Between noon and three

…spare us in the youngest day when all are shaken awake, facts are facts, (and I shall know exactly what happened today between noon and three); that we too may come to the picnic with nothing to hide, join the dance as it moves in perichoresis, turns about the abiding tree. — W.H. Auden, "Compline"

Tag: Prayer

March 25, 2018

Palm Sunday, 2018

This sermon was preached at St. Mark’s, Berkeley, on Palm Sunday, March 25, 2018. (The Annunciation normally falls on March 25, but because of the weight of Palm Sunday, Holy Week, and Easter Week, it will get pushed to Monday April 9. At St. Mark’s we will observe the Annunciation at Evensong on April 8, the second Sunday of Easter, though I know this bends the rules a little!) I have not announced a “theme” for my Holy Week sermons this year, but they are a continuation of the same ones begun earlier at St. Mark’s on worship and life with God. In hindsight, I might have titled these, “The moment that does not pass away,” borrowing an observation on the crucifixion by Br. Jeremy Driscoll, OSB, in his book “A Monk’s Alphabet.” — the point is, the events of Holy Week and in particular the Triduum are the heart of Christian life and identity, the focal point around which everything else, including the cosmos, revolves. These sermons explore that conviction, and try to offer a few different points of entry.

Collect: Almighty and everliving God, who, of thy tender love towards mankind, hast sent thy Son our Savior Jesus Christ to take upon him our flesh, and to suffer death upon the cross, that all mankind should follow the sample of his great humility: Mercifully grant that we may both follow the example of his patience, and also be made partakers of his resurrection; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Readings: Isaiah 50:4-9a, Philippians 2:5-11, Mark 14:1-15:47

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen:

After the Passion Gospel a sermon needs hardly to be preached; you’ve already heard most of what there is to say! But all the same I’d like to spend a few moments sketching out the territory for the week ahead.

We began this morning with one of the most ancient collects in our prayer book: “Assist us mercifully with thy help, O Lord God of our salvation, that we may enter with joy upon the contemplation of those mighty acts, whereby thou hast given us life and immortality.” The contemplation of those mighty acts. How do we accomplish this contemplation? In large part by dramatic reenactment.

We began this service out in the courtyard and sang the same Hosannas, waving the same palm branches as the crowds in the Gospel. We’ve just heard a dramatic retelling of the same episode. In my last parish we began out on the front lawn, even invited a local petting zoo to be a part of the day. The star visitor was a venerable donkey named Donatello, a fifteen year veteran of the festivities, who always proudly led the procession into church.

Over the course of this coming week we’ll undertake to wash one another’s feet, carry the Sacrament to the altar of repose, strip the altars, venerate the cross, and carry out a vigil as after a loved one’s death — all dramatic retellings of this series of events which is right at the heart of the church’s identity.

So, with God’s help, we enter the contemplation of these mighty acts. A big part of this is remembering what happened, and who were the players, and what were their motivations. We tell the story dramatically over the course of these days In part to jog our memories, and to give us the time we need to consider the scope of the drama and to offer us various points of entry into the unfolding narrative.

Remembering in this way, just like revisiting the story of the Pilgrims on Thanksgiving or Thomas Jefferson on July 4, helps to create a common set of reference points for who we are as a people, as a family of faith. It creates a baseline of shared memory: none of us were there ourselves all those years ago, and yet we are the common heirs of the memories all the same. Sharing them with one another creates and sustains the succession of generations for whom this holy week is their own inheritance, their own treasure.

It’s a remembrance, but it’s more than a remembrance. This past Wednesday, at the regular 12:10 service, the appointed first reading was from Daniel — that episode where Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego get thrown into the fire for not worshiping the king’s golden image. You know the story: instead of burning up, they walk around in the flames together, saying prayers and singing hymns. Meanwhile, as they walk around, King Nebuchadnezzar is watching to make sure they burn up like they’re supposed to — but he notices it’s taking longer than usual, and also he notices a fourth person in the flames with them, who wasn’t there when they got thrown in: he looks like a son of God. The king is so confused he lets them all out, and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are all unscathed — but no trace of the fourth person. The implication is, that, as the three of them said their prayers and sang their hymns, God himself appeared beside them.

We tell ourselves the same thing as a way of encouraging us to pray, and to come to church: especially this week! — when we remember together as a group the events of Jesus’ passion and death. As we pray together and sing, God appears among us, affirming our faith and leading us to the other side of whatever challenge we might be facing. Jesus promises that wherever two or three are gathered together in his name, there he is in the midst of them.

But it’s important to remember, praying is not a way of coercing God to show up. In the fiery furnace, the angelic visitor did not show up because he was impressed by Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego’s faith, or by their discipline, or their conviction. And for that matter on the cross: God does not decide to forgive our sins just because Jesus says, “Forgive them, father, for they know not what they do.” No, the thing about prayer, and the thing about remembering in the context of prayer, is that it does not coerce God into doing something that wouldn’t otherwise happen; rather, prayer reveals what is already true, shows what is already present, and enables us to recognize what was there all along but we couldn’t see or notice.

In the fiery furnace, Nebuchadnezzar could finally see for himself that God was with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego no matter how badly the king might try to isolate and shift their loyalties to himself alone. When a priest anoints the sick and prays for healing, it’s not magic for manipulating germs or enchanting the body’s powers of recovery. It’s merely to reveal that God the source of life is present even in the midst of illness, suffering, and death; and that the sight, the glimpse, the touch of God which anointing reveals allows for a more profound healing than any miraculous cure or magical incantation. On the cross when Jesus prays, “Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do,” he reveals to everyone present and to all of us that God’s mercy runs far deeper than any sin, violence, mockery, or injustice, and we can only be silent in awe before the mystery.

