Arms-Open Flying

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
March 23, 2008; Easter Sunday, Year A
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary
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The late spiritual writer Henri Nouwen liked to tell how enthralled he was the first time he saw the trapeze artists The Flying Rodleighs. After watching their elegant performance, he returned to their circus the following day to see them again, hoping to meet them and tell them what a fan he was. He was able to meet them, and they responded generously, inviting Henri to watch their practice sessions, giving him free tickets, inviting him to dinner, and later, suggesting that Henri travel with them for a week sometime in the near future. Henri took them up on their offers, and they all became good friends.

One day while he was sitting with Rodleigh, the leader of the troupe, Henri fell into a discussion with him about flying. The acrobat told Henri this: "As a flyer, I must have complete trust in my catcher. The public might think that I am the great star of the trapeze, but the real star is Joe, my catcher. He has to be there for me with split-second precision and grab me out of the air as I come to him in the long jump."

Henri asked him to explain how it works. "The secret," Rodleigh said, "is that the flyer does nothing and the catcher does everything. When I fly to Joe, I have simply to stretch out my arms and hands and wait for him to catch me and pull me safely over the apron behind the catchbar."

"You do nothing!" Henri said, surprised. "Nothing," Rodleigh repeated. "The worst thing the flyer can do it to try to catch the catcher. I am not supposed to catch Joe. It's Joe's task to catch me. If I grabbed Joe's wrists, I might break them, or he might break mine, and that would be the end for both of us. A flyer must fly, and a catcher must catch, and the flyer must trust, with outstretched arms, that his catcher will be there for him." (Writings Selected, p. 55; originally from Our Greatest Gift, p. 66)

When Jesus faced his death on the cross, he did nothing. Nothing other than continue to be who he was. He refused to fight or to run away, he didn't curse or threaten his attackers. He did nothing but hang there, trusting God, stretching his arms and hands out on the bars of the cross, waiting for God to catch him. Today we celebrate his death-defying leap.

On the cross, Jesus taught us how to die. When our time comes, we know that we can jump toward God and trust with outstretched arms that the catcher will be there for us too.

This arms-out-flying is a lot more than a way to die, it is the way that Jesus lived his life as well. Flying-with-your-arms-out is the way Jesus invites us to live our lives also.

At the beginning of his ministry, when his hometown synagogue gave him a chance to speak, Jesus leaped to his work, proclaiming the "year of the Lord's favor" -- when the poor get good news, the captives are released, the blind see and the oppressed go free. Then, he lived his whole life in that Spirit.

When a boy came with five loaves and two fish, Jesus launched them to God and there was abundance for the multitudes. When infected lepers came to him, he did not shun them, but reached to them with a courageous compassion that heals. When a Roman collaborator, defrauding and extorting money as a tax-collector, climbed up a tree to see Jesus swinging by, Jesus tossed himself an invitation to lunch at the man's home and made a new friend. When an outsider, a Canaanite sinner-dog spoke to him with unexpected words of loving trust, Jesus let go of the narrow bars of his cultural conditioning and threw himself into a world-embracing arc of compassion toward all people. That's how he lived his life -- with a responsive, open-armed freedom that reached out in loving, defenseless compassion.

He faced his troubles in the same way. When his family thought he had lost his mind and tried to get him to return home and leave this crazy work, he dived deeper into his mission and found a new and wider family. When the religious authorities accused him of blasphemy, he defied them and soared toward a God whose forgiveness was unbounded, who healed even on the sabbath and who would not be contained behind the Temple wall and its religious monopolies. When the political empire demanded his allegiance, he maintained his royal identity and threw in his lot with the Kingdom of God. When everything was falling in around his ears, he swung himself down into the role of a slave, washing his disciple's feet, and then feeding them with bread and wine, telling them that from now on, this would become his body and blood.

