March 29, Palm Sunday

Bryan Cones

Mark 11:1-11

Does anyone else like to play pretend? Maybe you like pretending to be a superhero, or sometimes a super villain. I have a niece that sometimes like to pretend to be a certain chilly Disney princess, and she is pretty convincing when she belts out her power ballad. Even us grown-ups might do it. Maybe we don’t “play pretend” so much anymore, but I know I sometimes pretend in my mind, imagining myself as president maybe, and what I might do, though admittedly I am probably more a benign dictator, or even as a wizard in the Harry Potter world, fixing my problems with a magic spell, or a professional tennis player—which requires a lot of pretending.

In a way we might think of that procession we just took part in as a kind of pretending: We imagine that we are there when Jesus entered Jerusalem; our pretending is a way of telling the story, of making it real.

Maybe Jesus and his followers, too, were pretending that day. They were enacting God’s promise  from a prophet named Zephaniah, about the day when God’s chosen one would enter Jerusalem as its peaceful king, complete with a donkey—what princes rode when they came in peace, as opposed to a warlike horse. Jesus and his friends were pretending that God’s reign had actually come to Jerusalem, that God was the real king of the city.

And how do we know they were pretending? We know because it was obvious to everyone that the God of Israel was not king in Jerusalem: Everyone knew that Caesar, the emperor of Rome, was king in Jerusalem, and Caesar had just sent his henchman Pontius Pilate with his Roman soldiers into the city to remind the people who was boss during Passover, or Jewish “independence day.” The biggest bullies were in charge. Pretend all you want, they might have said, we know who is the real boss. But don’t pretend too much or too long, or you’ll pay for it.

The thing is, though, Jesus wasn’t pretending. And he wasn’t kidding either. The gospel story tells us he had lined everything up: He had his donkey staged and ready, told his disciples the code words to get it,  and he timed his piece of street theater for maximum effect, for maximum insult to the Roman occupiers and their lackeys among the Jewish aristocrats: He was telling Pontius Pilate and the Temple priests that God was the real king in Jerusalem, and Jesus was God’s hand-picked agent, his general. And if you’ll notice, Jesus goes “straight to the Temple and looks around”: Jesus is casing the joint for his next move, which will involve a whip of cords and big mess in the Temple.

Things just got tense, and the tension is about to get worse. Jesus is provoking a crisis, turning up the heat, and he’s asking everyone to choose sides. Is the God of Israel your king, he is asking, or is it Caesar? And in Jesus, God is provoking a crisis: Do you want to live in kingdom of heaven or in the empire of Rome? And they aren’t pretending, not at all.

And neither are we. We weren’t pretending we were there in that procession: That procession is the sign that we are there, we are part of Jesus’ parade now. And Holy Week just keeps turning up the heat.

Today as we march with our palms, Jesus is asking if we wish to live in his rule of peace, or if we will live according to the rules of Caesar and his bullies. Maundy Thursday as we wash each other’s feet Jesus asks if we will show greatness by our service to others, or if we will choose to lord it over each other and boss each other around, “as the Gentiles do.”

Friday as we encounter the mystery of the cross and the way Jesus dies, Jesus asks if we will fight violence with violence, and become bullies ourselves, or if will we follow Jesus all the way to the cross, resisting the bullies of this world with our lives, even with our deaths. And we won’t be pretending, because God is not pretending. God is finally going to show Caesar just who is king in Jerusalem, just what is pretend and what is real.

And how do we know that? Well, that we will find out on Holy Saturday night and Easter Sunday morning. But between now and then, Jesus is asking: Which side are we on? 

March 22, 2015: Lent V

Kristin White

Jeremiah 31:31-34, John 12:20-33

There has been a certain amount of hand wringing, in recent years, among church leader types, about people who consider themselves “spiritual but not religious.” These folks tend not to find their way to church on Sundays. They tend not to join churches, or sign and submit pledge cards, or serve on parish committees.

