing to commit to in order to answer?
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(1) Killian Noe, Finding Our Way Home, Herald Press, 2003, p. 19f
(2) Noe, p. 22

The Anatomy of an Emotion

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
September 20, 2009; 16 Pentecost; Proper 20, Year B
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(James 3:13-4:3, 7-8) – Who is wise and understanding among you? Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom. But if you have bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not be boastful and false to the truth. Such wisdom does not come down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, devilish. For where there is envy and selfish ambition, there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace.

Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you? You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures.

Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.
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Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you? (James 4:1)

In Gerald May's seminal study Will and Spirit one of his chapters explores the anatomy of an emotion. Where does the energy and content of an emotion come from? What is the nature of these "cravings that are at war within you"?

May tells about a nun who was mature enough in contemplative matters to be able to observe her own emotional processes all the way back to a place of origin. She was going on retreat, but her mind was "filled with busy-ness," she said. "I was depressed and angry about some of my relationships at work, and I was even more distressed by some sexual feelings which had begun to stir within me in relation to a man I had to work closely with." (Now, that might not fit your caricature of a nun, but monastics are just as human as the rest of us.) She said her prayer time had been distracted by "thoughts about work and images of this man." She had lost touch with "the quiet center" which was such a home for her. So she went on retreat.

Now listen to how she processed and observed her interior life, those cravings that were at war within her. She said during the beginning hours of her retreat, she experienced only turbulent, mental noise. But she sat with that long enough, until things began to quiet down.

As the bombardment of thoughts and images began to disappear, she noticed another layer of turbulence beneath them. This was emotional turbulence. Again, she didn't do anything with it. She just watched it.

She said, "Watching this (emotional turbulence) very quietly, I experienced the whole gamut of emotions coming through my mind one after another as if on parade. Sadness, anger, frustration, sexual desire, guilt, fear, hope, and now and then some peace, lightness, and humor. First I recognized all of these as feelings. ...They seemed to originate very deeply, and for a while I became fascinated with seeing how they came into being." (Now that fascinates me. How do our emotions come into being?)

She said that as she "moved more intimately toward that point of origin" for her feelings, "it seemed as if there was a level at which a kind of diffuse dynamic 'percolation' was taking place." What she described was like a boiling cauldron of stuff that percolated, bubbled up with spurts of activity, like the firing of energy from the bottom of a cooking pot.

Then, she said, this diffuse, percolating energy became "attached to certain mental concepts or words or memories or images. When this attachment took place," she said, "I could immediately identify that 'spurt' or 'spark' as a feeling; an emotion. And with just a little more discrimination I could label the feeling as anger or sadness or whatever." She had observed the origin of an emotion.

What she described is similar to the experience of contemplatives from many traditions, East and West. They tell us that emotions begin as energy deep within us – diffuse energy without content. Then we attach to that energy some content – mental concepts or words or memories or images. At that moment, the energy sparks into a simple emotion – anger, fear, sadness, whatever. If we just watch the emotion, not adding anything to it, not reacting or doing anything about it, it just goes off – like a hot bubble coming up from the bottom of a deep pot of sauce, which comes to the top and pops. A burst of emotional energy bubbles up from within us, spends its energy, and leaves. The nun described how it was possible for her to watch all of this deep emotional activity with a present awareness, "totally unruffled, watching it all with complete serenity. There is something deeply reassuring about that," she said. (1)

But most of the time we don't just watch our emotions, do we? Most of the time we add energy to them. A lot of energy.

Here's the anatomy of an emotion. First, simple, undifferentiated energy percolates out of our depths. A simple emotion attaches to the energy, say anger. Then we add to that simple emotion of anger, the image of a person who has angered us. He tried to embarrass me, we think. He hurt me, we remember. Then we begin to add energy to the simple emotion. We begin to play our old emotional tapes of all of the times that person embarrassed or hurt us. The neurological pathways in our memory know this stuff. We've built neurological pathways as wide as interstate highways for these afflictive memories and emotions. We've thought about that person regularly, with passion; we've relived all of the times he's embarrassed or hurt us, over and over. There's an internal four-lane highway that has practiced saving and transporting all of that emotional content, which barrels down the acceleration lane, and dumps into the emotional system, pouring a truckload of energy into what had been originally a simple emotion. Old tapes of the former hurts begin to play. We remember in technicolor and full-volume stereo, and all of the old emotions of the past churn more and more chemicals into our system. Before long, we've created what my grandmother called a hissy-fit. Our cravings are at war within us. Instead of a little soup bubble of emotion, we've got a massive fireworks display.

Yet, even at that, there is still a part of us that can watch the fireworks. Feelings, emotions, compulsions, memories, passions explode within us. We can watch that, serenely unruffled, from another place in our psyche. "Wow! My chemicals sure are putting on a good fireworks show today!"

Our emotions are important. They are the background music that set the tone for our life.

The other day Kaye Bernard told the Servant Leadership II class on Compassion about a video called Atmosphere. It begins with movie images of busy New York streets. Crowds are hustling back and forth, jostling and hurrying – pedestrians, cabs and cars. Crowds emerge from the subway tunnels, steam from under the sidewalks. The music soundtrack underneath the images is driving urban rap music. After watching for a few minutes, it is over, and the convener asks what you felt as you watched. Rushed anxiety and tension. Steeled energy necessary for fighting your way through the pushes and bumps of the driven crowd; even a touch of angry defensiveness.

Then the video is shown again, but now with a different soundtrack. The background music is Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings, one of the most lush, beautiful, poignant pieces of classical music. The experience is strikingly different. Now the crowd movement looks like a dance, each person moving in concert with the whole, interconnected in the vibrant creativity of life's energy. Beauty, wonder, transcendence. Same video. Different music. Completely different experience.

For most of us, the emotional background music that interprets our life was composed in childhood. If we were loved and life was generally good, the underlying emotional music tends to play in an upbeat, hopeful key. But if we were threatened, hurt, unloved, that music is more likely to be in a minor key, filled with dread and foreboding.

Part of what religion offers is a new composition – a new soundtrack. It is the music of a love song. It sings, God loves me. Life is good. All shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well. It is the hopeful music that emerges out of all of the darkness and tragedy of Christ's crucifixion and death. Out of darkness, comes life. The Holy Trinity sings, "Let there be light!" And we are invited into the dance. With feeling. So we dance. And feel.

At some level, feelings just are. They percolate deep within us. Emotions happen. There is a place from which we can observe our emotions, like watching fireworks go off within. Chemical fireworks of energy transformed into feelings. From a place of inner observation we can watch, unruffled and serene, as powerful emotions explode within us. Wow! My chemicals are putting on quite a show.

We don't have to add to the show. We don't have to start the old tapes, replay the emotional memories, add fuel to the fire. Instead of releasing our reservoir of indignation, we can change the soundtrack that provides the emotional background to our experience. We can embrace the music of the heavens.

The music of the universe is a love song. Music that sings, "You are safe. You are loved. You are the beloved, infinite child of God. Look! God is moving in all things everywhere. God is bringing everything to newness. Resurrection is what God does: Life out of death; light out of darkness. Relax. Breathe. Watch. Live. Life is good. All shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well. You are alive. Be free. Listen to the music. Dance. Enjoy. Love it all. It's all love."
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(1) Gerald May, Will and Spirit. p. 175f

____________________________

The Mission of St. Paul's Episcopal Church is to explore and celebrate
God's infinite grace, acceptance and love.

For information about St. Paul's Episcopal Church and it's life and mission, please contact us at
P.O. Box 1190, Fayetteville, AR 72702, or call 479/442-7373
More sermons are posted on our web site: www.stpaulsfay.org
Visit our web partners at www.explorefaith.org

The "Other" is also the Same

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
September 6, 2009; 14 Pentecost; Proper 18, Year B
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Mark 7:24-37) – Jesus set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice, but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. He said to her, "Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." But she answered him, "Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs." Then he said to her, "For saying that, you may go-- the demon has left your daughter." So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.

Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him. He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, "Ephphatha," that is, "Be opened." And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. They were astounded beyond measure, saying, "He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak."
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You all remember The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a great American novel, set in 1839. Huck Finn is a boy who has run away from an abusive father and from the civilizing efforts of the Widow Douglas and Miss Watson. While camping out, Huck meets Miss Watson's slave, Jim. Jim is running away too, from Miss Watson's intention to sell him into the harsh servitude downriver. Huck believes what he has been taught, that it is wrong for Jim to escape. Jim is the property of Miss Watson.

Author Mark Twain uses the journey of this unlikely pair as a foil for his own satire social commentary and satire about the foolishness and wickedness of human beings.

When their raft is swamped by a passing steamship, Huck finds refuge with an established family and becomes friends with a boy his age, Buck Grangerford. The Grangerfords are in a thirty-year blood feud with the Shepherdsons, both good, church-going clans who bring their guns to church as they listen to the preacher's sermon on brotherly love. When Buck's sister elopes with one of the Grangerfords, there is a gunfight, and all of the Shepherdson males are killed. Huck narrowly escapes to rejoin Jim on the raft.

In one of their adventures, a grifter who poses as the lost descendant of Louis XVI and the rightful heir to the throne of France, "captures" Jim and turns him in, copping his interest in the reward money. Huck is outraged. But his conscience tells him that Jim is Miss Watson's property, and for Huck to continue to help Jim escape, would be tantamount to stealing. By now, though, Jim has become a real person, a friend to Huck. Huck lets friendship overcome his moral teaching and resolves to help Jim's escape, willing to face what he believes will be eternal consequences for a thief, saying to himself, "All right then, I'll go to hell."

In a complicated twist of plot, Tom Sawyer arrives and assists in the escape, but gets shot in the leg. Rather than making his way to freedom, Jim stops to help Tom, and for the first time in his life, makes a demand of a white person. He tells Huck to go get a doctor. Huck explains this complete reversal of his world-view the only way he can, "I knowed he was white on the inside... so it was all right now." Eventually, everything does turn out all right.

There are so many stories – novels, plays, movies, operas, T.V. shows, even animations – about one person discovering a common human bond with someone they believed to be "other" – different, unrelated, even sometimes the enemy. In those stories, something happens to allow them to recognize that the other is also the same. Out of that recognition comes relationship, reconciliation, even love.

From Mark's Gospel today, we heard one of those stories, about a Gentile woman, a Syrophoenician, who begged Jesus to cast the demon out of her daughter. "He said to her, 'Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs.'" In Jesus' neighborhood, Gentiles were called "dogs." He had heard that language from childhood. It was Biblical language for those who were unclean. Outsiders. Those "Others." We all grow up with some form of cultural conditioning. It is part of our humanity, and the church has always insisted that Jesus was fully human.

"Let the children be fed first," he told the Syrophoenecian woman. Jesus understood his calling to be for the renewal of his people Israel. Maybe that is why he did not want to be known as he journeyed into the region of Tyre. He traveled anonymously; this wasn't his territory. No, he was sent to the lost sheep of Israel.

But this woman crossed his boundary, and would not take "no" for an answer. "Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs." The church says that Jesus is fully human; the church also says that Jesus is fully divine. This woman's answer is divine. It speaks of love. Love for her child. It is a word of humble humanity, and God's ears are always tuned to the needs of humble humanity. Instantly Jesus sheds his human cultural conditioning, and sees this woman as a fellow child of God. Instantly, he heals her daughter.

From that moment onward in Mark's Gospel, Jesus changed his mission. He treated the Gentiles with the same compassion as his own people. From that moment onward, Jesus performed the same miracles of healing and feeding among the Gentiles as he did among the Jews. We read today that he went out of his way, past the Jewish region west of Galilee, into the Decapolis on the far side of the lake and on the other side of the River Jordan. The Decapolis was a Greek region, populated mostly by non-Jewish Hellenists. That is where Jesus touched and healed a man who was deaf and mute. In the next story in Mark's Gospel, Jesus feeds a multitude of 4,000 in this same location. It was the same miracle of feeding that Mark reported two chapters earlier about Jesus' feeding of the multitudes in his home of Israel.

We who are Christian cheapen our faith and betray Jesus' generous spirit when we treat those from other faiths and nations any differently than we treat our own kin. We are to love our neighbor as ourselves, and the answer to the question, "Who is my neighbor?" is the story of the Good Samaritan. A Samaritan was an outsider, a heretic, an enemy. That's another one of those stories about recognizing a relationship between those who were thought to be "Other."

I think our relationship to the "Other" is universally expansive.

We have a group in our church called the Friends of Animals. They celebrate the relationship we share with others in the animal kingdom. They promote an ancient tradition. The biblical kosher laws witness to the life that is in our brothers the animals, and how that life belongs to God and deserves human respect. So many of Jesus' illustrations are observations from the animal world – the birds of the air, the sheep and the goats, the net full of fish – all told by one born among the animals in the manger. The animals are our neighbors.

We have another group in our church called the Gaia Guild. They celebrate our relationship with the whole natural order. They also promote an ancient tradition. The earth is God's and all that is in it. (Ps. 24:10; 1 Cor. 10:26) God speaks, and the stars and the planets, the earth and sky and sea, and everything that is comes into being. The earth is alive, and God's entrusts her stewardship to us. We are God's gardeners, called to love and care for the health of the planet and all of its life. The biblical story begins and ends in a garden. All earthly life is our neighbor.

In our lifetime the ancient story of other-connectedness has even transcended human boundaries. You remember the movie E.T. A little boy befriends a stranded Extra-Terrestrial and saves him from the army of scientists. The little boy, Elliott, and alien E.T. find themselves bonded by a love that glows in their hearts.

Scientists tell us that the atoms and molecules that have bound together to create the earth and all that is in it, including us, human beings, come from the remains of great collisions and explosions of stars billions of years ago. We are literally stardust.

As God breathes our life into being, we are in an intimate relationship with the entire cosmos. What God has joined together, we should not separate. All humanity is our neighbor: Jew and Gentile, slave and free, Grangerford and Shepherdson, rich and poor, and every other division of race, religion, nationality, tribe, teaching, power, wealth, or condition of life – we are all one within God's eternal embrace. The "Other" is also the same.

We are even in an intimate relationship with the animate and the inanimate worlds, from the microscopic plankton that feeds the whales to the mysterious invisible dark matter that balances the universe. We are all in this together, and God calls us to honor respectfully all that God has made.

The old stories tell us to open our eyes and our hearts so that we can recognize our selves in the "Other." Those stories are simply narrative versions of Jesus' summary of all wisdom: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength, and love your neighbor as your self." The "Other" is our neighbor. The boundary of "neighbor" is universal.
___________________

The Mission of St. Paul's Episcopal Church is to explore and celebrate
God's infinite grace, acceptance and love.

For information about St. Paul's Episcopal Church and it's life and mission, please contact us at
P.O. Box 1190, Fayetteville, AR 72702, or call 479/442-7373
More sermons are posted on our web site: www.stpaulsfay.org
Also, see the sermon archive on this blogsite
Visit our web partners at www.explorefaith.org

Dirty Hands

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
August 30, 2009; 13 Pentecost; Proper 17, Year B
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23) – Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus, they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.) So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, "Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?" He said to them, "Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written,

'This people honors me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me;
in vain do they worship me,
teaching human precepts as doctrines.'

You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition."

Then he called the crowd again and said to them, "Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile. For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person."
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The chaplain at Temple University tells of watching a mother bringing her small son to the communion rail. As he held out his hand, she slapped him angrily. She was furious with him. Not the left hand! The right hand!

I got a letter from a leader in the Church of Christ. He was pretty furious with a recent column of mine. I get real mixed reviews from my columns, and that's fine. I don't think I know anybody who always agrees with me, including my mother and my wife, and they love me. Bill Clark is fond of saying, "I never agree with what Lowell writes in the paper, but I love him." Anyway, I got a letter correcting my contention that salvation is about a lot more than getting to heaven after you die. IN ALL CAPS the letter writer corrected me, saying that all Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and most Christians are going to hell unless they follow the right formula about Jesus. The Church of Christ teaches that only members of their church are saved.

I wrote back to say that the god he believes in sounds genocidal. His god doesn't look anything like Jesus, and we say Jesus is the incarnation of God. I said that the incarnation of his god would look more like Hitler; he was the last person to try to kill all the Jews. I wrote, "I'll bet you are a kind and loving man. I'll bet that there are people of your acquaintance whom you love and cherish who are not part of your church. If you were given the power of choice, you are kind and compassionate enough that you wouldn't intentionally condemn those good people to eternal damnation. Why would you worship a god who is less loving than you are?"

Well, I got a reply from him. He didn't actually write me back or respond to my questions, but he did enclose three brochures published by his denomination making it crystal clear his church is the only true church, the Bible read literally is the only "absolute, unchanging standard," and adult baptism with lots of water is "an essential condition to salvation." There were a lot of words in those three tracts, but the word "love" never appeared. That's where I'll start my next letter to him. (I wonder which hand they take communion with in that church.)

Ah, Traditions. Powerful stuff. I know I upset quite a few people when I removed some wooden blocks from underneath our altar cross. They were painted white so they might look a little bit like marble, and one had an empty hole in it for a microphone that used to be there in a previous sound system. I thought the blocks were tacky, and Episcopalians hate tacky worse than sin. But only after I removed them did I learn there was a tradition. According to some, the flowers should never be higher than the cross. I had never heard of that tradition. But I am assured that it is a holy tradition passed down from generations in certain Episcopal churches. I am out of compliance.

There are a lot of ways to mess up. There is a Mennonite bishop who had some trouble with some women under his spiritual care. The Mennonite bonnet has strings that are used to tie the bonnet under the chin. Some women decided not to tie their bonnets, but to let the strings dangle. "Honestly," cried the bishop, "I just don't know what this world is coming to!"

Many of you are old enough to remember as I do when women in the Episcopal Church always wore some covering on their head when they came to church. Lots of women had those little lace doilies that they pinned to their hair. That's not the right word, I know. What did you call those? That's a tradition that seems to be waning. There seems to be a lot of non-compliance as I look at the women's uncovered heads in this congregation.

"Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?" the Pharisees asked Jesus. Jesus quoted Isaiah back to them: Heart service is more important than lip service. You are teaching human precepts as doctrines.

I ran across an excerpt from the Digest of the Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States of America. "[Slavery] is a real and effective discipline, and without it we are profoundly persuaded that the African race in the midst of us can never be elevated in the scale of being. As long as that race, in its comparative degradation, coexists side by side with the white, bondage is its normal condition." Many Southern Episcopalians agreed.

I imagine that anthropologists in the year 5000 will not have many good things to say about American football. But in our day and time, football is pretty close to doctrine. For some people, it's a religion. "Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the righteous and wear longhorns on your helmets?" Okay, enough entertainment.

How do we know the difference between human precepts and divine truth? We are so immersed in our own culture, traditions, and customs that we rarely have enough distance to see them with much perspective. In some sense, we must hold lightly to what we think we know. James Russell Lowell wrote, "New occasions teach new duties, time makes ancient good uncouth."

The standard and the stillpoint that Jesus gives us is love. "God is love," the First Epistle of John declares. Jesus summarized the whole of the law and the prophets with the commandment to love. Scripture and human history is full of tensions between tradition and love, between purity and love. "Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?" Sometimes getting your hands dirty is the only way to love.

The Epistle of James offers us a tantalizing hint today saying, "Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world." Widows and orphans were the most vulnerable members of ancient societies. Caring for the vulnerable is an authentic religious expression of love. And "keeping oneself unstained by the world" sounds like a reminder to hold lightly the traditions, customs and values that our culture feeds us, constantly holding our inherited truths up to the discerning light of love.

According to the Rev. J. C. Austin of the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York:

There are no political, economic, justifications for a lack of care, a lack of compassion, toward those who are suffering regardless of who they are, what they look like, what they’ve done, or whose side they are on. There are no others, only neighbors.

That means we put our hands to work in some pretty dirty places: on the streets, in prisons, hospitals, shelters, and rehab units; in faraway places filled with people who are deemed outside our national interests or against them, like Liberia, Sudan, and yes, Iraq; and in the messiest conflicts on earth, where the most evil intentions and acts of the human heart pour out unchecked and rampage through the streets, as in that region that seems so ironically named these days, the Holy Land.

Our hands are made clean, are made holy, not by washing them, but by getting them dirty. Our hands have been set apart to scrabble in the dirtiness of the world’s injustices and impurities on Christ’s behalf, to touch with compassion those considered untouchable or unclean by our social mores, cultural divisions, or political commitments. As Teresa of Avila famously put it, "Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours; yours are the eyes through which God’s compassion will look upon the world; yours are the feet with which God will go about doing good; yours are the hands with which God will bless others now. (1)

So, open your hands – either hand will do; no slapping – to receive Christ's Body and Blood, according to our traditions. Know yourself to be God's beloved child, fed and nurtured in Divine Love. And then go into the world, holding lightly to everything except love, and be the hands with which God will bless others today and tomorrow, until we return next week, as is our custom and tradition, to this holy place, to open our hands again, to be blessed, and fed, and sent.
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(1) J. C. Austin, sermon: Dirtiness is Next to Godliness; 8/31/03

_____________________

The Mission of St. Paul's Episcopal Church is to explore and celebrate
God's infinite grace, acceptance and love.

For information about St. Paul's Episcopal Church and it's life and mission, please contact us at
P.O. Box 1190, Fayetteville, AR 72702, or call 479/442-7373
More sermons are posted on our web site: www.stpaulsfay.org
Also, see the archive of previous sermons in the right margin of this blog
Visit our web partners at www.explorefaith.org

The Hospitality of the Table

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
August 15, 2009; 11 Pentecost; Proper 15, Year B
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(John 6:51-58) – Jesus said, "I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh."

