Sermon, Sunday, 31 May 2009 -- Pentecost Sunday

Acts 2:1-13

April in New England can be an iffy affair. Some in that section of our country joke that there are really only three seasons: summer, winter, and mud. April can be a part of that mud season with one day filled with spring sunshine and the warming of winter out of one’s bones while the next can bring a drop of many degrees and several inches of snow on the flowers doing their best to begin the growing process.

So it was in April 1934. There were some wonderful days of sunshine and then a terrible storm arose. Of course, on the tops of the White Mountain Range in New Hampshire, those changes in weather are only accentuated to the extremes. And the summit of Mt Washington, the tallest of the White Mountains and one of the highest on the eastern seaboard is no exception.

It was there, atop that treeless apex, that on April the 12th of 1934 that the fastest wind speed on earth was recorded, a measurement that stands to this day. Does anyone know what the speed of the wind was in that wild storm? There was a gust of 231 miles per hour.

Since that’s the fastest recorded wind speed, and because I sincerely doubt that anyone here today was there on top of Mt. Washington some 75 years ago, I imagine none of us have really experienced such high wind speeds. But who’s been in the midst of a hurricane? Or a wind storm sweeping across the plains? Or been atop a high, unprotected mountain in the midst of a storm.

I experienced the high winds of a hurricane while in seminary and those winds only got to 80 miles per hour or so. Still, from my dorm room window, we watched several of the tall pine trees on our campus lose their branches, one entire tree giving into the relentless pressure of those winds and toppling over. And those winds were only a quarter of those from the top of Mt. Washington back in 1934.

We’re told that on that day when the disciples gathered to celebrate the first Pentecost after Jesus’ death and resurrection, that besides the tongues of fire that appeared and the miraculous speaking in languages which everyone understood, there was a violent wind that rushed from heaven and filled the house in which they were gathered.

Let me be clear: this was not a puff...not a breeze...not a wafting zephyr. No, this was a VIOLENT wind. A wind that would knock your socks off, though I doubt they wore socks yet by this point in history.

In the original Greek, the word used here is biaios and it is not found elsewhere in the New Testament. The King James Version translates this word as ‘mighty’, but the translation of the word biaios is closer to forcible or violent, which is how the New Revised Standard Version translates it.

Too often we want to think of the Spirit as moving among us in those puffs and wafts and gentle zephyrs. Too often, we invite the Spirit into our midst and expect a breeze to blow through; nothing too strong or anything that would disturb our carefully coiffed theological stances. Our prayers often seek a kinder, gentler Spirit to blow around us.

But that’s not the Biblical precedent. If we are to read the Pentecost story and believe that nothing has changed since then, we should expect major, mighty, violent wind to accompany the Spirit. It’s not a wind that we can control like an oscillating fan in a too warm bedroom. It blows where it will and as strong as it will. And we’d just better be prepared for it not only to undo our tightly curled, perfectly in place hairstyle that we call church, but to blow us right along with it to places we may not want to go. This violent, forcible Spirit will move us and shake up everything we think is already right in place, and just where it should be.

I’ve been on the top of Mt. Washington. (Don’t think I got too athletic and hiked up or anything--there’s a road and a van that takes you there.) Like the top of most high, unprotected mountains, it is a very windy place, even on the best of days. I have a feeling though those winds, and the winds of that hurricane I experienced, are nothing to what God has in store for us when the Spirit is unleashed among us.

Photo of the Pentecost Dome at Basilica San Marco, Venezia, Italia; photographer unknown

Sermon, Sunday, 10 May 2009

[Please note: I shall be on vacation for a little while, so this will be the last post until I return.]

Psalm 22 (25-31)

It’s a moment, even if we haven’t experienced or witnessed it ourselves, that is easy enough to imagine. Think of a crowded shopping mall...or a busy downtown street...or a teeming subway train. A small child becomes separated from her Mother, even if for a brief instant. Mom, of course, knows where her daughter is the whole time, but, in that instant, the child has no idea where her Mother is; Mother, her source of protection & nourishment. For a brief moment, a look of bewilderment flashes across the young girl’s face. Then comes fear followed by crying out. Reunion, because Mom is ever watchful, ever listening, is swift and brings comfort, quelling fears, reassuring the young one that all is well. But until that happens, there is confusion and fear and longing...longing for a return to safety and solace...longing for arms that hold and words that soothe.

Now age the young girl a few decades or so. Elongate that time of bewilderment, fear, and longing. Stretch it out to be several decades long itself in fact. Delay that reunion, withholding comfort, safety, and care from the one who longs for a return.

