Category: Sermon

Happy Easter!
It’s been a long, strange road this last month.  And it is more of a delight to be here than you can imagine.
For the last week, since I have been well enough to do it, I take several deep breaths throughout the course of the day.  Breaths that make you feel like you just got rid of some stale air that has been hanging around in the bottom of your lung for a day or so.  And each time I do it that replacement of dead air, which previously just felt good to do, now gives me pause for thanks.  I can breathe again!  I am alive!
For centuries, if not millenia, people of all kinds, philosophers and theologians, physicians and tent-makers, have, when they’ve had reason to think about it, equated the inhalations and exhalations of their daily living, with the underlying sense of confidence in life, without which their daily living would undistinguishable from the general mass of life.
And because it is distinguishable, because it is so valuable and so beautiful and strange and potential, we’ve called this thing the spirit of God.
In the first Jewish record of such matters, God creates the world by God’s breath.  In John’s version of the Easter story, Jesus breathes on the disciples, who gather in fear of the political execution they’ve just witnessed, and he says, “Peace.  Receive the Holy Spirit.”
Our breathing, our living, is tied into the activity of God.  Jesus’ point is that without it, you’re dead.  You can do nothing, paralyzed in this room behind locked doors.  Breathe.  Breathe again.
I have been reminded these past few weeks that this point is what the gospel continually sets before us as alone worth it.  Nothing else compares. The English theologian William Temple put it bluntly: “It is a great mistake to think that God is chiefly interested in religion.” It’s not religion.  It’s something more precious.
It is easy on this day, when we make a proclamation that sounds outlandish, to think religion is all about Easter.  But if I simply direct your attention to the way you have helped me to breath again, to the kind words and visits, to the extra effort required of you to keep church church, it is clear — what matters is the way we breathe everyday to do our work and to serve each other with a light heart and a kind smile and a word of peace.
In a moment we will call ourselves to worship using familiar and beloved words of a long, long tradition — Christ is risen!  Christ is risen in Indeed!
We could as well say, now, “I can breath. I can breath again.  I am alive!”