The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?" So Jesus said to them, "Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever."
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Imagine we are typical residents of Galilee during the time of Jesus. What do you think would have most caught our attention about Jesus? Maybe that he was a remarkable healer? But there were lots of healers. Maybe his teaching? There were other remarkable teachers and rabbis.

I think the thing that would have most stood out about him – the most unique, odd, and counter-cultural thing about Jesus – was his table fellowship. He provoked great scandal because he sat openly at meals with good people and bad people, with pious Pharisees and with unobservant tax collectors and sinners.

In that culture, to eat with someone was a public, not a private event. Villages were small. Windows and doors were open. Everyone knew your business. And it was understood, that for a Jewish man to eat with someone, it was a public declaration of friendship and acceptance. That is why people were very careful about with whom they ate. Your standing in the community, your family's honor, was dependent upon the care with which you created friendships and alliances. To eat with someone disreputable would bring disrepute upon your self and upon your whole family.

If we had been living in Galilee at that time, we would have heard the scandalous reports. "Have you heard? He sits at table with sinners and tax collectors. He invited Mary of Bethany to sit with him like any male student. When he was away in Tyre, he allowed a pagan woman, a Canaanite dog, to come and interrupt his dinner, and he healed her child. And him, a rabbi. Shocking!" Today scholars call it the "hospitality of his table." Originally, it was the scandal of his table.

You get the feeling that those meals were remarkable. They were so important to Jesus and to his companions. A meal is a powerful thing. We eat and visit together. We talk and commune. We truly connect with people when we dine with them. And as our conversation flows, the food we are sharing creates a profound union. When we eat together, we are literally being constituted by the same thing. The food we share gives us life. The energy and nutrition of our common food flows into every cell of our bodies. How different can we be if we are being sustained and created by the same substance?

Words and food. Powerful instruments of union and communion. At Jesus' table, words and food brought people together across social and religious boundaries, and you sense that in that holy space they found themselves transformed. They were changed by his presence; by his words and being; by his energy and love; by the power of his table. It made a profound impact on those who were near him.

The only miracle that all four gospels include in their remembered stories of Jesus is the miracle of his feeding multitudes. All four gospels tell how he taught great crowds and then fed them. All four gospels say that everyone was satisfied, and that there was an abundance remaining.

On his last night with them, as pressures increased toward some ominous climax, Jesus again brought his friends together to a table. As his last act with them, his final opportunity to give them something for the unknown future ahead, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it, and gave it to them and said, "This is my body which is given for you. Whenever you do this, do it in remembrance of me." As supper was ending, he took the wine, blessed it, and gave it to them and said, "This is my blood poured out for you. Whenever you do this, do it in remembrance of me." He told them to love one another. Within hours he was arrested, tortured, tried, convicted, and executed.

They were devastated. Afraid. "Will we be next?" They fled and hid. Yet on the following Sunday, something happened. Some of the disciples were sitting around a table, just like they used to do with Jesus. And a stranger took the bread, gave thanks, broke it, and gave it to them – and their eyes were opened. They knew Jesus was still with them. They knew him in the breaking of the bread.

From that moment forward, Christians have experienced themselves in communion with Jesus and with one another in the hospitality of his table. We have let his life feed us, nurture us, heal us, and make us one. Just as divine life entered into the person of Jesus of Nazareth, we experience his divine life present in the bread and wine as the sacrament of his same life, his body and blood. And we have become what we eat. We have become the body and blood of Christ, given for the world. We are constituted by the life of Jesus, mediated to us through the sacrament of bread and wine. It is the miracle of the feeding of the multitudes, our communion with Jesus and with one another in the hospitality of his table.

Go back with me in time once again. The year is 304. It is a time of persecution for Christians. A Roman proconsul is putting Christians on a torture rack, tearing their bodies apart with barbed hooks. Place yourself there, and ask yourself – What would be worth dying for? For what would I willingly accept torture and death?

There is a young Christian named Felix. He has just seen his father and a friend killed, their bodies torn apart on the rack in front of him. The proconsul now turns to him and asks the fateful questions.

"Were you one of the assembly; and do you possess any copies of the Scriptures?

How would you answer if you were Felix?

Listen to the response that Felix makes as he tells the world what one early Christian was willing to die for:

As if a Christian could exist without the Eucharist, or the Eucharist be celebrated without a Christian! Don't you know that a Christian is constituted by the Eucharist, and the Eucharist by a Christian? Neither avails without the other. We celebrated our assembly right gloriously. We always convene at the Eucharist for the reading of the Lord's Scriptures.

Enraged by that response, the proconsul had Felix beaten to death with clubs. (1)

Our ancestors were willing to die for the privilege of doing what we are doing right now – convening for the Eucharist and for the reading of the Lord's Scriptures. We are participating in the table fellowship of Jesus. It is a place of profound welcome and hospitality, for the pious and righteous, and especially for the sinner and outcast. At this holy meal we hear words of life and stories of God. We listen and we talk. We bring our selves, and offer our lives to this fellowship with Jesus. We hear his words of acceptance and grace. We let ourselves be healed, renewed, enlightened, empowered.

We see and hear the ancient event again. We participate in the night when Jesus took bread, gave thanks, broke it and gave it to them; when he took wine, blessed and gave it to them, saying "This is my body; this is my blood." We eat. We drink. We are constituted by the Eucharist. We are nourished by divine life. We are made one with Christ and one another. We abide in him, and he abides in us. The gift of eternal life. Here and now. Our ancestors believed this is worth dying for.
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(1) Quoted by Massey H. Shepherd, Jr. in The Worship of the Church, p. 4

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The Mission of St. Paul's Episcopal Church is to explore and celebrate
God's infinite grace, acceptance and love.

For information about St. Paul's Episcopal Church and it's life and mission, please contact us at
P.O. Box 1190, Fayetteville, AR 72702, or call 479/442-7373

More sermons are posted on our web site: www.stpaulsfay.org
and in the archives section of this blog

Visit our web partners at www.explorefaith.org

Our Praxis Gives Theoria of our Theosis

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
August 9, 2009; 10 Pentecost; Proper 14, Year B
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(John 6:35, 41-51) – Jesus said to the people, "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.

Then the Jews began to complain about him because he said, "I am the bread that came down from heaven." They were saying, "Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, `I have come down from heaven'?" Jesus answered them, "Do not complain among yourselves. No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day. It is written in the prophets, `And they shall all be taught by God.' Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father. Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh."

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I am going to do another teaching sermon today. That means I'm asking you to listen with a bit more attention than usual because I don't have some good stories or compelling images to add a little entertainment value. I can remember much of Suzanne's fine sermon last week thanks to her story of the scoundrel named Mutt and the image of radiance around him as he died. If you are going to remember anything about my sermon this morning, you might need to take notes or grab a copy of my text from the Narthex or the Welcome Center. This will be more like a classroom lecture, complete with foreign words and definitions. But at least its not fifty minutes long.

"I am the living bread that came down from heaven...; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh."

The fourth century church father Athanansius said, "The Son of God became human so that humanity might become God." The word the Church uses for this teaching is theosis, meaning divinization, deification, or making divine.

Nine hundred years later, Aquinas put it this way: “To restore humanity, who has been laid low by sin, to the heights of divine glory, the Word of the eternal Father, though containing all things within His immensity, willed to become small. This He did, not by putting aside His greatness, but by taking to Himself our littleness.... The humanity of Christ is the way by which we come to the divinity.”

The gift and goal of God is for all of us – all of humanity itself – to be restored to the full potential of our humanity. And our full potential is immense. We have the potential to be one with God. We have the potential to be divinized, filled with divine life and light. We were created to be in union with God, one with God, and therefore one with all creation, because in Christ, God has reconciled to the divine life, not only all of humanity, but also all of creation. That is theosis.

One of the early teachers, Irenaeus has a fetching way to teach theosis, this divinization of humanity. Irenaeus was a student of Polycarp who was a student of John the Apostle. Irenaeus said that God created the world and has been working with it ever since. He sees God as being in an ongoing creative project of raising up humanity from childhood into maturity. It takes a long time to grow up. Adam and Eve were created as children, says Irenaeus. So he says that the Fall wasn't a full-blown grown-up rebellion, it was more like a childish spat, a desire to grow up too fast and have everything now, before we are ready for it.

From the time of Adam and Eve, God has been doing everything God can do to help us overcome this initial mishap and grow up into our full spiritual maturity. But life is difficult. Irenaeus says that God made life difficult on purpose. The world is a difficult place where human beings are forced to make moral decisions as moral agents, because that is the only way we can truly grow.

He says that death is like the big fish that swallowed Jonah. You remember the story. Jonah was trying to flee God's call to go to preach to that terrible city Ninevah. Jonah sailed in the opposite direction and God appointed a fish to swallow Jonah. There, in the belly of the beast, Jonah was able to turn to God and accept his calling. Irenaeus says that death and suffering are like the fish, they appear as evils, but without them we could never come to know God. When we get swallowed up in the difficulty and tragedy of life, God is with us, inviting us to grow into something new, something we couldn't become without such adversity.

For Irenaeus, everything points to the incarnation of Jesus. He calls Jesus the new Adam. Jesus systematically undoes what Adam did. Where Adam was disobedient, Jesus was obedient. Adam disobeyed God by eating from the Tree of Knowledge; Jesus obeyed God even to death on the wood of the tree. Whereas Eve's disobedience brought death to the whole human race, Mary's obedience brings life and salvation, also for the whole human race.

Irenaeus says that Christ recapitulates in his one life the entire history of humanity -- from Adam the child to Jesus the mature human. Jesus lives his life from infancy to maturity, and by simply living it, Jesus sanctifies all human life with his divinity.

If the penalty for sin was death and corruption, Christ's embrace of our flesh awards immortality and incorruptibility. When God unites the divine and human natures in Christ, God spreads the divine qualities to us, like a benign infection. Irenaeus says that Jesus completely renews all things in himself.

A couple of weeks ago I quoted the Presiding Bishop's comment about the great Western heresy, "that we can be saved as individuals, that any of us alone can be in right relationship with God." St. Irenaeus also reminds us that we are not merely saved as individuals, but that we are part of God's project to create a new human race in Christ. In Christ, our flesh is raised into divinity. Christ takes into the Godhead not just our fleshly body, but the material of the whole cosmos.

Irenaeus said that we know our material body and our material world is filled with divinity because the cup of the Eucharist is the communion of Christ's blood, and because the bread which we break is the communion of his body. Bread, wine, body, blood – all are radiant with divinity, theosis. God became human so that humanity may become divine; God embraced earth so that the whole world might radiate divinity.

Another Greek word: Theoria. Theoria is the knowledge of God in Jesus Christ. Theoria is the experience deep down in your guts, in your body and blood, that you are one with God. Knowing. Deep knowing. We know Christ in our life, through praxis, one last Greek word. Praxis is the process by which we gain theoria of our theosis.

Oh my! I've gone one Greek word too far, I fear. But it's easy to translate. Praxis is our practice – the Eucharist, our daily prayer, our struggle to be conscious and loving, our service and surrender to God's will in the present moment. By our practice, we share in the work of growing up, God's work of taking us from infancy to full maturity. And we come to know, deep in our guts, that God is with us, we are "in Christ," we really are God-breathed. We open our hands and receive the living bread which came down from heaven, and we become what we eat. The life that Jesus gives to the world, which is his flesh, becomes our flesh. We enflesh God.

Our praxis gives theoria of our theosis. We look out our window with intentional consciousness and see the lush green leaves blowing in the wind, and we are struck by its beauty. We are seeing with God's eyes; it is God's eyes seeing through us. We look consciously at someone we love and our hearts are so gladdened. We are loving with God's heart; it is God's heart loving through us. We reach out our hand to do some work that needs doing. We are acting with God's hands; it is God's hands working through us.

It's just the business of growing up. Maturing into the potential that God intends for us. "The Son of God became human so that humanity might become God." Our praxis gives theoria of our theosis. So practice. And you'll know. You are one with God.

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The Mission of St. Paul's Episcopal Church is to explore and celebrate
God's infinite grace, acceptance and love.

For information about St. Paul's Episcopal Church and it's life and mission, please contact us at
P.O. Box 1190, Fayetteville, AR 72702, or call 479/442-7373
More sermons are posted on our web site: www.stpaulsfay.org
Visit our web partners at www.explorefaith.org

Salvation

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
July 25, 2009; 8 Pentecost; Proper 12, Year B
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Ephesians 3:13-21) – I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

(John 6:1-21) – Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, also called the Sea of Tiberias. A large crowd kept following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing for the sick. Jesus went up the mountain and sat down there with his disciples. Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near. When he looked up and saw a large crowd coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, "Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?" He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do. Philip answered him, "Six months' wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little." One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, said to him, "There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?" Jesus said, "Make the people sit down." Now there was a great deal of grass in the place; so they sat down, about five thousand in all. Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted. When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, "Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost." So they gathered them up, and from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten, they filled twelve baskets. When the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, "This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world."

When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself.

When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, got into a boat, and started across the sea to Capernaum. It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. The sea became rough because a strong wind was blowing. When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat, and they were terrified. But he said to them, "It is I; do not be afraid." Then they wanted to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat reached the land toward which they were going.ow after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news."

As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea-- for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, "Follow me and I will make you fish for people." And immediately they left their nets and followed him. As he went a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets. Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him.
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From today's Epistle: "I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fulness of God." (Ephesians 3:18-19)

I want to talk about salvation today. This will be mostly a teaching sermon. No good stories, so you'll have to listen with a little more intention than usual.

Salvation is a rich word, with "breadth and length and height and depth." Those of us brought up in the Bible Belt may have inherited an incomplete vision of salvation, based on the cultural dominance of our Southern Baptist neighbors and similar groups.

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori stirred some feathers the other day with a comment in her opening address to the General Convention. As she reflected on the global environmental and economic crisis, she said this: "The overarching connection in all of these crises has to do with the great Western heresy – that we can be saved as individuals, that any of us alone can be in right relationship with God. It’s caricatured in some quarters by insisting that salvation depends on reciting a specific verbal formula about Jesus. That individualist focus is a form of idolatry, for it puts me and my words in the place that only God can occupy, at the center of existence, as the ground of being." (1)

I've heard it said that heresy is having part of the truth and beating the rest of the truth to death with it. In that sense, what the Presiding Bishop complains of is heresy. Many of us grew up being told that our fundamental identity as human beings is as "sinners," condemned by a Holy God to a well-deserved punishment of eternal damnation and torment. The only way out is to believe that Jesus died for your sins, paying your debt to God, and to confess Jesus as your Lord and Savior. Do that, and you are saved, which means you go to heaven when you die.

I remember expressing some Episcopalian skepticism about that formula to one of my childhood classmates who was concerned about saving my soul. He offered what to him was a win-win option. If there's really nothing after death and you've been saved, what have you lost? But if there really is a hell, you'll be very glad you bought in. Religion reduced to a transaction. A very self-serving, individualistic transaction at that. I got my ticket. Too bad for you if you don't get yours.

Russian theologian Nicholas Berdyaev stayed up all night worrying about the concept of heaven. He wondered how could he die and then go to heaven, where all of his desires would be fulfilled, and yet still be conscious of someone in hell? "How could he still be in heaven knowing someone else was weeping and gnashing their teeth forever?" (2)

Salvation is a rich word. It means so much more than going to heaven when you die. There are at least three problems that come with constricting salvation to the afterlife. First, it usually turns Christianity into a religion of requirements. If Christianity is mostly about getting to heaven because you are threatened with not getting there, then who gets in and who's left out? What are the rules, the requirements? That gets very "me-focused." It's up to me to jump the right hoops to qualify. As the Presiding Bishop said, "it puts me and my words in the place that only God can occupy, at the center of existence, as the ground of being."

Secondly, salvation as a ticket to heaven separates humanity, often cruelly, into an in-group and an out-group. I know a dear family who sabotaged their daughter's engagement to a fine, church-going young man because he was not Church of Christ, and they believed only members of their church could be saved.

And the third problem is that focusing on the afterlife steals our focus from the real meaning of salvation, the transformation of this world and ourselves. (3)

Today's story of the feeding of the multitudes is one of several Biblical metaphors for salvation. When people are hungry, they need food. Salvation is food for the hungry. Jesus is the true Bread of Life who satisfies our spiritual hunger and calls us to share in his work of feeding all who are hungry. We connect service with worship each Sunday when we receive communion and are nurtured by his body. We become one body, united in the breaking of the one bread.

There is nothing individualistic about this. For everyone is fed; all are satisfied. "Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost," Jesus says.

The story of the feeding of the multitudes is the only one of Jesus' miracles that appears in all four Gospels. It is an important story. And Mark makes it clear that Jesus performs the same feeding for the unbelieving Gentiles as he does for his own people in Israel. All are fed. None are excluded. Salvation is food for our hunger.

That is but one image of salvation in our scriptures. Bishop Maze liked to say that the Gospel is Good News. So, he asked, "What is the bad news that the Gospel answers with the Good News? What is salvation? "Salvation is:
Light in our darkness
Sight to the blind
Enlightenment
Liberation for captives
Return from exile
The healing of our infirmities
Food and drink
Resurrection from the land of the dead
Being born again
Knowing God
Becoming "in Christ"
Being made right with God ("justified")

"In the Bible, salvation is all of the above." (4)

Let me offer two broad statements from Marcus Borg's fine chapter about Salvation from his book The Heart of Christianity. "Salvation is about life with God, life in the presence of God, now and forever." "The Bible is not about the saving of individuals for heaven, but about a new social and personal reality in the midst of this life." (5)

Borg expands. He starts in the Old Testament. "Ancient Israel's story is a story of the creation of a new people, a nation, a community. Salvation is about life together. Salvation is about peace and justice within community and beyond community. It is about shalom, a word connoting not simply peace as the absence of war, but peace as the wholeness of a community living together in peace and justice. Salvation is never only an individual affair in the Hebrew Bible."

"The emphasis upon social salvation continues in the New Testament. In the teaching of Jesus, social salvation is expressed in the theo-political metaphor at the heart of his activity, the Kingdom of God. For Paul also, salvation is social (as well as personal). He was creating new communities "in Christ" whose life together embodied an alternative vision to that of empire. And these – the movement around Jesus, the communities of Paul, and all of the early Christian communities of which we know – were communities of bread as well as Spirit. Food and Sprit, bread and breath: the sharing of the necessities of life in a new community... The Bible is not about the saving of individuals for heaven, but about a new social and personal reality in the midst of this life." (6)

Salvation is a rich and wonderful word, to be embraced in all of its multi-faceted beauty. Adapting the quote from Ephesians that I began with: "I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth [of our salvation], and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you [and all the world] may be filled with all the fulness of God."
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1. For the text of her address click here

2. Quoted by Michael Battle, Ubuntu: I in You and You in Me, p. 25-6

3. See Marcus Borg's fine chapter 9, Sin and Salvation: Transforming the Heart, in his book The Heart of Christianity, p. 164-186

4. Borg, p. 175

5. Borg, p. 184 and p. 178

6. Borg, p. 178-9
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The Mission of St. Paul's Episcopal Church is to explore and celebrate
God's infinite grace, acceptance and love.

For information about St. Paul's Episcopal Church and it's life and mission, please contact us at
P.O. Box 1190, Fayetteville, AR 72702, or call 479/442-7373
More sermons are posted on our web site: www.stpaulsfay.org
Visit our web partners at www.explorefaith.org

"For Power is Made Perfect in Weakness"

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
July 5, 2009; 5 Pentecost, Proper 9, Year B
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(2 Corinthians 12:2-10) – I know a person in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven -- whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows. And I know that such a person -- whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows -- was caught up into Paradise and heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat. On behalf of such a one I will boast, but on my own behalf I will not boast, except of my weaknesses. But if I wish to boast, I will not be a fool, for I will be speaking the truth. But I refrain from it, so that no one may think better of me than what is seen in me or heard from me, even considering the exceptional character of the revelations. Therefore, to keep me from being too elated, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, but he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness." So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.
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It's a miserable time for Paul. Some new apostles have come into the little congregation he started in western Greece in the city of Corinth. They've challenged Paul's authority. They say of Paul, "His letters are weighty and strong, but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech contemptible." They are taking for themselves money that Paul intended to use in his campaign on behalf of the Jerusalem church. They are bragging about their spiritual powers and consuming the congregation's resources. These are proud, powerful, persuasive preachers, and Paul is afraid that they will destroy the church he has so carefully nurtured.

But Paul is an ocean away in Ephesus, and he can't get back to Corinth any time soon. So he writes a "severe letter," defending his apostleship and attacking those others whom he sarcastically calls "super-apostles."

I am poor and I am weak, Paul writes to them. I was so weak that I didn't even ask you for money to support my living among you, though I could have. Instead I provided for myself with my own labor. But I am a fool. Yes, I am nothing, but Christ is everything.

I came to you first – bringing the good news of Christ – and you responded so lovingly. But it wasn't me, it was Christ.

Now you have these super-apostles with you, and they take advantage of you, and put on airs, and make you slaves. I was too much of a fool to do that. They seem so impressive and powerful. But have they endured the labors I have? Imprisonments, floggings, near death, beaten with rods, stoned, shipwrecked three times, in danger, hungry and thirsty, sleepless nights, cold and naked. And now, I am under constant anxiety for my churches, and especially for you Corinthians. I am the weakest and poorest of apostles. I cannot boast.

But if I were to boast...
"I know a person in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven..."

And Paul goes on, in the reading we heard just a few moment ago, to tell of being "caught up into Paradise," of hearing "things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat."