Reasons for people to characterize themselves in this way are as varied as the individuals themselves. But generally it comes to this: no longer is there the social pressure to go to church because it’s “what people do”. Church membership is no longer a requirement for work positions of a certain level. People’s neighbors aren’t super likely to look at them funny if they don’t see them pulling out of the driveway at 9:15 on a Sunday morning. Spiritual But Not Religious people interviewed for research studies on this subject talk about seeking encounter, and avoiding religious practice purely as a matter of expectation. In his book The Future of Faith, Harvey Cox claims, “The experience of the divine is displacing theories about it.”[1] And, frankly, people are looking for those encounters in places outside of church…in nature, in yoga, in a morning run on the lake.

People in church leadership positions like mine often wring their hands about this. “The church isn’t the same as it was 50 years ago,” they say. And they are right. It’s not. “The pews aren’t as full as they were 50 years ago,” they say. And they’re right. Usually they are not. “The budgets aren’t as big as they were 50 years ago,” they say. And they’re right. Often, though not always, they are not.

Spiritual but not religious folks are often more likely to spend Sunday morning reading the New York Times at Starbucks than teaching Sunday school, more likely to eat takeout on a Thursday night than come to a parish potluck, more likely to sing to their favorite music by themselves in the car than they are to join a parish choir.

---

Today’s Gospel might be the perfect one for the SBNR crowd.

Some Greeks come up to Philip, and say: “Sir, we would see Jesus.”

Now let’s stop right there for a second. Notice what the Greeks don’t do: they don’t ask for Jesus’ bio. They don’t ask about his teachings or credentials, or for a statement on his authority. They don’t ask what the requirements are for association with his band of followers. They don’t ask what it costs.

They don’t ask about him. They ask for him.

And notice who the Greeks are, and are not: they’re not Jews. They are not the tribe of friends and neighbors that have been following Jesus since he extended his first seaside invitation. They are Gentiles. They are outside the circle. And there is zero obligation whatsoever to do this, based on their social position, their family history, or their status at the office. In fact, all of these things would point them away from exactly what they are doing.

They are Greeks, Gentiles. They grew up in the same mixed-heritage community that Philip did, and they speak the same language, and they know he’s following Jesus. And they want to see this Jesus for themselves.

---

In today’s first reading, the prophet Jeremiah issues God’s promise to the People of Israel: “I will put my law within them, I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people…no longer shall they teach… ‘know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me…”

God’s promise is so dear, that for God to write this on tablets or scroll makes it too far away, too easily lost or forgotten. “I will be your God, and you will be my people,” God says. Talk about personal experience. Talk about direct encounter. This may be as personal and direct as it gets. This covenant is the promise “at the core of (our) being.”[2]

---

Next Sunday we begin the journey through Holy Week. Over those sacred next days, I pray that you would see Jesus. I pray for your own direct encounter, your very own experience of the divine in our midst.

I pray that you would see Jesus as we raise palms and sing “All glory, laud and honor” next Sunday, as we hear the words of the Passion read at the end of our worship, as we leave this space in quiet. I pray that you would see Jesus on Maundy Thursday, as we share the agape feast and recall the Last Supper, as we wash each others’ feet, as we strip the altar of everything that adorns it, as we keep watch hour by hour through the night. I pray that you would see Jesus as we kneel before the cross on Good Friday, pray the solemn prayers of our faith. I pray that you would see Jesus as we gather in the Columbarium on Saturday night at the Great Vigil, light a fire in the darkness, chant the names of our beloved dead. I pray that you would see Jesus as we find ourselves once more clothed in the light of the resurrection, with fanfare and music and joyous celebration.

This Holy Week and Easter, I pray that you would see Jesus. Because he promises that he is right here.

---

This is the promise, to those who teach Sunday school and to those who read the New York Times; to those who stop to pick up Thai food and eat it in front of the TV, and to those who make great food to share with church friends; to those who sing alone and to those who join their voices with others: “You will be my people,” God says to each one of us, “And I will be your God.” It’s God’s covenant with us all, written at the very center of who we are.