Isaiah 58:1-12
2 Corinthians 5:20 – 6:10
While it does not seem that there could be much worth liking about Ash Wednesday, it is one of my favorite times of worship.  In ancient Israel, the symbolism of ashes was understood to be a forceful reminder of the reality we so often like to evade — the reality of our mortality, and therefore of our sin.  And while that might seem an odd thing to enjoy, the truth of the matter is that life is better when we do not slip from that reality.  Paul nails it in his rather self-pitying list of realities: we suffer these things indignities, and to one way of looking we are imposters, we are unknown, we are dying, we are sorrowful, we are poor.  But as servants of God, we are, in our honesty about these things, true, known, alive, always rejoicing and not only rich, but making others rich.
Paul’s point, if I read him correctly, is simply that God  is the one through whom and by whom we are able to turn from these indignities and find the life that really is life.  The message is simple — we are human, we try to avoid them and pretend we can overcome them with wealth, or with business, or with prestige — and we can, for a while . . .
Or by God’s grace we can live with them.  The irony though is that in one case — they will catch up with us and leave us defeated.  In the other case, they have caught up with us and have not defeated us, we are sick but not down and out, we are as having nothing, yet possessing everything.
That is my assumption as I take a quick look at a line from Isaiah that happens to be one of my favorite single verses in the bible.  The last verse from the Isaiah reading “you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.” It is for this verse that I did not read from the Pew Bible (Good News).  It translates it “You will be known as the people who rebuilt the walls, who restored the ruined houses.”  There is nothing wrong with that, in fact it dawns on me that it would be a good verse to ponder as we head to Mississippi to help rebuild, or as we send wave after wave of people to Haiti to help rebuild the walls that came tumbling down last month.  But for today, it’s allusion to one of the other great scenes is the Bible, of Moses up on the mountain, while his people are down below making idols, so frustrated are they with the tortuous journey they’ve been on, and all apparently under God’s leadership.
God is fed up with them, and tells Moses that he’s just going to finish them all off and be done with them, and Moses pleads their case and changes God’s mind.  Psalm 106: 23 tells about this event: “Therefore he said he would destroy them— had not Moses, his chosen one, stood in the breach before him, to turn away his wrath from destroying them.”  Moses standing in the breach — is an image of the power that we humans are granted to deal honestly with our fate, to deal honestly with our sin — that is, in a nutshell, to deal honestly with our mortality.
The ashes are an ominous sign, yet hopeful, they are coarse, yet comforting, they are black, yet full of light, they are death, yet they show us alive.
I have been talking really, about human nature and human life — but never far from the conversation, is God and the nature of God. In fact, the point is that a truthful picture of what it means to be human, helps us paint a picture of what it means to call upon God.
I want to close with a light hearted story about God. It’s about the nature of God, which is revealed through a conversation Alvin has with God.
Alvin is working in his store when he hears a booming voice from above that says, “Alvin, sell your business!”  He ignores it.  The voice goes on for days saying, “Alvin, sell your business for three million dollars!”  After weeks of this he relents and sells his store.
The voice says, “Alvin, go to Las Vegas!”
Alvin asks why.
“Alvin, just take the three million dollars and go to Las Vegas.”
Alvin obeys, goes to Las Vegas and visits a casino.
The voice says, “Alvin, go to the blackjack table and put it all down in one hand!”
Alvin hesitates, but gives in.  He’s dealt an eighteen.  The dealer has a six showing.
“Alvin, take a card!”
“What? The dealer has . . . ”
“Take a card!”
Alvin tells the dealer to hit him, and gets an ace.  Nineteen.
He breathes easy.
“Alvin, take another card.”
“What?”
“TAKE ANOTHER  CARD!”
Alvin asks for another card.  It’s another ace.  He has twenty.
“Alvin take another card!” the voice commands.
“I have twenty!” Alvin shouts.
“TAKE ANOTHER CARD!” booms the voice.
“Hit me!” Alvin says.  He get’s another ace.  Twenty-one!
And the booming voice says “Unnn-believable!”
As Isaiah says, the fasting that you do, the ashes we put on our heads, is not the end game — the end game is, indeed, with God, in God’s care and by God’s wisdom, to be responsible in our dealings with one another, in our care of one another, and the earth, and in our repairing the breach and restoring the broken walls.

Texts:  Exodus 4:27 – 5:5

Luke 9:28 – 36
Context, as usual, is really important to understanding this odd and mysterious, but somewhat wonderful story that we tell every year on this final Sunday before Ash Wednesday.
The primary source for the transfiguration of Jesus is the Gospel of Mark (9:2-8).  In Mark, Jesus makes his first passion statement in 8:31, followed by a call to take up one’s cross and then the story of the transfiguration.  The Lukan context is similar.  Luke also moves from a first passion statement to sayings about taking up one’s cross (9:21-27).   Different from Mark, Luke introduces the transfiguration by beginning the story with the phrase “after these sayings.”  Luke clues us in:  this is a story not about an event, but a meaning.  He is being explicitly theological.

Another clue to the theological way Luke wants us to read this story is found in the way Luke changes “six days” in Mark to “eight days.”  This identifies transfiguration even more strongly with resurrection.  The “eighth day” was known as the Day of the New Creation in the early church.  We’re talking about resurrection here.  We’re talking about an awakening, or a rebirth, to use the language of the Gospels.

But an awakening to what?  A rebirth for what purpose?