He could boast, he says, on behalf of that vision. That was real. That was God in Christ. But then he says no more about it. He offers no details. Unlike other contemporaries who wrote extensively about their complicated visions and mystical experiences, Paul is remarkably quiet. It is as if language fails him. He can say that he was caught up to into Paradise, but he falls silent before the mystery of the experience. If he were to boast, he could boast about that revelation, but it is more than he can speak of.

So he returns to his weakness. As if to balance the elation of such a vision, Paul tells of his suffering from something chronic – he calls it his thorn in the flesh – that he prayed God to deliver him from. He gets an answer from God: "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness." Now Paul has words for this revelation. He can say exactly what God has told him. "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness."

So Paul boasts. He boasts of his weaknesses. Because what he has experienced is that whenever he has been weak, Christ has been present as his strength. "For whenever I am weak, then I am strong," he says. It is in his weakness, not in his strength, that Paul has most intimately known the presence of Christ empowering him.

An Episcopal priest named Ken Kaisch tells of a time of great weakness for him. He was in college, and a close friend and classmate had been killed in an automobile accident. Ken was devastated. He wondered how a good God could allow something like this to happen. He could feel the bile rising in him and the depression weighing him down.

Ken was walking heavily down a road one evening, thinking about his friend, how alive and vital he seemed; how dead he was. When the stars in the sky seemed to advance and come closer. Then it was like the heavens began to roll back from the center, almost like a theater curtain, to reveal an infinite openness. And Ken heard a voice that he identified as his friend who had died saying, "Ken. Don't be sad. It's all right. I'm just fine." And Ken felt an overwhelming sense of peace come over him. Then he looked again, and everything in the night sky was simply normal again.

Trusting his friend's message, Ken was able to release him, and live anew, without the bile and depression. In his weakness, Ken had been given new strength. (1) "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness."

I hear stories pretty regularly about people who have found themselves at the end of their rope, and when they let go they found a bottom to the floor right below their feet. Stories about times, when having reached the limits of their resources and control, they have surrendered and prevailed nonetheless. I have watched people whose bodies are wasting away and disappearing but whose being and soul and spirit is powerful and transcendent nonetheless.

Over and over in my own life, on ordinary days, when I back off a bit, when I quit trying so hard and worrying so much, something happens – whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows – and things work out or they rearrange in an acceptable new way.

But I am so resistant to the surrender. I spend so much energy trying to make things happen the way I think they ought to be. I worry and struggle so. I fret and fume, like Paul agonizing over the Corinthians. I can tell when I'm getting extreme, my back starts to spasm and I wake up in the night thinking about all that stuff.

I can imagine Paul waking up at night, helpless in Ephesus, worried and frustrated. Composing and recomposing in his head the letter he would write. But then in the midst of the anxiety, his mantra comes back to him. "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness."

Last Wednesday, preaching for our memorial service for our former curate Bill Stroop, Bishop Maze quoted from the mystic Meister Eckhart: "In the end, there is only God." Bishop Maze said that phrase often sustained him during his thirteen years as bishop. When he was up to his collar in problems, he would say to himself, "In the end, there is only God." That puts a bit of perspective on your troubles, doesn't it?

Our twelve-step friends will say, "Take it Easy. Let Go and Let God." The little child in us sings, "Jesus loves me, this I know." Written in the margins of my mother's high school algebra textbook are the words: "This too shall pass." The mystic Dame Julian saw in a divine revelation that "All shall be well; ...and all manner of things shall we well."

Yes, life is difficult. We cannot control it. Often we are tragically powerless when what we love is threatened. Even in the ordinary times, the drip-drip-drip of demands and needs can shrink our perspective and exhaust us.

Each of us needs a mantra that rings true for us to give us strength in weakness – a Word that brings perspective, surrender and hope to the challenge of the moment: "Ken, don't be sad. It's all right. I'm just fine." "Jesus loves me, this I know." "Take it easy. Let go and let God." "This too shall pass." "All shall be well." "In the end, there is only God." Whatever works for you. And today we hear Paul's contribution to that wisdom tradition. As we anguish with Paul in his struggles with his beloved congregation in Corinth, we hear his remarkable revelation from God: "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness."

"Let it be unto me, according to your word."
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1. Ken Kaisch, Finding God. (I'm trying to write this account from memory because I can't find the book. I've lost or lent it. So I have no idea how accurate, if at all, my version is to what Ken actually experienced and wrote about. I've reordered the book, so maybe I can correct this; but not today.)
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The Mission of St. Paul's Episcopal Church is to explore and celebrate
God's infinite grace, acceptance and love.

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Seeds of Love

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
June 14, 2009; 2 Pentecost, Proper 6, Year B
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Mark 4:26-34) – Jesus said, "The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come."

He also said, "With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade."

With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples.
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"The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed..." I would like to combine that opening phrase from today's gospel with another phrase, from 1 John: "God is love." (4:8; 4:16) The seeds that God sows are seeds of love, because God is love.

One of the original images of God is the image of a gardener. Genesis begins one of the stories of creation this way: "And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden..." (2:8) Because God is love, what God does is love; what God plants is love. The kingdom of God is as if God scattered seeds of love.

We see the seeds of love in the other creation story in Genesis. In the process of creation, over and over God looked with love at what God had created, "And God saw that it was good." (1:10, 12, 18, 21, 25) Then after God had created humankind in God's own image, and given the earth to our stewardship, the story says, "God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good."

The seeds of God come to us as God's fundamental love and blessing upon us. God is love, and God loves us. God sees the world God has made and God looks upon humankind, and God declares God's loving acceptance, God's blessing upon us: "It is good."

Now we know ourselves to be not-so-good, don't we? And some of us worry about our not-so-goodness. Will God quit being love? Will God quit being loving and accepting toward us?

The story of Jesus is God's great answer to that question. Will God quit loving and accepting us? "No!" God continues to love us, even when we are at our worst, when we act out of fear and guilt and alienation, even when we act with deadly violence and crucify goodness, God is love.

How can God be this way? Let's expand the seed image into the next mini-parable in today's gospel. "The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed... like a mustard seed, ...the smallest of all the seeds."

The smallest of all seeds for humanity, is a little baby. Whenever we see a little child, our universal response is, "Oh! How beautiful!" Every human being has a fundamental acceptance and love for a baby, for a little child, the smallest of all the human seeds.

But what if the child becomes fussy and starts making noise? Maybe even gets angry and furious. We still regard the baby as good and beautiful, don't we? When a child becomes fussy, we know that the child may be hungry and is crying because it wants food. Or maybe the baby is wet and needs a change, some clean diapers. Or sometimes it is just tired and needs some rest. When a baby begins to fuss and acts up, we lovingly look to its needs – feeding, cleansing, inviting rest.

Imagine, if you will, God our Creator/Parent, lovingly regarding us. We are all infants in God's infinite eyes. God looks upon each of us as God's very own child, and God says, "Oh! How beautiful!" And God beams upon us the rays of love – enduring, infinite love.

The story of Jesus shows us God's intention for us, especially when we are at our worst – when we get extremely fussy and angry and we act out. In Jesus, God becomes one of us, one with us. And look what Jesus does. Jesus gives us the gifts that every good parent will give to a child. Jesus feeds us; Jesus cleanses us; Jesus gives us rest. It's what we see in the gospel story of Jesus.

When we are hungry, God in Christ feeds us. The only miracle of Jesus that appears in all four gospels is the feeding of the multitude. Jesus feeds everyone. And the radical hospitality of his table was scandalous in his culture. He ate with peasants and rich tax collectors, with sinners and righteous Pharisees, with women and foreigners. He fed not only their physical hunger, but also their spiritual hunger. Teaching about a God of love, who reaches out with blessing to the poor, blessing to those who mourn, to the meek, and to those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. On his last night with his friends, when everything was falling apart, he gave them bread and wine, telling them that they would know him to be present whenever they would do this in remembrance of him. When we are hungry, God in Christ feeds us.

When we are soiled and dirty, sitting in the mess of our own making, God in Christ cleanses us, heals us, and restores us to newness of life. One of the reasons Jesus got in trouble with the Temple officials was that he made forgiveness freely available to all, just for the asking. Instant diaper change. You are clean. The characteristic work of Jesus day after day was his work of healing. Taking our brokenness and restoring us to wholeness. He invited everyone into the way of transformation – from sadness to joy, from guilt to freedom, from brokenness to wholeness, from alienation to communion. When we are soiled and broken, God in Christ cleanses and heals us.

Fed, cleansed, loved, accepted – we are invited into rest. Peace. "Come unto me all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. My burden is light and my yoke is easy." Christ has already won the victory. We can relax. All is well. You don't have to go anywhere, do anything. You are accepted. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted, as you are. Relax. Rest. Receive Sabbath. When we are weary and tired, God in Christ gives us rest.

Like little babies, we get fussy and cranky and unhappy – when we are hungry, when we are dirty, when we are tired. In the name of Christ, the Church continues doing the same thing that Jesus does.

For the hungry, the Church gives freely the bread of life and the cup of salvation, the food that feeds us with divine life and makes us one in communion with ourselves, with God and with one another.

For the guilty and broken, the Church proclaims God's word and gift of forgiveness, touching us with God's healing presence to reclaim our purity and wholeness as God's own beloved children.

For the tired, the Church invites us into Sabbath rest. Leave the world and rest here a while. Breathe deeply and easily, and simply be, here in the arms of your Creator – embraced, lifted and held in the eternal peace which is your birthright.

Fed, cleansed, rested, we are renewed to go forth into the world rejoicing in the Spirit, to go in peace to love and serve the Lord.

God is sowing seed. Seeds of love. Food for the hungry, cleansing for the soiled, healing for the broken, rest for the weary. But it's all one thing. It is Love. For God is love.

Lest this sound too idealistic and sweet, don't miss the point of the mustard seed. What about the mustard seed? Jesus says, "With what can we compare the kingdom of God...? It is like a mustard seed..." Now, you need to know what Jesus' listeners knew. The mustard seed is a weed. No farmer would want a mustard seed mixed among the plants in his field. And heaven forbid that it would grow so large that the birds would nest and roost in it, nasty birds that will snatch up the farmer's seed and peck at the fruit as it ripens. The mustard seed is a joke. "The kingdom of God is like... a mustard seed!" Jesus the comedian. It's like his parable "the kingdom of God is like leaven." Everyone knows leaven is unclean and corrupting. It's like his story of the good Samaritan. Everyone knows Samaritans are bad. It's like his story of the dishonest steward who was commended for using unclean money to secure friendships.

God's mighty works are among the insignificant and the unclean. God embraces the little seeds and the nasty weeds. The kingdom of God comes to the little, the leperous, and the lost. God is love, and it is the little ones, the hungry, the dirty and the tired who need love most.

We are God's garden. God sows us with seeds of love and declares, "It is good." And even when we become weedy and a shelter for nasty seed-eating birds, God embraces us with a comprehensive love. God's mighty works are among the insignificant and the unclean. Bringing food to the hungry, cleansing to the unclean, healing to the broken, rest for the weary. The gardener is showering you with love. Take, eat. Be cleansed and satisfied. Jesus says, "Come unto me, all ye that travail and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."

Mapping Relationships

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
June 7, 2009; Trinity Sunday, Year B
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Collect for Trinity Sunday) – Almighty and everlasting God, you have given to us your servants grace, by the confession of a true faith, to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of your divine Majesty to worship the Unity: Keep us steadfast in this faith and worship, and bring us at last to see you in your one and eternal glory, O Father; who with the Son and the Holy Spirit live and reign, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
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We've had a beautiful week. It's a lovely time of the year in the Ozarks, isn't it? The sun and rain have greened the earth. We've had some cool evenings and mild sunny days. It's harder now to see the broken limbs from the ice storm and its frigid assault just a few months ago.

All of this teeming life and fecundity is a by-product of relationships. Our earth spins a complete circle on its axis once every twenty-four hours and its relationship to the sun's light gives us day and night. The planet revolves around the sun in a 365-day orbit, a relationship that measures our years; and a slight tilt of the earth's axis in relationship to the sun creates the beautiful flavor of our four seasons.

It's all made possible by relationships. The very being of our life is energized by the mass and movement of our earth, the light and energy of the sun, and the gravity and motion that defines the dance of life between them. The sun, the earth and the forces between them are a singular system that nurtures and sustains our very life.

Here's another way to think about it. The sun is the light and warmth beyond us, transcendent in the heavens, source of the energy that is creating life. We walk into the daylight, and feel the sun's intimate warmth on our face, its light beside us illuminating our way. We eat a meal, and the sun's vital energy is captured by photosynthesis, united to the ground of the earth, and converted into edible foods that sustain us within, entering and nourishing every molecule in our bodies. The sun beyond us, the sun beside us, the sun within us, energizing our world and blessing our lives.

We have an intimate, life-giving relationship with the sun. No wonder early humans worshiped the sun, as a powerful, generous source of life and light.

Well, I hope you've picked up the trinitarian flavor of this conversation thus far – the earth, the sun, and their relationship in space; the sun beyond us, beside us and within us, giving us energy for life. Trinitarian patterns. I'm convinced that a trinitarian pattern is imprinted in the heart of virtually everything in creation. From the dance of the atoms to the symphony of the stars, all of creation is in relationship, and relationship is fundamentally trinitarian.

For any relationship to exist, there must be self-definition between each of the parties and the relationship that exists between them. Atoms are a nucleus, electrons and the atomic field that connects them. For love to exist there must be the lover, the beloved and the love that unites them. For intelligence to occur there must be the thinker, the object of thought and thinking process itself. For creation to happen there must be creator, the medium of creation and the artful act of creating.

All of life is trinitarian, and in that sense everything is created in the image of God. We know God as one Being, a singular source of life and energy – Being Itself. And we experience God as three: God the Father, God-beyond-us; God the Son, God-beside-us; and God the Holy Spirit, God-within-us.

We look beyond us and sense the presence and power of God the source and creator of all, transcendent, "dwelling in light inaccessible from before time and for ever," as we pray in Eucharistic Prayer D. "Fountain of all life and source of all goodness, you made all things and fill them with your blessing; you created them to rejoice in the splendor of your radiance." We are moved with awe – to worship and adore God-beyond-us.

We also know that God has drawn near. Whenever human beings experience beauty, truth or goodness, we know the near presence of God, manifest in the ordinary stuff of our existence – the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, God-beside-us. In Jesus we see the human face of God, God incarnate as one of us, the Word made flesh. Showing us how to live as authentic humans, inviting us to walk with him along the way of life – Jesus, God-beside-us, our loving friend and guide.

We also know God within us, the divine agent of inner renewal and transformation, breathing all things into being, mysteriously present, energizing us with the yearning for union and wholeness that alone can fulfill us. God the Holy Spirit, loving us into being and then blowing us into the new and unexpected way of life – God-within-us.

C. S. Lewis enjoyed calling church doctrines, like the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, maps. They are maps of reality. Maps aren't the reality that they represent. If I follow a map to the Fayetteville square on Saturday morning and look up at the Farmers' Market, and then look down at a map of Fayetteville, I am turning from something real to something less real.

Even though a map is only colored paper, C. S. Lewis said that there are two things that are important about a map. First, a map is based on the cumulative experiences of thousands of people. A map of the Atlantic Ocean is based on the experience of thousands of people who have sailed and flown over the actual ocean. When we stand on the beach and gaze at the ocean, we have a "single glimpse." The "map fits all of those glimpses together." A map reflects the cumulative experiences of thousands of people.

And the second important thing about maps, Lewis said, is that if you want to go anywhere, you need the map. "As long as you are content with walks on the beach, your own glimpses are far more fun than looking at a map. But the map is going to be more use than walks on the beach if you want to get to [Europe]."

The church has a lot of maps. They chronicle the combined the experience of centuries of faithful people and their relationship with God and with one another. One of our maps is the doctrine of the Holy Trinity – God is One God in three Persons. It can be a fascinating thing just to look at that doctrine, to think about and ponder the theology of the Trinity.

But if you want to know God, you are going to have to let the map lead you into the reality it represents. You'll need to go exploring – let the map we call the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity lead you toward the reality that it describes.

Can you embrace the reality of God-beyond-us – the awesome, transcendent source of all that is, beyond time and forever? Can you walk with God-beside-us – the Way of love, compassion and courage inviting us to die in order to live? Can you enter the dazzling darkness of the immanent mystery within, the yearning spirit drawing us forward and deeper into transforming union?

What we are talking about is relationship. Our relationship with reality itself. Our dance with God, giving light and life to our being.

We look into the vast, infinite wonder of God-beyond-us and we experience ourselves in relationship to the all. We walk intimately in relationship with the loving presence of God-beside-us, leading and guiding us into life abundant. We open trustfully to God-within-us, the energizing spirit that breathes us into being from our inmost depths. It's all one God: creating, renewing, sustaining us into being. One relationship experienced in three persons. The Holy Trinity – our map revealing the experience of generations in relationship with the infinite and holy presence. The Holy Trinity – our map and guide into the fullness of our relationship with God.

Happy Birthday!

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
May 30, 2009; Pentecost Sunday, Year B
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(John 15:26-27, 16:4b-15) –Jesus said to his disciples, "When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf. You also are to testify because you have been with me from the beginning.

"I did not say these things to you from the beginning, because I was with you. But, now I am going to him who sent me; yet none of you asks me, `Where are you going?' But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your hearts. Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: about sin, because they do not believe in me; about righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will see me no longer; about judgment, because the ruler of this world has been condemned.

"I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.".
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On Pentecost the Church was born. God's Holy Spirit breathed fire into a group of huddled, perplexed disciples, who were trying to figure out what to do. Their leader had been executed. After three days he appeared to them, convincing them that his life had been resurrected from death. But then he left them; they experienced his Ascension, his departure from them, a profound absence. And so they waited – waited in a condition of not-knowing, yet in a spirit of anticipation.

On the Jewish Feast of Shavu'ot (sha-voo-oat) – also known as Pentecost because it is 50 days after Passover – when pilgrims from throughout the Jewish world came to the Temple to present the first fruits of the harvest, the Spirit energized the Church into life. Today, Pentecost, we celebrate the Church's birthday.

Part of what we'll do today for this birthday event is to celebrate some of the ministries of this church – recognizing our Sunday School teachers, giving awards to our young choir members, commissioning new servants in our Healing Touch ministry. We'll also have a Birthday party, our annual Parish Picnic after today's 11:00 service. Don't miss it. But most especially today, we will baptize – bringing friends to the waters of new birth where they will be filled with the fire and breath of God's Holy Spirit. And we will feast. We will partake of the heavenly banquet of Christ's life, and be renewed and strengthened for our work. The Spirit is moving. It is Pentecost. Happy Birthday!


Some years ago I picked up a practice to help me begin to pray. As I start a period of prayer, I will first observe my breath, watching it freely move, in and out. Then quietly I will pray, "Oh God, you are closer to me than my own breath. May each breath I take deepen my awareness of you." (from Mark Link, You)

God is as omnipresent and as life-giving as the air we breathe. God's Holy Spirit is the atmosphere in which we live and move and have our being: Like the air, invisible and unnoticed, until it blows, sometimes with refreshing breezes, sometimes with rending force that can shake foundations.

There is an old story about a seeker who came to a holy teacher with the request: "I want to know God; teach me to pray." The teacher took the seeker to a nearby stream, where he suddenly thrust the seeker's head under the water and held it. The seeker struggled, but the teacher would not release. Finally at the point when it seemed that the seeker would drown, the teacher released his grasp, and the seeker burst out of the water gasping for breath. "When you want God as much as you wanted that air," the teacher exclaimed, "then I will teach you to pray."

At the core of our being, where our deepest desires lie, we do desperately want God. At the center of our being, we desperately want to love and be loved; we desperately want meaning, understanding and purpose; we want our lives to count for something – something greater than ourselves. We want to be safe and secure, we want to rest and be at peace; we also want to be energized and truly alive. We want to be comfortable in our own skins – at one with ourselves. We want to be in healthy relationships with our families, our neighbors and our community. At our deepest place, we truly want to be at one with everyone and everything, in a living union with the whole of life. At our core, we want it all. God is all.

God's Holy Spirit is the energy of God breathing us into being – breathing all into being.

Here's the way parishioner Lesley Knieriem describes it when she does our presentation on the Holy Trinity for our Inquirer's Classes each fall and spring: "God the Holy Spirit – ...the Sacred Breath or the Divine Wind – is always proceeding blowing lifting raising swirling inspiring binding together pushing pulling healing enlivening creating redeeming sanctifying loving."

The Spirit is sometimes a quiet and subtle Sacred Breath: Like the invisible air, still and omnipresent around us. Reaching into our lungs and breathing life to every inner molecule of our body, transmitting sound, wrapping plants and animals and everything in a life-giving planetary hug.

The Spirit is sometimes a shattering Divine Wind, tearing away foundations, revealing fault lines, shattering our certainties, transcending the old ways and storming the new upon us with tempestuous power that can make us feel like we are drowning.

But from the torrential waters of Baptism comes the death that brings new life. We ride the storm into the baptismal waters of Christ's death and burial. We are raised to the new birth of resurrection as God's own children and given the fire-breathing breath of the Holy Spirit.

In God's Spirit our desperate needs are satisfied: We are loved and enabled to love; we are given meaning and understanding and purpose; we know our lives count, for we are God's beloved children. Our safety and security is given; we can rest and be at peace. We are energized, on fire with God's Sacred Breath, bringing compassion and justice to everything we touch. We can be comfortable in our own skins, at one with our neighbor, even at one with the whole earth, for as Dame Julian of Norwich said, pondering the fate of those who have never heard the Gospel, all God does is done in Love, and therefore "all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well."