So it is with Holy Week, and with all our liturgical remembering — and for that matter with all our prayer in whatever context we offer it. We do not create what was not present already; we do not coerce the nearer presence of some reluctant or faraway deity. We merely open a window on what was there all along, and which will continue through endless ages, closer than the closest friend or brother, or even thought or feeling.

The events of Holy Week, its characters, and chief of all its God do not pass away. In remembering them together, we open a window onto a deeper reality than we can see most of the time.

In Holy Week, we see again as if for the first time a God whose chief characteristic is generosity, free and open and continuous to the world he has made, full of mercy and loving-kindness. We see a world gathered together around a death, uneasy with the wickedness that has been done, implicated in more ways than one, but powerless to stop it from carrying on. We see a Savior betrayed, but who in betrayal forges a way through death: that what was once an ending, the only ending, ending every story ever told, is now the continuation of my story and of every story in the further reaches of divine Love.

In Holy Week we see everything orchestrated together into a music which all creation sings. As we reenact, and remember, and pray, and sing together, we take up our parts and join the harmony of the whole. This year may God grant us a special glimpse of this music in which the whole world is caught up, along with life and death and all time. As we retrace the final steps of Jesus’ earthly life, may we see all the more clearly that pattern, that rhythm, to which the whole world moves. Seeing more clearly, may we love more truly; and loving more truly, may our joy overflow.

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Amen.

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March 18, 2018

What good does it do me?

This sermon was preached at St. Mark’s, Berkeley, on the Fifth Sunday of Lent, March 18, 2018.

Collect: O Almighty God, who alone canst order the unruly wills and affections of sinful men: Grant unto thy people that they may love the thing which thou commandest, and desire that which thou dost promise; that so, among the sundry and manifold changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Readings: Jeremiah 31:31-34, Hebrews 5:5-10, John 12:20-33

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen:

Recently l was talking with a parishioner, and the subject of prayer came up. “I learn the words,” he said, “But part of me also wonders, what good is this really supposed to do me?” I confess I sputtered a bit, because I normally operate from the presumption that prayer is an objective good in itself, valuable despite whatever benefit we might or might not derive from it. It doesn’t usually occur to me to ask “What good does it do me?”

I’m sure I answered with something unsatisfactory, and the conversation moved on. But I’ve been thinking ever since. Even if it is an objective good, apart from any personal benefit, there should be something to say about the good it does. One good place to start is the passage from Jeremiah this morning. “I will write my law on their hearts and on their mouths; and they shall not need to teach one another, saying, ‘Know the Lord, for they will all know me.’”

There is something about the repetition of words and phrases, which begins to sink into the mind and heart. It’s easier to feel loved when a loved one says “I love you,” on a regular, repeated basis. And when the going gets tough, those repeated affirmations become an internal backstop, a confidence which underlies whatever surface struggles or tensions we might face.

So it is with prayer. Words repeated over time enter the mind and heart and begin to undergird our daily reality with the promise and presence of God. When the going gets tough, and often when we least expect it, whatever prayers have sunk into our hearts resurface and work as guiding lights in the midst of chaos and uncertainty.

It reminds me of a story a father once told me about the first night his infant son was in the hospital. It was a sudden and unexpected emergency, and that first night, helpless, the father turned to prayer after a long time away from praying. He said he felt utterly stranded, he couldn’t think of a single word to say, or any way to start praying — just that he wanted to, and was devastated he couldn’t. But in that moment as he knelt in agony, without even words to offer, a childhood prayer came back to him which he remembered somehow from Sunday School. It was all he could offer, and yet in that moment it was enough; and as he said the words, a calm came over him that he never thought possible. From that moment on, he was convinced he had met God, and in a very powerful way he had.

We pray so that the words of our prayer might sink into our hearts and minds, and become second nature, a second language. But it doesn’t stop there. So often in life the things we adopt as second nature — the activities and hobbies where we spend our leisure — all become more than second nature. They come to shape our imaginations and define who we are. That’s clearest in a sacramental framework where a person ordained a priest really becomes a priest; or where married persons become something more together than the sum of their parts. But it’s also true in a smaller way in everyday habits and patterns. We introduce ourselves by our professions, our hobbies, our loyalties, our relationships. “I’m a teacher,” one person says, or think of all the cartoons and memes featuring some variation on, “Work at the firm pays the bills, but my life is fishing.” — or golf, or music, or whatever. We define ourselves by the second natures we adopt; and in doing so the second nature shapes and directs our primary nature.

Our whole lives long we are still becoming what we will grow up to be. For prayer to come as second nature to us is for it to shape our imagination, our powers of perception, until our primary nature is marked by openness to the presence and power of God. A life of prayer is a life of becoming more and more aware of the movement and mystery of God’s grace within and beyond whatever happiness or anxiety we face in any given moment. In this way, the words of our prayer and the choice to offer it become less like going to a river to sip water — it does nourish us and it does strengthen us — but more than that, it’s like getting in a boat and sailing downstream and out to sea. We move through the landscape from a completely different perspective, carried by the river at least as much as we navigate it ourselves, until it finally opens up onto a limitless horizon, and we look back at the land, our home, from the sea and see just how good and precious it is.

“In that day no one needs to teach one another saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.” As God’s words enter our hearts, our hearts enter God’s. Far from a small enclosure, there is room there for the whole creation and all worlds that ever were or might ever be.

