The Kingdom of God has Come Near You

The Kingdom of God has Come Near You

Psalm 102:15-22

Isaiah 52:7-10

Philippians 2:1-5

Luke 10:1-9

In our text today (Philippians 2:1-5) Paul tells us to “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus”… “having the same love, being in full accord … do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves… look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.”

Luke (10:8-9) tells us:

“Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, … cure the sick who are there and say to them, “The kingdom of God has come near you.”

What do you suppose the kingdom of God is?

We hear elsewhere in Scripture that it is “like”

A mustard seed

A treasure

A pearl

A farmer

And so on…

But what is it really?

Do you remember the What Would Jesus Do craze?  People wore wrist-bands and tee shirts that said WWWJD – and encouraged us all to think about what Jesus would do.  It was a good idea that ended up being kind of patronizing and a little silly.

There is a cartoon going around the internet lately that parodies the What Would Jesus Do campaign.  The cartoon depicts Jesus on a hillside and lists things Jesus would NOT do.  The list includes:

            Harass a single mother

            Shoot a doctor – shoot anyone- own a weapon

Hate his enemies

Attack the poor

And my personal favorite…Run for President

It’s not too hard to define the kingdom of God in the negative.  We know what it isn’t.

But how can we know what it is?

At our Women’s Retreat this past weekend, a member joking declared that the manna- that mysterious and miraculous sustenance which was offered to the Israelites as they crossed the desert in Exodus- that the manna was actually Diet Coke.  We discussed this idea at some length and decided that manna would taste different to each individual, for some it would be crème Brule and for others guacamole and chips. This being a women’s retreat the consensus was that manna would likely taste like chocolate.

Accepting this unorthodox but not entirely theologically unsound premise, the kingdom of God might look like different things to different people.

It might look like clothing to an impoverished mother

It might look like food to a starving Somali

It might look like enfranchisement to a Chinese dissident

It might look like reunion to the spouse of a deployed soldier

It might look like health to a person in pain

It would without a doubt look like arms outstretched and hands open

Today we celebrate the life and work of Thomas Bray, an 18^th Century priest and missionary to the American Colonies. Here are some of the things he did:

He radically reorganized and renewed the Church in Maryland.

He arranged for the instruction of children there

He re-organized the process of discernment and training of priests and pastors

He opened 31 libraries and a number of schools

He defended – from the pulpit both in England and the U.S. – the rights of enslaved Africans and displaced Native Americans

He persuaded Governor Oglethorpe to found the colony of Georgia as a as an alternative to debtors prison

He founded the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel and The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, both of which survive two hundred and fifty years later.

(He was in America exactly 10 weeks)

Here are things he didn’t do:

He didn’t force the Gospel on anyone – he offered them a chance to hear and learn it themselves.

He increased the presence of the Church – not by building buildings, but by propagating servants

He didn’t seek to punish those who had fallen on hard times, he sought to alleviate their suffering

He didn’t turn the other way when he saw the oppression of marginalized, enslaved, exiled people – he spoke from the pulpit at considerable personal risk – in their defense

Thomas Bray had a list of things he wanted to accomplish in this life.

We all have a list of things we want to accomplish in this life. 

What makes Thomas Bray exceptional is not what he accomplished, but how:

He did nothing from selfish ambition or conceit but in humility

He looked not to his own interests but to the interests of others

He clearly tried to let the same mind be in him that was in Christ Jesus.

Oh, on the list of things Thomas Bray DID do, I forgot to mention:

He brought the Kingdom of God closer to us.

Now, only Christ, when he returns, can bring the Kingdom of God finally and completely to us all. 

But in the mean time, while we are waiting, we are asked in our texts today to bring the Kingdom of God “closer.”  It almost doesn’t matter what you do. If you are in the same mind as Christ, if you let yourself be motivated by a desire to be of like mind to Christ… you are bringing the Kingdom closer to us.

How beautiful upon the mountains

are the feet of the messenger who announces peace,

Who brings good news,

Who announces salvation

Who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.”

Amen.