Happy Pentecost! Happy Birthday! Happy Re-birth Day!

When Worship Substitutes for Justice

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
March 14, 2009; 3 Lent, Year B
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(John 2:13-22) – The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, "Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father's house a marketplace!" His disciples remembered that it was written, "Zeal for your house will consume me." The Jews then said to him, "What sign can you show us for doing this?" Jesus answered them, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." The Jews then said, "This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?" But he was speaking of the temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.
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In 63 bce, a Jewish rebellion led by the Maccabean family not only ousted the foreign Syrian rulers, but also removed the role of high priest from the ancient family of Levi. Scholars believe that some followers of what they regarded as the more legitimate high-priestly family withdrew to Qumran, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found starting in 1947.

During Jesus' life, there were four major families who competed with one another for appointment as high priest. The Roman governor appointed the office. During that century, the term of most high priests lasted only about four years. But Caiaphas was the high priest for eighteen years, including the entire ten-year term when Pontius Pilate was governor. Obviously they got along very well, the Jewish high priest Caiaphas, and the Roman governor Pontius Pilate.

Imagine the ambiguity that the people felt when the priest who represented them before God on the Day of Atonement was the same person who represented them before Rome the rest of the year. (Much of the historical material for this sermon comes from chapter 2 of Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan's book The Last Week.)

Despite their ambivalent feelings toward the high priests, Jews loved their Temple. In 40 ce, when the emperor Caligula planned to install in the Temple a statue of himself as Zeus, tens of thousands of unarmed men, women and children confronted two Roman legions; they were willing to be martyred to protect the holiness of their temple. They loved the Temple.

They also remembered the days of Jeremiah when the prophet accused the rulers of Judah of injustice, saying in the name of God, "If you truly amend your ways and your doings, if you truly act justly one with another, if you do not oppress the alien, the orphan, and the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own hurt, then I will dwell with you in this place... Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your sight?" (Jeremiah 7) For Jeremiah, the Temple had become a refuge for robbers, a safe house for injustice. He joined the tradition of the prophets Amos and Hosea and Micah and Isaiah in demanding justice from God's worshipers. Over and over, through the prophets, God declared to the people, "I reject your worship because of your lack of justice." Jeremiah went so far as to say that God would destroy the Temple because it had become a haven for perpetrators of injustice and a den for robbers. For prophesying against the city and Temple, Jeremiah was arrested and nearly executed.

The Gospels remember the day when Jesus went to the Temple in Jerusalem and performed an action in the tradition of Jeremiah and Amos and Hosea and Micah and Isaiah. Jesus shut down the Temple. He drove out those who sold the sacrificial animals, he overturned the tables of the money changers. "Stop making my Father's house a marketplace!" he cried. And in Mark's version, he recalled Jeremiah's accusations, telling the people they had again made the Temple "a den of robbers." In the Temple that day, Jesus challenged both the Roman imperial power and the Jewish high-priestly collaboration with that power. Jesus fulfilled Jeremiah's threat. He shut down the Temple and its works of injustice. Jesus fulfilled the message of so many prophets, when worship substitutes for justice, God rejects God's Temple, or for us, God's church.

It was a symbolic action. The next day the markets were reopened. It was a pivotal action. From that moment the authorities determined to do away with Jesus. It was a prophetic action. Jesus announced God's judgment, and he acted out God's judgment in a dramatic symbol.

These kinds of dramatic, symbolic actions happen frequently. They happen in the cause of justice, and they happen in the cause of injustice.

I remember during the Vietnam War when protesters broke into draft officees and overturned drawers of file cards, sometimes pouring blood on them. A friend of mine who was outspoken in the Civil Rights movement had a cross burned in her yard. A group of young men hijacked two planes and crashed them into the symbols of international capitalism, the World Trade Center in New York. At Fayetteville High School straight students will voluntarily refuse to speak for a day in solidarity with their gay classmates, some of whom have to live in "the closet." A group of regional politicians recently tried to live a week spending no more than $25 on their food, the customary food stamp allowance. Whenever there is a state execution in Arkansas, a group holds a candlelight vigil in front of the Washington County Courthouse. When American colonists resented an unjust tax on tea, they emptied a ship's cargo into the Boston harbor. Iraq just sentenced a journalist to three years in jail for throwing his shoes at President Bush.

We are all familiar with dramatic symbolic actions.

It seems to me that two questions challenge us in the face of today's story about Jesus' action, when he shut down the Temple. First, how do we know when a symbolic action is in the cause of justice and right, and when is that act unjust and wrong? We have to apply the values of Jesus and the Hebrew prophets to our judgment. The prophets insisted that God seeks to uphold the poor and vulnerable, the orphan and widow and alien. Jesus acted consistently out of a motivation of love and compassion, especially on behalf of the outcast and broken. With whom do we side when we hear about symbolic actions?

But the other question that challenges us is the same one that challenged the Temple on that day. Are we zealous in the cause of justice? The prophets tell us that comfortable worship which is detached from justice is unacceptable to God. Amos spoke the word of the Lord: "I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. ...Take away from me the noise of your songs; ...But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream" (Amos 5) And Hosea: "I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings." (Hosea 6:6) And Micah: With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? ...Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? ...He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God. (Micah 6) And Isaiah: "What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the Lord; ...I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity. ...I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; ...cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow. (Isaiah 1)

It is a good thing to pray and to worship. It is a good thing to come to church, and to make our communion. But if we are not engaged actively in the pursuit of justice, we run the risk of our prayers being unacceptable to God. And if we fail to rescue the oppressed, help the alien, defend the orphan, and plead for the widow; if we neglect to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God, we risk the charge of merely being a refuge, a den of robbers.

The lesson of Biblical history is that when worship substitutes for justice, God rejects God's Temple. That's not what we want for this congregation. Let this be a place of authentic and healing worship as well as a center for justice and advocacy on behalf of God's purposes. Let us pray well, let us serve well, and let us work well, in the name of Christ.
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visit our web site at www.stpaulsfay.org

A Strategy for the Wilderness

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
March 1, 2009; 1 Lent, Year B
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Mark 1:9-15) – In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased."

And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.

Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news."
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Do you remember the acceptance speech that Sally Field gave when she won her second Oscar? Sally Field started her career on TV as Gidget, a boy-crazy surfer girl, and was best known as The Flying Nun. With her cute smile and big dimples, she had a hard time getting cast into serious roles. She won an Academy Award in 1979 for Norma Rae, a performance that established her as a dramatic actress. But it was at the 1984 Oscars, when she won Best Actress for Places in the Heart, that her acceptance speech stunned so many people for its tearful honesty and vulnerability. "I haven't had an orthodox career," she said, "and I've wanted more than anything to have your respect. The first time I didn't feel it, but this time I feel it, and I can't deny the fact that you like me, right now, you like me!"

Sally Field realized that she had been given something that she had always sought. She had the respect of her peers in her profession. It validated something deep within her, and she was overjoyed. Underneath that joy, I suspect, was a deep well-spring of peace. Maybe she could relax now. She wasn't just Gidget or the Flying Nun anymore. She had a new and more profound sense of affirmation of her identity.

According to the accounts that we have, Jesus experienced a profound sense of affirmation and identity at his baptism. Mark writes, "As he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, 'You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.'" He could feel it, and couldn't deny the fact that God loved him, right there, right then."

Maybe you can remember moments in your life when you felt a deep sense of appreciation or belonging. When you were able to embrace yourself, able to claim a particular sense of identity or role or vocation. When you felt respected, accepted, even loved.

We had an exercise in our Journey to Accountability class the other day when I asked the participants to think of some time in your life when you did something well and you were fulfilled in doing it. Then, I asked them to list as many of these as they could, at least ten. Maybe single events, maybe a series of events like raising a child. When were times when you did something well and you were fulfilled in doing it.

Memories like that can be clues to our gifts and our calling. Usually they are times when we have experienced a sense of identity and affirmation. It is good to remember such times. They remind us of our capacities and qualities. They remind us that we are good and worthy, and even "beloved."

We all need to know ourselves to be "beloved." We need to be able to feel it, deep in our bones. To know in such a way that we cannot deny the fact, that we are loved. It is a fundamental, core, bedrock message of the Gospel of Christ and a foundational teaching of Christianity that God loves each of us absolutely and unconditionally. I hope everyone in this room knows that you are "Beloved" – that you are loved, respected and accepted. I hope that everyone here has felt that as certainly as Sally Field felt it at her second Academy Award. If she ever forgets, she can go back to YouTube and replay it. The rest of us either need our memories, or symbols that can jog our memories, to remind us that we are "Beloved."

Those memories are important, because we don't stay in the afterglow and peace of the experience of being loved unconditionally. We need to treasure and recall that reality, because much of our lives is spent in the wilderness. After Jesus' baptism, and the exquisite experience of hearing the voice from heaven tell him that he is Beloved, "the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness." He was in the wilderness a long time.

The wilderness is the place where the conviction that we are Beloved is tested. In the wilderness we do not feel beloved. In the wilderness we feel threatened. We feel unloved, maybe even unlovable. We feel stuck, powerless, out of control. Many of us spend a long time in the wilderness, like Jesus did.

Sometimes the wilderness can last for years, as it did for the people of Israel after their deliverance from bondage. After Mother Teresa died, we all learned what her spiritual director had known – she lived virtually her entire life in the wilderness, feeling only the absence of God, living faithfully upon the remembrance of a profound sense of calling in 1947 and a brief feeling of union with God in 1958. The rest of her life was a spiritual desert, but it produced a garden of healing and love.

I remember a time just after I had found my sense of belonging and vocation. I had become the Rector of my first church. I loved my work; I loved my community. This seemed like what I was born to do. I experienced a sense of affirmation and identity. But some time, within a year or two, I felt tired and depressed. I talked with a friend who was a therapist. "Burnout," he said. "Classic stuff." So I read a book about Ministry Burnout by John Sanford, and I learned that it is easy to become over-extended and out of balance. Writing as an Episcopal priest and Jungian analyst, Sanford said that our renewing energy often comes out of our shadow side or our inferior functions. In Jungian language, I had so over-used my dominant Intuitive functions that I had burned myself out. He recommended functioning out of the opposite side of my personality, the Sensate functions, to restore some balance and bring new energy. So I started digging a hole in the back yard to build a fish pond – a very physical, sensate activity, with concrete, visible results. I started feeling better immediately. Now I know, whenever I begin to feel worn out and over-burdened – do something physical. That is a path out of my particular wilderness.

When we teach about making a Rule of Life, I encourage people to make a strategy for the wilderness times. You know that you will go through periods of discouragement or disillusionment. We all do. Usually we revisit the same deserts we've been to before – the issues may be different or the circumstances altered, but usually we have characteristic, repetitive patterns when our wheels fall off.

So while we're in a good space – when we're feeling beloved or balanced or purposeful – that's the best time to plan a strategy for responding for the next time we're down-in-the-dumps and living in the wilderness.

What's worked for you in the past to bring you balance and energy? When life gets out of balance, how can you shift toward those things that are like the times when you did something well and you were fulfilled in doing it? Where do you find your grounding? Where is your foundation?

Matthew and Luke offer expanded accounts of Jesus in the wilderness. What sustained him was that he recalled the reality of his relationship with God – he remembered that he was God's beloved, and so he lived out of that reality instead of false comforts that tempted him when he felt especially weak and burdened.

When we know ourselves to be loved, grounded, respected, accepted – when we embrace the reality that we are beloved – we are less compulsive and more real. If we have a plan to remember that reality during our sojourns into the wilderness, we can bring some of the healing and balancing energy of blessing to our times of lostness. While we are with the wild beasts, we can realize that the angels wait on us.

When Jesus finally left the wilderness, he was ready to do something new. He was ready to proclaim the good news – "The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God has come near." He may never have reached that place of power and authenticity without having gone through the period of testing and trial. There is something given to us through the wilderness. It seems inevitable and important.

So if you are in a desert wilderness right now, take heart. Lent is a great time to face your dryness. Or if you are in a time of fruitfulness and effectiveness right now, take the opportunity. Plan for how you will face your next venture into the desert. What will you do to renew your sense of affirmation and identity? How will you remember the fact that you are Beloved – how will you feel again that you are the beloved child of God, that you are loved and accepted absolutely and unconditionally? When you are in the desert next, you will want to remember the waters of your baptism, and you will want to drink deeply again. Remember now, and get your canteen ready.
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The Mission of St. Paul's Episcopal Church is to explore and celebrate
God's infinite grace, acceptance and love.

For information about St. Paul's Episcopal Church and it's life and mission,
please contact us at
P.O. Box 1190, Fayetteville, AR 72702, or call 479/442-7373

More sermons are posted on this blog
and on our web site: www.stpaulsfay.org

Visit our web partners at www.explorefaith.org

Transfiguration Snapshots

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
February 22, 2009; Last Epiphany, Year B
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Mark 9:2-9) – Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. Then Peter said to Jesus, "Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah." He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, "This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!" Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.

As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.
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It was a strange day. There had been a dark mood around the disciples for about a week, since Jesus had exchanged some sharp words with Peter. One moment he was praising Peter for his insight, "You are the Messiah." The next moment Jesus called Peter "Satan" and started talking about death and rejection and how everyone must deny themselves and lose their lives. That was six days ago. It had settled over the little group like a cloud.

On this day, Jesus took three of them on a hike, away, up a mountain by themselves. And there, in the thin air, they saw something strange. They saw Jesus enlightened, as it were. Surrounded by light; infused by light. And a different kind of cloud overshadowed them. A cloud of divine presence that said, "This is my Son, my Beloved; listen to him." They didn't say anything to anybody about it. But the images stayed with them.

For those of us in the post-resurrection church, we can say that what happened to Peter and James and John was that they got a brief glimpse into the true and deeper reality of Jesus. For just a moment, they looked at their friend and saw him as he is. Later Paul will use this language: "the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God." (We just heard that from Second Corinthians.) For a snapshot of a moment, these three disciples saw that light.

We have no record of it, but I hope they saved the image of that snapshot for later when things got so dark. They needed that picture when they looked upon the bitter reality of seeing the life broken out of that same body dying in slow anguish on the cross. Maybe one of the reasons their eyes were able to see him resurrected was because the image of the risen Jesus was more real to them than that final image of the crucified Jesus. Of course he was risen; they had seen that light in him before.

Transfiguration snapshots are important. We all have them, don't we? We have in our memories snapshots of our loved ones. Moments when they have caught our attention, when they looked particularly effused with light, when they appeared so beautiful and happy and free. In my memory and imagination I have images of Kathy like that, but since she's here, I won't embarrass her. Instead I'll embarrass my daughter Allison, she's not here. I think I've mentioned before of a moment on a soccer field, when she was maybe seven. The other players were herded around the ball somewhere toward the goal. But in the middle of the field, Allison was running with pure exuberant freedom, her hair flying behind her as she took long, gazelle strides celebrating the joy of running and being. So alive, so energized, so present, so happy. I carry the snapshot of that memory with me.

And lest I freeze her in the past, as an adorable little child, I have another, more adult image. I wasn't there, but I have in my visual memory a photograph of Allison. She's a college student at Ole Miss, standing confidently at a podium with her African American friend Jada, telling a packed auditorium how important it is for sports fans at that school to stop waving the Confederate battle flag and singing "Dixie." Same energy and intensity as the girl on the soccer field; different setting.

And my son Gray. There's a picture of him as a tow-headed child, head cocked, gentle smile; and the memory of him on my shoulders clapping his hands over his head singing "Born to be Wild" at his first outdoor rock concert. And a grown-up glance at him, tall and energized, talking adult-to-adult in animated conversation with one of our friends at a party in our house where he cooked a gourmet meal for us all.

We all have these family portraits in the gallery of our memory scrapbook. They capture the light and life of our beloved at moments when we see them in their particular transfigured glory. These are true images. Glimpses of their true self, the light that emanates from them when we see them as they truly are, beautiful beings created in the image and likeness of God.

It is especially important to recall and treasure these images and assert their reality in those other moments – when they are not so enlightened, when the dark clouds obscure their light, when sadness and suffering and folly seem more real than their glory.

A few days ago I looked on my father-in-law in his coffin. I can see that image in my mind's eye. I know it is real. He is dead. But there are other images of him that are so much more real and alive. As we looked through family pictures, we recalled old times. I found myself surprised at a picture of Kathy's mom Claire, late in her life, when emphysema made dark circles below her eyes. I had forgotten that she once looked that way. The picture reminded me. But my stronger, transfiguration image of her is from our family vacations at the beach, bending over from the waist, straight-legged, finding another sea shell washed up from the sea. She loved to do that. Contented, peaceful, with almost childlike joy.

Transfiguration images are healing. Sometimes when I talk to someone who is haunted by a sad or hurtful memory, I'll invite them to imagine Jesus physically there in the scene, bringing strength and light and enfolding love into their tragic moment. After all, Jesus was there. See him. Let him be there for you. For some it works better simply to let the remembered moment be filled with divine light and presence, God's light and presence loving you through the pain, upholding you and bringing healing and resurrection to the burden of your own remembered cross.

It can help to pray with images. To see someone who is weak or ill and to imagine them transfigured like Jesus on the mountain, filled with light and resurrection life.

Sometimes imagery helps when someone is angry or mad at you. Look below their words or their body language and see them as they truly are, a beloved child of God, infinitely loved and able to bear God's light, even though right now there seems to be a pretty thick cloud over that light. Clouds can pass. When someone really pushes my button, sometimes I'll remind myself that they had a mother, and their mother loved them. I don't know why, but that seems to help me. Maybe because my mother loved me, even when I wasn't very lovable.

It can help to pray transfiguration prayers for those with whom we are angry, or even those we hate. It helps me to think that Osama bin Laden had a mother, and his mother loved him. He too is a child of God who has been hurt, and now acts out his hurt in such damaging ways. For a little while I can imagine him healed, infused with divine, maternal light; quiet and peaceful once more; able to bear and reflect God's light again. How relieved I would be if he could embrace that deeper reality; and as I pray, I also realize that I will be relieved at his capture or death if he is unable to embrace that light.

I think that organizations and offices have a transfigured being. What would they look like if they were following their true calling with energy and enlightened reality? Nations have an inner being. How can this nation live into its truest identity and potential? Imagine that, see that, remember that.

In our teaching ministry here, in the Servant Leadership basic course and elsewhere, we teach about the process of dismantling our attachment to our false self and reconnecting with our true self, the person God created us to be. At the center of our being, where we are most truly ourselves, we are one with God, for we are created by God for God. Every person is created in the image and likeness of God. God is love. We are created by love, in love, for love. As Killian Noe tells street addicts in her remarkably successful rehabilitation program, "what is most true about each of us... is that we are loved and that God's love abides in us... Just as surely as a peach pit is at the core of every peach, love is at the core of every human being." (from Finding Our Way Home, p. 13-14)

To see with transfigured eyes is to see this loving divine reality exploding throughout creation, including within ourselves. For a moment, Peter, James and John saw Jesus as he really is.
And they treasured that memory. To see yourself as you really are would mean to look upon yourself infused with light, infinitely loved by God, at peace, secure and joyful. Can you hear the voice that comes from the divine cloud and speaks every time you look into the mirror? "This is my child. My beloved. Listen."
___________________________________________

The Mission of St. Paul's Episcopal Church is to explore and celebrate
God's infinite grace, acceptance and love.

For information about St. Paul's Episcopal Church and it's life and mission, please contact us at
P.O. Box 1190, Fayetteville, AR 72702, or call 479/442-7373
More sermons are posted on our web site: www.stpaulsfay.org
Visit our web partners at www.explorefaith.org

Ice Storms and Sabbaths

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
February 8, 2009; 5 Epiphany, Year B
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Mark 1:29-39) – Jesus left the synagogue at Capernaum, and entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. Now Simon's mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once. He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.

That evening, at sundown, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons. And the whole city was gathered around the door. And he cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons; and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.

In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. And Simon and his companions hunted for him. When they found him, they said to him, "Everyone is searching for you." He answered, "Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do." And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.
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We had an interesting conversation last Sunday during the 10:00 Friends Talking hour. We discussed the ice storm – debriefing, sharing stories, seeing what insights we might learn from the experience.

How did you respond or react when you lost electricity and our world changed so dramatically?

There were some who were as delighted as kids on a "snow day" when school is cancelled. They felt relief. No going to work today. I don't have to face those responsibilities or frustrations or pressures, at least not today.

Some people said they experienced the ice storm as an adventure. For some, the adventure was mostly inside their own home and personal space. Getting creative to provide light or heat or food. For others the adventure was more outside. Getting around to check on others – people who live alone or who have handicaps. Guys grabbed chainsaws and did what guys with chainsaws do. Lots of people found ways to help other people.

Some people said they experienced a troubling sense of loss of control. They didn't like being faced with inconveniences that might escalate to threat, without being able to take charge and master the situation. For others, the dark and cold reinforced their sense of isolation or loneliness. A widow felt the helplessness of having to face all of this without her beloved partner.

I heard some people express anger in various forms. Others experienced fear or dread. Some people found motel rooms to move to. Others nested by fireplaces or gas heaters. There were reports of break-ins at homes that appeared abandoned. Several people said that they had more family conversation than usual without the distraction of TV or computer. Someone said they seemed to run out of conversation sometime on the second day.

Many said how thankful they were for the hard-working people whose job it is to try to restore electricity and do the other essential tasks for our community – things like health-care and police work and fire-fighting. Several people said how thankful they were that many cell towers functioned, or that they had saved an old analog telephone.