We are not the same church we were 50 years ago. We are a different institution than we were back then. And for that, honestly, I give thanks. Our pews may not be as full as they were 50 years past…but you are here. And you’re here because you have decided to be here, among a multitude of places you could choose to be, without social obligation hanging over your head to make that decision for you. Our budget may be proportionately smaller than it was 50 years ago, but we have everything we need to do the work we’ve been given to do, and people have given generously to support that good work, and we’re growing into a fuller manifestation of living as the church we’re called to be. Our leadership looks different than it would have looked 50 years ago. 50 years ago, not one of the clergy now serving this parish would have been welcome to pursue ordination. 50 years ago, only one of our two wardens would have been accepted by the canons, the laws of the church.

This is the promise, to the church of our heritage and to the church of this moment and to the church of the future, to the people who count themselves among that church and to those who define themselves as Spiritual But Not Religious: that God will be our God, and we will be God’s people. This is God’s promise: that when we say, along with the Greeks, “Sir, we would see Jesus,” we will.

This is the promise, as we follow the cross toward the hill and the tomb, as we wait again and still for that third day. This is the promise, written by God on our hearts, tended by the Spirit, sealed by Christ himself: that God would be our God, that we would be God’s people. That in looking for him, we would see him.

Because he’s right here.

[1] Harvey Cox. The Future of Faith. New York: Harper Collins, 2009. 20.

[2] Fred Craddock, ed. Preaching Through the Christian Year: Year B, A Comprehensive Commentary on the Lectionary. Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press, 1993. 162.

March 15, 2015: Fourth Sunday in Lent

Bryan Cones

Numbers 21:4-9

Who slipped this snaky passage into our readings today? That first reading obviously has a connection to the gospel with Jesus’ assertion that the Son of Man must be lifted up, like that serpent long ago, but it’s kind of a lot to digest just to make that point, with its overreacting, even homicidal God, who sends poisonous serpents among the people because they had complained one time too many as they were wandering in the desert. Why must we read a passage like this in Lent? Why has the church chosen it for our reflection? Indeed, why has this story been included at all in the family history our ancestors in faith have passed down to us in the Bible?

It’s passages like this one that led one early Christian, a man named Marcion, the son of a bishop in the second century, to completely reject the God of the Old Testament. Marcion was probably the first to divide the scriptures into Old and New, and he saw the God of the Hebrew Bible as an angry, jealous, tribal deity, completely incompatible with the Father of Jesus. So Marcion produced a cleaned up “Bible,” which was really quite brief, more like a pamphlet, just his version of the gospel of Luke, along with some of Paul’s letters.

Not that texts like this one are limited to the Hebrew scriptures. Thomas Jefferson, playing a latter day Marcion, clipped out with a razor all the gospel passages that offended his philosophical sensibilities— anything he judged to be supernatural. His Jefferson Bible focused on Jesus’ ethical teachings: no miracles, nothing about Jesus’ relationship to God, no healings or resurrection or any other funny business.

I doubt that Marcion or Thomas Jefferson would be the only two in the whole history of Christianity to want to edit the Bible: It’s full of troubling, even embarrassing stories, stories that have caused a lot of trouble and suffering for people. One of the more difficult ones for me is coming up on Good Friday: the Passion according to John, with its constant refrain that “the Jews,” “the Jews,” as if as a people, were responsible for Jesus’ death, a charge which has through the centuries resulted in real suffering and death for Jewish people.

So why not just cut these texts right out of the Bible? Or if not out of the Bible, at least out of the stories we read when we gather on Sunday. Our lectionary is already an edit of the Bible: We never read, for example, the long, florid list of curses that Jesus hurls against his opponents in the gospels of Matthew and Luke. It certainly is tempting just to keep on editing.