There But For the Grace of God

There but for the Grace of God

(Jan 2, 2012)

John 9:1-7 As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. ²His disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ ³Jesus answered, ‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. ⁴Wemust work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. ⁵As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.’ ⁶When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s eyes,⁷saying to him, ‘Go, wash in the pool of Siloam’ (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see. 

You know, there is just not that much difference between people in the first century and people in the 21^st century.

In the first century, people commonly believed that your sins would be visited on you and on your children and their children for generations. They believed that if something ill befell you, it was a sign of your sin. They even had certain sins assigned to certain illnesses, impure thoughts might manifest themselves as insanity,   gossip resulted in throat cancer,   anger might emerge as bile in the gut.     Envy is commonly associated with blindness.

And so in this text, our 1^st Century characters see a blind man and wonder what he did to deserve to be blind.

To our 21^st Century ears, that sounds inhumane, completely lacking in empathy, unthinkable.

Or does it? How often do we hear of the misfortune of others and immediately look for a way to distinguish ourselves from them. Our first instinct is to erect a wall between what happened to them and what is possible for us.     “I don’t live where there are tidal waves”      “We never go to Brown’s Chicken”      “We never leave candles burning.”

The implication is that there is something about me or my circumstances that will keep that misfortune from happening to me.The implication is that there is something about her or her circumstances, that resulted in his misfortune.

You see, people in the 1^st Century and in the 21^st Century are not that different at all.

But that misses the whole point of this Scripture and indeed of the teaching of Jesus in the Gospels as a whole. In our Gospel today, Jesus is not concerned with the reason that the blind man is blind. Jesus is concerned with the opportunity it offers him, the opportunity it offers all of us, to be the vehicle for transformation in the lives of those less fortunate than ourselves.

The Scripture says:

“he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. ⁴We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day;…. ⁵As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.’ 

·         Bad things do happen to good people.    Accidents, illness, misfortune, they are indiscriminate.        No one deserves to have their entire community swept away by a tornado.   Nobody deserves to be blind. But the answer is not to make a distinction; The answer is not to define an “us” and a “them.” The answer is never a wall between people.

(Here’s a tip: when you are wondering if your actions are following in the footsteps of Christ… if you’re building a wall between people, they’re not.)

The Good News in this Gospel is that Jesus takes people where he finds them. No looking back with regret, no “what if.” Jesus teaches us to start where we are and move forward. There is an opportunity for God’s grace here, the potential for the presence of the Lord.

“he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. ⁴We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day;…. ⁵As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.’ 

In this Scripture we are called to work the works of mercy and kindness…to be the light when there appears to be only darkness. We are called to be the instruments of consolation, the conduits of God’s healing love.

And how are we expected to achieve such an awesome task?Th ese are scenes of tragedy and trauma and suffering, how can we possibly be expected to make the love of God present in situations such as these? 

Well, Jesus spit on the ground.

He spit and made a mud ball and smeared it on the poor blind man’s face...

This is one of those cases where it helps to know the context. Galilee is a pretty arid place. The soil is fertile, but it takes some work to grow things. What Jesus does, then, is take dry, arid dirt and add water to make it fertile. And not just any water, water from his own mouth. His own essence is part of what makes the dirt into soil and releases its potential for growth. Jesus’ saliva represents something essential to him, something unique and priceless.

He took a little bit of himself, some of his DNA and added that to the soil to make the poultice. 

And that is what this text calls us to do. When we are confronted with tragedy, with suffering and with misfortune… we are called to be instruments of God’s grace. And not just with some soil and some water from our water bottle.

Now, you may be thinking, “Oh no. I have no more time in my day to cook for the soup kitchen. I work full time, I cannot train with the Red Cross.” Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask you to. There are times when all we can do and in fact the best thing we can do, is write a check.

In that case, by all means write that check. 

But when you do, add a little of your own essence to it. Enclose a note to the relief worker – there are places on the Episcopal Relief website to do that. Or just stop before you press send and say a little prayer over your gift.

Join your energy with God’s to transform the lives of the less fortunate.