Jesus lived his life with utter freedom and abandon, with outstretched arms that trusted always that the Catcher would be there to catch him. He knew the difference between trusting the Catcher and trying to grab things with your own strength. When he was tempted in the wilderness to turn stones into bread for himself, to grab for his own security on his own terms, he said no, and lived on the bread that comes from God. When he was tempted to gain fame and acclaim with a stunning act of aerobatics, to launch himself off the pinnacle of the Temple, allegedly trusting God to save him, he knew the difference, and refused to tempt God. When he could trade his integrity for unimaginable power, he declined. He would not grasp for security, esteem or power. Instead he flew through life with arms outstretched, trusting in the grasp of God to give him whatever security, esteem or power he needed.

The result is a fearless life. A stunning freedom. An openness that allowed him to be God's instrument of healing, love, and compassion. He launched himself like a trapeze artist flying through life with his arms wide open, leaping into death with abandoned trust. His resurrection is God's great "Yes!"

This is the way we are invited to live as well. We can live with the same freedom and fearlessness as Jesus. We don't have to hold on to anything. We can let go of our anxious self-protecting grasp, and fly with the Spirit. We don't have to do anything but trust, throwing ourselves into life each day with outstretched, relaxed and expectant arms, waiting wide-eyed for God to catch us.

Can you taste the freedom of that kind of life? It is a freedom that is "sensitive to the interconnectedness of all things, compassionate in its empathy for all living beings, and centered in the very mystery of God." (Jay McDaniel, Roots and Wings) Living in the life of the resurrected Christ is like feeling the wind against your face, or tasting the breath that exhilarates, or being one with the sky. There is nothing that we have to do but trust. We don't need to try to catch the catcher. We are already God's beloved. There's nothing to grasp. We can let go of all of our anxieties and worries. Just hold out your arms and God will catch you. That's the secret. The secret of life. God loves you, therefore you are perfectly safe. Nothing can threaten you, not really. God loves you, there's nothing you have to do. So let go, soar, fly. Put your arms out and embrace the day, embrace the world, and wait for the thrilling moments when God will snatch you out of the air and pull you to the safety of God's embrace. Over and over; day by day. Utterly free to be the thrilling acrobat that God has created you to be.

Alleluia! Christ is risen!
He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

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The Easter Gospel:
(John 20:1-18) -- Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him." Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus' head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples returned to their homes.

But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping?" She said to them, "They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him." When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?" Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away." Jesus said to her, "Mary!" She turned and said to him in Hebrew, "Rabbouni!" (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, "Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, `I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'" Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, "I have seen the Lord"; and she told them that he had said these things to her.
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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 info is posted on our web site: www.stpaulsfay.org
Visit our web partners at www.explorefaith.org

Kant's Three Questions (Palm/Passion Sunday)

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
March 16, 2008; Palm/Passion Sunday, Year A
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

The philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote that all our questions of human reason and speculation combine into three questions: "What can I know? What ought I to do? What may I hope?" (Critique of Pure Reason, 1787)

As we hear the moving and tragic story of the Passion of Jesus, we know that this is a picture of human tragedy and evil. What does Jesus do? He hangs there, suspended between heaven and earth, between life and death. He does nothing but hang there, suffering. But that is a lot. He does not return the cursing; he does not attack his attackers. He hangs there trusting God, and living as he has lived his whole life, returning compassion for injury, love for hate, pardon for offense. He dies, apparently abandoned, without hope -- the words "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me" giving expression to the depths of his suffering.

In 1981, a high school student from Catholic Cathedral High in Natchez, Mississippi was walking with his date to the annual prom: tuxedo and formal gown. Without warning, another young man, about the same age, snatched the date's purse and ran down the sidewalk. The boy in the tuxedo gave chase. He ran track for Cathedral, and eventually he caught up with the purse-snatcher. As he reached to retrieve the purse, the other boy turned, pointed a pistol and shot him in the stomach. He died.

