The Sixth Sunday After the Epiphany 2 Kings 5: 1 – 14
Sunday, February 12, 2012 I Corinthians 9: 24 – 27
The Rev. Bambi Willis Mark 1: 40 – 45
A leper came to Jesus begging him, and kneeling he said to him, ”If you choose, you can make me clean.”
Mark 1: 40
A leper came to Jesus begging him, and kneeling he said to him, ”If you choose, you can make me clean.” A leper comes to Jesus this morning in our reading from the gospel of Mark, begging Jesus to make him clean. And Jesus does, touching the man with his hand and sending the man away to the priests to be declared “clean.” The leper does not ask Jesus to heal him, but rather to make him clean. How odd. When was the last time you went to a doctor and asked the doctor to make you clean rather than cure you?
The leper in our story this morning is afflicted with some sort of skin disease, which may or may not be what we have come to call Hansen’s disease, or leprosy proper. His affliction is visible and disfiguring and may or may not have been contagious as we understand contagion. But for his contemporaries, this man’s affliction was a sign that his body was “wasting away,” in the words of one commentator, that the power of life was being taken away from him. This man’s leprosy was a sign of death and death was to be shunned.
In a world before modern medicine, life and death were completely in the hands of God who gave life and who could also take life away. Life, for our ancestors in the faith, meant following God’s law; failures to follow God’s law led to death. Death was a sign that God was withdrawing God’s favor and like the rotten apple that can spoil the whole barrel, death could be passed on to others, and therefore, to be avoided.
Shunning death meant keeping away from lepers, dead bodies, menstruating women and anyone who lost blood or body fluids. Blood was the symbol of life and the loss of blood meant life was being taken away. Death, the absence of life, was a curse and those who tasted death in any way could only be restored to life by God. And accordingly, in the Old Testament book of Leviticus, we find a variety of “purification” rituals, rituals recognizing that life had been restored. After giving birth, which included the loss of blood, a woman was “impure” or “unclean” and needed to seek to be restored to the land of the living. Restoration meant bringing an offering to God which the priests would make on her behalf.
To be “unclean” was to be separated from God, the source of life, and from the community. “The person who has the leprous disease,” Leviticus tells us, “shall wear torn clothes and let the hair on his head be disheveled; and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean.’ He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease; he is unclean. He shall live alone; his dwelling shall be outside the camp.” Before the advent of modern medicine, we can only presume that those with real leprosy lived out their lives away from all human community.
What Jesus does this morning is to restore this man with leprosy to the community, a community that had no way of doing what Jesus did. And not because the community was harsh, unloving or unforgiving, but rather because only God could take away this man’s affliction. The priests could restore this man to the community but they could not take away his leprosy. This Jesus did and then sent the man to the priests to be re-admitted to the community.
The purity laws of our ancestors are often seen as a bunch of silly laws that make little sense to us today. And sometimes, the next move we make is to turn Jesus into the only man with the good sense to know that eating pork would not keep God from loving you. But the purity laws codes kept the people of Israel safe, secure in a world that was subject to death and decay. Without those “rules,” life was not secure and could easily dissolve back into the chaos out of which God brought forth life “in the beginning.”
What Jesus does in our text today is not to overturn a way of life meant to create a holy and life giving people but to be for the people of Israel what the Temple was meant to be, the very locus of the power of God. Jesus is not saying that the Jewish way of life is wrong and the Temple rituals misguided; Jesus is bearing witness to a power greater than that of the Temple. In cleansing the leper and sending him back to be declared “clean” by the priests, Jesus is not destroying the boundary between clean and unclean, but rather extending the boundary so that those who were excluded from the community such as this leper could now be included.
Ultimately, what begins this morning with the cleansing of an “unclean” Jew, will become a cleansing for us, non-Jews who through Jesus are “ingrafted” into the people of God.
We no longer consign folk to “uncleanness,’’ but we do, because we are human, continue to draw boundaries between the clean and the unclean, who’s in and who’s out, as we forge a common life with our families, friends and neighbors. Most of the boundaries we create are unspoken, recognized only when we engage a new relationship. The first time I had dinner with A.G.’s family I learned that grace was always said before meals and the grace was always offered by the most senior gentleman – either his dad or his granddad. The first time A.G. came to dinner with my family, he learned that my father never said grace. As we began our life together, we quickly saw that the rituals our families observed were different and that we would have to determine our own.
The same is true for our common life. The first time I came among you, I learned that St. Asaph’s is not a community given to waving their arms in the air nor especially inclined to kneel during the Eucharistic prayer nor given to having their priests vested in chasubles. All well and good but nothing John Nunnally told me when he asked if I would supply on Ash Wednesday, 2010. Had I arrived that night waving either incense or my hands or intoning the entire liturgy, I suspect you would have been surprised. You knew who you were and I would not have “fit in.” That did not happen, thanks be to God.
Yet, every Sunday we throw open our doors and have no idea who might come among us. Those who come, those who are new to this community, have a steep learning curve which we do not always appreciate. No one wants to feel “strange,” we all want to “fit in” but the bulletin and the website do not communicate our boundaries, our ethos, the way we do things. The only way to know those things is to come and get a sense of who we are. Strangers, newcomers, are very quick to pick up on our unspoken rituals, the boundaries we draw without ever even knowing we are drawing boundaries.
If your native language is Spanish, for example, you will be very aware that we do not read the gospel in Spanish. If you are homeless, you will be very aware that this community presumes you have an address and a phone number and probably email. If you are Catholic, you may find it strange that I am a married woman with children.
