Sunday, December 9, 2018

Sermon for December 9, 2018 | Advent 2

The Journey: Preparing the Way

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah,
‘The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
“Prepare the way of the Lord,make his paths straight.
Every valley shall be filled,and every mountain and hill shall be made low,
and the crooked shall be made straight,and the rough ways made smooth;
and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”’

Something’s going on between the lines of today’s scripture. I’m going to read it again, and paraphrase what I think is being said by not being said.

It was the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, and the word of God did not come to the ruler of the Roman Empire. Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and the word of God did not come to him. Herod and his brothers presided over the Eastern Mediterranean world, and the word of God did not come to them. It was during the time when Annas and Caiaphas were the high priests of the Jewish Temple, and the word of God didn’t even come to them. The word of God came to John, son of Zechariah, in the wilderness.

After giving us the names and offices of the most powerful people of the day, Luke says the word of God bypasses the centers of power. The word comes to a hairy, cave-dwelling hermit who outside the thrones of power. It’s kind of a Luke thing. In the previous chapter, our well-known Christmas story of Luke 2, Mary and Joseph are told there is no room in the Inn. They must go to the barn to have the baby. The Word of God incarnate comes to the world from the outside. Luke tells us, “There were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night … And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid” (2:9). The first ones to hear about the birth of the new Kinge are sheep herders, a marginalized peasant class who experienced the oppression and exploitation of the Empire. Rejected and outside, they hear the Good News of the coming incarnate Word.

Thomas Merton has a classic essay from 1966 called “The Time of the End Is the Time of No Room.” Merton insists we must understand the severity of our present time. We need to understand that we are in a world inhospitable to God Incarnate, the Prince of Peace. The Inn was too crowded and there was no room for Jesus. Merton says that we live in the time of the Crowd: where there is a “vast indefinite roar of armies on the move and the restlessness of turbulent mobs.” It is a time of “the display of power, hubris, and destruction;” a time of “suspicion, hatred, and distrust.” He goes on to say that this is the time when, “…everyone is obsessed with lack of time, lack of space, with saving time, conquering space, projecting into time and place the anguish produced within them by technological furies of size, volume, quantity, speed, number, price, power, and acceleration … We are numbered in the billions, and massed together, marshaled, numbered, marched here and there, taxed, drilled, armed, worked to the point of insensibility, dazed by information, drugged by entertainment … nauseated with the human race and with ourselves, nauseated with life.”

He says, “There is no room for quiet. There is no room for solitude. There is no room for thought. There is no room for attention. There is no room for the Good News because it is drowned out with all of the noise.

And we want it so badly, don’t we. When I read the news, or thumb through my social media feeds, I want some good news. I want the powerful, the rich, the famous … the insiders … to finally offer me some inspiration. My attention yearns for the insiders to give me something more than distraction and entertainment.

I expect the word of God to visit the powerful. I noticed it in some of my reactions to Mr. Trump during the funeral for President George H.W. Bush. Much was made of how Mr. Trump did not really participate in the service – he did not sing the hymns or recite the Apostle’s Creed with other worshippers. He looked out of place and uncomfortable in the high church setting of the National Cathedral. He took a lot of teasing. I suspect some people thought that if he was in church, maybe God would speak to him. Maybe God did speak to Mr. Trump. But if Luke’s gospel is right, we should never expect it in the first place.

Consider how immigration legislation is discussed in the corridors of power. Immigrants are trotted out like figure heads, but the primary groups at the table are chambers of commerce, industry and defense contractor lobby groups, and a handful of DC-based immigration lobby groups vying with one another for a place at the table. The arguments always boil down to political realities and NEVER about what is best for immigrants as defined by immigrants. So, the decisions lack empathy. There is no room in the inn, so to speak, for the word of God to become alive and show us a better way.
The word of God comes to those who live and work outside the crowded inns of power and wealth and influence. The Gospel comes to those who can find no room in the Inn – the drowned-out, the crowded-out, the missed-out, the worn-out, and the left-out – like John the Baptist. The outsider is the one who hears the word, the outsider is the one preaches the word of repentance and forgiveness of sin. Would John have heard if he lived within the power and noise?

