Craving, Insanity and Sanctity

Craving, Insanity and Sanctity (Sermon, John 14:15-21)

 St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, Easter 6, May 29, 2011

Can we talk about love? It is one of the most over-used, misused and misunderstood words in the English language.  Part of the problem is that other languages have different words to describe a multitude of conditions for which we use this one English word.

For example.  I love chocolate cake. I love coney island hot dogs.  Another example. I love that girl so much I want to be with her all the time, all my life.  I would do anything for her.  I have never felt anything like this before.  Another example. Jesus said “love your enemies.”

In the first example, we are talking about a food craving.  In the second we are talking about romantic love, a wonderful experience which has been diagnosed as temporary insanity.  And in the third we are talking about advanced spirituality.  All three very different conditions are identified with the same word, “love.”

I would like to present to you a model for love based in scripture, a very Christian model challenging us to grow spiritually.  By presenting this model I wish in no way to diminish the greatness of the craving for mashed potatoes and turkey gravy or of falling in love.  This spiritual model starts very small and moves out in concentric circles.  First God loves us, each and every one of us.    From that loves comes the ability to love ourselves, which is our  first step and obligation.  Self-love is not bad.  It is very good. We are not capable of loving others unless we love ourselves. By love I mean wanting good and doing good for someone.  First we do it for ourselves, so that we can do it for others.  Jesus said in today’s Gospel “If you love me, keep my commandments.”  Love is more than wishing good; it is doing good.  It is more than a wonderful feeling, although that helps a lot.  Sometimes the wonderful feeling isn’t there at all, but true love is.

This love of God for us and our love for ourselves and for Him begins to spread out.  At first in a small circle that includes only immediate family. That’s natural. Love starts at home.  Then by the grace of God it moves out to include the larger family and the relatives.  Now for some it doesn’t move out.  Maybe there has been turmoil over a marriage.  Maybe there has been abuse, so that the nuclear family closes in to protect its members.  Forgiveness may be needed.  But by the grace of God and our own willingness, this love can expand into a larger circle, to include neighbors and friends, those who are similar to ourselves.  Then by the grace of God it moves out further to include those who are different but just as lovable when we get to know them.  Many, by the grace of God, are able to move beyond their own region and develop a real love and patriotism for their country, even a willingness to die for it and it’s people.  These are the people we will be honoring tomorrow on Memorial Day.

The next expansion of the circle is difficult for many, is sometimes hard to even conceive.  It is a love for all mankind, regardless of country.  To embrace all mankind in the arms of our love, again by the grace of God, does not mean we love our own country and its people any less, any more than a mother and father love their firstborn less when other children are born.  The firstborn now has other family members to love and to be loved by.

Remember, the love I am talking about when I refer to all mankind or any part of it is wanting good and doing good when we can for people.  Loving someone and doing good for them doesn’t mean we necessarily like them.  Sometimes we don’t like our own family members or even ourselves.

Caring about people from other countries and helping when we can does not make us any less patriotic in regard to our own country.  I think it can make us more patriotic, yes, more realistic about our country’s failures.  It can make us appreciative of what we are and have, maybe a little less self-absorbed.

I am grateful to have had an experience of living overseas as a student for four years and to have met and made friends with people from many nations. I know that influences my view on things, but I don’t think that has made me any less appreciative of the U.S. or less patriotic.  The experience of sailing across the Atlantic after four years away and cruising into New York harbor  was very emotional. My fellow students and I, all newly ordained priests, were anxiously looking forward to seeing the Statue of Liberty.  Before we reached her, however, an officer of the ship came to me and asked for one of my classmates, John Wall.  He had a sad message for John and asked me to deliver it.  John’s father had died while we were crossing. The family had intentionally waited until he was close to home to send the word.  I shared the sad news with him and a bunch of us gathered to celebrate the Eucharist in his cabin.  When we finished the ship was docking; we had passed the Statue of Liberty.  John’s brother came on board to escort him home to the funeral in North Carolina.   I missed seeing the Statue but never regretted that because of the special time with John. My love for him and his family superseded the opportunity for a personally rewarding patriotic experience.  Years later I was able to return to New York and gaze on the grand lady.

The sentiments that I have been expressing to you are found in today’s closing hymn, “This Is My Song, Oh God of All the Nations.” I ask you to listen to its words and let the melody move you.  The melody is that of Finlandia by Jean Sebelius, the great Finnish composer; the words are from the Methodist Hymnal.  They speak of patriotism for one’s own country and empathy for the citizens of other countries.            

Sin on Sunday

The Lark, June 2011

The waitress looked at me and said, “Did you bless us, Father?”  I hadn’t but I did.  Then she asked if it was a sin that they were working on Sunday, “they” referring I surmised to the other waitresses in addition to herself.    I said no, it was a special thing they were doing for those who could dine out on the day they were not working.   But, I added, it was important they had at least one day a week off so that they could rest from their labors and have time with their families.  “And for prayer” she added.  After all, I said, even God rested after a week of creating the world. 