Which brings me to the last piece of good that prayer does for us: and that is, that it puts us in touch with God himself at work within us, just as he is at work in all life. Prayer is something that happens in us, something that God accomplishes within us, at least as much as it is something we say or offer ourselves. When we pray, “Our Father,” as Jesus taught us, we offer the same words Jesus himself offered to God, we step into his own prayer, into his Spirit, who prays his prayer within us. When we pray, we open ourselves to the movement of the Holy Spirit who gives us life, who is the ground of who we are and who we are meant to be. In short we are put in touch with the core of our inmost nature: made in the image of God, yet still unfolding in every moment of our lives.

In this way we can understand a little better then what Jesus means in today’s Gospel when he reiterates the same thing he said to Nicodemus last week: “I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” He makes from the cross his own final prayer, “Father into thy hands I commend my spirit.” — His final prayer, which is the heart of all prayer: the Son of God offering himself to God the Father, opening himself continually to the movement of the Holy Spirit, even in the face of death itself. There is a magnetism here which the whole creation is bound up in, everything that is created by God and depends on God for life; and when death itself is drawn into prayer in this way, whatever power it had to sever and break is ended. When we pray we are brought back to this moment, this eternal offering of the Son to the Father in the Holy Spirit, this unity of all creation in love.

What good does it do us? It may not be measurable by clinical or financial standards. But it does put us in touch with the whole reason and mystery and majesty of life. And the more we open ourselves to this mystery, the more wonder-filled and delighted we will be as persons; the more capable of weathering the storms and difficulties that inevitably come; the more bound up in one another our lives will become, and the more we will recognize ourselves as creatures of love whose lives are hid with Christ in God.

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Amen.

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January 29, 2018

The Reliability of God

This was my first sermon at St. Mark’s, Berkeley, CA, preached on the Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany, January 28, 2018. This was three weeks after my last sermon at St. Michael & St. George, and in the meantime I was able both to take my annual retreat at the Monastery of Christ in the Desert in New Mexico, and to move to the Bay. Thanks to all for your patience these last few weeks especially, as I’ve been slow to respond to emails and even slower to update this site. Life is getting settled more and more now with every passing day, and I’ll be back in the swing of things before long.

Collect: Almighty and everlasting God, you govern all things both in heaven and on earth: Mercifully hear the supplications of your people, and in our time grant us your peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Readings: Deuteronomy 18:15-20, 1 Corinthians 8:1-13, Mark 1:21-28

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen:

Good morning everyone! It is a pleasure long-awaited to be here with you this morning. I’m looking forward very much to getting to know you better, and to serving as your priest.

I promise it’s not usually my habit to begin a sermon by commenting on the lectionary itself, so it’s probably bad form to do so this morning, but at this point you’re stuck — so there it is.

Here we are on the fourth Sunday after the Epiphany. Jesus has been baptized in the Jordan, he has called his disciples, and now he begins his ministry officially with a sermon and a healing in Capernaum. By pairing this Gospel with the passage from Deuteronomy we heard read, the lectionary framers are pointing out that Jesus is the fulfillment of this prophecy: Jesus is the “second Moses,” the “prophet like Moses” which Moses prophesied to the people of Israel that God would send to fulfill the promises and usher in the messianic age.

It’s a connection rife with theological riches. But for myself, I’m stuck wondering, why on earth did it take so long? By most reckonings, that prophecy would have been made to Moses at the very least many, many centuries before Jesus came on the scene; and at the very most, potentially almost two full millennia before Jesus came on the scene. Why such a long wait?

It begs a lot of questions about what God was doing in the meantime, and Israel, and should make us stop to think — with such a long time between promise and fulfillment, how were people supposed to carry on? There were the prophets, and kings, and psalmists, and all the rest. But none of them were the final word.

So much waiting in their lives of faith, across so many generations. So much waiting in our own lives of faith, or our lives, period, for that matter. Isn’t there more to it than just so much waiting? As Christians we hold very dearly that God is faithful, and more than that, that God is reliable. How do we experience this reliability, how do we know it for ourselves, when so much of our lives are spent waiting for God to act, or for some other goal or occasion? Or worse, how can we trust the reliability of God when disappointment looms, and things don’t go as planned or hoped?

For the Israelites, in exile as in Egypt, they had to become people of prayer if they were going to keep going without the familiar places or rituals of land or temple. And in their prayer, they recalled the former days of God’s faithfulness: his faithfulness to Abraham and to Moses; to Ruth, David, Bathsheba, Esther, Daniel, and all the rest. There was something so central about remembering the past that it came to characterize prayer in the present: when Jesus first appears in the synagogue at Capernaum, Israelite religion had flourished in the long centuries of exile and subjugation, flourished with prayerful remembering of all those long centuries. When he gets up to preach he first reads from the scroll of the Torah, recalling to mind those events of ages past.

But more than remembering, their prayer included the offering of the present too. Isaiah, Jeremiah, the Psalmists, constantly offer all the anxieties and concerns — and joys and celebrations — of the present moment to God in prayer. Today in Capernaum Jesus, with the whole rabbinic tradition of which he was a member, directed his teaching at the present moment, helping the people to offer their daily lives to God, all their experiences and all their moments. Beyond the synagogues, in Jesus’ day whole schools of prayer flourished in which the faithful were trained to live the present moment as an offering to God; and all the vast system of rules and regulations, so often lampooned as merely “Pharisaical,” existed to help people mark all the moments and tasks of their daily lives with a prayerful attitude.