And while we are trimming our religious family history, I think I’d also like to do some editing on my own story. I’d love to take an X-Acto knife and surgically trim those embarrassing moments, the failures and sins, the wrong turns, the acts of prejudice, the times I have punished or judged others, the times I have chosen badly, or poisoned myself.

I’d also like clip out those poisonous influences on my life, the people that weren’t helpful to me, or the ones that led me astray, the bullies, the people who hurt me and made my life hard. Then along with a nice, tidy, consistent religious family story, I’d have a nice, tidy, consistent story of me to go along with it, though, admittedly, it might only be pamphlet-length. It’s so, so very tempting.

Is anyone else tempted?

Of course, I am not always nice or tidy or consistent, and neither is my family history, nor my family of faith. I am as complicated as the Bible, which is why it has been so helpful to me as a way to interpret life. I have struggled with an image of a punishing God, and with my own desire to punish or to have God punish others, or even wondered if I was being punished by God. I have wandered and complained, been bitten and poisoned, sometimes by my own doing, sometimes innocently. And I have found healing by facing truthfully whatever serpent has brought me trouble.

Does that sound familiar to anyone else?

In that light I’m grateful that we heard this story today, grateful that the Bible doesn’t let me or us off the hook, grateful that I have to struggle to make sense of a difficult story, and grateful that my complicated story is reflected in our complicated Bible story.

Lent is after all an invitation to be truthful, to decline the temptation to be anything other than I am, and perhaps we are: complicated human beings, with complicated families, and complicated stories, along with complicated faith, maybe even a complicated God, who nevertheless calls us, invites us, to be God’s complicated people.

March 8, 2015, Lent III

Kristin White

The Third Sunday of Lent

John 2:13-22

         This is the prayer we prayed just after the Confession and Absolution this morning, the Collect of the Day:

         Almighty God, you know that we have no power in ourselves to help ourselves: Keep us both outwardly in our bodies and inwardly in our souls, that we may be defended from all adversities which may happen to the body, and from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

         Now, theologically, there is much in that prayer that I would let go of. But this one line sticks in my head: Keep us, we prayed, outwardly in our bodies, and inwardly in our souls. Keep us in our bodies. Keep us in our souls.

         We’re a heady bunch, we Episcopalians. Among other revelations, the most recent Pew research showed that of all denominations in the United States, Episcopalians are the most highly-educated. It makes me think of an Episcopal friend’s tee shirt from the Divinity School at the University of Chicago: “That’s great in practice, but how does it work in theory?” We parse meaning and play with concept and argue interpretation. We have a history of loving words and using lots of them. And both of those things go back to the DNA of our denomination, back before the split from England to Elizabeth the First, who did two things: made sure that the words of our worship were the words of our daily lives (sure, made more shiny and maybe multi-syllabic, but still, a fancy version of the vernacular); and she gave us the inheritance of free thought: “I desire not a window into men’s souls,” we know her to have said. “Believe what you will. And come to church.”

         Keep us in our bodies. Keep us in our souls.

         Even in talking about bodies, we know how to remain in our heads. I remember defending the position I had taken on the theological argument on “incarnational Christology” in seminary, and being pretty proud of it. Extra syllables and all. (Incarnational Christology Meaning: Jesus is both fully human and fully divine. Meaning: Jesus is God, and Jesus has a body.)

         Conversely, we gasp at the frailty of our human bodies. We gasp the vulnerability of a newborn’s immune system in light of a measles outbreak in Palatine. We gasp at the anticipation of a diagnosis. We gasp at the danger and at all the implications in an elderly person’s fall.

         John’s gospel gives us a word about bodies in today’s passage. But even before we get to it, the poetry of that otherworldly, ethereal, evangelist echoes into the conversation. “And the word became flesh and lived among us,” John says. “Full of grace and truth.” And there’s some kind of irony in that, because this otherworldly, ethereal account describes the very concrete and earthy fact of God taking up space in this world with flesh and blood and bone. God is Word and God is more than Word. Because in the person of Jesus, God has a body. Fully human. Fully divine.