The look of sadness that came over her face told me she didn’t get a day off. Her accent suggested she was probably a recent immigrant.  Her message was that of a woman who brought her religion with her from the old country and the demands of life in the new country were interfering with the practice of it.  It made me think of a time when life was simpler in this country and time for God and for ourselves was easier to come by.  Now those who are working/raising children/going to school have to struggle to keep their priorities straight.  Even those who are retired can have the same issues.  We can fill our lives up with busyness and still not have time for God and for what is best for ourselves.

Something to think about on our day off.        

  

 

Heaven is a Relationship

  Heaven is a Relationship:

Sermon (Acts 7:55-60 & Jn 14:1-14)  

 St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, Easter 5, May 22, 2011

Today’s readings are just full of puzzlements.  There are so many questions, like in the reading from Acts, what was young Saul doing at the killing of Stephen?  Of course, Stephen is our hero, the first Christian martyr, our patron saint.  And insiders know that this Saul is really Paul who will become St. Paul, the great apostle.  Why was he there, approving of this murder?

Another puzzlement.  Jesus is quoted in the reading from John that in His Father’s house there are many dwelling places and that He will come and take us there?  Does that mean that heaven is a big house with a lot of rooms in it?  Should we read that literally?   Do souls, once they leave our bodies, need a physical place to dwell, since they are spirit?  Or is it imagery?

Further down in the same passage Jesus says something astounding to the Apostles and maybe to us.  “Truly I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and in fact will do greater works than these.”  Those who believe in Jesus will do greater works than He did?   That’s really hard to believe.   

That’s three puzzlements, in one Sunday’s set of readings.  How do we solve the puzzles?  Let me make a suggestion.  Let’s look at it from the standpoint of relatedness, of connectedness.  We human beings are made up of connections, both internally and externally.  Just looking at our brains alone there are trillions of synapses interrelated, firing messages and storing information inside our brains.  Synapses are the connections between nerve cells or neurons.  David Brooks in his book the Social Animal estimates the brain of a developing child creates 1.8 million synapses per second from the second month in the uterus to the second birthday.  How those synapses organize themselves, what memories are stored, what perceptions of the world are formed in this little brain depend on connections outside his or her body, the way they are nurtured by the mother and many others.  That process doesn’t stop as the child grows through adolescence into adulthood.  We humans maintain our freedom of choice, but the options we have for choosing are very dependent on our social relationships.  What our spiritual identity is and whether we believe in a power greater than ourselves depends to a great degree on the beliefs and practices of those in our social network.  Whether we like it or not, we are so connected to the earth from which we came and to the whole world of living things, including other human beings, that we are unable to function in a healthy way if we don’t stay connected.  No man is an island.

In fact, let me suggest further to you that God is a relationship.  Oh, He’s far more than that, but He, should I say “They,” is a relationship.  What is the Christian doctrine of the Trinity if not the description of a relationship?  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, intimately related to one another, make up the one godhead.  The Son was sent to become a human, Jesus of Nazareth, in order to bring us into relationship with the Godhead.  What did He say in today’s reading?  “I am the way the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me.  If you know me you will know my Father also.”

So, it was no coincidence that young Saul was at the execution of Stephen.  His conversion to Jesus on the road to Damascus was connected to Stephen’s martyrdom.  There was a saying in the early church that the blood of martyrs was the seed of Christianity.  The Pharisee Saul with the fire in his eyes to stamp out this heretical sext known as the Way was transformed into arguably the greatest of the Apostles, certainly the most prolific writer of the New Testament.  Stephen’s death lead to Paul’s conversion, as Jesus death led to Stephen’s conversion and subsequent death.

So, when Jesus said greater things than these you will do, he wasn’t blowing smoke just to make the Apostles feel good.  It was true.  How many disciples did He have at the time of his death?  Maybe a few hundred, at the most, depending on who you count.  Most of those ran like wild horses when it came to taking a stand.  Yet look what the Apostles were able to do after His Ascension.  Christianity took off.  It spread throughout the civilized world, maybe not quite like wildfire, but with a steady and unrelenting force.  What made the difference?  The Coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the third member of the divine relationship.  He, the Holy Spirit, enabled the Apostles and us to enter more fully into a relationship with the Trinity.  Read the Acts of the Apostles and you will pick up the enthusiasm that was present in the early church.   People like Stephen didn’t run away, nor did Paul when he got the word.