That is all this Scripture is asking us to do…

to add a little of ourselves,

become invested,

draw on our own resources,

So that the healing and the mitigation and the resolution are part of us and we are part of them.

No longer is the suffering person “other” or distinct from us,

now we are blended,

blind man and healer,

sufferer and comforter,

friend and friend.

That is all we are asked to do. To give of ourselves, as we are able, and with the grace of guidance of God, to heal what is broken in Creation.

In the first Century and in the 21^st Century, When we witness human tragedy, we are tempted to have the same initial response of fear. We whisper, “There, but for the grace of God go, I”

But we are called by this Scripture to respond differently. We are called to say, not in a whisper but in a loud and very clear voice,

“Here, by the grace of God, are we…all in it together.”

Amen.

Doubting Thomas: The Essential Twin

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

St. Thomas

Doubting Thomas, at last something I feel qualified to preach about.  Thomas the Apostle was also called Didymus, which means “the twin” in Greek.  Interesting, isn’t it, that in the first community of faith there was one among them who was called to articulate doubt and he was a twin. Doubt is the twin the faith, the brother of believing. It is not the opposite of believing, not the nemesis of believing. Doubt is essential to belief, incorporated into belief.  It requires doubt, as well as its counterpart, belief, to create the whole, complete  and dynamic entity that is the life of faith.

Are you familiar with the T’ai Chi? We sometimes hear it called the Yin-Yang symbol. It is a Taoist symbol, a circle made up of two identical halves, one black and one white, each stretching into the other a little, like two comets dancing around one another. Within each half there is a dot of the other.  So, in the white half, there is a distinct circle of black and within the black there is a matching circle of white.   The two halves, then create a perfect circle, a whole, which is where its name comes from: T’ai Chi translates to “Great Ultimate.”

I think it is a useful image to use when we encounter doubt and belief.  Belief is that brilliant white side, where we are full of confidence and consolation.  But within that brilliant white space there is a small but not insignificant measure of black doubt. And, on the other hand, doubt is that dark place that seems bottomless and engulfs us in despair, but within that darkness is one small but essential circle of light, of belief, present even in the domain of darkness. The whole thing together, the dark and the light, wrapped around one another and also incorporating one another, creates a whole, a complete circle, an entity we call Faith.

Toaists use the image of T’ai Chi to represent the dynamic nature of the Universe.  The Yin signifies rest and the Yang represents movement.  Stasis and progress. Being and becoming. Belief and doubt. As described by Dr. K. K. Yeo, the T-ai Chi embodies the natural state of Creation:  “change, even chaos, is not to be disliked manipulated or feared.  Change produces a life of pilgrimage. It is in that change and pilgrimage that one finds his being, the meaning of existence.”  (Yeo, What has Jerusalem to do with Beijing? 1998, p.98)

Belief and doubt exist in relationship to one another and it is that relationship that keeps them alive. It is the give and take of doubt and belief, the constant movement between one and the other that creates the living and growing and changing whole that is faith.  Believing is part of faith, but it is not all.  If faith and belief were the same thing, we could just rest on our laurels all the time, saying, “I believe and that is all there is.”

But that isn’t what we find in the Scripture.  Thomas questions Jesus. Thomas has doubts.  Not just in our text today but also in John 14 in which Jesus says:

³And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. ⁴And you know the way to the place where I am going.’ ⁵Thomas said to him, ‘Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?’⁶Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life.”

Doubt opens the door to belief. Doubt articulates what isn’t and in so doing creates an opportunity for belief to articulate what is.  Doubt enlivens belief.  Doubt forces us to confront what we don’t believe, where we can’t go emotionally, intellectually or spiritually. Doubt is a dark place that we try, as a rule to avoid.  But the fact that there is such a dark place means that, within the whole of the Great Ultimate, there is also a light place.  We know there is because in the depths of the darkest place, there is a hint of light. It looks like a dot but it might also be a beam. A beam of light that can draw us back into the light side of belief.  And when we get there we are on firmer footing because we have been in the darkness of doubt, we know it is there and we are never permitted to forget.  There’s a spot of it right here in the light all the time.