Furthermore, by Jesus’ day Israelite religion had grown oriented towards the future too, and their prayer followed suit. Not just remembering the past, not just marking the present; but standing on tiptoes as it were, looking forward both to the coming of the Messiah and finally to the end, when all the promises would be fulfilled. The Jewish mystical tradition comes out of this orientation towards the future, and many of their great hymns and sacred music as well, which Jesus and his disciples would have known and the early church would have sung. (Music which, incidentally, continues to shape the life of the Church in its later development as Gregorian chant.)

In the centuries and millennia between promise and fulfillment, then, the people of God carried on by becoming people of prayer: people whose prayer was characterized by a concern for remembering the past, marking the present, and orienting themselves towards the future.

I’d be hard pressed to come up with a better summary of what prayer is all about: what is prayer but sharing memories with God, painful, joyful, and otherwise? What is prayer but sharing the present moment with God, with its struggles and celebrations? What is prayer but sharing hopes with God, both for healing of griefs and for fulfillment of cherished dreams?

If you and I ever find ourselves in a position where the gap between promise and fulfillment seems too long to bear, or where the tension between what is right and what is actually happening is impossible to bridge; or simply where grief looms with no way out, offer it to God in prayer. Start with the present moment; recall the past with all its twists and turns, highs and lows; direct yourself towards the future in anticipation that God will finally prove faithful yet, that peace will finally come in all its splendor — and you will have covered the bases.

But more than covering the bases, you will find something mysterious going on. As you share all these moments and concerns with God, the present, the past, and the future all commingle together in the presence of the Holy Spirit; and as they commingle, by God’s grace a new thing is made. Our memories, our present, our futures, are transfigured and transformed, recast into a new thing beyond any of them. More than a backward glance, more than a glimpse far off, in prayer we find our lives the occasion of heaven itself breaking into the here and now, especially into hurt and grief, anguish and anxiety. A new thing happens, God himself appears, and we encounter him most personally right where we need it most.

This is certainly one of the points that St. Mark is making in this passage from his gospel this morning. It’s no wonder that Jesus’ first miracle, and his first official public appearance, occur together, in the context of the people of God at prayer, in the synagogue.

So here’s the kicker. When we take all our waiting, all our griefs, all our frustrations, hopes, and concerns to God in prayer, in public or in private, God’s answer is not necessarily to do what we ask, but to show up himself, just as Jesus showed up in that synagogue in Capernaum. When we are most sick of waiting, most frustrated by the promise of peace still lingering so far off, God shows up to teach and to heal; Jesus shows up, commending himself to our touch, our taste, our nourishment, and most of all, to our love.

Yes when God shows up, it is not to answer our questions to resolve our dilemmas or give us directions on what to do next; it is to commend himself to our love. When we are filled with perplexity, God is not in the business of giving satisfactory explanations for us to understand, but of revealing his face for us to love. And in that love our griefs are held and healed.

So what are we to do in the long gap between promises and fulfillment? Jesus came as Moses prophesied, but more than a thousand years later. Jesus has made promises to us too, about the peace that passeth understanding, and the fullness of his kingdom coming soon. In times and moments when that seems especially far off and grief and disappointment are still to near, let’s you and I turn to prayer. There may we find painful memory and uncertain hope, both of them, recast before the face of God, recast into the wide open embrace of his presence, his healing, and his peace. There may we find the courage to love even as Jesus loved, and find heaven itself breaking into our midst.

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Amen.

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December 24, 2017

Rejecting Spiritual Technology

This sermon was preached on the Fourth Sunday of Advent, 2017, at St. Michael & St. George. This was a rare year when December 24 fell on a Sunday, and we were faced with the challenge of keeping two very different occasions on the same day. Writing this sermon I was very conscious of composing an “Advent” sermon, and not Christmas, though the temptation to blend the two was great – especially with the Gospel of the Annunciation. The opening is something of a gimmick — do a google search for “news December 17-24, 2017” to see the whole range of issues and events I could have been referencing!

Collect: We beseech thee, Almighty God, to purify our consciences by thy daily visitation, that when thy Son Jesus Christ cometh he may find in us a mansion prepared for himself; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Hosly Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Readings: 2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16; Romans 16:25-27; Luke 1:26-38

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen:

It was only a week or so ago, but already there’s been a massive response across the country and even around the world. The magnitude of this new spin on the old themes took nearly everyone by surprise; we’re still processing exactly what happened, and what it will mean, though already we know that life won’t be quite the same after this. Meanwhile no one except insiders know where we’re going next, and they’re certainly not telling. There are a lot of rumors of course, and a lot of theories, but really we’ll just have to buckle down to wait and see.

I’m talking of course about “The Last Jedi,” the newest installment in the Star Wars franchise. One of the things I appreciate most about this newest film was articulated by a friend of mine: “At least as far as the Jedi part is concerned, there’s a lot less emphasis on the technology, on the chemistry of how it works than we saw in the earlier films, and a lot more emphasis on the intangibles of imagination, and perspective, and relationships.” The result is a much more three-dimensional world that cannot be nailed down or exhausted as easily as in the past.

That got me thinking: Star Wars and the Christian Religion are not exactly comparable categories. But something analogous has been happening in our churches and in our culture for generations now. Somehow we have reduced the Christian religion to mere “spiritual technology.” Do X and you’ll be fine; swallow this or that far-fetched explanation and your life will improve. Come to church and you’ll go to heaven. Pray this prayer, vote this way, buy these books, or listen to that music, and somehow, magically, you’ll grow in faith and discover the meaning of life.