That description is the way many have experienced God; or better put, experience a lack of God. That description delineates what many of us feel about the Divine. Those of us who are bewildered or anxious or frightened because we feel we’ve been abandoned in the shopping mall we call life, surrounded by strangers in a strange land, seek and yearn for God’s return to our lives, yet think our cries go unheard; we feel abandoned because indeed God does not come to scoop us up in God’s arms right away. We stand amidst the swirl of people going to and fro all around us; people who are seemingly going about their business; people who seem to be connected to their God; people whom we want to be. Instead we yearn for the one who is no longer in sight. Instead we ache for God’s loving embrace once again. Instead, we are left seeking and crying out in our distress.

The verses from the Psalms that we read together today is the very end of Psalm 22. Those verses belie the beginning of the Psalm in which the author cries out in a way I have just described. Yes, we hear about the psalmist’s praise and how even the dead will bow down to God and deliverance is for generations and generations yet to come.

Yet hear the opening words of Psalm 22, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Sound familiar? Of course, it’s the very same words that Jesus used from the cross; the words that he was mocked for saying, in the same way that the Psalmist was mocked and felt abandonment in the first 24 verses of this Psalm. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer; and by night, but find no rest.” (1-2)

It sounds familiar because it is familiar to anyone who’s been around a church during Holy Week and know all too well the narrative of the crucifixion. For some of us though, it rings true for other reasons. Not only is it the cry of Jesus from the cross, in his pain and sorrow and grief as he hung awaiting death, but it’s the cry that many have exclaimed when feeling forsaken, abandoned, bereft, deserted. Deserted, indeed, by the Creator, by my God, my God.

We all know the good works of Mother Teresa, the Albanian religious sister who served the poorest of the poor in Calcutta, that poorest of the poor city. If anyone who has graced the pages of the daily newspapers in our lifetimes is going to end up being declared a saint, it is, no doubt, she. She worked tirelessly to alleviate suffering, to care for those who needed care, to bring the Christ into the lives of “the least of these.”

Yet listen to her words:

"There is so much contradiction in my soul, no faith, no love, no zeal. . . . I find no words to express the depths of the darkness. . . . My heart is so empty. . . . so full of darkness. . . . I don't pray any longer. The work holds no joy, no attraction, no zeal. . . . I have no faith, I don't believe." (as quoted in The Journey With Jesus Website, http://www.journeywithjesus.net/)

These words, made public at the occasion of the 10th anniversary of her death in 1997 from her letters, surprised many. But to many believers...yes, believers...her words had the ring of authenticity and truth. They all sound too familiar; too much the truth of our own lives; too resonant with the very thoughts that have found a home in the shadowed moments of our own lives.

The Psalmist complains that

“I am a worm, and not human; scorned by others, and despised by the people...On you I was cast from my birth, and since my mother bore me you have been my God. Do not be far from me, for trouble is near and there is no one to help.” (6, 10-11)

This ancient author goes on to describe the bulls and dogs who surrounded and are ready to attack. We read of the pining for God...an ache so real that it calls out through the centuries upon centuries to Mother Teresa and to many of us.

In our yearning, we struggle to maintain our balance in the swirl all around us. As we reach out, stretching our arms into the seeming void,we hope to grasp onto something, anything that will lead us to God, to that reunion we desperately crave.

But like Mother Teresa, we all too often find need in our midst instead of God. Our yearning is overshadowed by the great deprivation which surrounds us. The work that needs to be done eclipses our own deep-seated want for God’s touch.

So we set off, off-balance as we are, to right whatever wrongs we can along the way, as we ourselves stumble along. We do right because it is, well, right; because in the absence of a God who calls, suffering must be addressed, whatever the motivation.

So the Mother Teresas and all who know too well the mood of the beginning of Psalm 22, reach out for God and in our reaching out happen upon those who cry not for spiritual food, but for real, belly-filling food. As we seek to be sheltered by God, we find those who don’t know what real shelter is, sleeping night after night in a new doorway on the street. Our thirsting for the connection with the Divine remains unslaked as we provide cool cups to those who thirst for water that quenches thirst from the lack of clean, accessible water.

If these sermon words of mine seem foreign to you, if Mother Teresa’s story is unfamiliar, if the early verses of Psalm 22 do not describe your situation, rejoice and be glad. Love the God who is your companion and your way.

If however you have noticed the nodding of your head throughout these words of mine, know you are not alone. From Mother Teresa around the globe to our community, there are many who seek God, but find God to be unreachable and remote. Continue to do the work that gives meaning to your life. God, when God reveals Godself to you again, will have been there with you as you reached out to those needing care.

