What did you preach on today?

I had a wonderful few days this weekend.  I spoke at a conference on church leadership, and while in the neighborhood, I attended the celebration of a music director who had served a parish for 60 years.  The former filled me with hope at the dedication of local leaders and their enthusiasm, as well as their honest confrontation of their struggles as the church enters unchartered territory.  The latter filled me with awe at the dedication of a devoted servant of God who had patiently enriched the praises and prayers of a congregation through music for 60 years. 

As wonderful as it was, I arrived back at the airport on Sunday night happy but pretty tired and ready to get home.  I was thinking only about relaxing for a minute with a drink and then somehow getting through a late flight to New York. 

When I drove the rental car into the return lane, the agent checked me in, reminded me that I’d left my phone in the car (!), and then asked, completely unexpectedly, “What did you preach on today?”

I was sure I couldn’t have heard her correctly.  “I beg your pardon,” I said.

“What did you preach on today?”  I was startled but realized my collar, from which I hadn’t had time to change, had given me away.

I was relieved that the answer, actually, should have been “nothing.”  Perhaps that is more often the case than I would like to admit.  But what I said instead, with some relief that I was going to dodge a bullet, was “Oh, I didn’t preach today.” 

She was not deterred.  “Well, what was the sermon about where you went to church this morning?” 

Oh, rats.  I decided, wisely I think, not to get into the fine point that we had had Eucharist with a sermon the night before and explain how Saturday night and Sunday morning are the same thing, liturgically speaking.  I knew it wouldn’t have gotten me off the hook anyway. And I didn’t go into the fact that I’d been to Morning Prayer Sunday morning and Evensong Sunday afternoon, each without a sermon.  I figured that could only make things worse.  In fact, I was a little disturbed about when I thought about the implications of a Sunday without any expounding of Scripture, the Saturday night technicality notwithstanding. 

So in a moment of controlled panic I wracked my brain to remember the sermon.  I was frustrated with that because it had actually been a good sermon, quite a good sermon.  Had I not been paying adequate attention?  Regardless, I was not prepared for a quiz.  And the sermon was so good that it warranted more than a ten second synopsis.  I was frustrated with my obvious lack of faith.  I blurted something out at first that clearly didn’t make sense.  She responded with a puzzled look and a “Huh?”

More wracking of the brain.  Finally I blurted out something, which though not profound, was at least minimally coherent and actually related to what the preacher had been trying to impart.  I was pleased that I could remember, basically at least, the Gospel lesson at issue.  I mentioned the book and the chapter and hoped she would give me a pass on the verse. 

It worked.  She was satisfied.  Sort of. 

Then she went on to tell me about her preacher’s sermon that morning.  God was not in a break-giving mood apparently.  She remembered that her pastor had preached on Psalm 150, and she remembered the point of the message, which was that we should not judge how others praise God.  Everyone praises God in her or his own way, he had said, and that none of us is in any place to make qualitative distinctions between prayers and the manner in which they are made.   

I can only hope it applies to her memory of her encounter with a very tired preacher in a purple shirt last night.  It is interesting to me, though, that I remember more about the sermon she heard than the one I did.  And I assure you it has nothing to do with the preacher I heard.

Peace,

Being Whole

The Gospel for this week caused me a lot of spiritual confusion for a long time.  It was of a particularly dangerous sort.

Jesus said, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”  (Mt. 5:48)  One of my particular spiritual weaknesses is perfectionism.  It can do a lot of damage.  And these words of Jesus appear at first to confirm rather than challenge that perfectionism.  They appear to suggest that perfection is something attainable if only one expends enough effort.  Fortunately along the way, I came to realize the fallacy of that. 

I had always taken perfect to mean perfect as in a moral sense.  I suspect that made me a particularly difficult person to live with.  It wasn’t doing me any good, either. 

The light went on when I realized that perfect had another meaning.  It also means whole, complete, healthy, at peace.  This is what Jesus hopes for us—wholeness more than perfection in the way we normally mean it.  It’s the Hebrew concept of shalom.

Wholeness, though, is not somehow effortless.  I’m afraid it has no small amount of hard work, too.  And that is what Jesus has been talking about in the verses leading up to what he had to say about being perfect.

For example, just before the verse about being perfect, Jesus had been teaching about love.  Loving those who love you is relatively simple.  Not all love is reciprocated, though.  Sometimes love is met with indifference; sometimes, with hatred; sometimes, with harm.  That’s when love is difficult.  But anything less than love is also less than whole.

Love is not complete in the way God’s love is complete when it discriminates even between those who are evil and those who are good, the righteous and the unrighteous.  Love cannot be whole if there are any it refuses to reach.

That’s why Jesus said, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’  But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”  (vv. 43-44)  Love that includes some and excludes others is necessarily incomplete.  Love that is less than all is also less than whole.  Love that holds back cannot be fully at peace.