I can see why that’s tempting: human beings are solution-oriented after all. We have a problem and we want it fixed. We have a goal and we want to reach it. We have a project and we want to complete it. It’s completely natural for us to regard religion in the same way. So we accumulate bits of spiritual technology: phrases, theories, habits, products, to help us get what we want. It’s completely natural.

But just like previous iterations of Star Wars, the end result is a watered-down imagination, and an anemic sense of our relationship to the whole, let alone to God.

Why do I bring all this up this morning, on the Fourth Sunday of Advent, right on the brink of Christmas Eve and the great feast of the Nativity? Because this is a time of year when the Church talks a lot about promises, about expectations, about the fulfillment of long-standing hopes for light and peace and goodness, in a world which we are constantly reminded is a dark and despairing place.

Of course it’s important for us to say all these things, to revisit the old prophecies, retell the old stories, and remember the promises. But how do we keep from letting all these things become for us just more bits of outdated spiritual technology that fail to get us what we want? How do we open ourselves to the larger mysteries, to the multi-dimensional world of faith and religion beyond transaction and exchange?

First of all, by remembering that Christianity is not actually about your spiritual life, or mine. It is about God. It’s worth remembering, from time to time, the immortal line from Evelyn Underhill: “God is the interesting thing about religion.” The Christian religion is not about you. It is about God, about the world God has made, and the incarnation of Jesus Christ which makes creation holy and renders it all a thank-offering to God the Father. If you and I are involved at all, it’s to participate in God’s larger project of forgiveness, healing, and renewal; it’s to get some sustaining glimpse of that eternal love “that moves the sun and the other stars,” until we are made fit to participate more fully, to enter into that divine life forever. It is emphatically not about me getting what I want.

Which finally brings us to the doorstep of that house in Nazareth where in today’s Gospel Mary sits at prayer, and where she is surprised by a visit from the Archangel Gabriel. If you and I are going to find Christmas to be Good News again for us, we have to follow Mary’s pattern and pray. That doesn’t mean filling our heads with lots of positive thoughts. That doesn’t mean compiling a catalogue of all our good wishes for various needs or people. It means we just have to stop. Stop all the noise. Put down all the technology, spiritual or otherwise, and listen. Listen to the clock ticking, listen to your heart beating, listen to your own breathing, whatever it takes, just listen.

Listen, and watch: watch for how quickly your mind goes to the cares which press on it, watch for how quickly the worries and the fears and the inadequacies and all the rest come rushing in. What is your conscience afraid of? What weakness or sickness or vulnerability in yourself presses particularly painfully? What hopes do you cherish, what grudges do you nourish, where do your affections lie, whose regard are you desperate to win? In the silence all these doors and passageways and countless more will open to you; you will begin to be aware of the dizzying moral and spiritual complexities of everyday life, and of the vast scope of your own involvement in the world.

Mary sits at prayer in her home in Nazareth, her spirit listening and watching in the silence at the heart of it all. And this is when the Archangel appears, this is the moment when Gabriel declares her “Full of grace.” This is the moment, right when she is most in touch with her own needs and vulnerabilities, that God appears and salvation enters the world.

It might sound counterintuitive, but so much the better. The more you and I are in touch with all those cares and anxieties which constantly threaten to swamp us, the better prepared we are to meet God. The more we admit of our weakness and vulnerability, the easier we will be able to receive the Christ Child. The more truthful we can be about our own doubts and fears and despair, the clearer we will be able to see the dawn of new life when it comes over the horizon tomorrow.

No, Christianity is not about your spiritual life. It is not about spiritual technology at all, not about doing the right thing, or saying things that sound holy or religious or whatever. It’s not about fulfilling expectations, or even about generosity. It is about God; about being quiet enough to listen, truthful enough to admit my own weakness, and sensitive enough to see God working even in ways that don’t make sense and in places we’d rather not notice. Christmas is Good News for us precisely because it enters the world at its quietest, most vulnerable point; because it enters us at our weakest, most fearful moments, when we are most conscious of our failures and our impotence. In this way God grants dignity and grace to the very lowest of the low, and makes his Divine Majesty resident in the humblest of places.

This Advent 4, as we race onward towards Christmas Eve, let us resolve afresh to reject the enticements of spiritual technology, put away the drive to get what I want out of God, and listen: listen and watch, in our hearts and our world, for the humiliation which silence reveals. And let us catch a glimpse of the worlds on worlds of new life and new love which God is calling forth from the empty, barren, and broken places of the earth.

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Amen.

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July 10, 2017

Prisoners of Hope

This sermon was preached at St. Michael & St. George on Sunday July 9, 2017, the 4th Sunday after Trinity/3rd after Pentecost. It was my first Sunday back from vacation in California and England. Among other things, the choir sang one of my favorite anthems, Howells’s “Mine eyes for beauty pine.” (Text by Robert Bridges: Mine eyes for beauty pine, My soul for Goddes grace: No other care nor hope is mine, To heaven I turn my face. / One splendor thence is shed, From all the stars above: ‘Tis named when God’s name is said, ‘Tis Love, ’tis heavenly Love. / And every gentle heart, That burns with true desire, Is lit from eyes that mirror part Of that celestial fire.)