Continue reading “Feb 14 — Beyond the Face”

Texts: Genesis 3:1-7
Milton, Paradise Lost, Book 12

So spake our mother Eve; and Adam heard
Well pleased but answer’d not: for now too nigh
The Archangel stood; and from the other hill
To their fix’d station, all in bright array
The Cherubim descended; on the ground
Gliding meteorous as evening mist
Risen from a river o’er the marish glides
And gathers ground fast at the labourer’s heel Homeward returning. High in front advanced
The brandish’d sword of God before them blazed
Fierce as a comet which with torrid heat
And vapour as the Libyan air adust,
Began to parch that temperate clime; whereat
In either hand the hastening Angel caught
Our lingering parents, and to the eastern gate
Led them direct, and down the cliff as fast
To the subjected plain; then disappear’d.
They looking back all the eastern side beheld
Of Paradise so late their happy seat,
Waved over by that flaming brand; the gate
With dreadful faces throng’d, and fiery arms:
Some natural tears they dropp’d but wiped them soon; The world was all before them where to choose
Their place of rest and Providence their guide
They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow, Through Eden took their solitary way.

As you know, every year around the date of Charles Darwin’s birthday, February 19, I preach a sermon on some aspect of his work. I have done this at the behest of an organization called the Clergy Letter project which got started 6 years ago or so, when a man named Michael Zimmerman circulated a letter to clergy asking them to sign on the statement asserting that there was no fundamental reason for science and religion to clash so, as they were over evolution at the time.
This year, I thought I’d give it a break, and I did not sign on.  But the leadership, sent out a letter around the holidays to those of us who had not signed up yet, urging us to do so.  I read a letter from a professor of biology at Rockhurst, a small Jesuit College.  She said:

I am writing to thank you for your past participation in Evolution Weekend, and to encourage you to sign up to participate in the upcoming Evolution Weekend 2010 (February 12-14, 2010).
As I reflect upon this holiday season I cannot help but remember a conversation I had last year with my teenage nephew.  He was stunned that I would be helping to plan a celebration for Darwin’s 200^th birthday.  He then asked me if I accepted evolution why I went to church.
Sadly he had been led to believe that he needed to choose between religion and science.  When those of us who recognize the compatibility of religion and science are silent then students, like my nephew, will hear the voices of those who push that false dichotomy.
However, when clergy members by the thousands stand together and make it clear that there is absolutely no reason for such a false choice to be made, both religion and science are strengthened.  That is the major message associated with Evolution Weekend.