         Two chapters past that point lands us at today’s gospel. In an argument with the authorities, Jesus says that if they destroy this temple, he will raise it up. They are confused, those poor authorities. This is not a concept that is part of their vernacular. But Jesus isn’t talking about the temple of marble and gold that has been under construction in Jerusalem for 46 years. Jesus is talking about the temple of flesh and blood that is his body; the temple that for 33 years, right here on this earth, showed us what God looks like.

         And this is what that temple has revealed, this is what God looks like, right here: like walking alongside people who don’t know exactly where they are going, and are a little confused about what they’re going to do when they get there; like picking up children, when others want those kids to stay away; like feeding folks who are hungry, even when you never asked them to come along on what you thought was going to be a silent retreat; like trusting that what you need to eat and drink will be provided; like putting your hands on people who are sick; like “loving the bodies of other people who, like you, one day will die; like touching human flesh as if it is holy instead of worrying that it is unclean;”[1] like taking and blessing and breaking and giving bread to everybody who is hungry, and sharing a cup with those who thirst.

         These are the ways that the Body of Christ has shown us what God looks like. And you are that Body. You are that temple.

         Earlier this week, as he has before and will again, Bishop Lee told a group of people that the Church is not a Building. The church, the ecclesia, is the body of people assembled. The Church, the Body, is You. You are the temple that shows the world what God looks like.

         Keep us in our bodies, we pray.

         This church has known frailty and vulnerability and loss in these past months. I was interviewed a few days ago about the gathering we had last November, on All Saints’ Night. I told my interviewer about our comfort food potluck (mac and cheese, chicken potpie) and hymn sing, our conversations about what it means to die a holy death, our funeral planning time that evening. It was impossible to talk about it, though, without telling about the many people who had died from this church in the months before and since that night. “It feels like body blows,” I found myself saying. “We carry those losses as a Body.”

         As he has before and as he will again, Bishop Lee recently told a group of people that their minds will not save them. Their words, their checkbooks, their retirement accounts, their exercise regimes, their healthy eating practices, their education…all of them helpful, and none of them will save. But the Body will.

Christ was speaking of the temple of his body. Which is us. Which is you.

         And this is how we show the world that temple; this is how we show the world what God looks like, here on earth: we walk alongside people who don’t necessarily know exactly where they’re going, as they stumble and lose their way; we pick up children who want to be held; we feed people who are hungry; we put our hands around the hands of those who are sick, and dying; we take and bless and break and give bread, and we share the cup we have to share.

Because the word became flesh and lived among us.     

Because he was speaking of the temple of his body.

         This is what Lent brings us: “a body anointed, a body beaten, a body on a cross, a body laid in a tomb.”[2] Through it all, and through the 33 years that his body was a temple of flesh and blood in this world, and beyond, Jesus tells us that his body is what God looks like. And yours is too.

         The word becomes flesh and lives among us…full of grace and truth. “We are baptized into that word made flesh, (so) that we might become the flesh made word,”[3] that we might embody the truth of the gospel, become agents of the fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace.

         So yes, keep us, we pray.

         Keep us in our bodies.

         Amen.

[1] http://www.nadiabolzweber.com/uncategorized/in-the-beginning-a-sermon-on-the-occasion-of-paulas-baptism.htm

[2] http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=3547

[3] http://www.nadiabolzweber.com/uncategorized/in-the-beginning-a-sermon-on-the-occasion-of-paulas-baptism.htm

March 1, Second Sunday in Lent

Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16; Mark 8:31-38

Does anyone ever try to make “deals” with their parents? Like: If I do my homework, I get an hour of time of Facebook or Xbox or Minecraft? Or: If I eat two-thirds of my vegetables, I can have all the ice cream I want? Or: If I go to church, you take me out for breakfast?