Collect: O God, who hast taught us to keep all thy commandments by loving thee and our neighbor: Grant us the grace of thy Holy Spirit, that we may be devoted to thee with our whole heart, and united to one another with pure affection; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reighneth with thee and the same Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Readings: Zechariah 9:9-12; Romans 7:15-25a; Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen:

Just before I left on vacation, a woman came to my office to share with me something important that had just happened in her life. She was very nervous: she had made a momentous decision that was the fruit of many long months of anxious thought. As she told me about it, it was clear that this was a decision for the best, but I also noticed that she was so overwhelmed she was visibly shaking. I didn’t want her to be embarrassed, I’ve been in that situation before too. Momentous decisions tend to have that effect on us: it’s hard for us to separate our selves from the matter at hand. And it’s the nature of the thing, decisions like these actually do a lot to shape who we are as people, and how we operate in the world. No doubt you have your own set of moments like this one, where so much of yourself is invested in the outcome that it becomes a part of you.

The prophet Zechariah seems to have something like this in mind today in our first lesson, when he addresses people whom he calls, “prisoners of hope.” “Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope; today I declare that I will restore to you double.” It’s the end of a passage we usually read in Advent, or Palm Sunday. But today, the 9th of July, it’s an invitation to consider our own moments as prisoners of hope: when we are so invested in a positive outcome we find it hard to separate our selves from our hope. Maybe that’s something as simple and good as a successful pregnancy, or maybe something more dire: hoping for relief from some kind of affliction, or help for someone else; hoping for Mom to stop drinking, or for Dad to fall in love again; or for Illinois to get its budget figured out. Whatever it is, we can find ourselves completely wrapped up in the pressures of the moment, prisoners of hope, or else prisoners of anxiety or fear.

St. Paul continues the same tack, in one of his most famously neurotic passages — and actually one of the earliest examples of writing of this kind: the passage we heard from his letter to the Romans is full of intense self-searching, self-doubt; a psychological exploration of the body’s complicity in sin, along with the will’s impotence to accomplish the good it desires. He concludes with one of the most despairing cries in Scripture, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” Thankfully St. Paul follows this passage from Romans 7 with Romans 8, and if you want the end of the story go home and read Romans 8; copy it down, memorize it, take it with you everywhere, put it under your pillow at night. But for now, Romans 7 presents us with Paul himself as a prisoner of hope: full of hope for the good, but a prisoner to the anxiety of his mind.

One of the best analogies I can think of is digital and social media: Facebook, YouTube, television, email, all of them are what I call “infinity devices,” to which there is effectively no end: we keep scrolling, we keep watching, there’s always something more to see, to read, to “like.” Our minds are like that too: there’s always another pressure, another distraction, another task that needs doing, idea that needs exploring, event that needs unpacking, emotion that needs expressing. This constant “mindstream” can imprison us, keeping us from exploring the full range of the world around us, keeping us from doing the good we wish or loving as we ought. What to do?

In the midst of all this, the Gospel promises relief: Jesus gives us one of the most famous of his Comfortable Words, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

How is this? What is the relief that Jesus brings? How does he loose the bonds of us prisoners of hope?

As Christians we think a lot about the God who saves us, and how that’s accomplished. But we don’t as often think about who it is that God saves. That’s you and me. And if you’re like me, maybe sometimes you could do with a little more thought, a little more consideration for you, yourself, just you, whom God saves; not in a narrow self-centered way that makes ME the center of the universe; but in a way that frees us from our various anxieties and emotions, and places us on secure footing in the simple, unconditional love of God. Only the love of God frees us to engage all the more fully with our neighbors, freed from the pressure of our “mindstream” infinity device.

Be still for a moment. Stop. Just listen. Let the love of God drive a wedge between you and the constantly playing screen of stories and reactions and worries in your head. Let them be, but you just step aside for a moment without them, and consider that here, alone, in the quiet, just yourself, with nothing else, you are with God.

You are not merely the sum of your emotions, your opinions, even your convictions; you are not your failures, your talents, your sins, your virtues; I am not my anxiety, or my fortitude, or whatever. The Lord’s yoke that is easy, his burden that is light, is simply the knowledge that you in yourself, without anything else, in silence, the person that God made, is the person whom God loves, whom God saves.

All this might sound like pop psychology, but it is deeply rooted in the Gospel, and the hard work of Christian prayer. The better we know ourselves as creatures of God’s love, the better we can know God, as the one who loves us. The more we do that, the more we can love our neighbors and our world for God’s sake and theirs, selflessly, not needing them to answer our own worries or hopes, but allowing them to delight us with who they are as creatures of God’s love themselves.

We all have hard decisions to make, and I’m not advocating we ignore them or pass them off as mere distractions. But I am suggesting that the Gospel releases us from imprisonment to our mindstreams, and equips us to see the world for what it really is: a surprising, unnecessary creation which God made for the sheer delight of it, in which you and I may find our places as creatures of his love, of his forgiveness.

May we hear today Jesus’ voice calling through the fray, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me. For I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Amen.

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August 21, 2016

“Our Father…”

This sermon was preached on July 24, 2016, at the Church of St. Michael and St. George. I had just been with our mission team in Nicaragua over the past week — our 17th annual trip to the same place. The Gospel was the episode where Jesus taught his disciples the Lord’s Prayer.

Collect: O God, the protector of all that trust in thee, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy: Increase and multiply upon us thy mercy, that, thou being our ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal, that we finally lose not the things eternal; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Readings: Genesis 18:20-33, Colossians 1:21-29, Luke 11:1-13

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen:

Many of you know that I was away this past week, with our mission team in Nicaragua. They’re still there, they’ll be there for another week, but I was grateful for the chance to spend these few days with them, and to share with them the work that they’re doing. If you’ve never been on this mission trip, I strongly encourage you to consider going next year.  

