Saturday, February 04, 2017

The Two Directions

The Two Directions

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, O.A., Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
February 5, 2017;  5 Epiphany, Year A
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary
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Isaiah 58:1-9a

Shout out, do not hold back!
Lift up your voice like a trumpet!
Announce to my people their rebellion,
to the house of Jacob their sins.
Yet day after day they seek me
and delight to know my ways,
as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness
and did not forsake the ordinance of their God;
they ask of me righteous judgments,
they delight to draw near to God.
“Why do we fast, but you do not see?
Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?”
Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day,
and oppress all your workers.
Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight
and to strike with a wicked fist.
Such fasting as you do today
will not make your voice heard on high.
Is such the fast that I choose,
a day to humble oneself?
Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush,
and to lie in sackcloth and ashes?
Will you call this a fast,
a day acceptable to the Lord?

Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up quickly;
your vindicator shall go before you,
the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.
Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;
you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.
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The people complain to God: "Why do we fast, but you do not see?" In those days in Israel, the people fasted in times of anxiety and fear, when they faced a threatening crisis too big to manage. When Israel's first king, Saul and his son Jonathan were killed in the army's terrible defeat at Gilboa, the people fasted for seven days. When King David's child fell deathly ill, he fasted, hoping God would spare the child. When the Jews in the Persian Empire faced extermination, they fasted and placed their hopes on Queen Esther's appeal to the king. Fasting was the Jewish response to threat and fearful distress.

Isaiah speaks to this anxious people, and he tells them, Your fasting is ineffective because you are worrying about the wrong things. Shift your attention. Instead of being fearful and anxious about your own security and your selfish self-interest -- oppressing your workers and inventing hostilities -- focus on compassion and love; nurture the needs of the vulnerable. Quoting now: "Loose the bonds of injustice, …let the oppressed go free… Share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house: when you see the naked, cover them, and do not hide yourself from your [needy] kin. Then your light shall break forth like the dawn… Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer."

Cell biologists tell us that the cells of our body have an either-or mechanism. When they are in a healthy, nurturing condition, they move toward growth. When they receive negative, threatening signals, they move toward protection. Cells can only move in one direction. Toward growth or toward protection. They can't do both simultaneously.

I think the same is true for the larger human systems. Whenever we are moving toward growth, we are open, less defensive, less protective. Whenever we are moving in a protectionist defensive posture, we can't grow.

When we experience threat or fear, our bodies react chemically. The hypothalamus reacts to perceived threat and sends a warning message to the pituitary. Tell the adrenal glands to flood the system, and every cell gets the message:  "Fight or Flight or Freeze." The energy and attention of the entire body then goes out to the extremities. Muscles tense and prepare the bones for action. The viscera, the internal organs in the chest cavity and abdomen almost shut down. Digestion slows or stops, activity in the immune system recedes. Those are the systems for growth, not for protection.

Blood in the brain moves from the frontal cortex, the rational executive brain, to the more primitive reflexive area of the brain. Under stress we get stupider and reactive. Do you ever remember taking an exam when you were very nervous, and you just couldn't think?

Whenever we live with constant threat or repeated fears, adrenal levels rise in our bodies. Then we begin to experience chronic anxiety, and our immune systems become compromised. One study estimates that 60 to 90 percent of doctors' office visits have something to do with stress-related issues.

A society that gets a steady diet of fear and threat will become chronically anxious and reactive. It will get stupider and more defensive. It will compromise its immune system and become vulnerable to internal viruses of self-centered dysfunction. That's what Isaiah saw happening to his people.

But Isaiah and Jesus offer good news to an anxious people. The answer is love, especially love of neighbor—compassion and generosity.

Let's go back to the human body. The pituitary is the master gland that controls our direction, sending us signals either for growth or for protection. The pituitary sends a message: You are safe. Grow. The lungs fill, the heart finds rhythm, the digestive system nurtures. We relax and grow stronger and more healthy.

In human beings the most powerful growth-signal is love. You may remember those studies of orphaned infants in Eastern Europe who were not picked up and loved. They didn't grow. They got plenty of food, but they didn't grow. Love is even more important than nutrition.

Medicine has discovered something that religion has known for centuries. We call it prayer and contemplation. Medicine calls it the "relaxation response." Doctors teach patients to focus gently on their breath with a mantra to recall attention. We teach Centering Prayer.

Happiness researchers have discovered something that religion has known for centuries. When you love your neighbor as yourself, in a spirit of trust, nurturing hope and generosity -- you thrive.

Neuroscientist Richard Davidson had developed a unified theory of a happy brain. He works with affective disorders, depression and anxiety. Davidson maps four independent brain circuits that influence our sense of lasting well-being. One neurological circuit manages our ability to maintain positive states. It is fed by compassion and love. A second, completely different brain circuit manages our ability to recover from negative states. It nurtures our resilience. A third brain circuit manages our ability to focus, our capacity to pay attention and to avoid mind-wandering. Meditation exercises our capacity to pay attention.