Saturday a week ago, our youth were on a fun trip to Devil's Den for an overnight workshop about dreams. They were in a circle throwing a frisbee back and forth, when Andrew Kilgore, one of the adults who volunteers with our youth, threw a sloppy toss that landed a few feet in front of him. His competitive spirit rose, and he wanted that frisbee back to give it a better toss. He ran quickly toward it, tripped and fell suddenly, face first to the ground. His head snapped back violently, bruising his spinal cord. He couldn't move most of his limbs. Andrew graduated into HeathSouth Rehabilitation Friday, where he is slowly regaining his functions, facing a long, uncertain road back to mobility.

Immanuel Kant asks, "What can I know?" I know that life is difficult. Very difficult. I know that terrible things happen, sometimes as accidents, sometimes as evil.

"What ought I do to?" Hang in there. As Andrew begins the slow work that has interrupted his life... What will he learn? What will he see? It's too early to know how this will turn out. But you can see the emotional spine and character that is strong and resilient as Andrew does his part in the healing of his physical spine.

"What ought I to do?" Hang in there. Hang in there, trusting God. I was teaching Ethics to the class of high school seniors at the Episcopal school in Natchez when that young man was shot. They all knew the boy who had died. They talked about their feelings. Why did he chase? Just let him have the stupid purse? But they were also proud of him, for doing the right thing, for standing up for his girl and against theft. Some were angry at the boy who shot their friend: I hope he fries. But others thought, What about his life? He would end up in prison, maybe forever. Or worse. And his family? They've lost a child too.

"Where was Jesus in this?" they asked me. He was there, was all I could say. He was there absorbing that bullet into his own stomach, dying again with their friend, just as he had died on the cross. He was there, grieving with helpless love as another of his beloved children lost himself and pulled the trigger. He is there, with the family and friends like you, with us, to absorb the and pain and loss in the tragedy of human evil and stupidity, just as he was absorbing pain and loss in the evil and stupidity of his own tragic death.

Standing at the ruins of his Gulfport church just days after Katrina, my friend Bo Roberts choked back tears as he said of the hurricane, "God doesn't send 'em; God doesn't stop 'em. But he gives us strength and faith to overcome 'em." His church never missed a Sunday.

Dorothy Sayers said it nicely, "God did not abolish the fact of evil. God transformed it. God did not stop the crucifixion. He rose from the dead."

"What can I know?" Life is difficult, sometimes tragic and evil.

"What ought I to do?" Hang in there, with courage and trust, returning compassion for injury, love for hate, pardon for offense, as best we can.

"What may I hope?" That God is with us. Christ knows our circumstances. The evil we suffer and the evil we do. Out of that suffering and evil, God brings new life -- resurrection.

We're not there yet. It's still Passion Sunday. We've still got a way to go, through Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. But the hope of Easter is out there. Just beyond the horizon of our vision. Jesus is with us. Hang in there. What God does best is resurrection.
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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

Changing Vision

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
February 17, 2008; 2nd Sunday in Lent, Year A

Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary
The Gospel -- John 3:1-17 -- is printed below the sermon text.
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It was 1962. I was in the fourth grade. My father's old partner from when he had been an agent in the F.B.I. came down to visit with his family from Ohio. His wife had been one of my mother's best friends, and they had two girls who were almost exactly the same age as my sister and me.

I was pretty interested in them. They were from Ohio. That means they were Yankees. I'm not sure I had ever met any real Yankees. Now when you grow up in the middle of Mississippi, and the team you follow with childhood passion is called the Rebels, and their mascot is a Confederate soldier, and the fight song is "Dixie," and you wave Rebel flags whenever something good happens, Yankees are a big deal. They were the ones who had fought and defeated us in "The Great War." In Mississippi there is much lore and puzzlement about that War. We played Rebels and Yankees on the playground and in our backyards. It was hard to get somebody to be a Yankee. On our playground, they always lost. This stuff was in the air I breathed. As our neighbor William Faulkner said, "The past isn't dead; it isn't even past."