I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but here it comes – churches are notalways  the best places to hear the word of God. If it’s true that God’s word is best received on the outside, then maybe church isn’t the first place to go. Yes, church attendance has many benefits. And I like to think I offer some Good News each week. And, even though we complain a lot about how the church is losing influence and interest, the church still thrives on the inside. Even here at CCC, we can afford to make close to a million dollars of capital improvements to our properties. Yes, it seems necessary. Yes, I support the costs. And, I wonder if it all distracts us from hearing the word of God. Knowing the word of God. Living the word of God. I’m becoming more convinced that we will only experience it on the outside. The word of God comes when we can say ‘no’ to the way the world is and begin to create a new world built not on injustice, greed, individualism and passivity, but rather a world based on justice, community, solidarity, action and love of the other. I’m not sure how to get there, yet – how to abandon and reject the current power structures and social practices — how to become part of a spirituality that is much bigger, more intelligent and rational, and certainly more real, necessary and true than anything the insiders can offer.

Who will prepare the way? We prepare the way for God to live among us – at least that’s what we’ve been told. But let’s not overlook my key point. Those on the outside have heard the Good News. We need to prepare the way to hear from them. How do we receive the word of God from those who live outside? How can we allow some wildness and wilderness to enter our tame, predictable institutions? When the word of God comes, who will straighten our crooked paths and smooth our rough ways?
The poor, the displaced, those in the shadows of depression, the residents of nursing homes, migrants tear gassed on the border and refugees caught in  war by powerful armies, those without homes living on streets of the wealthiest nation in the world, and all those overwhelmed with grief … Women who talk about their sexual abuse publicly and protest men’s abuse of power,  African-Americans who call out the killing of the on innocent by police … The Good News comes to all who suffer, who search, who are outside. I have no doubt these are John the Baptist’s spiritual relatives, living outside, in the wilderness, hearing the word and call us to repentance. How will we listen?
Sources:
http://www.ekklesiaproject. org/blog/2012/12/outside-the-inn-siders/

Sunday, December 2, 2018

Sermon for December 2, 2018 | Advent 1

The Leafy Branch of Winter

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. And this is the name by which it will be called: “The Lord is our righteousness.” — Jeremiah 33:14-16

“My primary strategy for living through the 21st century and beyond is not to die,” Those are the words of Ray Kurzweil, the futurologist and Google engineer who opted to have his body cryogenically preserved at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Arizona. The central idea is simple: preserve the body in a pristine condition until medicine develops a cure for whatever brought about death in the first place – at which point one’s corpse is thawed and reanimated. Alcor charges $200,000 for the full body and $80,000 for head-only preservation and offers the option of clients taking out a life insurance policy that will pay out to the company. Forget about the fact that as soon as a frozen body is re-animated, there is likely to major damage that the freezing was supposed to avoid like ruptured membranes and lost neural connections. I wonder what happens to the soul? What happens to the thinking, feeling, connecting, remembering part of a person who is cryogenically preserved? Does the soul live suspended in some heavenly realm, like taking a long vacation to the Bahamas, and then reluctantly return? Do people who get re-animated become zombies? Maybe the Seventh-Day Adventists are right — maybe the soul just goes to sleep, lying dormant until the fullness of time.

Too bad freezing bodies can’t be more like planting seeds in the late Winter. I’m a New Englander, and we never think about planting before Memorial Day. Tomatoes grown indoors get too leggy. Early spring crops, like peas, do best in the warmed ground to begin. Winter is a time of stillness and relative inactivity. Yet beneath the surface of the ground, there is activity invisible to the human eye. Bulbs planted in the fall are dormant, but that dormancy is crucial to their coming to bloom the following spring. When the bulbs are planted, they immediately soak up all the moisture and nutrients from the soil that they can get and begin to put out shoots. When the deep freeze comes, their growth is halted. The coldness, the dormancy, is necessary if the bulb is to last more than one season. A period of rest allows the plant to grow in a more robust way in the longer term.