Before I get to the fourth brain circuit of a happy brain, let me revisit something I ended with in last week's sermon. It touches on those first three brain circuits. A passage from St. Paul invites us to pay attention to eight things that will help us both to maintain a positive state and to recover from negative states. Paul advises, "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." (Philippians 4:8) Pay attention to these eight things, and you are more likely to influence the brain circuits that strengthen the positive states and release the negative states.

But I told you about those other three independent brain circuits for a happy brain, the neurological systems that influence our sense of lasting well-being – I told you about those three to tell you about the fourth. There is an entire brain circuit devoted to our innate ability to be generous. When we are generous, this neurological system lights up and it contributes to our happiness and sense of well being. The human brain is hardwired for cooperation, compassion and generosity.

Our innate evolutionary drivers are to survive, to reproduce, and to cooperate. That's how the human species survived. Yes, we are hardwired to fight or flight, but we are also hardwired to cooperate and to be generous.

I would contend that in a civilized world where we are unlikely to be eaten by an animal, we only rarely need the fight-flight mechanism. And when we feel that we are being attacked by other humans, we will probably defend ourselves better by keeping our resources more focused in our rational and thoughtful capacities than in our kill-or-be-killed capacities. We have the capacity to listen and to understand the other, to empathize and to be peacemakers. Jesus taught us to love our enemies. I believe using the fully human part of our brain and emotional systems is a better strategy for confronting nearly every perceived threat than using our mostly animal part of our brain and emotional system.

An emotional diet of fear, conflict and anxiety is an unhealthy diet and will make us sick. An emotional diet of love, compassion and generosity is a healthy diet and will let us grow.

Isaiah's advice still holds. Are you anxious or feeling threatened? Is your coping strategy not working? Stop thinking in a protectionist, defensive direction. Let love, compassion and generosity move you in a generative and growing direction. Let go of your negative thoughts and maintain a hopeful capacity. Focus on your opportunities to be generous. Loose the bonds of injustice, let the oppressed go free. Feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, clothe the naked.

Listen to Paul and concentrate. He tells us to focus our attention on whatever is true, honorable, just, pure, pleasing, commendable, excellent or praiseworthy. "Think about these things," Paul says.

If we will change our focus, Isaiah and Paul give us two promises:  
     When you call, God will say, "Here I am." 
     "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 its life and mission, please contact us at
P.O. Box 1190, Fayetteville, AR 72702, or call 479/442-7373
More sermon texts are posted on our web site: www.stpaulsfay.org
Click the “Video Online” button to watch full services and sermons live-streamed or archived.

Paul's Experience

Paul's Experience

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, O.A., Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
January 28, 2017;  The Conversion of St. Paul
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Acts 26:9-21)  Paul said to King Agrippa, "Indeed, I myself was convinced that I ought to do many things against the name of Jesus of Nazareth. And that is what I did in Jerusalem; with authority received from the chief priests, I not only locked up many of the saints in prison, but I also cast my vote against them when they were being condemned to death. By punishing them often in all the synagogues I tried to force them to blaspheme; and since I was so furiously enraged at them, I pursued them even to foreign cities.
"With this in mind, I was traveling to Damascus with the authority and commission of the chief priests, when at midday along the road, your Excellency, I saw a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, shining around me and my companions. When we had all fallen to the ground, I heard a voice saying to me in the Hebrew language, `Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It hurts you to kick against the goads.' I asked, `Who are you, Lord?' The Lord answered, `I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. But get up and stand on your feet; for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you to serve and testify to the things in which you have seen me and to those in which I will appear to you. I will rescue you from your people and from the Gentiles-- to whom I am sending you to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.'

"After that, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision, but declared first to those in Damascus, then in Jerusalem and throughout the countryside of Judea, and also to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God and do deeds consistent with repentance. For this reason the Jews seized me in the temple and tried to kill me."
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I
've mentioned before how important it is to me that I was brought up in the racially segregated South. When I realized how wrong my hometown was about something very important, it opened me to the possibility that there might be other things wrong about what I inherited – values, world-view, morals and perspective. I think that's why when my inherited understanding about gay people was challenged, I quickly began to ask questions and explore, and I found that what I had been taught from childhood was wrong. I changed my mind. To this day, I walk around expecting to be corrected. That's a good thing.

T
o understand the apostle Paul, you've got to start with his experience of being wrong. He was the most religious person in his age group. He did everything right. He followed the law. And when a heretic group of Christian Jews started a movement challenging his orthodoxy, he went after them. But he discovered he was wrong. He had been wrong all along. He thought God was in the rule-making business, and he discovered God was in the love and mercy business. So Paul changed his whole orientation.

Before, when he was trying to earn his own status before God, he was competitive and self-absorbed. "How am I doing? I'm doing everything right, aren't I? Look at those others. They are wrong. I know it!"

Paul divided the whole world that way. Right / Wrong. Righteous / Sinner. Orthodox / Heretic. Jew / Gentile. Saved / Lost. But all of a sudden, he found himself on the other side of those dualities. What he experienced on the Damascus Road was a love that eliminated all dualities, transcending them in a unifying love.