I remember taking these two Yankees from Ohio to our town square. I showed them Leslie's Drug Store and the soda fountain where we got our nickle Pepsi Colas. We had all heard the news stories about black people who were going into soda fountains like Leslie's and integrating them. Soda fountains and restaurants were for "whites only" then. That was the law. For those who are too young to remember, there were separate waiting rooms, restrooms, swimming pools and schools back then, separate but equal facilities for Negroes, as we said.

There were news stories about black people, sometimes with white allies, usually Yankees, who would intentionally go into soda fountains and ask for service. Usually those stories ended up pretty simply. The store called the police and the police came and dragged off the protesters to the jail. But sometimes, before the police could get there, a fight broke out. You have to understand, what those protesters was doing was against the law. The law said that any property owner had the right to serve anyone he wished. Black people who tried to eat at a "whites only" establishment were guilty of trespassing, unless a fight broke out. And then they were guilty of inciting a riot, or something like that.

My Yankee friend asked me if any Negroes had integrated Leslie's. "Why no," I explained to her. "They wouldn't even want to come in to Leslie's! Let me show you where the Negroes go," and I led them around the corner, down a narrow alley. We came to a rusty screen door with a rusty sign over it, "Bole's Cafe." "You see," I explained condescendingly to the poor little Yankees who didn't know anything, "This is where the Negroes go to eat and to drink their Pepsi." I pointed out the yellowing menu sign over the grill. "See, they even eat different things from us. Do you see it on the sign? 'Buffalo Fish.' You can't get Buffalo Fish at Leslie's."

I want you to know, and this is important -- that this was a completely innocent conversation on my part. I was simply sharing what I knew. And I felt good that I could help enlighten a benighted Yankee about the things of the South that they didn't have a clue about. This was part of the cultural blindness that came with the territory when you grew up in Mississippi.

Sometime later that year, my vision changed. It had something to do with the riots that happened in the fall of 1962 when James Meredith integrated Ole Miss. I remember the face of hatred. Four feet away from my backseat window. A fierce, angry man who leaned out his car and yelled, "Let's go git 'em!" straight into my face as he drove past, headed into battle. That mud in my eyes washed something out, and I began to see some things in an entirely different way.

Once your eyes get changed like that, you can't go back to that old way of seeing. It just doesn't work anymore. It makes you different from everyone else that you've known; all of your friends who still see they same way you used to see. Only one other classmate in my fifth grade class of thirty-two students was not a segregationist. And our teacher did her best to change our minds, to make us see again the way we used to. I got an "F" in deportment for the first six weeks report card, and I got in a lot of trouble at home. I was nearly perfect the next six weeks, and I got a "D." My dad was about to ground me for life when our enlightened elementary school principal told him to go easy on me. I was getting those grades because of my "views."

I know that experience marked me. It made me suspicious of cultural conventions. It made me sensitive to various forms of discrimination. It made me sometimes skeptical of the law. I know when I hear my neighbors complain of illegal immigrants, it doesn't find much traction with me. I find more fault with the bad immigration laws than with people of color trying to improve their lot. It's the way I learned to see things.

Like the man born blind, whose eyes Jesus healed, we all go through these processes of changing vision. And conflict usually ensues. We're all blind in different ways. Our faith tells us that ours is vincible blindness, and the spiritual journey can be likened to a pilgrimage of ever expanding vision, allowing us, over time, to be able to see more of the light, and to come to terms with the darkness that is revealed every time the wattage is turned up. I'm hoping that this weekend's visit from Ibrahim Abu-Rabi will be an enlightening one -- that we will see some things more clearly thanks to his sharing some of the perspectives that come from his culture.

I also think that it is important for me to remember with compassion that fourth grade boy who innocently explained the cultural values of the South to his Yankee friends. From within my world view and paradigm at that time in my life, I was being as consistent, wise and compassionate as I possibly could be. It would be wrong to fault me personally.