In the days following I heard people talking about making plans for being better prepared in the future. I heard a few people say they had a new empathy for the homeless and others who live with these inconveniences as a constant presence in their lives. I heard of gougers taking advantage of needs by overpricing their services, and of Good Samaritans who helped others without expectation of return. I met a couple of guys who had been unemployed; now they were working, clearing out debris thankfully. One called the storm "God's economic stimulus package" for people like him.

Someone else said it was like Sabbath. He spoke about the practice of Sabbath that his Jewish friend observes from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday every week. During the Sabbath his friend will not turn on a switch, answer a phone, access a computer, drive a car, walk more than a short distance, or do anything that might seem like work. Instead, he will light candles and have dinner with the family; rest, pray and read; visit with household and friends; think, and be quietly thankful.

It was after just such a Sabbath that Jesus went back to work, as we heard in our reading from Mark's gospel just a moment ago. At Saturday-sundown Jesus returned to his work of healing. Mark says "the whole city was gathered around the door." That sounds overwhelming to me. So many demands. So many expectations. The tyranny of everyone. The story continues, "And he cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons; and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him."

I wonder about the demons he silenced – those demons who knew him. Sometimes it is good to silence voices that are intent on spreading damage, who create confusion and suspicion in community. Or maybe these were demons that were particularly familiar to Jesus, the voices he met in his temptations in the wilderness; the voices inside of him that might deflect him from his center or compromise his purpose.

I felt overwhelmed at one point this week, and I let my demons of frustration have their voice. It was ugly. It was damaging and demoralizing. We all have these demons who know us, who know how to push our buttons and deflect us from our better self; who know how to get to us in so many ways – when we're tired and stressed, or equally when we're proud and successful.

People who practice contemplative prayer tell us that as soon as we start to become quiet, the chatter of the false self cranks up. The demons who know us try to seize the mental conversation. In last week's class as we were visiting about the ice storm, we talked about how our particular reactions to the dark and cold tended to mirror something in our own inner lives. Different things surfaced for different people. Frustration from lack of control; loneliness or vulnerability; relief for an escape from daily demands; confusion from not knowing what-to-do; anger for not being prepared. As our lives got interrupted by the ice, we got some clues, some snapshots of the shadows of our interior landscapes.

Sometimes when we stop, we make space for seeing our inner reality more truly. Sometimes when we stop, we make space for God's presence to silence our demons and to recall us to our center, to reinforce our purpose. Maybe that's why Jesus got up early "in the morning, while it was still very dark" and "went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed." There in the dark, quiet solitude he could be open to the divine presence. Like on the Sabbath, he could rest.

When you let go of the clamor of demands and you silence the voices, the tyranny of everyone, you can rest, and let God be God. You don't have to be in control, or fearful, or angry, or lonely. You can release all of that into the infinite dark silence of God, and simply rest. Just breathe. That's enough. Relax. Let God breathe you into being.

"Everyone is searching for you." That's what Simon and the others said to Jesus when they finally found him at his prayers. Jesus got up, apparently ready to get back to work. But he didn't just go back to work. At least he didn't return to Capernaum, even though there were still plenty of people to heal and plenty of demons to silence. Instead he said, "Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do."

Sometimes when you back away for a while you get a new perspective. Sometimes when you make some space, you can disengage from the cycle of demand and response; separate yourself from the compulsive energies that drive and oppress us, the tyranny of everyone; silence some of the inner demons. Sometimes when you become silent and enter the quiet darkness of God, you reconnect with your center and your purpose. From that place, it is possible set healthy boundaries that come out of a sense of purpose and the sanctuary of security.

It is a good thing to find Sabbath and Sanctuary in your life. Jesus seemed to need that. If Jesus did, I'm sure we do too. Stop all the activity. Turn out the lights. Turn off the noise. Let go of the demands. Rest. Be still. Breathe. Let God breathe for you.

When you get up, everyone will still be searching for you that was searching for you before. That's okay. But maybe you can respond with a bit more definition and trust, with better boundaries and a touch of God's energy.

Right now is one of those Sabbath times as we offer our Sunday worship. You can relax and let the prayers happen. Offer it all to God and let it be blessed. See life taken, blessed, broken and given back to you as Christ's bread of life and cup of salvation. Nourished and strengthened, at peace with yourself, with God and with the world, you will be ready, in just a little while, to go forth into the world to love and serve the Lord. Thanks be to God.
_________________________________________________

The Mission of St. Paul's Episcopal Church is to explore and celebrate
God's infinite grace, acceptance and love.

For information about St. Paul's Episcopal Church and it's life and mission,
please contact us at
P.O. Box 1190, Fayetteville, AR 72702, or call 479/442-7373
More sermons are posted on our web site: www.stpaulsfay.org
Visit our web partners at www.explorefaith.org

Your Deep Gladness and the World's Deep Hunger

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
January 25, 2009; 3 Epiphany, Year B
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Mark 1:14-20) – Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news."

As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea-- for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, "Follow me and I will make you fish for people." And immediately they left their nets and followed him. As he went a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets. Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him.
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"Follow me and I will make you fish for people."

Who would have thought that the fulfillment of life for these four fishermen – Simon and Andrew, James and John – would have been fishing for people instead of doing what they had always done – fish for fish? Yet something about Jesus compelled them to take the chance to do something different. And they set their fishing nets into deeper waters.

There is a story told of an obscure woman in London. After attending a lecture by the distinguished naturalist Dr. Louis Agassiz, she complained that she never had a chance to learn. In response, he asked her what she did. She replied that she helped her sister run a boardinghouse by skinning potatoes and chopping onions.

He said, "Madam, where do you sit during these interesting but homely duties?"
"On the bottom step of the kitchen stairs."
"Where do your feet rest?"
"On the glazed brick."
"What is glazed brick?"
"I don't know, sir."
He said, "How long have you been sitting there?'
She said, "Fifteen years."
"Madam, here is my personal card," said Dr. Agassiz. "Would you kindly write me a letter concerning the nature of a glazed brick?"

She took him seriously. She looked it up in the dictionary. She read an article in the encyclopedia and discovered that glazed brick is vitrified kaolin and hydrous aluminum silicate. Not knowing what that meant, she looked it up. She went to museums. She studied geology. She went to a brickyard and learned about more than 120 kinds of bricks and tiles. Then she wrote a 36-page treatise on the topic of glazed brick and tile, which she sent to Dr. Agassiz.

He wrote back, offering to pay her $250 if she would allow him to publish the article. Then he asked: "What was under those bricks?"

She replied, "Ants."
He said, "Tell me about the ants."

She then researched ants in depth, after which she wrote 360 pages on the subject and sent it to Dr. Agassiz. He published it as a book, and with the proceeds she was able to travel to places she had always wanted to see.

(story attributed to Morman leader Marion D. Hanks,
quoted from Stephen M.R. Covey, The Speed of Trust p. 99-100)

Frederick Buechner famously said, "The place God calls you is where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet." Sometimes we sense this calling when one of the world's deep hungers grabs our attention. There is some need that touches your heart, and you are drawn to respond. That's how most of the ministries here at St. Paul's got started. Patty Sullivan saw that a group of parents would like to connect with one another about the hard work of raising children. She started a class on Sunday mornings for them. Kimberly Gross found there was a gap in the social fabric; homeless neighbors could get night shelter and a morning and evening meal, but there was no support for them during the day. Our Vestry helped her start the Seven Hills Homeless Center. An Episcopalian from Little Rock asked us to visit his daughter in the Women's Correction Center just down College Avenue. We found a deep hunger for the Eucharist, and we're about to start a weekly service there. Many of the fifty-plus ministries at St. Paul's began when someone saw a need and was moved to respond.

But God's calling to us also happens in the other direction. Calling also happens from within us, from our own deep gladness – when there is something that we love to do, and so we do it. We express our own spirit and heart, and it becomes our way to bless the world. If we follow the deep gladness of our heart, our heart will find a way to meet the world's deep hunger.

A colleague of mine in Connecticut visited with a widow who was battling a lost sense of meaning since her husband's death. She didn't know what to do with herself.

My friend asked her, "What do you do that comes fairly easily to you, and when you have finished, you have more energy than when you started?" She said, "Nothing that I can think of. But I'll see what I can come up with."

Several days later she returned, saying, "Now you may think this is silly, but I know what I do well. I set a really nice table. I know how to coordinate various foods and flowers, placemats and napkins, and make it all turn out beautiful and delicious."
"Great," he said. "Now how can you turn that into a ministry?"
"I don't know," she said, "but I'll get back to you."

Several days later she returned, saying, "I've got an idea. I see all of those people working in those offices downtown, and I feel sorry for them. My late husband worked close enough to home that he could come home for lunch every day. I would set a nice table for him, and we sat down together and had some of our best times eating lunch with each other. I'd like to do something like that for these men and women who work downtown near our church."

With that she started a weekly luncheon at their church. Before too long it attracted a large business clientele. Many people remarked that her meal was an island of peace and hospitality in the middle of their hectic work-week. Her service brought meaning and new energy to her life as well. The lunch was so appreciated that it continued in her name for years after her death.

(remembered from a conversation with Terry Fullam)

Simon and Andrew, James and John didn't know what their heart was leading them to when they left their nets to accept that enigmatic invitation from Jesus to "follow me and I will make you fish for people." But they sensed a deep gladness when they were with him, and they trusted that gladness enough to follow.

Where do you find deep gladness in your life? Are there things that you like to do? Things that come fairly easily to you, and when you have finished, you have more energy than when you started? We're going to explore that soon during the first four weeks of our new Journey Into Authenticity class. The first part of that class will be a workshop to discover our spiritual gifts.

What do you do naturally and well? What gives your heart deep gladness? If you can think of something, then ask yourself, "How can I turn that into ministry, or service, or vocation or a career?"

The four Galilean fishermen were good at their work. They were good fishermen. But something in their hearts resonated when Jesus invited them to follow him and to fish instead for people. They followed their hearts; they listened to their intuition, left the nets and went with Jesus. With Jesus as their companion, they learned to meet the world's deep hunger with their deep gladness.

Is there a need that catches your attention? What part of the world's deep hunger moves your heart?

What brings you great gladness? What things bring energy to your life?

"The place God calls you is where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet." A big part of the work of this church is to help your great gladness meet someone else's deep hunger.
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The Mission of St. Paul's Episcopal Church is to explore and celebrate
God's infinite grace, acceptance and love.

For information about St. Paul's Episcopal Church and it's life and mission,
please contact us at
P.O. Box 1190, Fayetteville, AR 72702, or call 479/442-7373

More sermons are posted on our web site: www.stpaulsfay.org
as well as on this blog in the archives

Visit our web partners at www.explorefaith.org

Sacrificing Babies

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
January 11, 2009; 1 Epiphany, the Baptism of Our Lord, Year B
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Mark 1:4-11) – John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel's hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. He proclaimed, "The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit."

In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased."
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The renowned Christian educator John Westerhoff taught at Duke for many years and assisted at the Chapel of the Cross Episcopal Church in Durham, North Carolina. John says that every once in a while the rector would come across a particularly interesting couple who wished to have their child baptized, and who, in the rector's opinion, could handle having John do their pre-baptismal preparation. Without too much warning, the rector would send them over to visit with John, build him up in their imaginations with an impressive resume as the great Christian formation expert: the Rev. Dr. John Westerhoff. Thus prepared, the couple arrived at John's office, carrying their beloved infant.

"So, the rector sent you to me because you want your child baptized. You look like such a nice couple. This is a beautiful baby. Why would you want to do something like that to such a wonderful child?"

After the couples' dumbfounded look, John would continue. "Let me tell you what we're going to do to your little one. I'm going to take your child away from you in the name of the Church. This child will no longer belong to you, it will belong to the Church and to God. After I take your baby away from you, I'm going to drown it and remove its identity as your child and the descendent of your two families with all their horse-thieves, and I am going to give it an entirely new identity. I am going to drown it, brand it like cattle, and give it a new name. Now if you're willing to do that to this precious child, we'll proceed."

John said that the rector had been careful about whom he sent to John for pre-baptismal preparation, and so far, none of the couples had walked out. The reward for their bravery was a profound experience of Christian baptism.

Like the Christmas tree, the word "Easter" and the Celtic cross, Baptism has its roots in ancient, primitive tribal customs, the rites of initiation. When a young person was to be initiated into the tribe as a fully responsible member, the child would be kidnaped or separated from its home and village, and taken to an undisclosed place. There the child was taught the lore of the tribe – its story, its values, its meaning and purpose. There would be some trial which risked death and installed character. The child's old clothes would be removed and burned, and it would be given new garments to signify its full membership in the tribe. The child would return to the village where there would be a great festive gathering. Among the gathered community, the child would experience a ritual of initiation, receive a tattoo or mark of tribal identity, be charged with the responsibilities of membership in the tribe, and be welcomed into the community with a great feast and celebration.

Today that is what we are going to do to some precious children in our community. We are going to take them from their parents; teach them the lore of our tribe – our story, values, meaning and purpose; we will give each child a new identity, each will be Christened with its Christian name; we will drown these children into Christ's death; under the waters of baptism they will be united with Christ in his death and raised with him in his resurrection; out of the waters of new life they will be marked and sealed as Christ's own forever; the heavens will open and the voice of God will say, "This is my beloved child" and we will welcome each child into the household of God. We then will return each child to its parents and charge them with their ministry as steward's on behalf of God and the church, responsible for the life of this child. The child's sponsors or godparents will be given their ministry to insure that this child will be brought up in the Christian faith and life. It is primitive, powerful stuff.

Baptism is full initiation into the Body of Christ. We recognize each baptized person as family, and we welcome them to the family feast of the Eucharist to share in the Body and Blood of Christ.

The act of Baptism is indelible. From now to eternity, this person belongs to God, and God will never relinquish the divine claim. When the child is older, the child may choose to confirm that identity and faith, and through the sacrament of Confirmation take personal responsibility for the promises made on the child's behalf by its parent and godparents; or when it matures, the child may choose to deny that faith and identity. But God will never deny the reality that is accomplished today.

At least three things happen in Baptism: Identity, Membership, and Meaning.

We are given our primary identity – we are God's children, created in the image and likeness of God. We are made members of the Body of Christ, and we put on the mind and character of Jesus. We are filled with the Holy Spirit and grafted into the meaningful life and work of the Church.

The Baptismal Covenant tells us of the triune God in whose image we are created. At every baptism we repeat the Baptismal Covenant to remind us of our common work and calling as the Church: to continue in the apostles' teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers; to persevere in resisting evil, and whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord; to proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ; to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself; to strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being. This is our calling. This is what we do as Christians.

We ask God to fill us with the Holy Spirit so that our consciousness, our interior subjective awareness, may be opened and conformed to the heart of Christ, so that we will be predisposed to lead lives faithful to the gift of our identity, membership and meaning as Christ's Body in the world.

This is our tribal initiation. It is ancient, profound, and mysterious stuff. But I want to mention one other ancient aspect of what we do today. You might even call it primitive. Whenever our tribal ancestors approached the divine, they always did so in a spirit of offering. They always had something to give to God, something to sacrifice. Grain or drink; self-immolation or money. There is ancient mythic power and meaning underneath the act of sacrifice. To sacrifice something is to give it to God; it is no longer our own. We make no more claim upon the object. Often whatever was sacrificed was burned as a symbol that it has been given to God. Whatever is given to God is made holy. That is the meaning of the word "sacrifice" – it is from the Latin, sacra meaning "sacred rites" and facere meaning "to do" or "to perform." To sacrifice something to God is to perform a sacred rite to make it sanctus or sacer: holy. Whatever is given to God is made holy.

But there is a further meaning to sacrifice. Whenever something is given to God, the part represents the whole. When we offer our prayers of the Daily Office, we give God this part today's time so that all of the day may be holy and blessed. When we offer to God a portion of our money, our tithes, we ask God to accept this part of our wealth and income so that all of it may become holy and blessed. When a person is set apart through ordination to become a priest, it is so that the whole community may know itself to be a holy priesthood for God. When bread and wine are sacrificed on the altar, it is that all may be nourished by the Body and Blood of Christ so that every table may be holy and blessed. When Jesus is sacrificed on the cross, it is so every human being may rise to the resurrection life that overcomes death. In the act of sacrifice, the part represents the whole. The part is given to God – is sacrificed, and thus made holy – so that the whole may also be blessed and made holy.

And so today we sacrifice these children into the death of Christ, that they may rise to his resurrection, holy and blessed, and be given their new identity and vocation of Jesus to be a holy blessing to the whole world. And the Church, this community of the baptized, we are not set apart as a superior tribe to claim any form of domination or arrogance above those who are not part of our community. We are to be the part that is sacrificed for the whole. We are to be the living sign of the reality that God loves and God claims all humanity. We willingly offer ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy and living sacrifice for the sake of the whole world -- just like Jesus. All inclusive.

The children whom we baptize today are God's beloved children before we ever bring them to the baptismal font. We are simply recognizing and enacting the pre-existing truth and reality of God's blessing upon them. The world of all humanity is God's beloved community. When we claim our identity, membership and meaning as baptized people, we are simply recognizing and enacting the pre-existing truth and reality of God's blessing that extends universally to all humanity. It is our privilege to sacrifice ourselves to that purpose and to live into our baptismal vows on behalf of all people.

Therefore, remember who you are and whose you are. It is a high calling. You are called to be God's sacrificial people. Everything you are and everything you do is to be part of what God is doing to reconcile and heal the world. It's such a big job. We need some help. Let's baptize a few more people today, to help us in this holy calling.
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The Mission of St. Paul's Episcopal Church is to explore and celebrate
God's infinite grace, acceptance and love.

For information about St. Paul's Episcopal Church
and it's life and mission, please contact us at:
P.O. Box 1190, Fayetteville, AR 72702, or call 479/442-7373
More sermons are posted on our web site: www.stpaulsfay.org
as well as on this blog.
Visit our web partners at www.explorefaith.org

The Hospitality of the Manger

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
January 4, 2008; 2 Christmas, Year B
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Matthew 2:1-12) -- In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, "Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage." When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. They told him, "In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet:

`And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
for from you shall come a ruler
who is to shepherd my people Israel.'"

Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, "Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage." When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.

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This week my friend Bonnie Crocker from my former congregation in Jackson, Mississippi, sent me an email with two photos attached. I'm guessing the pictures were from Christmas around 1984, when both of my children were angels in the Christmas pageant. Allison's huge smile shows a gaping hole where her top two front teeth once were, and Gray is winged and wide-eyed with excitement. He's already posted his photo on his Facebook homepage.

The images that collect around Jesus' birth are touching, especially when linked to our traditional pageant – shepherds in bathrobes, Mary and Joseph singing to a pink-cheeked baby, the "Away in a Manger" lullaby of tiny angels, the sheep finding ways to pick at one another, the exotic dress of the little one who proudly announces "I'm a child from many lands," the fidgety Roman guards with their cardboard spears, the timid solos of the crowned wise men bringing gifts down the center aisle with each verse of "We Three Kings." It's good stuff. Heart-touching.

Yet, in his commentary on Matthew, Stanley Hauerwas claims that sentimentality is one of the greatest enemies of understanding the gospel, especially the Christmas story and the events surrounding the birth of Jesus.(1) There are dark and serious things afoot in our gospel reading today. Pagan magi making their way to honor the child pay a diplomatic visit to King Herod who will use their information to slaughter innocent children. This is a story that contrasts God's way of hospitality with the tyranny of abusive power.

Who are these "wise men"? Some bibles simply transliterate the word as "magi." Maybe they were priestly astrologers of Zoroastrianism who observed the stars for divine guidance. In their day they might have been regarded as scientists for the rigor of their observations and mathematical calculations. The fifth century historian Herodotus said they were a caste of priests from Persia who could interpret dreams, not unlike many therapists today. By the third century these visitors were thought to be kings, and the church interpreted this story as a clash of kingdoms, with the pagan royalty giving homage to Jesus while the Roman king tried to kill him. The early confession "Jesus is Lord" deliberately sabotaged the political claim that "Caesar is Lord."

So, using a little imagination, we can allow these wise men collectively to represent the presence of foreign religions, scientists and psychotherapists, and even political powers who come to the child Jesus and receive the hospitality of the manger. They offer what they can – gold, frankincense, and myrrh – gifts that aren't particularly needed by this child, but the gifts are welcome and accepted nonetheless. The text says of the magi that "they knelt down and paid him homage." Some translations say "worshiped him." The word means literally "to kiss the hand toward." It is an act of respect that has various meanings in the Middle East.

Here is the picture we are invited to contemplate: These exotic foreigners offer to Jesus a measure of respect that they are able to express, and the holy family welcomes them generously. Blessing and blest, the magi return home to continue in their pursuits. It was not expected that they give up their religion, their quest for knowledge, or their standing and authority in order to be in this cordial relationship with the holy family. The magi didn't become Jews, and there is no story of their becoming followers of the resurrected Jesus.

For me, the picture of this scene offers us an icon of the healthy relationship of hospitality and mutual respect that can exist between Christians non-Christians, between faith and science, between sacred and secular powers.

But behind this picture of unity and fellowship is a darker reality. While the magi are giving homage to the child Jesus, Herod and Rome are trying to kill him. Warned by a dream, the visitors return home by another way. Warned by a dream, Joseph takes his family and flees to pagan Egypt. In Israel's memory, Egypt has been a symbol of bondage. It now becomes a place of protection for the refugee family. Presumably they do not even need to hide from immigration officials. But back home, the brutal Herod kills every male infant in the region of Bethlehem. Refugees, violence, immigrants and genocide. It is still the stuff of today's headlines. We need more saving dreams. We need more inclusive hospitality.