So, while I don’t think that you all have the kind of difficulty that Professor Haskin’s nephew has, I signed on, realizing that this is a bigger issue than me, or even us.
Today, I want to share a few poems recently published by  Darwin’s great-great granddaughter Ruth Padel.  The poems are published in her newly published book titled Darwin: A Life in Poems.
For someone who came up with what has been described as “the single greatest idea anyone has ever had”, Charles  Darwin has been vilified as an enemy of religion.  The letter I read to you this morning testifies to the that.   But to actually study  Darwin and begin to understand him, is to discover a genius of the religious spirit melding with the genius of superb observational skills and exquisite powers of deduction.  “Philosophy,”  said one of Darwin’s contemporaries,  is the “product of wonder.”  On the other hand, the scientist “acquires knowledge to appease his passion for discovery.” It becomes clear in this poetic biography that Darwin’s science is a product of wonder.
The poems that comprise this biography are inspired by the writings of Darwin and contain snippets and quotations from his voluminous corpus of scientific tracts, letters, and essays,  The first poem of Padel’s I want to read to you is called “Plankton.”
In this poem, Darwin has been taking some time getting his sea legs aboard the Beagle.   Now it’s January 1832.  He’s been wretchedly sea-sick off and on for months.  Suddenly, the sea calms and he is entranced by the life forms before him which he’s never seen; life forms that have evolved to this strange environment in ways that stirred his fevered mind.
Plankton
The deck is dazzle, fish-stink, gauze-covered buckets.
Gelatinous ingots, rainbows of wet flinching amethyst
and flubbed, iridescent cream. All this
means he’s better; and working on a haul of lumpen light.
Polyps, plankton, jellyfish. Sea butterflies, the pteropods.
‘So low in the scale of nature, so exquisite in their forms!
You wonder at so much beauty – created,
apparently, for such little purpose!’ They lower his creel
to blue pores of subtropical ocean. Wave-flicker, white
as a gun-flash, over the blown heart of sapphire.
Peacock eyes, beaten and swollen,
tossing on lazuline steel.
Darwin once said that if he had his life to live over again, he would read one poem every day.  He carried Milton with him on all of his journeys.  The poem I want to leave you with is called “Remembering Milton in the Night At Sea.”  It’s about the experience of sailing through waters filled with luminescent creatures —  an extraordinary phenomenon that makes the boat seem as if it were sailing through life itself.  The bow splash sparkles like the stars above.  And the boat and sailor are transported into another world.
‘The night pitch dark.  The whole sea luminous.
Every part of water which by day is seen as foam
glowed with pale light.  The vessel drove before her bows
Two billows of liquid phosphorus.  Her wake was a milky train.
As far as the eye reached, the crest of every wave was bright;
& from the reflected light the sky — just above the horizon —
not so utterly dark as the rest of the Heavens.
Impossible to behold the plain of matter, as it were melted
& consumed by heat, without remembering Milton!”
Today, as you know, is the first Sunday in Lent and as such is for many of you the first step in this 40 day long prelude to Easter that takes us to the depths of humanity, and has us explore the power and beauty of life as it stands in stark contrast with it’s inevitable pains, with its many disappointments, with its sheer fact of evil destroying so much of what is good in our midst.  The journey we take through scripture and through our own examination of the commitment to the gospel, which we see clearly is full of risk, is not always easy.    So I ask you now to remember Milton, as you get started.
The world, as Milton said at the end of Paradise Lost, is all before you.  So, now, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow — find beauty in your work and may it trail a milky train of luminescence.  Amen.

Texts:  Luke 8:22-39
Neither the dark queen
nor the lord who rules the underworld could deny
Eurydice. She was there among the shades
just recently arrived, and now she walked toward them
slowly, the wound still fresh upon her ankle.
Orpheus took her, with the one condition:
if he should turn to look at her before
they had passed the dismal valleys of Avernus,
the gift would be revoked.
They climbed the path
through the deep silence, wrapped in total darkness.
They had almost reached the rim of the upper world
when he, afraid she might slip, impatient
to see her bright, beloved face, looked back:
and in an instant, she began to fade,
reaching out, struggling desperately to hold on
to him, or to be held; but her hands could grasp
nothing but thin air. She didn’t blame
her appalled husband for this second death
(how could she blame such love?) and, calling out
a last Farewell! which he could barely hear,
she vanished. – Ovid, Metamorphoses X, 46ff.
An Illinois man left the snow-filled streets of Chicago for a vacation in Florida. His wife was on a business trip and planned to meet him there the next day. When he reached his hotel, he decided to send his wife an e-mail.
Unfortunately, when he typed in her email address,  he accidentally missed one letter, and his note was directed instead to an elderly woman whose husband had passed away only the day before. When the grieving widow checked her e-mail, she took one look at the screen, let out a piercing scream, and fainted.
At the sound, her family rushed into the room and saw this note on the screen:
Dearest Wife, just got checked in. Everything prepared for your arrival tomorrow.
PS. Sure is hot down here.
It feels right to begin sermon on hell with a laugh.  Perhaps this is the problem — Some Christians seem to take the hell way to seriously.  You know the type:  You sit down in a crowded place to wait for a bus or a train or you take your seat in the airplane, and your seat partner begins to question you and your beliefs with the intent to warn you about the nastiness of hell, as if you were born yesterday and did not know the popular mythology of hell.
On the other hand — the mythology of hell which is partly retold in that beautiful poem by Ovid — demands some serious reflection.
Continue reading “Feb 7 – To Hell and Back”