Perfection is in loving as God loves, even when it is difficult, especially when it is difficult.  It’s not that it’s a matter of morality.  It’s that it’s a matter of being whole.

Peace,

Affording Division

The Church has suffered two major schisms, and I’m afraid, lots of minor ones.  The major ones were the Great Schism of the 11th century and the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century.  The latter especially has led to further splintering even to our own day.  We are in the midst of such an event in Anglicanism right now, and of course, we are a product of the major split that occurred with the Reformation and its expression in England.  Breakups, including church ones, have no small connection to issues of power and money.  Power not only corrupts; it divides.  Money is not only the root of much evil; it is the root of much division.  Both are true in the Church. 

But power and money played another role in our divisions, I believe.  Both of the major schisms occurred at the height of the Church’s power, one at the height of the Middle Ages, and one at the end of them.  The Middle Ages were a time when the Church and the State were most closely identified.  In many cases it was difficult to tell them apart.  Church politics and secular politics intermingled freely and naturally but not always righteously.  Though there may have been some cracks beginning to appear by the time of the Reformation, both of the major schisms occurred at the height of the Church’s power, privilege, prestige, and wealth. 

In short, the Church split because it could afford to.  One part of the body could afford, in a quite literal sense, to say to another, “I have no need of you.”  Division was a luxury for solving differences that the Church could afford to buy.

It is no longer so.  And in that we share something with our ancestors who long preceded the schisms.  They were tempted by division, too, but they resisted.  I think the reason is that lacking the privileged position in society that the Church later came to enjoy and take for granted, schism was simply a luxury the Church could not afford.

Paul wrote about it very early on in the Church’s missionary life. 
For as long as there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving according to human inclinations?  For when one says, "I belong to Paul," and another, "I belong to Apollos," are you not merely human?  What then is Apollos? What is Paul?  Servants through whom you came to believe, as the Lord assigned to each.  I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.  So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.  The one who plants and the one who waters have a common purpose, and each will receive wages according to the labor of each.  For we are God's servants, working together; you are God's field, God's building.  (1 Cor. 3:3b-9)

In the early days of planting and watering and tending, the Church could not afford division if it were to thrive.  Maybe there was a time when it could.  If so, the time has surely passed.  The reality of the Church’s life now is that division is a luxury we can simply no longer afford.  There’s just too much planting and watering to be done.

Peace,

Kenzo

We had a joyous event in my office last week.  Our colleague Bernice David became a grandmother. The baby’s name is Kenzo, which I think is an awfully cute name for a baby.  Bernice shared pictures with us.  Kenzo is adorable.  In one of the pictures, the new grandmother is holding her new grandson.  She has a smile that goes from ear to ear.  In our world, this sharing of pictures, in this case by email, is how we present a new arrival to the world.  In the world of Mary and Joseph, a sacrifice in the temple of a pair of turtledoves or two pigeons was the accepted protocol for presenting the child to the world.

We expect the proper response to the presentation of a new baby to be oohs and aahs and talk of how cute the new arrival is.  In Kenzo’s case, this was quite easy to do.  But Mary and Joseph were greeted by a rather strange response from an old man named Simeon when he saw Jesus for  the first time:  “This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed.”  (Lk. 2:34-35)

The birth of a baby is generally received as good news in a family.  Simeon’s words to Mary and Joseph hardly sound like good news.  They do, however, sound like truth.

Kenzo was born into a middle class family.  That made him more fortunate than many babies born in America last week.  According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, 22% of children born in America are born into families who live below the official poverty level.  They also estimate that 45% actually live in families with marginal incomes but not quite low enough to meet the government’s official definition of poor.  And this will come as no surprise, but the rates of poverty among children are highest among children who are black, Hispanic, and Native American.

That is absolutely unacceptable.  It is so totally unacceptable, that every single child born in America today is, whether we recognize it or not, a child “destined for the falling and rising of many . . . a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed.”

How we respond to this absolutely unacceptable reality speaks volumes about what our true inner thoughts are, and those of our culture.  How we respond to this absolutely unacceptable reality speaks volumes about whether our inner thoughts have anything whatsoever to do with being a disciple of Jesus, a 21st century missionary who meets Jesus in the person of the poor.  It is impossible to ooh and aah over the baby Jesus brought by Mary and Joseph to be presented in the temple or because of whom we gathered in darkened churches to sing “Silent Night” just a few weeks ago and not respond to the reality in our own neighborhoods of children living in poverty.

The fact that there are children living under the threat of war or the threat of not having a roof over their heads or the threat of not having food in their bellies is, just as Simeon said, “a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed.”  The question, of course, is what does it reveal about us?

Peace,