We can be as hospitable as the holy family. We can welcome the stranger, the exotic belief and the unfamiliar custom. We can be as curious and respectful as the magi. We can explore mysteries and be open to truth found in unexpected places. We can listen to our dreams and honor their peculiar form of wisdom. We can be as available as Egypt. We can offer refuge, protection and hope to those who flee from violence, poverty and threat. We can resist tyrants and use our considerable power to oppose genocide, injustice and oppression.

In the midst of harsh political realities, we can create a manger in our hearts – a place of holy welcome and refuge where the divine life rests in a secure embrace. In my Christmas Eve sermon a few days ago, I invited you to make a picture in your mind's eye – to see a picture of the manger on that Christmas night so long ago. The star beaming its light from heaven; the hovering protective care of Joseph; the maternal arms of Mary, gently, lovingly holding the child who surrenders divine life into her keeping.

I said that same picture dwells within your heart. The divine light shines upon you, bringing life to your inmost being, where you hover with protective care and gently hold the love of God surrendered into your keeping.

Now add to that picture the visit of these strange magi, the entrance of the odd and alien ones, so different from ourselves. From the center of light and love that the manger represents, we can be secure and grounded enough to be people of radical hospitality, able to welcome the exotic and unexpected. We can be alert and humble enough to learn from our dreams. We can be nimble and non-possessive enough to leave what we must leave, to flee to Egypt in order to protect whatever is good and vulnerable.

There is something deeply true about the Christmas pageant tableau that fills our sanctuary with beautiful children in their wonderful costumes each year. They offer to us a compelling picture that is more than mere sentiment. When we look at those children, collected for the finale at the end of the pageant, we can see the whole of creation gathered around the Christ child in a spirit of hope and light. Sheep and donkey, soldiers and shepherds, angels and stars from heaven, children from many lands and those three exotic kings. We see in front of us a vision of the unity and peace that God intends for us. And something deep inside us tells us "this is true."

My two children, as complex and complicated as they are, really are angels deep inside. It's good for me to recall those childhood images, especially in moments when they bring me frustration or worry. The world, as complex and complicated as it is, really is blessed. All creation is filled with the glory of God. It's good to remember that too, especially in moments of anxiety or fear.

Let the star stop over the place where the child is. We also can be overwhelmed with joy. We can kneel and pay him homage. We can open our treasure and give him our gifts. We are welcome. All are welcome. Whoever you are, or wherever you are in your pilgrimage of faith, you are welcome in this place; you are welcome at God's table.
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(1) Many thanks to Dan Clendenin and his weekly webzine journeywithjesus.net. I've taken several parts of this sermon from his essay "Pagan Magi and Power Politics"

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The Mission of St. Paul's Episcopal Church is to explore and celebrate
God's infinite grace, acceptance and love.

For information about St. Paul's Episcopal Church and it's life and mission, please contact us at
P.O. Box 1190, Fayetteville, AR 72702, or call 479/442-7373
More sermons are posted on our web site: www.stpaulsfay.org
Visit our web partners at www.explorefaith.org

(Christmas Eve) -- Holding a Baby

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
December 24, 2008; Christmas Eve, Year B
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Luke 2:1-20) -- In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid; for see-- I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger." And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying,

"Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and on earth peace among those whom he favors!"

When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, "Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us." So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.
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A couple of weeks ago Suzanne Stoner and I went down to Little Rock to visit several people who were ill. Among our stops was a visit in the Children's Hospital neo-natal ICU to see Mandy Bunch and Melissa Evans' little newborn baby Nicholas. As we were on our way, driving down I-40, Suzanne began to opine about the feel of a sleeping infant your arms.

What a joy it is to hold a baby as it sleeps, lying there, surrendered to you in complete trust and deep peace. Children seem to feel heavier when they are asleep, don't they? When you are holding a baby, you feel both a sense of thrill and of responsibility. How awesome it is, to hold this mysterious life in your arms -- protecting, nurturing, comforting. You always have a heightened degree of awareness when you hold an infant, don't you? You are alert to its presence and attentive to any need.

Some moments, when your focus is entirely upon the baby in your arms, time seems to stand still. You look, and marvel at this mysterious life. You want to ask the child, "Who are you? What are you thinking? What future awaits you? How can I love and cherish you adequately?" And then the words in your imagination seem to slide away, and you simply look. Enthralled. Thankful. Sometimes the stillness of deep peace descends. We were thinking about that in the car on the way to Little Rock.

Later that day in the hospital Suzanne held little Nicholas in her arms. He slept, at peace even in the presence of tubes and wires and monitors, the technical professional bustle of the neo-natal unit. She sent such love and hope to him. Quiet words of care and encouragement. The claim of belonging to this little child who is both the child of God and our child as well. Glistening tears; beaming smiles; the nurturing back-and-forth looks of a loving family. Nicholas slept; held in trust, this vulnerable life.

I watched, and I joined my prayers to theirs. Silently I asked God's blessing upon Nicholas and upon this devoted couple who willingly brought this life into the world, knowing from the womb that he would be a child of "special needs." Nicholas is not unlike the child of Mary – conceived under awkward circumstances, Jesus brought his own constellation of special needs, including a darkness that the old man Simeon foresaw, a sword that would pierce through a mother's soul. I asked God's strength to be with this family in their darkness and in their light. I felt deep thanksgiving and wonder. And then I just gazed, enveloped in this communion of faith and hope and love.

In Archbishop Anthony Bloom's little book Beginning to Pray, he relates an episode from the life of Father Silouan, a Russian artisan who came to the monastery, and was put in charge of a workshop where young peasants from distant villages would come to work for a year or two as indentured assistants to raise cash they could get in no other way. One of these peasant-assistants was also named Nicholas. Part of Father Silouan's management of these assistants was to pray secretly for them.

In the beginning I prayed with tears of compassion for Nicholas, for his young wife, for the little child, but as I was praying the sense of the divine presence began to grow on me and at a certain moment it grew so powerful that I lost sight of Nicholas, his wife, his child, his needs, their village, and I could be aware only of God, and I was drawn by the sense of the divine presence deeper and deeper, until of a sudden, at the heart of this presence, I met the divine love holding Nicholas, his wife, and his child, and now it was with the love of God that I began to pray for them again, but again I was drawn into the deep and in the depths of this I again found the divine love. (Anthony Bloom, Beginning to Pray, p. 113, 1988)

I think I felt some of that, standing, watching Suzanne hold another Nicholas within the arc of the love of his parents' adoration.

One of the most startling things we Christians say about God is that God comes to us this way. God comes to us as a child. On Christmas we celebrate a God who pours out the divine nature into the life of a newborn infant. This is one of our core, foundational pictures of God.

We worship a God who comes to us with such complete humble vulnerability, that God trusts the divine life entirely into our arms like a baby. God invites us to embrace and hold tenderly God's very Being as we would hold an infant – an intimate mystery, alive as though sleeping in our arms. There is a certain heaviness to it, but what joy. You hold within you the absolute love of divine life. Feel the presence. Be aware. Look. Listen. God is with us. Immanuel, we sing: the Name that means, "God with us."

Like holding a child, there is a certain thrill and responsibility that comes with holding God's life in your arms. There is joy and thankfulness, there is also a necessary awareness and alert attention.

When each of our children was tiny, we had a front pack that we used to bind the little one close to us while we went about our daily business – getting the groceries, fixing dinner, talking on the phone, typing, even going to church. Regardless of what the task at hand might be, there was always a certain part of our awareness that was conscious and awake to the presence and needs of the child, bound closely to our heart.

Life in God's presence is like that. It is like carrying and alertly caring for the loving mystery of the divine presence at the center of our being. God yields the divine life into our hands, silently alive, but ready to awaken with needs for our attention and love for our receiving.

Sometimes I talk to people who say they don't know how to pray. Have you ever held an infant in your hands? Well then, you know how to pray. Hold the life from life tenderly and intimately in the center of your being. Speak thankful words of hope and love. Be alert to whatever need draws your attention. And, from time to time, just sit, and look, in silent adoration.

Do you want to pray for someone else? Let the same loving arms with which you hold the divine child embrace the one you wish to pray for, bestowing love and recognition, asking for the blessing of choice and the glimpse of possibility for that one's emerging life.

Jesus taught us to pray with childlike trust. He prayed to Abba, a child's name for God – like Dada or Mama or Papa. Tonight we join the conversation between Jesus and Abba in the communion of love that flows between the Father and the Son, whom we know as God's Spirit, the breath that breathes life into us all.

Make a picture in your mind's eye. See a picture of the manger on that Christmas night so long ago. The star beaming its light from heaven; the hovering protective care of Joseph; the maternal arms of Mary, gently, lovingly holding the child who surrenders divine life into her keeping.

That same picture dwells within your heart. The divine light shines upon you, bringing life to your inmost being, where you hover with protective care and gently hold the love of God surrendered into your keeping.

Have you ever held a baby in your arms? You know what God's life feels like. We celebrate that life coming to us this night. Let us rejoice and sing happy songs; let us nurture and care for the love that is entrusted to us; and let us live alert, thankful lives, filled with the goodness that is entrusted to us, this night and forever.

"Shhh Papa! Be quiet and still!" my friend's three year old granddaughter said to him as they sat together on the living room floor while she arranged and re-arranged the little creche with her tiny fingers. "Shhh Papa! Be quiet and still! The baby Jesus is asleep and if you are still, you can hear the angels singing."

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The Mission of St. Paul's Episcopal Church
is to explore and celebrate
God's infinite grace, acceptance and love.

For information about St. Paul's Episcopal Church and it's life and mission, please contact us at
P.O. Box 1190, Fayetteville, AR 72702, or call 479/442-7373

More sermons are posted on our web site: www.stpaulsfay.org
Visit our web partners at www.explorefaith.org

"Who Are You?"

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
December 13, 2008; 3rd Sunday of Advent, Year B
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(John 1:6-8, 19-28) -- There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.

This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, "Who are you?" He confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, "I am not the Messiah." And they asked him, "What then? Are you Elijah?" He said, "I am not." "Are you the prophet?" He answered, "No." Then they said to him, "Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?" He said, "I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, `Make straight the way of the Lord,'" as the prophet Isaiah said. Now they had been sent from the Pharisees. They asked him, "Why then are you baptizing if you are neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?" John answered them, "I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal." This took place in Bethany across the Jordan where John was baptizing.
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"Who are you?" the authorities asked John. John is remarkably clear about his sense of self and about his vocation. "I am not the Messiah." There were many expectations about the coming Messiah. Most of those expectations had Biblical roots; some expectations were contradictory and debatable. John quickly stepped out of that triangle, disidentifying himself with whatever projections others may have about the Messiah.

Many expected that Elijah would return as a precursor of the Messiah. The questioners were familiar with the oracle from Malachi: "Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the land with a curse."

They ask of John, "What then? Are you Elijah?"
"I am not." John immediately deflected from himself whatever expectations they might have had about the return of Elijah.

I'm not sure about their third question: "Are you the prophet?" Maybe they were referencing Deuteronomy 18:15 which says that God “will raise up a prophet like Moses… I will put my words in his mouth and he shall speak all that I have commanded him.” To that identity, John also answers, "No."

Well then, who are you? Define yourself, John.

"I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, 'Make straight the way of the Lord,' as the prophet Isaiah said."

William Faulkner famously said, "The past is not dead. In fact, it's not even past." John the Baptist invokes the past; he invokes the memory of Second Isaiah, the great prophet of the 6th century bce Babylonian Captivity. We heard his voice last week in that poetic passage that begins, "Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God." Sometime before the Persian king Cyrus defeated the Babylonians in 538, this Isaiah spoke of the renewal of hope. He imagined a highway from Babylon through the desert all the way back home to Jerusalem.

John picks up Isaiah's vision and urges people to return to their home. He used the ritual of baptism as a cleansing new birth to facilitate that passage home. Wash yourself. Become pure again. Renew your hope. God is doing great things. Prepare. I will cleanse you with water, but God is bringing on a future more powerful than any of us can accomplish. "Make straight the way of the Lord." Come home.

"Coming home" is one of the phrases we use to describe our own sense of knowing who we are and where we come from -- knowing who and whose we are. Each Sunday as we come to this holy place, we return home. We come to the waters of baptism, where we were given our truest identity, as children of God. We let the past become present again, touching the water of baptism in the font; and if our ears are attuned, we may hear once more the voice that split the heavens at our own baptisms, declaring: "This is my child, my beloved."

"Who are you?" they ask. "I am God's child," we answer, and the baptism of our past is alive yet again.

In just a few days we will remember God's coming among us as a child, and the past of Christ's birth will come alive to us yet again.

Hear the Advent call. "Make straight the way of the Lord." Renew your hope. God is doing great things. Prepare. "Make straight in the desert a highway for our God."

Have you ever thought of that aisle in the middle of our congregation as a highway for our God? It is the path through which God comes to us and we come to God. It is our road home. Each week we come from our own wilderness experience, walking thirstily through the desert, and we come home to the table prepared for us from the beginning. And whenever we come home, we do what families always do when they return. We have a feast.

God comes to us on a highway from heaven and feeds us with the bread of life and the cup of salvation. Christ's life becomes our food and drink -- nourishing us, empowering us, forgiving us so that we start anew, cleansed, refreshed and strengthened. Enlightened by the light. Some days you can almost see a highway of light streaming from the window above our altar, descending upon us as the light from light -- bathing us in new light, filling us with the Spirit.

For, "the Spirit of the Lord God is upon [us], because the Lord has anointed [us]; God has sent [us] to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." That is the sound of another voice, present from our past. It is a later prophet writing in the tradition of Isaiah. He writes after the return of the people from exile. It is a hard time. A time of economic depression and corporate distress. A time when the challenges that face them seem bigger than their resources.

We hear this prophet speaking to us today in our hardship, in our time of economic depression and corporate distress. He comforts those of us who mourn, promising us an end to our grief and a renewal of our gladness. He tells us we will be "oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, to display his glory." Renewal is coming. We will "build up the ancient ruins" and "repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations."

This prophet reminds us of what we can do because of who we are and whose we are. We are God's people. We will not only survive, we will prevail. This prophet reminds us that we are called to love what God loves and to turn away from what God despises. "For I the Lord love justice, I hate robbery and wrongdoing." So do we!

The voice and light that comes to us from heaven anoints us with the Spirit of God to share in God's work of restoring justice. We are the advocates of the oppressed, the comforters of the broken, the liberators of the trapped, and the enemies of injustice. That's part of what we promised at the waters of our baptism when we were asked, "Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?" "I will, with God's help."

Let them ask us as they asked John, "Who are you?" In answer, return to your baptism. Hear the heavens open and the voice speaking of you: "This is my child, my beloved." Feel your anointing with God's Spirit, the light that brightens your highway through the wilderness.

Who are you? Return to your baptism. And hear again the defining words that call you to your mission. "Will you continue in the apostles' teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers? Will you persevere in resisting evil, and whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord? Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ? Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself? Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?"

We answer, "I will, with God's help."

We have come home. We know who we are. We know whose we are. We know what road to follow. Anointed, blessed, empowered. Thanks be to God.
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The Mission of St. Paul's Episcopal Church is to explore and celebrate
God's infinite grace, acceptance and love.

For information about St. Paul's Episcopal Church and it's life and mission, please contact us at
P.O. Box 1190, Fayetteville, AR 72702, or call 479/442-7373
More sermons are posted on our web site: www.stpaulsfay.org
Visit our web partners at www.explorefaith.org

Peace in the Wilderness

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
December 6, 2008; 2nd Sunday of Advent, Year B
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Isaiah 40:1-11)
Comfort, O comfort my people,
says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and cry to her
that she has served her term,
that her penalty is paid,
that she has received from the Lord's hand
double for all her sins.
A voice cries out:
"In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord,
make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be lifted up,
and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level,
and the rough places a plain.
Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
and all people shall see it together,
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken."
A voice says, "Cry out!"
And I said, "What shall I cry?"
All people are grass,
their constancy is like the flower of the field.
The grass withers, the flower fades,
when the breath of the Lord blows upon it;
surely the people are grass.
The grass withers, the flower fades;
but the word of our God will stand forever.
Get you up to a high mountain,
O Zion, herald of good tidings;
lift up your voice with strength,
O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings,
lift it up, do not fear;
say to the cities of Judah,
"Here is your God!"
See, the Lord God comes with might,
and his arm rules for him;
his reward is with him,
and his recompense before him.
He will feed his flock like a shepherd;
he will gather the lambs in his arms,
and carry them in his bosom,
and gently lead the mother sheep.

"Righteousness shall go before you, and peace shall be a pathway for your feet." (Psalm 85:13)

The presence of peace is often a sign of the presence of God. I have known people who were going through terrible trials, living in situations of confusion or threat, who nevertheless say that they have experienced a deep sense of peace in the midst of their struggle. That peace is a source of strength, meaning and direction for them, helping them to face their challenges with deep hope.

"Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. ...In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord."

From time to time, all us find ourselves in a place where we don't know which direction we should turn. How do I decide what is the better path? How do I make a pathway through my desert? Occasionally people will come to me to visit when they find themselves in the wilderness. Now I'm not a trained counselor or a therapist, but I know the spiritual traditions, and I can listen as a friend. Sometimes I can connect someone and their situation with a resource or a story from the deep wells of our religious heritage.

There is a helpful practice that comes from the tradition of St. Ignatius of Loyola. Ignatius was the founder of the Jesuit Order, and in the heritage of his spirituality, the Jesuits have done some of the church's best work on discernment. Discernment is disciplined listening that can open us to God's direction. As the Psalmist says today, "I will listen to what you are saying, for you are speaking peace to your faithful people and to those who turn their hearts to you." (85:8) According to Ignatius, peace is a sign of discernment, an indicator of the will of God.

In his early years, Ignatius was a soldier. He was wounded severely in battle, and had to spend months in hospital convalescence. He lived with intense pain. One of the ways he found to cope with the confinement and pain was to daydream actively. He found that when he used his imagination to create vivid stories and narratives it lessened his pain and helped the hours pass.

Ignatius used all of his senses as he imagined. He would see the colors of his daydreams, smell the scents, and hear the sounds. He would feel the tactile touch and taste the tastes of his stories. He created voice and conversation. He used all of his senses in active imagination.

Ignatius found that he gravitated toward two fantasies – both narratives about how he might spend the rest of his life once he was healed and left the hospital. In one narrative, he imagined himself becoming a chivalrous knight who won honor and acclaim on the battlefield and earned the hand of a beautiful and virtuous noble woman. For hours he could create stories about his future, its drama and glory. While he was in his active imagination, his pain was distracted and he was comforted.

There was a second narrative that also gave him relief. Ignatius imagined himself becoming a great knight and explorer for Christ, traveling into uncharted places where no one had yet heard the Gospel story and being the first to bring Christ to the darkness beyond the edge of the known world. For hours he could create stories about his future explorations. While he was in active imagination, his pain was distracted and he was comforted.

But Ignatius noticed an interesting difference between the two narratives. In the moments after he had been in active imagination, when he was just biding time and attending to the businesses at hand, he discovered he experienced a very different emotional and spiritual state following each of these two fantasies. In the ordinary time after he had been in active imagination in his stories of battlefield glory and chivalrous knighthood, he found that he felt restless and even disconsolate in the hours following. But in the ordinary time after he had been in active imagination in his stories of becoming an explorer for Christ, he found that he felt peace and consolation in the hours following. That afterglow of peace, Ignatius decided, was the sign of the will of God for him, the evidence of discernment. After he was healed, Ignatius became that Christly adventurer, and with his companions took the Gospel to new and unknown lands.

I sometimes encourage people to practice that form of Ignatian discernment when they have decisions. Choose two alternatives. Use your active imagination to live into each of them. Then notice, where does your spirit go in the ordinary time afterward? Does one path leave an afterglow of peace? That peace may be the sign of the yearning of God's Holy Spirit for you, a path through your wilderness.

This week Suzanne and I visited with someone who is walking through a wilderness and finding peace as a pathway for her feet. For more than a month, our friend Katherine has been living in a hospital motel in Little Rock in order to be near the side of her sister Ann. Katherine's history has been harder than most, and her sister is the person who has most sustained and befriended her throughout her life. Ann is living with life-threatening cancer; now she is largely unresponsive, sustained by a respirator – a young wife, mother of two children – the tragedy of it all seems overwhelming. Every day Katherine is there. In her gentle, quiet way, she sits and stays bringing her gift of deep faithful love. Katherine has found a breath prayer that she recites to herself in the rhythm of the ventilator. In times when the pain is great, Katherine is present to hold Ann's hand or to pray within the helplessness. Katherine simply is, there, present. For more than a month she has been there; she eats in the cafeteria or makes something simple like soup in her room with its microwave and small refrigerator. She's careful to get to the hospital early so her sister's husband won't have to come into his wife's room with nothing but machines there. Like most families, Katherine and Ann's has some complicated and conflictive relationships. Katherine is careful to maintain her own healthy, self-defined relationship with each of her relatives. She keeps the information flowing to all, even while she helps them maintain some boundaries between them that tend to minimize the potential for continued hurt or conflict.