This, I think is the most important point to be made.  Because we know even when we are perfectly secure in what we believe, there is always the possibility of doubt. Therefore we also know, just as surely and with just as much resolve, that when we are in the abyss of doubt and it all seems impenetrable darkness, that there is there, as well, the possibility of Belief, the hope of renewal, the essential element that can bring us back to balance.

That is the Great Ultimate, the whole life of faith. And because these two elements are constantly in relationship with one another, a life of faith is never static.  The life of faith is always growing, always changing.  We know well that over the course of our lives we come and go from believing, we come and go from doubt.  And that coming and going is natural, it is essential. It means the life of faith is never stagnant, it is never still, it is never dead.  

Doubting Thomas was a member of the community of faith around Christ.  His words were important enough to be recorded many times over, his legacy of skepticism is preserved thousands of years after other disciples words and actions have been lost to history.  I think this is because even in the community of Jesus, in the presence of the most brilliant, bright and absolute belief, in order for it to be complete, there must be one small but unrelenting dot of doubt. 

I’ll leave you with a little piece of poetry- and it is trite, I apologize - from the Christian Reformed Church from a poem about St. Thomas.:

May we, O God, by grace believe
  and, in believing, still receive
the Christ who held His raw palms out
  and beckoned Thomas from his doubt.

(Thomas Troeger, 1984, Psalter/Hymnal of the Christian Reformed Church)

St. Margaret of Scotland: Why, not How.

 ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
   because he has anointed me
     to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
   and recovery of sight to the blind,
     to let the oppressed go free, 
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’ 

Over the course of the entire history of the Christian church, there has been a fascination with the elemental questions about Christ. 

Obviously, the central question is “Who is Christ”?  Son of God, Descendant of David, Son of Joseph…

Throughout the history of the church there have been searches for the historical Jesus, leading to the helpful of sometimes confusing distinction between the “pre-Easter Jesus” and the “post-Easter Jesus.”

Immediately after his death the second most nagging question arose, “What is Christ”?  All man?  All God?  God and Man?

And “How does that work?”

But of all the questions we ask ourselves about Christ, one that is almost never under discussion is “Why?”

Why was the Word made flesh to dwell among us?

Why did he perform his ministry over the course of his life?

Why did he perform miracles?

Why did he tell parables?

Why did he preach the overthrow of tradition and traditional wisdom?

At the risk of offering an extremely simple answer to an impossibly complex question:

Our text today tells us that he did so “because he was moved by the Spirit.”

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me

Now, the Scripture doesn’t say that the Spirit of the Lord told Jesus to go out and perform miracles, it doesn’t say, “Drive the devil out of a man, and then into some pigs and then toss them off a cliff.”  It doesn’t say, “Answer direct questions with obscure cultural references and ambiguous metaphorical aphorisms.”

There are no instructions in this text at all about how to get it done.

Just what needs to be done:

o   Bring those who are distant from it, closer to the love of God

o   Help those who are enslaved by sin in every form

o   Bring light where there is darkness

o   Empower those who have no power

o   Be a beacon of Hope for the future.

Today is the anniversary of the death of Saint Margaret Scotland. She is the only Scottish Queen to be canonized.

She was born in around 1045,  and when she was 20, she and her family fled the Norman invasion of England intending to go to Northumberland.  According to legend, a storm blew up and sent their ship to Scotland.  The place where it is believed to have landed is called St. Margaret’s Hope.

Margaret was a renowned beauty and King Malcom fell in love with her on sight.  After their marriage, she is credited with being a civilizing influence on his court.  Though he could not read, she read stories of the Bible to him.  It is said the he “disliked what she disliked… and loved, for love of her, whatever she loved.”

And what she loved was service.

·         She instigated religious reform, striving to make the worship and practices of the Church in Scotland conform to those of Rome.

·         She was considered an exemplar of the "just ruler", and influenced her husband and children, especially her youngest son, later David I, also to be just and holy rulers.

·         She served orphans and the poor every day before she ate,

·         She washed the feet of the poor in imitation of Christ.

·         She rose at midnight every night to attend church services.