God works like that sometimes. Yes, in our tradition we have stories about God miraculously re-animating corpses, no corporate life insurance policy needed. My experience with God is less like that, and more like a dormant bulb waiting to come to life. We can experience times of relative quiet and inactivity where significant growth is happening beneath the surface. I remember going through a period of dryness for several years. When I meditated and prayed, I didn’t feel anything. I went through my routines, but the Spirit felt … I don’t know … not absent, but not present either; real but unavailable. I hit a low point where I felt defeated, helpless, and unhappy. I felt suspicious, closed off, and hardened. I felt like a victim to other people’s poor decisions. I was physically unhealthy. My coping mechanisms were not good. My spiritual life felt lifeless. I was dissatisfied with feeling dissatisfied. Looking back, I realize it was a time of preparation.

I now know that in when it felt like nothing was happening in my spiritual life, God was active in a way that was imperceptible. After the wintry latency ended, my prayer life shifted from less begging to more contemplation and imagination. I found motivation to reach new goals. I felt happier. I can’t quite say what God was doing during the time of quiet, but what followed was like the blossoming of a flower after dormancy. Signs of new life appeared, holding new surprises. Parts of my life are still growing, beckoning to flower with hope. And I’m now able to prune some of the old growth and deadwood that does not serve me anymore. I can let go of old ways and worn obligations. I can give energy to the commitments and covenants God invites me to now. The season of dormancy was necessary to re-focus my growing season.

Jeremiah alludes to these dormant promises in the life of his people. To people in the dormancy of exile, he says a time is coming when a promise will be fulfilled. A shoot will grow out of that which seemed dead. In the stark and barren winter of life, a green tendril will grow into a leafy branch. The promise is not dead, just dormant. God is still getting it ready, preparing and nourishing imperceptivity. When the promise comes, it will be a season for growth and newness. A season of justice and righteousness. A season of safety and salvation. Until then, until the fulness of time, it is a season of hope. Oh. Hope. Advent. A Savior. A baby. God born anew in human form. God with us. Emmanuel.

Perhaps you have felt absorbed in confusion and self-doubt for a season. Perhaps you feel alone, abandoned, and neglected by God and others. I don’t know when this season will break for you, but I do know that God is with us. Emmanuel, God is with us. Do not lose hope. When the promise comes, it will be a season for growth and newness.

Some say that hope is silent suffering through difficult times awaiting future righteousness. I think hope is here. We find hope in each other’s eyes, in a parent making lunch for a child, and in a medic’s night shift saving lives. Hope is in refugees seeking asylum and in neighbors taking care of each other. Hope is in the ordinary, mundane ways we keep going each day without giving in to cynicism. Hope is in the 4-week-old baby I held in my arms last week. Hope is the eyes of the person standing in the mirror before us every day. In hope, we press on and take care of each other, especially in the wintery seasons of our lives.

Hope is in a 2000-year-old story that we can’t stop telling. We can’t let it go, because it reminds us that there is greatness in the ordinary and newness from the dormant times of life. The light shines. The desert blooms. The righteous branch grows from a sleeping stump. The Divine comes to as a baby in a manager, and we keep remembering God understands what it means to come alive. God is with us. Emmanuel.

Sources:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/nov/18/the-cryonics-dilemma-will-deep-frozen-bodies-be-fit-for-new-life
https://www.ignatianspirituality. com/18647/winter-dormancy
https://www.ignatianspirituality. com/19578/two-necessary-seasons-of-life-pruning-and-dormancy.

Sermon for October 6, 2019

Abundant Bread Preached by Pastor Matt Braddock They found him on the other side of the lake and asked, “Rabbi, when did you get her...