Chalice Newsletter for the week of 3 May 2009 -- Defending Ourselves

St Peter enthroned,
originally uploaded by Lawrence OP.

Dear Friends,

Peter stood before the court of the Priests and Elders of Jerusalem. He and his colleagues had been arrested the day before and, after spending a night in jail, found themselves before the leading religious figures of Judaism of their day.
Peter, if you remember, was always something of a foil throughout the gospels. Jesus likened him to Satan at one point in fact. Peter was always getting it wrong, it seemed, around Jesus.

But here he was, facing the authorities. They had been arrested because of a healing they did, though clearly the real reason they were brought in was because they were getting just a bit too popular. Luke, the autor of Acts, tells us they had 5,0000 followers. No doubt this is a representative number; no one went out a did a census of how many followers of The Way there were at that point. It is interesting that the number matches at least one account of the miraculous mass feeding that Jesus performed during his ministry. Luke’s point is that it was a large number who were following by this point.
So Peter, who bumbled his way through the gospels, is suddenly thrust into the position of being a spokesperson. Peter, who denied that he ever knew Jesus just hours before the crucifixion, faced the same people who schemed to have Jesus put to death. And, relying on the Spirit, Peter defended himself and those with him against the charges, those used as presenting charges as well as the unspoken ones.

If we had to defend our faith, would we open ourselves up to the movement of the Spirit and allow it to work through and in us? If we found ourselves facing a group of religious bigwigs, would we be confident of God’s presence with us?

And, actually, aren’t we in that situation more often than we like to admit? In our daily lives, when we are in contact with friends, colleagues, and acquaintances, don’t we have opportunities to tell the story of our church and our faith time and time again?
Peace,
Gerry

(Picture © Br Lawrence Lew, O.P. "St. Peter Enthroned" ;
text © Gerry Brague)

Sermon, Sunday, 3 May 2009

Acts 4:1-12

“Houston, we have a problem.” These words, immortalized in the movie Apollo 13, have entered into the common lingo of our day as a way to say, sometimes humorously, that something is amiss. The wording, I discovered, is not exactly accurate, since both Apollo 13 crewmembers John Swigert, Jr and James Lovell said “Houston, we’ve had a problem.” The shade of difference in the meaning though means little. The problem referred to, if you remember, was a major one--life threatening in fact for the three crew members as they sped toward the moon. An electrical explosion shut down many operations in the command module including the oxygen system. “Houston, we’ve had a problem” translated by the movie into the present tense, was the start of some very tense days in 1970. After the film came out in 1995, the misquote phrase joined the popular jargon. Now-a-days, when you hear it, you know something’s not right. And so it is that the phrase comes to mind as I read the Acts lectionary text for today and think about pluralism as it stands these days.

When we became a part of The Center for Progressive Christianity several years ago, in preparation for that stance, several of us participated in an ongoing study of that organization’s eight points. The second of those eight points states:

By calling ourselves progressive, we mean that we are Christians who recognize the faithfulness of other people who have other names for the way to God's realm, and acknowledge that their ways are true for them, as our ways are true for us.

And in the light of today’s Acts reading, I want to say “Houston, we have a problem” though I wonder if Houston really cares or can do something about it.

Most of us, during that study, and I’d wager today, would affirm that 2nd point of The Center for Progressive Christianity. The thought behind this different approaches to God is known as pluralism which has a fairly major influence on us these days. No longer do we automatically discount something because it is different from us. Neither do we reflexively accept something because it is like us. We are more discerning now and more open. This, in and of itself, is not a bad thing. We are working on being open to diversity in our midst and learning how to live that out.

On the website The Journey with Jesus by Daniel Clendenin, he writes that David Barrett identified 10,000 religions in 2001 in the World Christianity Encyclopedia. Ten thousand separate religions that humanity has turned to in its attempt to understand, get closer to, and/or explain the divine. Of those 10,000, 150 of them have one million members or more. Either way you look at it, Christianity is one amongst many. And as Clendenin asks, “Is it reasonable to believe that Jesus is the only way to the only God, and that the other 9,999 religions are false?” Most of us would not take such a hardline position, I would surmise. But Clendenin goes on to make some important points to consider before we rush to a blind and wholehearted embrace of religious pluralism. (http://www.journeywithjesus.net/)

Because out there, in the world today and throughout the vast scope of our history, people have done some amazing things in the name of religion. And I’m not saying “amazing” always in the sense that they are wonderful things being done; I’m thinking too about actions and events that make us stop and shake our heads in dismay.