So, is heaven a big mansion in the sky?  Maybe.  I see it as a relationship with God that develops in this existence and comes into fullness after we die.  WHERE WE ARE doesn’t matter nearly as much as HOW WE ARE.  How else was Jesus going to explain it, though, except as describing a place.  Talking about trillions of synapses isn’t nearly as consoling as saying: “I go to prepare a place for you,  and I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am you may be also.”

Citation: The Social Animal by David Brooks.  Random House, 2011

   

 

Stories of Motherhood

Stories of Motherhood: Sermon (Lk: 24:13-35)

 St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, Easter 3, May 8, 2011

It is difficult to overestimate the power of a good story and the ability of a story to endure and perpetuate its message, whether that message is one of joy, sadness, or a mixture of the two.  Some of those stories change a bit during the elapse of time.  Take two recent examples of stories with new chapters.   The wedding of Kate and Will at Westminster Abbey is one.  It hearkens back to the wedding of Diana and Charles at St. Paul’s Cathedral some thirty years before.  There is tragedy and hope, as well as sadness and joy. There is strong tradition in the continuing story of a family, a royal one at that, and the beautiful young women who marry into it.

I vividly remember our own daughter at age six getting up in the wee hours to watch Diana’s wedding.  She was up again two weeks ago at four in the morning with her six month old daughter to watch Kate’s wedding.  I think this time it probably had more to do with a sleepless baby than with a desire to see the wedding live, but the two girls did watch it together.

This last week we learned of the assassination of Osama Ben Laden. That took us back with a jolt to that fateful day ten years before when the twin towers fell.  Both times it seems we were assaulted by repeated TV images, the first time the pictures of the towers falling and this last time pictures of Ben Laden himself.  I wanted to say, “give us a break.”   I’m sure different Americans have differing feelings.  Those families who lost loved ones on that fateful day of 9/11 hopefully were able to attain a sense of vindication and some closure.  For many I think there is a feeling that justice has been done.  Yet it is an on-going story with this second chapter of what could be a multi-chapter saga.

At no time in history has the power of a story been more vividly demonstrated than in the spread of Christianity.  Jesus was a story-teller.   Yes, He taught directly when he listed the commandments or the beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount, for example, but it is the parables where he dramatized His messages.  We remember the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, the Sower.  He was demonstrating, in the case of the Good Samaritan, what it is like to be loved by a neighbor who is a hated foreigner or, in the Prodigal Son, how much God wants to forgive and welcome us home. Or, in the Sower Who Went Out to Sow His Seed,  that the word of God taking root in our lives depends on our receptivity to it.

These parables are all fictional stories.  The Apostles spread the word by repeating the parables, but also by telling the true stories of His resurrection.  Repeatedly we hear Peter and the others in the Acts of the Apostles tell the stories of the empty tomb, the appearances to various disciples and the messages He gave to them after His resurrection.  And they reached peoples’ hearts.  We hear the word “heart” in the reading from Acts today.  When Peter told the crowd that Jesus whom they crucified has been raised, it says they were cut to the heart and they repented and asked to be baptized. 

In the Gospel we hear the story of the two disciples on the Road to Emmaeus, my favorite Easter story, and how their hearts burned within them as Jesus explained the prophecies that had foretold not only his death, but His resurrection as well.  And they recognized him in the Breaking of the Bread.  We repeat that story in various form every time we celebrate the Eucharist.   

That’s how Christianity spread, by telling the stories that moved peoples’ hearts, along with the example of those who acted on that heart movement.

Speaking of heart movement, last but not least we come to the stories of motherhood on this Mother’s Day, 2011.   See, I have this idea that motherhood, the art of mothering, is passed down through the stories about mothers.  By motherhood I am not simply refering to the physical part of it, from conception, through gestation, and delivery.  She is most truly mother who acts as mother and hangs in there through the long haul that lasts a lifetime; she is not necessarily the one who bears the child.

How do little girls come to be mothers?  How do they come to be those who truly mother?  Oh sure some of it is genetic, there are natural processes of bonding that are very powerful, but how does the young mother know what to do after delivery and bonding.  I submit to you it is by being mentored by other mothers.  There are long family traditions passed down. They are primarily passed through the stories.  “When your brother was born this is what I had to do.”   “My mother, your grandmother, told me this is the way to put a baby to sleep or to wean her.”  And when that doesn’t work, you ask another mother for a different story.  “Well, what did my grandmother tell you about how she handled you or mishandled you, Mom, when you were a teenager?”   “Yes, and tell us that story again about how you and Dad met.  His story doesn’t seem to match your story.  Did you meet on the internet?”

See, these are powerful stories, some of them humorous. It’s one of the ways we manage to half-way function as a human civilization.  So, when you gather today for the celebration of Mother’s day, ask mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers for their stories.  If they are not there, repeat the stories you have heard from them. Maybe some of you would like to record them, like story corps, for your daughters and granddaughters.  You won’t be sorry.