·         She invited the Benedictine order to establish a monastery at Dunfermline in Fife

and her blessings extend even into our congregation - she rebuilt the monastery at Iona – where our own curate went in pilgrimage and heard his call.

Saint Margaret was canonized in the year 1250 by Pope Innocent IV “in recognition of her personal holiness, fidelity to the Church, work for religious reform, and charity.”

Now, just to be clear, Canonization, whether formal or informal, does not make someone a saint: it is only a declaration that the person is a saint and was a saint even before canonization.

The person proposed for canonization “must have lived and died in such an exemplary and holy way that he or she is worthy to be recognized as a saint. The Church's official recognition of sanctity implies that the persons are now in heavenly glory, that they may be publicly invoked and mentioned officially in the liturgy of the Church, most especially in the Litany of the Saints.”

22 miracles are attributed to St. Margaret. After her death, people who were afflicted would have a vision of a beautiful and elegant woman who told them to go to the burial place of St. Margaret and there to be healed. 

Useless hands were made whole, lesions and injuries were healed, insanity, infertility, and dropsy all born away on the prayers of the faithful.  My personal favorite is the man who suffered for years with a bally full of lizards.  God knows that can be uncomfortable. He was set right in prayer at St. Margaret’s resting place.

Now, I don’t think you need to believe in these miracles as such (though you are welcome to if you like, the older I get the less sure I am of the boundaries of reality as I know it.)

What is striking about these miracle stories is what they say about Margaret’s life.

Margaret of Scotland’s biography tells the story of a woman whose life and works were infused with the Holy Spirit.  She was intentional in the use of her talents, powers and privilege as means of serving her fellow man and her Father in Heaven. 

I think when people go to her grave and pray for a miracle they have not been brought by the “how” of her life, but by the “why.”

Why did she do all that she did in the service of the Kingdom of Heaven? 

Because “the Spirit of the Lord was upon her” and when the spirit of the Lord is upon you, all things, all things are possible.

 As long as we don’t lose sight of the “Why”…. The “how” will work itself out.

“and the Scripture will be fulfilled in our hearing.”

Amen

The Loaves and the Fishes: Occupy Galilee

Matthew 15:20-39

This is my favorite of all of the miracles Jesus performed during his lifetime. This and the story of the wine casks in John – when Jesus is asked to provide wine and turns dozens of gallons of water into the finest wine at a wedding.  I love these stories because they remind us that our God is a God of abundance.  And that is such an important message that we can’t say it enough.

But the story of the loaves and the fishes is unique. It is the only miracle story recounted in all four Gospels.  In fact, it is told six times in the gospels.  Some scholars think that indicates that the event, or some kind of event actually took place – not metaphorically, not allegorically – actually… that there was an event of feeding a mass of people in the wilderness.  In Jesus’ time and, as in this text, in the wilderness, food would be scarce and the people would be pretty desperate – to feed such a crowd would be a feat worthy of recording at least six times.  

The people following Jesus have been three days without anything to eat.  They came to be healed and have miracles performed for them, their motivation was great, but it has been three days and they are probably in pretty bad shape.  They are in a crowd of four thousand men and untold numbers of women and children.  They have come for miraculous healing, so at least when they started out they were injured or ill or in pain.  And they have remained in faith and subject to the elements for three days and nights.  They are, we can safely say, a profoundly wretched bunch.

And they are starving.

But they are also faithful - for in their time with him, they have been made whole, cured, made well.

So, what does Jesus do? He has compassion on them. He takes what resources are present, blesses them. There are seven loaves of bread and a few small fish.

Seven loaves and a few fishes is probably just enough to feed himself and his 12 Apostles. There is no way it can make a dent in the needs of the four thousand. But Jesus and his party put them into seven baskets and hand them out into the crowd.

Now, it doesn’t say he magically magnified the food as he did with the wine in John. There is no indication in any of the six versions of the story that he did anything more than bless the bread for their consumption. So, without a miraculous incantation, how on earth did those seven baskets of food feed four thousand plus people?

Well, it has been suggested that certain of the people, when they saw how little food there was and that it was meant to feed so many, didn’t take any.  They decided they did not need any and let the less fortunate have some. 