There have been crusades and jihads and wars, killing thousands upon thousands of people, all fought to prove that one religion’s path to God is the right one to the right God. We’ve had centuries of slavery and subjugation of entire peoples, often in the name of religion. Women have been and continue to be oppressed through religious beliefs. Some ancient Polynesian religions, I understand, had a class of slaves who were the human sacrifices to the Gods. Hinduism has long history of a complex caste system including the untouchable caste that, if you’re unlucky to be born into, you cannot escape. In the jungles of South America, Jim Jones led hundreds to their suicides in his church. Polygamy has been practiced by religious figures throughout history, including but not limited to the Mormons. which has some break-away sects that still understand their religious call to be one of multiple wives for one husband.

From Donald Wildmon of the American Family Association to Fred Phelps of “God Hates Fags” fame to Iranian Ayatollahs to Osama bin Laden to the Lord’s Resistance Army of northern Uganda to countless others today, we haven’t come far from the Crusaders marching to conquer the Moors several times a thousand years or so ago. But if we are to truly embrace pluralism, we need to recognize that it’s more than thinking warmly of the Dalai Lama or working together with a Jewish synagogue for Interfaith Hospitality Network.

And so we read today’s lectionary text from Acts in which Peter, defending himself and his colleagues, says flat out: “There is salvation in no one else [than Jesus] for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved.” (4:12) How do we defend our stance on religious pluralism facing such a direct statement by a true leader of the early church? Even from the words of Jesus we hear “I am the way, the truth, the life, no one comes to the Father except by me” (John 14:6) and the parable about a wide easy road and a narrow, difficult gate that is hard to get through in Matthew. (7:14)

As we did that study about becoming a member congregation of The Center for Progressive Christianity, I recall that during the session about point two, this one that I read a few moments ago about pluralism, we likened getting to God as a gate. We discussed whether there was only one path that led to that gate or whether there were multiple paths. As I remember it, we pretty much agreed that there were indeed multiple paths and we were on one of them, that path known as Christianity. We ended up with an image on newsprint with a number of lines converging from the bottom at a point near the top on a line, the space above which we had labeled “God.” It was an upside down funnel of the theological variety.

But I wonder now if that was only part of the picture. I wonder if there are other paths we didn’t draw in; lines that do not go to the gate we had imagined; paths that might even lead away from the top of that page where we placed God. Perhaps it’s not so much an upside down funnel as it is a mishmash of paths and lines going in all directions. What then do I do with pluralism? If I embrace and blindly accept these 9,999 other religions without much investigation into them, am I being naive and opening myself, and perhaps others, to possible movement away from God? And with so many other religions to check out, how and where does one draw the line that says “no, that is not a religion that leads to God.”

And I still have that defense from Peter to contend with. Now, mind you, circumstances between dear, old Peter and us are quite different. There was no “Christianity” then; there were a group of followers of Jesus of Nazareth, most of them Jewish. They hadn’t even gotten to the point where they were a thorn in the side of the Roman Empire yet; they were up in today’s reading before the Jewish high priests, not some imperial court. Peter was defending this sect within Judaism to the Jewish authorities. He shrewdly used a verse from Psalm 118 in his defense (the part about the rejected stone being the cornerstone) since they were indeed building a new religious edifice and that would be a verse that the priests would surely have known. Peter wasn’t talking so much about other religions in this case, but about how this new group related to Judaism.

So where does this leave us? Probably with more questions than answers. How do we approach pluralism? How do we work in interfaith situations and not seem triumphal? Where do we draw those lines about some of those other 9,999 religions? Do my lines need to match yours? Do I have to accept religions that still oppress women or gay men & lesbians or are xenophobic? Is violence such a part of religion so as to leave it to be irredeemable? And what then can be said about our own religion? How do we approach those who would say that their religious stance is the only way to that gate we see as the entrance to God? Is there no common ground? And how do I deal with other Christians who take very seriously the fact that following Jesus is the only way to approach God? Are we practicing the same religion? I’m not sure.

I fear this is one of those times at which I present more questions than answers. As we seek to find Truth however, we wonder about the truths that are out there. Indeed, Houston, we do have a problem. We have a problem in the tension between accepting other religions and acknowledging their ways as true for them while not diluting the message we are called to proclaim of God’s love and grace to the ends of the earth. We have a problem in opening ourselves up to others while understanding our call to bring the Gospel to others.

If you find yourself pondering such struggles, you are not alone. You are joined by many who seek to understand God as best they can while remaining true to the Christian faith that claims them.

© Gerry Brague, 3 May 2009