It’s one of the most unusual mission trips I’ve ever participated in. First of all, our work is directly with the people who live there. Lots of mission teams seem to operate on an industrial model these days, where there are lots of intermediaries between the team participants and the people they serve. Not so with our team: we worked directly with a local organization that runs a school and a clinic. Unlike most mission teams, who stay off-site and get bused in, we stayed in the same neighborhood where we worked. We saw the same people every day, and our team has been seeing these same people for close to twenty years now. The number of happy reunions I witnessed was remarkable: residents of the neighborhood greeted members of our team as if they were old friends, and indeed they were. Because I was new to this mission trip, our people were constantly telling me stories as we carried out our work: stories about this or that building that wasn’t there ten years ago, or this or that family and their news, or a local church congregation with whom we had been worshiping, or various projects they had completed, or funny stories they had experienced.

Most mission teams go to a place, complete the tasks assigned, take lots of pictures, buy lots of souvenirs, and go home, where they start planning for somewhere different next year. Not ours. I have to say I was extremely impressed not merely by the accumulation of work we’ve accomplished over the last 18 years, but even more by the quality of the relationships we have built and the way the Nejapa neighborhood of Managua has become another home for St. Michael and St. George.

Why do I say all this to begin my sermon? First because you all ought to know just what a wonderful thing this is that we do every year at CSMSG, and how unusual in its quality. And second, because it’s a perfect analogy to begin talking about today’s readings. This morning we’ve heard a fairly systematic series of readings on prayer, and the various forms it takes. Abraham negotiates with God about the fate of Sodom & Gomorrah. The Pslamist reflects thankfully on receiving the help and mercy he had asked for. Jesus teaches his disciples the “Our Father,” and continues with his famous admonition to ask, seek, and knock, for the door to be opened. Paul highlights the importance of being focused on Christ himself, and not on law or status, as we are incorporated into His own life.

These lessons certainly seem to cover the bases: Abraham petitions God, and teaches us that we can approach God with our requests. The Psalmist gives thanks, and teaches us to do the same. Jesus teaches us that prayer is something like a relationship between father and son, parents and children. And Paul teaches us to reflect theologically on what it all means. Yet all this still seems insufficient really to say what prayer is all about. Because prayer is so much more than simply an outline of holiness, more than an index to Christian living.

As a priest sometimes people come to me who are dissatisfied with their prayer life. As we talk, it usually becomes clear that they are making one of a few different possible mistakes. One of the most common is that people feel they ought to pray for things that sound holy: things like peace on earth, or to have more patience with their families, or to get better at budgeting for charitable causes. These are all fine, and certainly worth aiming at. But prayer is not a divinely-sanctioned wishing well. And there’s no use asking God for something you think sounds holy if you haven’t done the work of preparing yourself to receive it. Because chances are, you won’t be able to recognize it when it comes. And so people get disappointed.

So what’s the answer? I remember once being scandalized by something my medieval theology professor said during the course of a lecture in seminary. (Imagine, being scandalized by the Middle Ages! But it might scandalize you too.). He said, “You should always pray for what you want, even if what you want is to steal your neighbor’s wife.” How does this make any sense? Because in prayer you are not placing orders with a cosmic amazon.com. I’m sorry to disappoint you! Rather you are lifting up your desires to God, you are offering yourself as a desiring person. Naming them in prayer surrenders those desires, and yourself, to God, to let him do with you what he will. If you want to steal your neighbor’s wife, God knows it already, naming it in prayer won’t surprise him in the least. It will not make it happen, God does not work that way. Be honest in prayer, even and especially about those things which we might want to hide or plaster over with a more holy veneer.

This is the starting point, hiding nothing from God. This is the only way we can begin to know the depths of his mercy, the only way we can begin to see another way forward, the only way we can begin to desire the higher things. On this model, prayer is less about getting what you ask for to change your world, and more about asking in the first place so that God might change you. On this model, prayer is less a religious means to my personal ends, and more the medium in which God draws me closer to himself, the occasions by which he clarifies his image in me.  

This is the kind of prayer to which all our lessons point this morning. In Genesis, Abraham’s prayer marks a transition point for him in his relationship with God. Before this, Abraham heard God’s call and obeyed, he offered sacrifice and made a covenant. But now God has visited his tent, they have haggled, and they have become friends. Jesus teaches the “Our Father” to his disciples, so that by their constant prayer, they might see they are no longer merely objects of grace, passive recipients of divine precept, but that they are God’s children now, whose life in the world will be radically different. Paul takes it a step even further, insisting that the whole thing is inescapably personal, as we abide in Christ himself, his body who is the Head.

Prayer is the place where we begin to see just what this means for the way we perceive the world and our own place in it. Prayer is the place where we begin to enjoy the communion of all God’s children one with another. Prayer is the place where we are changed more and more into the likeness of Christ, whose perfect act of prayer was to offer himself to his Father upon the cross.

So, what does all this have to do with our mission trip to Nicaragua? As with prayer, we might have started out thinking we were going to “help those in need,” or something similarly holy-sounding. But what I witnessed was a group of people who had been changed by the act of offering themselves in this way, who are there now, not because of any abstract desire to “help,” but because they have grown to love the people of Nejapa in a very real way: Norr, and Julio; Alex, Don Victor, and dozens of children, doctors, teachers, and laborers who work to make that place a home for so many.  

Put another way, the object of our team’s love has become their home, in a very beautiful way, over many years, and the people of Nejapa their extended family. May you and I find prayer to be the same for us: the place where we learn to love God with every fiber of our being, and find ourselves at home in him, with all those who also say, “Our Father.”

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit: Amen.