"In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God." Each day Katherine spends some time with her journal. She prays. To stay grounded, Suzanne suggested that she spend some time lying on the floor. Katherine says that she did her grounding in the bed; that seemed to be the closest to the floor that she could manage. She keeps herself open to the resources of support that she needs and willingly calls on them. She stays close to friends by the phone. Last week I had a message on my answering machine. Katherine had called while I was visiting with someone else, so my voice mail picked up. "Father Grisham, this is Katherine. I just wanted to hear your voice, and I guess I did. I just wanted to say 'hi' and thank you for your support. I'm doing fine. Thank you for your prayers for Ann. Goodbye."

Step by step she walks a straight path through a dark and difficult wilderness. There is something about the quality of Katherine's faithfulness that seems to be lowering mountains and raising valleys in the wrenching ups and downs that come with following a loved one through a threatening illness. Above all, she knows that this is where she should be. She is giving a gift to her sister. Around Katherine is an aura of peace.

"A voice says, ...All people are grass... The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever. ...He will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep."

As God gently leads Ann, the mother sheep, Katherine her sister brings comfort, O comfort, along this wilderness road. In her, mercy and truth have met together, righteousness and peace have kissed each other. She is listening to what God is saying, for God speaks peace to God's faithful people and to those who turn their hearts toward God. She knows where she should be. She knows where she is going. Each day as she walks toward the hospital, righteousness shall go before her, and peace shall be a pathway for her feet.

In the wilderness – in all of our wildernesses – God is making a pathway. Listen, listen, O my friends, for the gentle sound of peace. The presence of peace is the sign of God's guidance. God's peace is our source of strength, meaning and direction, helping us to face our journeys with deep hope.
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The Mission of St. Paul's Episcopal Church is to explore and celebrate
God's infinite grace, acceptance and love.

For information about St. Paul's Episcopal Church and it's life and mission, please contact us at
P.O. Box 1190, Fayetteville, AR 72702, or call 479/442-7373
More sermons are posted on our web site: www.stpaulsfay.org
Visit our web partners at www.explorefaith.org

God's Eikons

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
October 18, 2008; 23rd Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 24, Year A
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Matthew 22:15-22) -- The Pharisees went and plotted to entrap Jesus in what he said. So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, "Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality. Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?" But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, "Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? Show me the coin used for the tax." And they brought him a denarius. Then he said to them, "Whose head is this, and whose title?" They answered, "The emperor's." Then he said to them, "Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are God's." When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away.
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A man suffered a serious heart attack and had an open heart bypass surgery. He woke up from the surgery to find himself in the care of nuns at a Catholic Hospital. As he was recovering, a nun asked him questions regarding how he was going to pay for his treatment. “Do you have health insurance?”
"No,” the man croaked. “No health insurance."
“Do you have any money in the bank?”
"No money in the bank."
"Do you have a relative who could help you?" asked the nun.
"I only have a spinster sister. She is a nun."
The nun bristled. "Nuns are not spinsters! Nuns are married to God."
“Alright, already!” croaked the patient. "Send the bill to my brother-in-law."


"Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are God's"

Jesus has been teaching in the Temple. It is a politically charged setting. Two competing parties bring a dispute before Jesus. The Herodians are Jewish collaborators with the Roman Empire. They enjoy a degree of power and wealth because they cooperate with Rome and help administer its occupation. The Pharisees are a party devoted to a strict following of the Torah laws of scripture. To them, everything about the Roman occupation is unclean, and an affront to God. Among their party are some who might be tax resisters and maybe even some Zealots who plot revolution. The Herodians and Pharisees, strange bedfellows, ask Jesus a politically loaded question, "Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?"

If he says "yes," he is compromised in the opinion of the Pharisees and many others who regard Roman taxation as oppressive and unjust. If he says "no," he risks arrest from the Herodians as an enemy of the state.

"Show me the money?" Jesus says. Someone brings him a coin, a Roman denarius. Whoever did that has been outed. This is the Temple. Jesus began this section of teaching in Matthew's Gospel by overturning the tables of the money changers. The money changers convert the unclean Roman coinage into Tyrian shekels which do not have offensive images on them. This is an illegal coin inside the Temple.

Jesus looks at the coin. "Whose head is this and whose title?" The word he uses in Greek is "eikon." Whose "eikon" is this? I like the King James Version for this verse: "Whose is this image and superscription? Most likely it is an image of the emperor Tiberius, whose full name was Tiberius Julius Caesar Augustus. The superscription on the side of the coin that bears his image would have proclaimed his deity: "son of the divine August." "Son of God" in other words. The other side of the coin would have declared him as "Pontifex Maximus," or "High Priest." Divine Caesar is Lord of the civil and religious realm. That is the meaning inscribed on the denarius.

Jesus' response is profound and enigmatic: "Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, but give to God the things that are God's."

And what is God's? Everything. "The earth is God's and all that is in it," declares the Psalmist (Ps. 24:1). The scriptures proclaim that we are created in the image of God. Every human being is an "eikon" of God. As the coin bear's Caesar's image, so we bear God's image. We may give the coin that bear's his image to Caesar, but we are also to give ourselves to the God whose image we bear. Our primary identity is as God's children and our primary commitment is to God. Everything we do in Caesar's world must be shaped by our primary identity as the children of God created in God's image and by our primary allegiance to the reign of God that Jesus called the Kingdom of God.

The early Christians were called "athiests" because they refused to participate in the civil cult of Emperor worship. They were regarded as outlaws and rebels because they proclaimed "Jesus is Lord" and named Jesus "Son of God" rather than Caesar.

I think that primary identity must inform our self-identity as well, especially in a political season. We are not primarily Americans or Republicans or Democrats or even Razorbacks. Beware of the "eikons" that will claim our exclusive allegiance. We are God's people. Everything we do in our worldly spheres must be shaped by an exclusive and primary allegiance to God. To speak of "God and country" as mutually compatible allegiances is to risk entering the territory of blasphemy.

When we do "give to Caesar" we do that best by defending the values and ideals that inspired this nation – liberty and justice; equality for all – values and ideals that are compatible with the Gospel of Jesus. I like to pay taxes because it is the best way we have to promote liberty and justice; equality for all. I always hope our political discourse will hold our nation accountable to those virtues.

Nobel prize laureate Paul Krugman said last February that the U.S. economy is suffering from a "crisis of faith." He described a growing lack of trust in our economic institutions and the securities that have backed much of our debt. At the center of the problem, he said, is the extension of credit.

This is religious language. Faith and trust; doubt and debt. The word "credit" comes from the Latin "credere" – to believe or to trust. The Apostles' Creed begins "Credo" – "I believe." Our current economic crisis is in part about misplaced trust or faith between debtors and lenders. There is a steep price to pay for misplaced trust. Many of you may find yourselves in economic stress. We already know that St. Paul's will start our budget planning with $20,000 less than last year because of the decreased value of our endowment. Some of you are friends of a talented young man who took his life about three weeks ago when he lost faith in his ability to crawl out of a financial catastrophe.

Jesus tells us not to put our trust in Caesar or Caesar's money. He tells us not to be afraid or anxious. He fed the multitudes; he will surely feed us. He clothes the lilies of the field; he will surely clothe us. He was born in a stable; he will surely shelter us. He liberated the Hebrews from slavery; he will surely free us. He knows his sheep by name. He invites us into the alternative kingdom and the alternative economics of people created in the image of God.

So, if our truest nature is to be like God, and if we want to be happy, we should be who we are and do what God does. What does God do? God loves. God gives. God loves and gives extravagantly. Then God receives. God receives our love and our faith and our trust. For us to live into our true nature, we are to live fearlessly and generously, trusting and loving God, neighbor and self.

We've seen what that looks like recently. This week I signed a check for over $32,000 from St. Paul's discretionary fund to help little Eleanor Suttle's therapy for eye cancer. Much more than that has come through the wider community. Those acts of loving generosity feel good. They feel like acts of God. But all of it was given by people – simple human beings, living as the "eikons" of God.

God has stamped us with God's image. We are God's coins. God doesn't want our money. God wants us. God want us to spend ourselves in the service of God's compassion and love. That is who we are. That is the path to true freedom and happiness.

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The Mission of St. Paul's Episcopal Church
is to explore and celebrate
God's infinite grace, acceptance, and love.

Visit our web site at www.stpaulsfay.org

Our Rule of Life

We aspire to...
worship weekly
pray daily
learn constantly
serve joyfully
live generously.

Lowell Grisham, Rector

St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Fayetteville, Arkansas

A Hard Parable

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
October 11, 2008; 22nd Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 23, Year A
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Matthew 22:1-14) – Once more Jesus spoke to the people in parables, saying: "The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding banquet, but they would not come. Again he sent other slaves, saying, 'Tell those who have been invited: Look, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.' But they made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business, while the rest seized his slaves, mistreated them, and killed them. The king was enraged. He sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city. Then he said to his slaves, 'The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy. Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.' Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests.

"But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe, and he said to him, `Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?' And he was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, `Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.' For many are called, but few are chosen."
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I've been at St. Paul's for over eleven years. I've never preached on the week when this gospel reading was assigned by the lectionary. Some of that is the luck of the draw, but I believe at least once I looked ahead and saw it coming and managed to pass it off to one of my colleagues. If I had exercised a little foresight this year, I probably would have done just that. But I wasn't paying attention. So this week, when I realized it was this parable and it was my turn to preach, I thought, "Oh, no. Can't it were someone else's weekend. No."

This parable is a tough one. The commentators all have trouble with it. So do the preachers. Sometimes people will try to allegorize the story with God as the king, but the violent behavior of this king bears little resemblance to the God Jesus points us toward, whom Jesus calls "Abba."

I do not know what this parable means. So you're not going to get something definitive, maybe not even something very helpful from me this morning. I'm flummoxed.

But I do know that one of the things Jesus used parables for, was to shake people out of their complacent attitudes and world views. Jesus' parables are often very subversive. They are like verbal hand grenades that Jesus tosses out to unnerve and destabilize us. It's like Jesus says, "You think you know something about reality? Think again. The Kingdom of God is like..." and then he tosses his grenade. When he's finished, everybody looks perplexed. He gives no easy answers. He just challenges us. "What are you going to do with that?" Fair warning. That's where we're going today. I don't know what this parable is saying, so here we go.

I'm guessing that when Jesus started this story, saying: "The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son..." his listeners thought immediately of the Emperor. They were familiar with kings. And in Roman times, there was really only one: Caesar. Jesus speaks of a king, and his listeners think of Caesar.

There is to be a royal wedding. Caesar's retainers invite the elites to the wedding. In Israel, that would be those Jews who were collaborators with the Roman occupation – those who had become powerful and wealthy through their cooperation with the Empire. The High Priests and the Sadducees; wealthy landowners, multinational businessmen and governmental officials. "Everything is ready," says Caesar, "come to the wedding banquet."

But the unimaginable happens. The elites say "No." They diss the Emperor. Can you imagine the buzz among the peasants hearing this story? "Good. At last. Someone is standing up to the hated Romans, like Judas Maccabeus did nearly two-hundred years ago." This is the kind of story they've been waiting for. When Messiah comes, he will lead the rebellion to throw off the oppressors and defeat them forever.

But that's not the way the story goes. The king is enraged. His army comes and massacres the rebels and burns their city. The people remember that story. That's happened before. The fall of Jerusalem; 587 BCE. And it's not the last time either.

So the Emperor sends the Legions into the streets. They "invite" everyone, both good and bad. They've seen what happened. They go to the wedding hall. At sword-point or voluntarily out of fear. Nobody turns the invitation down this time.

"But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe." Who do you think that man might be? I think there is a clue. Look at the description of that unclothed man. When he's asked to explain himself, the man is speechless, silent. So the king binds him hand and foot and throws him into the outer darkness." I think this is Jesus. "Like a lamb that before its shearers is mute, so he uttered not a word." He was bound hand and foot upon the cross and crucified into the utter darkness.

While everyone else is cowed in fear before the oppressor, coming to the wedding banquet, wearing the dress the tyrant expects, Jesus simply refuses to cooperate. He will not wear the clothing of injustice. He doesn't say anything. He doesn't accuse or attack. He doesn't meet power with power; he doesn't return violence for violence. He simply stands there in his integrity and refuses to acknowledge or cooperate with the misuse of power. He accepts the predictable consequences of his defiance. He is crucified.

Not many people have the courage to do that, do they? "Many are called, but few are chosen." Few so choose. There's Rosa Parks who just sat there, refusing to cooperate when she was told to give up her seat and get back to her place in the back of the bus. She was bound in handcuffs and thrown into the utter darkness of jail. There's Abraham Lincoln who resisted the demands to punish the rebellious South, saying, "With malice toward none and charity for all." There's Gandhi, who marched 240 miles to lead hundreds of Indians to pick up a handful of salt and walk non-violently into British clubs and batons, some to their deaths.

When brave people refuse to cooperate with power exercised as injustice, they expose tyranny to the light of day. They force the ugly violence, which so often remains hidden under the camouflage of threat, to do it's repugnant work openly, to be revealed as the evil it is. Ultimately, darkness cannot overcome its exposure to the light.

Sometimes it is something simple. An employee tells a boss, "I'm not going to do that." A spouse tells a beloved, "I won't cover for you anymore. I'm letting others know about this." The consequences are often powerful and costly. It is the price of freedom.

And maybe there is a connection here with the words we have from Paul. Paul has weighed in to a conflict and brought it to the light. "I urge Euodia and I urge Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord." There has been a fight, a disagreement, maybe an injustice. Paul offers a context for standing up in the presence of unpleasantness.

As I read these words of Paul, imagine these words being in the mind of the mysterious wedding guest who refuses to wear the king's garment and will not cooperate with the violence and oppression that the king wields. Or let these words be in Rosa Parks' thoughts or in Gandhi's heart as they place themselves peacefully before injustice. Or hear these words in the soul of the employee or the spouse who is standing up to wrong.

"Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

"Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you."

One more thing. Did you notice who was missing from the parable? There's no bride and no groom.

After Jesus was bound hand and foot and thrown into the outer darkness, God raised him from the dead. Jesus became the bridegroom for his bride, the church. And the real King, the Sovereign of the Universe, prepared a wedding banquet. To this wedding banquet all are invited, without coercion or violence, but with love and acceptance. It is the banquet of the Lamb. It is the light that comes into the world, and the darkness cannot overcome it. We are participants in this banquet, welcomed regardless of raiment. We are fed and empowered, made one with God and with one another, so that we can share in God's work of reconciliation which overcomes all injustice and oppression.

Welcome to the wedding banquet. Keep doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in Christ, and the God of peace will be with you.
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The Mission of St. Paul's Episcopal Church is to explore and celebrate
God's infinite grace, acceptance and love.

For information about St. Paul's Episcopal Church and it's life and mission, please contact us at
P.O. Box 1190, Fayetteville, AR 72702, or call 479/442-7373
More sermons are posted on our web site: www.stpaulsfay.org
Visit our web partners at www.explorefaith.org

Parental Sour Grapes

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
September 28, 2008; 20th Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 21, Year A
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Ezekiel 18:1-4, 25-32) – The word of the Lord came to me: What do you mean by repeating this proverb concerning the land of Israel, "The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge"? As I live, says the Lord God this proverb shall no more be used by you in Israel. Know that all lives are mine; the life of the parent as well as the life of the child is mine: it is only the person who sins that shall die...

(Matthew 21:23-32) -- When Jesus entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him as he was teaching, and said, "By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?" Jesus said to them, "I will also ask you one question; if you tell me the answer, then I will also tell you by what authority I do these things. Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?" And they argued with one another, "If we say, `From heaven,' he will say to us, `Why then did you not believe him?' But if we say, `Of human origin,' we are afraid of the crowd; for all regard John as a prophet." So they answered Jesus, "We do not know." And he said to them, "Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.

"What do you think? A man had two sons; he went to the first and said, `Son, go and work in the vineyard today.' He answered, `I will not'; but later he changed his mind and went. The father went to the second and said the same; and he answered, `I go, sir'; but he did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?" They said, "The first." Jesus said to them, "Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him; and even after you saw it, you did not change your minds and believe him."
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Right at the beginning of the Ten Commandments, we hear this:
I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and fourth generation of those who reject me.

Seven hundred years later, that conviction has come down to the generation of the prophet Ezekiel in the form of a folk idiom.
The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge.

Ezekiel speaks in the name of God and says, "No longer will you repeat this proverb. From now on, you are responsible for yourselves. You are not to carry the weight of your parents' guilt." It is a freeing and liberating word. But it is a freedom that must be claimed and lived into consciously.

An important task of our spiritual journey is to heal the inheritance of our past. We have to accept the ambiguity of the blessings and curses that have come to us from our ancestors. Then we have to define ourselves as separate beings, authentic and whole, yet connected to our past. I'd like for us to consider today's Gospel story as an illustration about how to do that.

The first part of the story shows Jesus challenging the chief priests and elders who have not been able become authentic and self-defining with respect to a part of their own past. They failed to endorse the popular prophet John the Baptist whom Herod has executed. "What do you think about John the Baptist?" Jesus asks them. Instead of telling Jesus what they think, they get anxious, and equivocate. Their response is reactive, not authentic. So Jesus doesn't waste his breath on them. They are not mature enough to handle his truth.

Then Jesus tells a story of two sons. A father says to each, "Son, go and work in the vineyard today." Now I'm going to read something into the story that is not there. I'm going to assume that this is a difficult father. I'm guessing that this father is someone who is dominating, controlling, maybe even abusive, at least from the perspective of his two sons. I think their reactions have something to do with their emotions about him.

Both sons are reactive. One appears compliant, "I go, sir," but then rebels in an unhealthy, passive aggressive way; he doesn't do what he said he would do. The other son reacts rebelliously, but then reconsiders, and does the responsible thing. He chooses to do what is right, despite his feelings about his father.

I saw a documentary film last week about a father and son. The film is about Haskell Wexler, two-time Academy Award winning cinematographer, 81 years old at the time of the documentary. It is filmed by his son Mark, who has had modest success as a photojournalist for the Smithsonian and for the Federal government. Father is a life-long outspoken liberal; son is a conservative, proud of his photo with George H.W. Bush, a souvenir of his photo-story about Air Force One.

It's hard to get a handle on why Mark is making a film about his father Haskell. Is it an attempt toward reconciliation, or is he documenting for the world to see what an SOB his father really is?

Haskell is bossy, intimidating, controlling – continually telling his son Mark how to place the camera, what scenes to choose, when to cut. These are orders. Most of the time Mark silently resists, staying behind the camera to exercise artistic control over the film he is making about his father. Over and over the son stands there, non-reactive, camera rolling, while the father goes off. "Maybe I would have been a better father if I knew what I know now when you were growing up so you wouldn't turn out to be such a mess," Haskell cackles with a scornful laugh. It's all recorded.

Mark is researching – exploring what makes his father the person he is. Mark goes back into their history. Mark's grandfather, Haskell's dad, was a successful electronics manufacturer. Haskell grew up in wealth and privilege during the depression. When Haskell wanted to become a film-maker, his father invested a million dollars into a failed startup. He told friends that Haskell's real work was turning money into excrement. Haskell managed to organize the workers at his father's plant into a union and led them in a strike.

Mark is researching – he visits his father's friends and colleages who have worked with him. They bring new perspectives, more views and angles. Many of them remark on Haskell's difficult personality, but they communicate respect, and sometimes even affection. It seems to help when Mark interviews Jane Fonda and Michael Douglas, the children of other famous, powerful fathers.

Still the battle of wills continues. Haskell wants to tell Mark something important, and calls him to his room. Mark suggests they film outside where the afternoon light overlooking San Francisco is perfect. "No," his father says, "We'll stay right here." "Dad, come outside for just a minute. It's a beautiful backdrop." The fight for control is excruciating. It seems to last forever. Both lose. Mark doesn't get his shot; Haskell doesn't tell his important message.

In a poignant moment, the crust breaks for just a bit. They visit Mark's mother, Haskell's second of four wives. They divorced after thirty-three years, punctuated by Haskell's many affairs. She is now living in the Alzheimer unit of a nursing home. Mark backs away, the camera still in range, as Haskell speaks softly to the silent woman. "We have secrets," he whispers to her. "Things no one else knows." "Yes," she says. Her only words during the encounter.

A learning moment seems to happen when Mark is trying to get a shot of his father swimming in the pool. His father instructs him how to frame the shot – to meet him half way, which Mark does, and it works. The sequence beautifully frames Haskell emerging from the water with a joyful smile.

The movie becomes a frank and courageous exploration of the most significant relationship in Mark Wexler's life. It is a tribute to his father; it is also brutally honest. But there's more. An additional trailer, not part of the film, records Haskell's watching the nearly finished first cut of the documentary. We see him laughing at his own arrogant hubris. We see him touched by the scene with his wife. When the video is over, Haskell is moved. He can't speak for a while. Then he says, in colorful language I won't use here, It's a great film; you are a fine film maker. Mark dissolves into weeping as their tears unite them in ties as deep as blood.

William Faulkner famously wrote, "The past is never dead. It's not even past." Part of our spiritual journey into wholeness and maturity is to make peace with our past. Part of that work is digging into our history and knowing our story and our ancestors' stories. We need to recognize how our lives have been profoundly shaped by our parents, and the sour grapes that are inevitably part of our inheritance. Then we need to stand alertly, courageously behind the camera, learning what we can learn. From a place of knowing, we can authentically choose who we will be. We can define ourselves consciously, rather than to continue living unconsciously in reaction to our past. We can shed the insecurities of childhood, and be authentic and whole adults.

Maybe that's one of the reasons why there is so much parental language in religious imagery. None of us had perfect fathers or perfect mothers. We all need more perfect love than we can possibly receive from the finite human beings who make up our family. So we speak of God the Father who comes to us with unconditional love and vitality. We speak of God the Son who comes to be with us to encourage and heal. We speak of Mother Church, Mother Earth, Mother Mary as the embracing love that nurtures us into the fullness of our being.