When I was a kid, and first learning my negotiating skills, I used to try to make these kinds of deals with my dad. But he was pretty shrewd: If I proposed a deal in which I cleaned my room, in return for some new toy or a trip to McDonald’s he always countered with something like:  If you clean your room, I’ll feed you dinner. Or: If you mow the yard, I'll pay the heat bill. It was pretty hard to negotiate a deal with my dad.

But I can say for my dad, whether I lived up to my end of the bargain or not, he, along with my mom, always kept the heat bill paid and dinner on the table. I have been lucky and blessed in my parents. I hope most of us have been, too, because not everyone has been.

I’ve also sometimes made deals with God. Has anyone else ever tried to make a deal with God? Maybe especially when times were hard, or maybe when I had made a mistake, and needed some divine assistance to get out of the mess I was in, I made a deal with God.

I have found my deals with God to be kind of like my deals with my dad: I’ll do what I’m really supposed to do anyway if God will rescue me from whatever mess that at least sometimes was a result of me not doing what I was supposed to do anyway. Fortunately, God always keeps up God’s end of the deal, whether I do or not: always loving me, always forgiving me, always helping me to start over. We are lucky and blessed in the God we have.

And, actually, God is pretty much always offering good deals. Take today’s first reading: God offers Abraham a pretty sweet deal: Leave your homeland and follow me, and live according to my ways, and I will give you a family so large that you can’t count them, even though you are already 99 years old, and so is your wife, and you don’t have any children yet.

I think the reason Abraham fell on his face was because it was such a ridiculously good deal, too good to be true. When Sarah hears about it later, she laughs out loud, too.

Our first readings this Lent are all about God’s good deals; in the Bible they are called covenants: Last week it was Noah, when God promised not to destroy the earth with a flood again,  no matter how bad people were. This week, it’s Abraham and Sarah, whom God promises a multitude of nations. Next week, a ragtag bunch of slaves and outcasts from Egypt get the offer of having God as their ruler, and their own country, if they will only live in the ways of fairness and peace God gives them, those “Ten Best Ways” or Ten Commandments. Then, even when that deal gets complicated by the fact the people can never quite live up to the covenant, God promises to renew that deal again and again, over and over.

Which brings us to Jesus, whose deal doesn’t seem quite so good. Jesus offers a deal where, if we follow him as he carries his cross, we will get crosses of our very own. That sounds like a bad deal. Can I get in on that deal God offered Abraham? I think Peter was feeling the same way,  which is why he got up in Jesus’ face about having to die.

Jesus is pretty straightforward about the deal he is offering: Here’s what it means to be God’s beloved ones: We get to call God our Abba—just like our dad or mom or the person in our life we can always rely on. That’s how God will be with us.

And we get to be part of God’s household, workers and servants and partners and friends in God’s plan. We get to be part of God’s adventure in creation, to bring about with God what God dreams for the world.

Unfortunately, there are powers in the world opposed to God’s dream, and they will oppose us just as they opposed Jesus. That’s where the cross comes in. As many Christians have learned, and as Jesus learned, those forces can be very powerful, and they can be very mean. The good news is, they can’t stop God’s dream from happening; the bad news is, it won’t be easy. But what adventure is easy?

We Episcopalians have boiled down our side of our deal with God in Jesus into our baptismal covenant, which our confirmation candidates are reflecting on this Lent, and hopefully the rest of us are along with them. We promise in it to keep following Jesus and coming to church, to seek forgiveness and try again when we fail, to live in justice, fairness and peace with all people, and to see Christ in everyone and to serve him in them.

That deal has its own unique shape for each of us: Just like Abraham and Sarah, Noah and his family, the people of Israel, Jesus and Peter and Mary Magdalene and all those who followed Jesus, God is offering us a deal, a real adventure with God: a life that matters, even a death that matters, a dream worth living for, and dying for, and rising again for.

So perhaps we may ask ourselves this Lent: What kind of deal do you want to make with God? Or maybe: What kind of adventure do you want to have with God?