Maybe there were some who had neighbors nearby and the promise of a good meal very soon. Some may have brought food of their own and let the basket pass by them,  some may even have put food from their pockets into the basket as it went by.

In any case, at the end of the story, the baskets make their way back to the Apostles with food remaining in them. 

³⁷And all of them ate and were filled; and they took up the broken pieces left over, seven baskets full. 

The obvious modern application of this text is Occupy Wall Street.  It seems clear to our Loaves and Fishes Informed eyes that the top 1% of Americans need to spread their wealth more evenly among the 99% who are not as privileged.  Clearly, they need to put their loaves into baskets with a blessing and send them off into their communities.

But that isn’t the lesson of the Loaves and the Fishes, is it?  I mean, the miracle was not that Jesus and the disciples were generous enough to put their wealth in a basket and send it out into the world. That is what we would expect from the Messiah and his apostles.

The miracle was that the 99% were able to share it.  No one horded, no one jealously guarded, no one cheated, and further, many people must have replicated the initial act of generosity in order for the food to go as far as it did. 

Do you think if we sent seven baskets of money into the crowd of 4,000 at an Occupy Demonstration, that they would come back with change in them? I confess, I doubt it.

So what is the difference between the 4,000 in Galilee and the 4,000 in the financial district?

The 4,000 in Galilee had come to see the Messiah in faith.  They believed in him, in his ability to heal and to set things right.  They believed that his actions were motivated by love and that his teaching was the truth.  They believed that everything would be alright.  They had faith. Not just faith in Jesus, faith in God. A God of abundance.

The demonstrators at Occupy don’t have that confidence. They have a scarcity ethic: “there isn’t going to be enough”, “I won’t get what I need, if I choose moderation now, I may starve later.”

So, the miracle Jesus performed in Galilee was not that he magnified the resources, it was that he replaced the crowd’s fear with confidence. He replaced their insecurity with generosity.  He replaced their desperation with faith in a good and gracious and abundant God.  And when he did that, he set them free.

Absent their insecurity, the crowd was able to be generous.

Absent their fear, they did not panic and hoard.

Absent their doubt, they were filled with faith in an abundant God and the ability to live out his commandments with courage and conviction.

And, it tells us, everyone went away full.  

The Miracle of the loaves and the fishes didn’t happen in the bread baskets, it happened in the hearts and minds of the people who knew and loved Christ.  That is worth repeating six times because not only is it amazing, it is timeless.  It can happen today.  It should happen today.

We have, at Christ Church, a ministry called Christmas Angels, in which Christ Church families “adopt” less privileged families, provide for them for Christmas, wrap the gifts and sometimes give a little extra as well.

This year, because some supporting agencies were unable to take their usual number and because more families than ever are in need, we at Christ Church have taken on 60 new families – large families.

Now, this is a lean year for many of us.  We none of us are able to give as generously to our loved ones during the season as we would like.  We none of us are able to fulfill the dreams or fill the stockings the way we had hoped to be able to.  We have only enough for our own Christmas this year, and not even enough to do that properly.

We have only the seven loaves and a few fishes for our whole family.  How can we be expected to share it with 3,995 other people?

Well, we don’t have to share it with 3,995 other people.  We have to share it with one other family.  We have to reach into our pockets and say, “I have enough for me and mine. Let me leave in this basket for you, what I do not need.”

“Because God is good and bountiful, I can afford – no I am privileged to be able to – extend His bounty to you.”

In our hearts, we may be afraid and insecure. We may secretly embody a scarcity ethic. But we also know and we believe in that super abundant God who miraculously fills wine casks and bread baskets.

Now, this isn’t a “prosperity Gospel”: it doesn’t tell us that if we pray for a pool we’ll get a pool. It isn’t really about material things at all.

It is about being faithful to the God in whose image we are made, remembering and believing in the Messiah in whose footsteps we are meant to walk and embodying the Holy Spirit, and being her hands and feet in the world.

I we can do that: remember, believe, be…

We can all walk away fulfilled.

Amen