Our spiritual journey involves our liberation from the bondage of our past in order to be mature, freely responsible and whole in the present. Each of us is a child of God; unique and beloved. Each of us has been given a singular story and unique gifts that we may do our part to help Christ create a new future, redeeming in our time on the earth the little square inch we are given to tend, until creation is healed and reconciled, we are whole and real; and the Garden of Eden blooms anew.
_______________________________________________________

The Mission of St. Paul's Episcopal Church is to explore and celebrate
God's infinite grace, acceptance and love.

For information about St. Paul's Episcopal Church and it's life and mission, please contact us at
P.O. Box 1190, Fayetteville, AR 72702, or call 479/442-7373
More sermons are posted on our web site: www.stpaulsfay.org
Visit our web partners at www.explorefaith.org

Blessings from the Poor

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
September 14, 2008; 18th Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 19, Year A
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Matthew 18:21-35) -- Peter came and said to Jesus, "Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?" Jesus said to him, "Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.

"For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. When he began the reckoning, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him; and, as he could not pay, his lord ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions, and payment to be made. So the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, `Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.' And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt. But that same slave, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and seizing him by the throat, he said, `Pay what you owe.' Then his fellow slave fell down and pleaded with him, `Have patience with me, and I will pay you.' But he refused; then he went and threw him into prison until he would pay the debt. When his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their lord all that had taken place. Then his lord summoned him and said to him, `You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?' And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt. So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart."
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When Jesus began to tell this story, his listeners immediately recognized it as a story about their Messianic hopes. One of their treasured dreams was that when Messiah comes, all debts will be released. So when the king in this story forgives the enormous debt of his slave, all the listeners thought, "Aha! This is how it will be when Messiah comes." Jesus continues the story. The released slave leaves the king's court, and the listeners expect that he too will follow the lead of his master, extending generosity toward his debtors, on down the line until all the debtors are free. That's how it will be when Messiah comes. But that's not what happens. Instead, the whole story turns ugly.

At the very least it is a commentary about how fallen and corrupt our systems of power are. How difficult they are to change. How ultimately undependable they are. It is as if Jesus is saying, "Don't look in that direction for the Messiah. Don't look for the Kingdom of God to come from the top down." There is too much selfishness and greed for power built into the DNA of the wealthy and powerful.

And yet, something historic did happen to change the Roman Empire in the wake of Jesus' stories. In his book Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire Peter Brown has documented a great change in the Empire with the rise of Christianity. He documents how "suddenly, the poor were brought into 'ever-sharper focus.' The Church made visible what previously had been politically invisible." (quoted in Sojourners, Rose Marie Berger, June, 2008, p. 29)

Working from the bottom up, Christians changed an Empire. Early Christians told the stories of Jesus and recalled his message that whenever they fed the hungry, welcomed the stranger, clothed the naked, cared for the sick, visited the prisoner they were serving Christ himself. These Christians gave new value to the poor and served them as Christ. Bishops were charged to be "lovers of the poor." As the Church grew in influence, some of the values and focus of the Roman Empire changed.

Brown says that "the early church categorized the poor in two ways: those who were destitute and those who lived, as we would say, 'paycheck to paycheck.' In (the year) 380, St. John Chrysostom preached that most people in the Christian churches were of the second kind – a 'middling sort' of economic class, that could slide easily into destitution. With regard to charity, Chrysostom advocated liberality. 'When you see on earth a man who has encountered the shipwreck of poverty,' he preached, 'do not judge him, do not seek an account of his life, but free him from his misfortune.'"

That was the fourth century. Now shift forward 800 years, to the 12th century days of medieval Christianity. Ethicists in that day had a more discriminating debate. They asked the question about a hierarchy of need. Are some more deserving of charity than others?

In medieval days the focus was not so much on the individual but rather on the community. "Undeserving" poor were those who had family or a support network with the means to care for them. They weren't undeserving in a moral sense, but the responsibility fell to the family rather than the church's safety net, they reasoned. The "deserving" poor were those with no one to care for them. These belonged to the church, they said.

Every case was different. If a "paycheck-to-paycheck" family received a destitute member who would push the whole family into deeper poverty, the church understood that and accepted its responsibility to maintain that "middling sort" family. The church had to know its people.

But what if an unknown person came into the community asking for food or lodging? Whatever they needed was to be given, in moderation, if available. Strangers were given the benefit of the doubt without a lot of questions about merit.

And the church was charged "never to turn away the destitute, known or unknown, morally upright or not, in good times or bad. They were to be served as Christ, no matter the circumstance or the sacrifice required."

I don't know about you, but that makes me a little uncomfortable. I'm not that generous. I often ask questions to try to judge whether someone measures up to my standard of "deserving."

But then again, I haven't had much time to talk to people about their needy circumstances. I've been fairly preoccupied this week with other things. Things like parking lots. It caught my attention in a new way when I read about another church that has some parking lot problems. First Presbyterian in Dallas made the papers not long ago. It seems that they decided to respond to some new Dallas municipal regulations banning panhandling, restricting shopping carts on city streets, and limiting where and when food could be distributed to the hungry, by opening their parking lot every night as a safe place for homeless people to sleep, providing a security guard, portable toilets and cardboard boxes for pallets. Like us, they really got a lot of press, most of it negative. D-Magazine was not impressed.

But young people did seem impressed. Young people so often have an eye and a heart for the poor. We've seen that from some of our own. Mac Stephen returned from a University development project in Belize that St. Paul's helped underwrite last year, and Mac raised money for scholarships for children in St. Matthew's Anglican School in Pomona outside Dangriga. Emily Petrino is working right now to raise $16,000 for a bus for the children at Esaase Christian School in Ghana, West Africa where she spent three months working earlier this year. And Nick Klinger is home from his recent service in the Peace Corps in St. Lucia where he helped set up microfinance projects among the villagers. I'm so proud of these young people.

I got an email from Julie Schultz late Wednesday night asking me if St. Paul's would be doing something locally to join in a world wide prayer action to support the United Nations gathering on September 25 to review and renew commitments to achieve the Millennium Development Goals on behalf of the world's poor. "No," I answered. I've been too distracted or too preoccupied. It hadn't hit my radar. So, God bless Julie, she's going to help organize something so we can add our prayers and support for what might be the most important movement of our lifetime. St. John Chrysostom is blessing Julie's efforts, as well as Mac's and Emily's and Nick's.

But Jesus did not say "Blessed are those who care for the poor." Jesus said, "Blessed are the poor." It seemed important to Jesus for us to recognize that it is in the poor that we will see Jesus. The late Henri Nouwen asked, "How is it possible to keep caring for the poor when the poor only get poorer? How is it possible to keep nursing the sick when they are not getting better? How can I keep consoling the dying when their deaths only bring me more grief? The answer is that they all hold a blessing for me, a blessing that I need to receive. Ministry is, first of all, receiving God's blessing from those to whom we minister. What is this blessing? It is a glimpse of the face of God. Seeing God is what heaven is all about! We can see God in the face of Jesus, and we can see the face of Jesus in all those who need our care. ...Those who serve Jesus in the poor will be fed by him whom they serve." (Henri Nouwen, The Spiritual Life)

Maybe in our century we can change our world from the bottom up the way the early church changed the Roman Empire from the bottom up. To do so will mean seeing as Jesus has taught us to see, seeing the poor and responding generously. It will mean letting go of the distractions and preoccupations that so often block our eyes from the priorities of Jesus. It will mean aligning our priorities with the destitute and the "paycheck to paycheck" people; it will mean welcoming the stranger; it will mean accepting responsibility for those who have no one to care for them.

In a way, it is like a treasure hunt. Hunting for Jesus. "Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?" "Where's Waldo?" "Where is Jesus?" Archbishop Oscar Romero's cry echoes resoundingly: "La gloria de Dios es el pobre – The glory of God is the poor." Jesus, and Jesus' blessing is among the poor. That's what Jesus taught us. The early church taught it to the Empire. The medieval church taught it to a dark age. Now it's our turn. The message and its responsibilities are in our hands. Will we be blessed by the poor?

Rocky Foundations

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
August 24, 2008; 15th Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 16, Year A
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Matthew 16:13-20) -- When Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, "Who do people say that the Son of Man is?" And they said, "Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets." He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?" Simon Peter answered, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God." And Jesus answered him, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven." Then he sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.
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In my grandfather's little town a lot of people went by their nicknames. There were my two cousins, "Kiss-em" Grisham (with the English pronunciation, a silent "h"), and his younger brother "Hug-em." One year they were the starting guards for the Iuka Chieftain basketball team. "Kiss-em" passes to "Hug-em." My roommate "Bubba" was from Iuka. I tell some Bubba stories from time to time. His real name is David Olen Jourdan, III. And there was guy who was about 6-foot-seven -- the tallest person in Iuka. Everybody just knew him as "Shorty." Great fun.

Maybe Jesus was having some fun with his friend Simon when he nicknamed him "Rocky." "Peter" is a masculine form of the Greek word "petra," meaning "rock." Elsewhere in the New Testament we hear him called "Cephas," Aramaic for "rock."

The picture of Peter -- the Rock -- that we get in the New Testament is of someone who is hot-headed, quick, impulsive, fiery, bursting with energy, but not sure sometimes where to send that energy. The opposite of Rock-like. More "Sparky" than "Rocky."

Two weeks ago we saw Peter in a boat calling out impulsively to Jesus who was walking across the pommeling waves, "Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water." "Come on," says Jesus. Peter hops right in and starts walking toward Jesus, until he sees the waves; he wavers and starts to sink, crying almost clownishly, "Lord, save me!"

Peter was the one who spoiled the wonder of the moment in the afterglow of the Transfiguration, when Jesus was simply glowing in the midst of an apparition with Moses and Elijah. It was like Peter clapped his hands and the mystery disappeared, as he said, "Let's get to work and do something, like build a shrine to what just happened." What a spoiler. That broke the mood.

In John's version of Jesus' arrest, it was Peter who grabbed a sword and attacked the high priest's slave, trying to defend his friend. "Put the sword away," Jesus had to tell him, and, according to Luke, Jesus repaired the damage, healing the man Peter had rashly injured.

But every once in a while, this mercurial, impetuous Peter gets it right. Maybe it was something about his uninhibited nature, but occasionally Peter intuits something and rushes into the possibilities with uncalulated zest.

"Who do they say I am?" Jesus asks. Like students carefully trying to fish for the answer they think the teacher wants, the disciples respond, "Some say this, and some say that." Jesus turns it on them. "But who do you say I am?" It is Peter who bursts toward the impossible possibility, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God."

I'll bet Jesus howled with laughter then. "God bless you, Peter. You are something else. Way to go Rocky. On this rock-hard, solid foundation I will build my church." I can see everybody getting in on the joke, with gleeful, high spirits. Jesus wraps his arms around the unrestrainable Peter and cheers, "The gates of hell cannot prevail against this!" The others respond with bouyant mirth. Jesus turns, and with an ambiguous solemnity, pronounces to Rocky, "I give you the keys to the kingdom. Whatever you bind on earth is bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth, is loosed in heaven." And the sheepish Peter doesn't quite know what to do with that, but he trusts Jesus. Then Jesus warns them against speaking any indiscreet word about Messiahs, and the scene ends.

I don't know if it happened just that way. But what I do know is that every time Peter intuited something that was bigger than he could handle and jumped right into it with reckless abandon, Jesus commended him, knowing all the while Peter could never live up to the wonders he embraced. That's a foundation you can build something wonderful on.

I'm a skeptic by nature, a doubter by temperament. But every once in a while something happens that tweaks my imagination, that teases my intuition with impossible possibility, and I can feel a tingle. "It all might be true. It all might be more wonderful than I can imagine." And when I jump in there and follow that energy, it seems that life opens up.

I remember wanting to experience God, to feel God, alive and real. Suddenly it seemed there was a presence in the room with me. I asked hopefully, sheepishly, "Is this it? Is this God?" And something like a cosmic laugh seemed to fill the universe, saying -- "Yes!"

Even though it seemed a little stupid to me, I tried contemplative prayer. Let go of thoughts, let go of feelings, let go of everything. It was maddening. I'm a borderline ADHD extrovert. Distraction, boredom, nothing. Until quiet broke through, and I descended somewhere below thought and feeling, where time stood still, and I didn't even exist, and All just was. I don't know what happened, but when something I call "me" separated again and emerged from the "All," there was peace.

I remember learning the physics of the wave/particle duality. Light simultaneously behaves like a wave and like a particle. It is both. And it teased me with all of the possibility of paradox that seems woven into the very fabric of creation -- human/divine, material/spiritual, immanent/transcendent. Maybe everything can be both/and rather than either/or.

I know that when I gave up the tribalism of insisting that my faith was the only fully true faith, a world of faithfulness opened up, and I could see God wonderfully manifest in new and marvelous ways.

Whenever I quit resenting the thousands of frustrations, tragedies and injustices, and imagine that God is universally present bringing life from death and healing to brokenness, I see signs of encouragement and places to put the energy of my hope.

Every once in a while the wonder of this simple act of Eucharist breaks upon me. A cup of wine, and bit of bread, a story about a dying man two thousand years ago, a community with open hands reaching out beyond ourselves to be fed by God. We become one with the All -- nutured, healed, fed. There is coherence, wonder, peace.

But then a hand claps, or a wave threatens, or I don't know how to deal with things, and the horizons collapse into such threatening ordinariness. So I have to live on memory. I remember the tingle. So I decide to act as if it all could be possible; the impossible possibility. God is good; God is here -- all is good, all is well, all is safe. And, like Peter, I look around for whatever the next thing might be that God wants me to throw my life into.

When you can sense yourself surrounded by the living energy of God, it's easier to forget yourself, lose your inhibitions, and live with a bit of rash, intuitive hope. Even when you fail.

You remember what happened to Peter when the chips were down. When Jesus warned them that trouble was brewing and that they would all desert him. "I will never desert you," boasted the impetuous Peter. Before the cock had crowed the next morning awake, he had denied even knowing Jesus, not once, but three times. Not much of a rock when the times got hard.

Peter was crushed. Such failure might break another, a person with some pride, with a bit of self-respect.

But sometime later, after the cross. After the first Eucharist when they knew Jesus in the breaking of the bread. Sometime later, on the shores of Lake Galilee, Jesus came to Peter. Three times Jesus asked him, "Peter, do you love me?" Three times Peter was able to speak his heart's deepest truth, "Yes, Lord, you know I love you." Three times Jesus commissioned him, "Feed my sheep; tend my lambs." And on this impetuous, fiery love, Jesus founded his church.

Love energized. And the gates of Hell cannot prevail against it. Love energized. That is the intuitive key that open the heavens to bind and loose wonders. Love energized. It is the rock and foundation of the Kingdom of God. Love energized.

It can be unpredictable and failing; it can be impetuous and mysterious: But love energized continually teases us with the impossible possibility -- it all may be more wonderful than we can imagine. Every time we jump into it with both feet, wonders happen. And rash, flighty clowns become Rocks.
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The Ego-less Dog

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
August 17, 2008; 14th Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 15, Year A
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Matthew 15:21-28) -- Jesus left Gennesaret and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, "Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon." But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, "Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us." He answered, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." But she came and knelt before him, saying, "Lord, help me." He answered, "It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." She said, "Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table." Then Jesus answered her, "Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish." And her daughter was healed instantly.
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"It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs."

"Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table."

That is one of the most fascinating exchanges in all the scriptures. Six years ago when I last preached on this passage, I talked about it from Jesus' perspective. I talked about cultural conditioning. Cultural conditioning is the world-view that our environment gives us -- what our families, our neighbors, our religion, our nation and our circumstances tell us about the way things are. We drink it in with our mother's milk; we breathe it in from the atmosphere. It is part of our human inheritance.

Even Jesus, the Son of God, was formed by his own cultural conditioning. Orthodox faith asserts that Jesus was fully divine and fully human. Cultural conditioning was part of his humanity, just like his need for rest after a long day or the effect of nails on his human flesh. Jesus had been taught, like every child in Nazareth, that Canaanites are dogs. The dogs we're talking about weren't pets; they were scavengers. Unclean animals, like vultures or buzzards. "Dog" was a word you used to describe someone who was unclean. After centuries of conflict and alienation, for Jews, all Canaanites were dogs; and the Canaanites felt the same way about Jews. It was part of their cultural conditioning.

In our story today, a Canaanite woman confronts Jesus. She will not be silenced by the disciples; she will not be deflected politely by Jesus' gentle bit of self definition when he says, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." Instead, she keeps on pushing; she won't stay in her place. So Jesus speaks to her as he has been taught. "It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs."

Now, I know people from an older generation who were conditioned to call black people by the "N-word," without any personal hostility. I remember when, for me, gay people were "queers." I've heard ugly culturally conditioned references to Moslems and Middle-Easterners, especially during the past seven years. Occasionally I hear people say things about Fayetteville and Springdale. I'm cheering for the Americans during the Olympics. How about you? We're all culturally conditioned. It's part of our inheritance as human beings.

But Jesus shows us the way out. When this Canaanite woman says, "Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table," Jesus hears something that is out-of-sync with the way he always thought things were. Her comment catches him by surprise. It is not the comment of a dog. It is a profoundly human comment. More than that, it is a word of faith. His ears are always open to the possibility of a word of faith, even in unexpected places. He looks again at this woman whom he had been taught was just a dog, and he recognizes that she is a child of God. Instantly, without hesitation, he throws away a lifetime of cultural conditioning and responds to her with divine compassion, "Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish." Her daughter is healed instantly.

Right after this story, Jesus goes into a pagan foreign land, and gives to them the same gifts he has been giving to his own people -- healing them and feeding a multitude. Never again did Jesus distinguish between outsiders and insiders as he mediated the abundant extravagance of God's grace to all people.

But I want to look at this story also from the perspective of this remarkable woman. Look at her. She comes to this foreign man and his retinue. She asks for mercy, placing her daughter's plight before them. She meets stony silence. She hears the disciples tell him to send her away. Then the man politely declines her request. She could have left at that point and kept her dignity. Instead, she will not take "no" for an answer, and keels before him, begging. He responds, "It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." She knows what that means.

Notice what she doesn't do. She doesn't resist; she doesn't retain the insults; she doesn't react emotionally. "Dogs! Are you calling me a dog? Let me tell you what you are..." She doesn't reconfirm her own cultural conditioning and leave reinforced, "My mother told me about you Jews. She was right."

"It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs."

I imagine some time elapsed, as she let the insulting stuff pass through her. I can feel the silence before she turns, and with dignified humility says, "Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table." What a disarming response.

This is an "ego-less" response. It might be what Eckhart Tolle calls an "out of ego experience." Listen to what he offers in his popular book A New Earth:

A powerful spiritual practice is consciously to allow the diminishment of ego... For example, when someone criticizes you, blames you, or calls you names, instead of immediately retaliating or defending yourself -- do nothing. Allow the self-image to remain diminished and become alert to what that feels like deep inside you. For a few seconds, it may feel uncomfortable, as if you had shrunk in size. Then you may sense an inner spaciousness that feels intensely alive. You haven't been diminished at all. In fact, you have expanded. You may then come to an amazing realization: When you are seemingly diminished in some way and remain in absolute non-reaction, not just externally but also internally, you realize that nothing real has been diminished, that through becoming "less" you become more. When you no longer defend or attempt to strengthen the form of yourself, you step out of identification with form, with mental self-image. Through becoming less (in the ego's perception), you in fact undergo an expansion and make room for Being to come forward. True power, who you are beyond form, can then shine through the apparently weakened form. This is what Jesus means when he says, "Deny yourself" or "Turn the other cheek." (p. 215)

Beneath all of the ego self -- the false self that we build up defensively around us, cooperating with the cultural conditioning that tells us who is strong, who is right -- beneath all of that we are all essentially God's children. We are all created in the image of God, filled with divine life, and one with every other creature in the universe. That's our true condition.

Whenever we can dis-identify with the ego-self, the cultural self, the false self -- we can simply be. Needing no defense; needing no defending. At one with all life, including the one who might appear as enemy.

In Centering Prayer we teach the "four-R's" as a way to deal with distractions in prayer: resist no thought, retain no thought, react emotionally to no thought, and return ever-so-gently to the sacred word. Maybe that's something like what this Canaanite woman did in the presence of this discomfort. She offered no resistance; she retained no insult; she did not react emotionally to the situation; and she returned ever-so-gently to the love that prompted her need. She was here to help her daughter. Her Being came forward as she spoke the disarming words, "Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table."

Immediately two miracles happened. Her daughter was healed, and Jesus shed the cultural conditioning of a lifetime.

We are given, two lessons, two examples in this remarkable story. There is the example of the Canaanite woman who remained centered in her own Being while her ego was being attacked, and there is the example of Jesus who immediately dismantled his cultural conditioning when he saw a deeper reality. This story offers us a path to both inner peace and outer reconciliation.

The divine presence that is our true self is also the divine presence that is the deepest reality of every other self. Can our eyes open to see God within our Being and to see God within every other being? As the 13th century mystic Meister Eckhart said, "The eye with which I see God is the eye with which God sees me."
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Thanks to Jim Burklo and his article The Bible and Eckhart Tolle for ideas for this sermon. Published in The Progressive Christian, July/August 2008)

(to read my previous sermon on this passage, go to our web site www.stpaulsfay.org, click "sermons", click "2002", click "August 18, 2002, 13 Pentecost; Proper 15 Year A" or go directly to: http://stpaulsfay.org//sermon081802.html. Link to sermon )