I think that kind of compassion is important to remember as we live together with one another. We all live together at different stages of consciousness, with different paradigms and different world views. Psychologists and spiritual directors have various schemes to trace these stages of consciousness. When we interiorize the values of our parents, culture, church and peer groups in an unquestioning way, we are living in what the Benedictine spiritual director Thomas Keating calls the "mythic membership level of consciousness." I remember asking with earnest need, "What do we Episcopalians believe?" I wanted to know. What are the rules? What are the norms? What do I believe? We do our best to help our young people develop a strong sense of identity and meaning as Episcopalians. It is essential during the stage of our life when our mythic membership consciousness needs the values of our community in order to establish our own sense of self. I remember desperately wanting a book with all the answers; a book to which I could entrust myself to with confidence, because this is what we believe. Many people find the Bible to be just that kind of book.

But for some of us, there comes a time when our upbringing fails us, when our certainties crumble. We learn something that was different from the book we were given; something contrary to the values and rules of our parents, culture, church and peer groups. When that happens, our vision changes. We begin to question and to think for ourselves. We begin to value independent, rational, pragmatic thinking. Thomas Keating says, when that happens we are entering the "mental egoic level of consciousness." Some people see our contemporary American culture war as the expression of these two contrasting world views which they say account for most of our adult population.

Keating would have us realize there are further stages open to our spiritual and emotional development. Beyond mental egoic consciousness is unitive consciousness and more. But that's an exploration for another day.

It is enough today to look at the story that John's gospel has given us, this story of the healing of a man born blind and his conflict with the authorities. Jesus offers this punchline: "I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind." We can see our own stories of movement from blindness to insight within this metaphor. We can recognize upward mobility of vision that characterizes the various stages of human consciousness. We can accept the tension and conflict that inevitably exists at the boundaries of these different stages of consciousness. We can confess in the words from our new Enriching Our Worship liturgies: "We repent of the evil that enslaves us, the evil we have done, and the evil done on our behalf."

We can look with trust upon Jesus, and ask him to put a little mud in our eyes in order to enlarge our sight. We know we will experience our own interior tension and anxiety as we grow. We know our neighbors and our society will experience tension and anxiety as we live together in different paradigms. But that tension itself is a divine gift from God, inviting us to grow, to transform, even to transcend ourselves.
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(John 9:1-41) -- As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" Jesus answered, "Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God's works might be revealed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world." When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man's eyes, saying to him, "Go, wash in the pool of Siloam" (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see. The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, "Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?" Some were saying, "It is he." Others were saying, "No, but it is someone like him." He kept saying, "I am the man." But they kept asking him, "Then how were your eyes opened?" He answered, "The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, `Go to Siloam and wash.' Then I went and washed and received my sight." They said to him, "Where is he?" He said, "I do not know."

They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. Now it was a sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. Then the Pharisees also began to ask him how he had received his sight. He said to them, "He put mud on my eyes. Then I washed, and now I see." Some of the Pharisees said, "This man is not from God, for he does not observe the sabbath." But others said, "How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?" And they were divided. So they said again to the blind man, "What do you say about him? It was your eyes he opened." He said, "He is a prophet."

The Jews did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they called the parents of the man who had received his sight and asked them, "Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?" His parents answered, "We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind; but we do not know how it is that now he sees, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him; he is of age. He will speak for himself." His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue. Therefore his parents said, "He is of age; ask him."

So for the second time they called the man who had been blind, and they said to him, "Give glory to God! We know that this man is a sinner." He answered, "I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see." They said to him, "What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?" He answered them, "I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear itagain? Do you also want to become his disciples?" Then they reviled him, saying, "You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from." The man answered, "Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships him and obeys his will. Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing." They answered him, "You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?" And they drove him out.

Jesus heard that they had driven him out, and when he found him, he said, "Do you believe in the Son of Man?" He answered, "And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him." Jesus said to him, "You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he." He said, "Lord, I believe." And he worshiped him. Jesus said, "I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind." Some of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to him, "Surely we are not blind, are we?" Jesus said to them, "If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, `We see,' your sin remains."
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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