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May 31, 2016

The liturgy, the crucible of love

Lumen de lumine, 2009. Fr. Lawrence Lew, OP.

 

“Liturgical manuals are full of very specific instructions, and vergers with their maces can cast stern looks. Yet the task for us fallible humans is not simply to “get it right” but to move in such a way that puts us at the disposal of the Holy Spirit: to be aware of our own need for grace, to be aware of the location and intentions of our neighbors, and to surrender our egos, so that all might be offered to the glory of God.”

A recent post of mine for The Living Church’s blog, on praying during the liturgy.

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March 15, 2016

“Everything just feels right there.”

St. Louis Abbey

The following homily was preached on Sunday, March 6, 2016 (the fourth Sunday of Lent), at a service of Choral Evensong at the St. Louis Abbey, sung by the CSMSG choir as part of our continuing relationship with the monks of that Community.  I officiated and preached, and we were all the grateful recipients of warm hospitality from the Abbot and brothers. “A good time was had by all!” I think this is one of the best things we do here at CSMSG, and I pray this relationship continues a long and happy one!

Collect: Gracious Father, whose blessed Son Jesus Christ came down from heaven to be the true bread which giveth live to the world: Evermore give us this bread, that he may live in us, and we in him; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Lessons: Romans 8:11-25; John 6:27-40

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen:

A friend of mine is a parish priest in Denver, Colorado.  Just this weekend he returned from making a Lenten retreat at a nearby monastery.  In the course of telling me how it went, he praised the quiet, the mountains, the hiking, the other guests; but most of all he appreciated the community and the life they led.  He summed up his experience by saying, “I’m convinced it’s one of the most sacred and beautiful places on earth for me.  Everything just feels right there.”

Everything just feels right there.  His words resonate with me, and I suspect with a lot of people.  There are places we go in life where everything just feels right.  Monasteries seem especially able to communicate this.  There is something fundamentally right about the work of God which is carried out here, something deeply beautiful about a community’s life ordered as a school of the Lord’s service.  They are places which are resonant with the Spirit calling as deep to deep, where “the final revealing of the sons of God” often seems to be at the very brink.  The church, the grounds, and most of all the members of the community themselves, impress themselves on the visitor as icons of the way things ought to be.  I always find it remarkable how quickly visitors start to feel at home in a monastery, even on their very first visit; and I have to think that a large part of that is a response to the feeling that here, things are as they ought to be.

Of course, this side of heaven, things are rarely as they ought to be, even in a monastery.  And in fact, the more things appear to be just as they ought, the more vigilant we must be, not to let evil and vice creep in unnoticed.  Parishes are the same way, and families; cities and states and nations too.  It is often very easy for a generous visitor to see a new country as the portrait of its own ideals.  But its citizens can always tell a different story.

Why is it that visitors see the good, while citizens see all the rest?  Are they simply deluded?  I don’t think so.  I think rather that there is simply something about being a guest in a place, that clears the vision and allows the good to shine through.  Likewise, there is something about being a citizen of a place that highlights its weaknesses, its challenges, and the work that still has to be done.

Which of these aspects is the more true?  The grace witnessed and experienced by the guest, or the mundane, ordinary life of the citizen?  Probably a little of both.  The English spiritual author G.K. Chesterton once observed that our “spiritual sight is stereoscopic, like [our] physical sight: [we] see two different pictures at once, and yet see all the better for that.”

The world wants to see contradiction and hypocrisy in the Church because so far we do not yet exhibit the holiness and perfect unity in love which our Lord promised and for which he prayed the night before his death.  Likewise we can be dissatisfied with our vocations, wherever they may plant us, because it is much easier to see grace at work abroad than in the complicated and confusing humdrum of our own lives.  The place where everything is as it ought to be, where “everything just feels right,” is very frequently somewhere else, somewhere farther on ahead of us, which we may visit from time to time but cannot yet call our own.

What, then, are we to do?  How do we answer the world?  How do we resolve our own contradictions?  Where can we go to be finally and forever at home?  Our lessons tonight suggest that the best answer to these questions is to be always at prayer.

All may not be right with the world or with ourselves, but in prayer we are moved by the Spirit into the presence of our heavenly Father, who is our eternal home.  In prayer the two contradictory visions of our spiritual sight overlap, and we see in three dimensions. Our sin: not just our fall from glory, but also the occasion of our redemption.  Heaven: not just a promise for the end of time, but also our strength and nourishment even now as the Spirit moves within us.  Though the world about us fall to pieces; though we ourselves be racked by temptation, disquiet, and uncertainty; in prayer we are joined to Our Lord’s own eternal offering of himself to his Father, even as we are also joined to the Father’s gift of his Son for us and for all creation.

In prayer, we are always at home — even if we be thousands of miles away, even if we be separated from our families or broken from their fellowship.  In prayer, the groaning of whatever suffering we experience in this present life is joined to the agony of Our Lord and the birth pangs of the Spirit.  In prayer we begin to be made new.  All might not be right with this world, with ourselves, with whatever place it is we are.  Yet in prayer,  however agonizing it might be for us, in prayer we are at home: everything is as it ought to be, we are on the doorstep of heaven, and the One who dwells there recognizes us for his own.

As Lent draws on towards Holy Week and the Paschal Mystery, let us resolve to be people of prayer: which is to say, let us be guests of heaven.  Let us throw ourselves on Heaven’s hospitality.  And so heaven’s Host will wash our feet, bind our wounds by his own, give us his peace which passeth all understanding, and feed us with his own Body and Blood.  So we shall be both guests and citizens at once, heirs of his eternal life.

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Amen.

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