He experienced God as infinite love, complete acceptance, pure gift. He had persecuted the Messiah. He had been wrong. Yet God loved him, accepted him, and called him. He didn't earn that. He didn't deserve it. It was all a gift. And now he was free. Free from the compulsion of judging himself or judging others. Free to simply be. Free to love.  That is the Good News, which is what the word "Gospel" means—"Good News."

Now this is important. Paul realized that if God loved and accepted him—an enemy of Christ, an enemy of God—then God loves every human being in the same way. "God shows no partiality." (Rom. 2:11) There are no human divisions. Everyone is the same before God.

Everybody has failed. No one can appear before God with the claim that God owes them. Everyone is loved infinitely, even enemies like Paul used to be. "God shows no partiality," but loves every human being infinitely.

Furthermore, Paul is convinced that Christ's triumph is complete and universal. "For as in Adam all died, so also in Christ shall all be made alive." (1 Cor. 15:22) Even enemies.

S
o Paul started undoing all the false human divisions that we humans have created. There is no longer Jew or Gentile; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male or female. (Gal. 3:28)

No longer Jew or Gentile. Paul broke the Gentile boundary in the early Church. He welcomed Gentiles without expecting them to become Jews or to follow the law. He opened the Church to the outsiders.

No longer male or female. Paul authorized women to lead in his congregations: women like Lydia in Philippi, Phoebe in Cenchreae, Prisca and her husband Aquila in both Corinth and Rome (Paul usually names her first), Chloe, Euodia and Synthche, and his fellow apostle Junia, a woman he speaks of as of equal apostolic rank to Paul. Some men apparently got nervous about Paul's egalitarian attitude. A later writer inserted a phrase into a copy of Paul's first letter to the Corinthians about women being silent in church. (1 Cor. 15:34f) Other later disciples wrote, in 1 Timothy, Ephesians and Colossians, adopting patriarchal models that neither Paul nor Jesus practiced. Women led and taught in Paul's churches.

No longer slave or free. When Paul returned the runaway slave Onesimus to his owner Philemon, Paul instructed his disciple Philemon to welcome the slave Onesimus "as you would me" your teacher, "no longer as a slave" but as a welcomed "beloved brother."

Paul challenged all of the divisions of his contemporary culture. Male-Female; Slave-Free; Jew-Gentile; Roman Citizen-Non-citizen. Paul's practice gives witness to his belief that any structure that divides human beings is wrong, including structures like slavery imposed by government. Every human being is equal in God's sight. Thou shall not divide us, in the church or in the state.

Paul dared to make that claim using the same language and symbols for Christ that the Roman civic religion used for the Emperor. "Caesar is Lord," said Rome. "Caesar is the Son of God, bringing peace to the whole earth, the Pax Romana," said Rome. The Roman peace enforced by the sword of domination. 

Paul challenged Rome's authority directly using the same political language: "Jesus is Lord. Jesus is the Son of God" who guards "the peace of God which surpasses all understanding." (Phil 4:7) What Rome would oppress, Christ liberates. What Caesar divides by force, Christ unites by love. Faithful Christians must continue to assert the same claims against arrogant government oppression today as Paul did in his day. "For I am convinced," he said, "that nothing in all creation" – not rulers, or powers, things present or things to come – nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Rom. 8:38-39)

S
o Paul began to expect God's surprising presence to be everywhere, because God is continually loving everyone without exception. Paul's eyes were opened to see the fruit of the Holy Spirit present throughout all humanity. "Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and temperance. There is no law against such things," he said (Gal. 5:22-23). These qualities are evidence of the Spirit's presence. Even when they come from the unexpected person or outsider group.

Paul sought to create communities like this one where these gifts could be nurtured. His essential symbol and strategy was the Eucharistic feast, a table among equals where all are fed on the life of the risen Christ. When some elitist Corinthians used their wealth and power to create an exclusive feast that the poor could not share, Paul condemned them fiercely. He reminded them of the moral obligation for the wealthy to share generously with the poor. Paul spent so much time and energy on his collection for the poor, even shaming the relatively rich Corinthians by boasting about the generous gifts from the poor churches of Macedonia. (1 Cor. 8)

We are all one, he insisted. And the needs of one are the responsibility of us all. We are all one, he insisted, and any dividing of humanity between the in and the out, the us and the them, the acceptable and the unacceptable, is unacceptable. Paul knew, because when he was unacceptable, God had accepted him. Therefore, there is no condemnation.

T
hat is the broad world view that our patron St. Paul invites us to embody here at this church which lives under his name. Be free, for you are loved. Be one, with all humanity. Break down the divisions among humans, and manifest the unqualified love and acceptance that God gives so freely to all.

"Finally, beloved," to close with Paul's words, "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 on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you." (Phil. 4:8-9)
_______________________________
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 its life and mission, please contact us at
P.O. Box 1190, Fayetteville, AR 72702, or call 479/442-7373
More sermon texts are posted on our web site: www.stpaulsfay.org
Click the “Video Online” button to watch full services and sermons live-streamed or archived.