Now we might and we often do, say: “Well, this is who we are. Take it or leave it.” There is some truth in that but not a particularly helpful truth. Not a truth that brings us to life but only an affirmation that we have found life where we are and we are not going to risk finding life somewhere else. Strangers in our midst invite us to examine our unspoken assumptions about who we are and what we are about.
Strangers challenge us and we would like to be left alone. The leper is a stranger in our text this morning, a stranger calling out for justice, for redemption, for restoration. The leper amazingly puts his trust in Jesus. The leper kneels down before Jesus and says simply: “Help me.” We can help and we can hurt and we usually hurt when we ask folk to become who we are rather than asking who we need to become in order to include them. Saint Paul will speak of this as being all things to all people. You and I resist that because we value who we are and fear becoming something we do not want to be.
But who we are is not a gift we give to God; rather, who we are is a gift God gives to us. Who we are as a community will not be static, but will grow and change as new folk come among us, hoping to find a place at God’s table. We are called to be gracious as God is gracious and who this day, makes a way for a leper long separated from the holy people of God, to return to the community of the faithful. The community was now tasked to receive this cleansed leper, to make a place for him among the “clean.” That is our task as well, to make a place for those who by the power of God have been led to be with us. May God give us all the grace to receive those who God sends to us as friends and not as strangers.
Sunday, February 12, 2012 I Corinthians 9: 24 – 27
The Rev. Bambi Willis Mark 1: 40 – 45
A leper came to Jesus begging him, and kneeling he said to him, ”If you choose, you can make me clean.”
Mark 1: 40
A leper came to Jesus begging him, and kneeling he said to him, ”If you choose, you can make me clean.” A leper comes to Jesus this morning in our reading from the gospel of Mark, begging Jesus to make him clean. And Jesus does, touching the man with his hand and sending the man away to the priests to be declared “clean.” The leper does not ask Jesus to heal him, but rather to make him clean. How odd. When was the last time you went to a doctor and asked the doctor to make you clean rather than cure you?
The leper in our story this morning is afflicted with some sort of skin disease, which may or may not be what we have come to call Hansen’s disease, or leprosy proper. His affliction is visible and disfiguring and may or may not have been contagious as we understand contagion. But for his contemporaries, this man’s affliction was a sign that his body was “wasting away,” in the words of one commentator, that the power of life was being taken away from him. This man’s leprosy was a sign of death and death was to be shunned.
In a world before modern medicine, life and death were completely in the hands of God who gave life and who could also take life away. Life, for our ancestors in the faith, meant following God’s law; failures to follow God’s law led to death. Death was a sign that God was withdrawing God’s favor and like the rotten apple that can spoil the whole barrel, death could be passed on to others, and therefore, to be avoided.
Shunning death meant keeping away from lepers, dead bodies, menstruating women and anyone who lost blood or body fluids. Blood was the symbol of life and the loss of blood meant life was being taken away. Death, the absence of life, was a curse and those who tasted death in any way could only be restored to life by God. And accordingly, in the Old Testament book of Leviticus, we find a variety of “purification” rituals, rituals recognizing that life had been restored. After giving birth, which included the loss of blood, a woman was “impure” or “unclean” and needed to seek to be restored to the land of the living. Restoration meant bringing an offering to God which the priests would make on her behalf.
To be “unclean” was to be separated from God, the source of life, and from the community. “The person who has the leprous disease,” Leviticus tells us, “shall wear torn clothes and let the hair on his head be disheveled; and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean.’ He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease; he is unclean. He shall live alone; his dwelling shall be outside the camp.” Before the advent of modern medicine, we can only presume that those with real leprosy lived out their lives away from all human community.
What Jesus does this morning is to restore this man with leprosy to the community, a community that had no way of doing what Jesus did. And not because the community was harsh, unloving or unforgiving, but rather because only God could take away this man’s affliction. The priests could restore this man to the community but they could not take away his leprosy. This Jesus did and then sent the man to the priests to be re-admitted to the community.
The purity laws of our ancestors are often seen as a bunch of silly laws that make little sense to us today. And sometimes, the next move we make is to turn Jesus into the only man with the good sense to know that eating pork would not keep God from loving you. But the purity laws codes kept the people of Israel safe, secure in a world that was subject to death and decay. Without those “rules,” life was not secure and could easily dissolve back into the chaos out of which God brought forth life “in the beginning.”
What Jesus does in our text today is not to overturn a way of life meant to create a holy and life giving people but to be for the people of Israel what the Temple was meant to be, the very locus of the power of God. Jesus is not saying that the Jewish way of life is wrong and the Temple rituals misguided; Jesus is bearing witness to a power greater than that of the Temple. In cleansing the leper and sending him back to be declared “clean” by the priests, Jesus is not destroying the boundary between clean and unclean, but rather extending the boundary so that those who were excluded from the community such as this leper could now be included.
Ultimately, what begins this morning with the cleansing of an “unclean” Jew, will become a cleansing for us, non-Jews who through Jesus are “ingrafted” into the people of God.
We no longer consign folk to “uncleanness,’’ but we do, because we are human, continue to draw boundaries between the clean and the unclean, who’s in and who’s out, as we forge a common life with our families, friends and neighbors. Most of the boundaries we create are unspoken, recognized only when we engage a new relationship. The first time I had dinner with A.G.’s family I learned that grace was always said before meals and the grace was always offered by the most senior gentleman – either his dad or his granddad. The first time A.G. came to dinner with my family, he learned that my father never said grace. As we began our life together, we quickly saw that the rituals our families observed were different and that we would have to determine our own.
The same is true for our common life. The first time I came among you, I learned that St. Asaph’s is not a community given to waving their arms in the air nor especially inclined to kneel during the Eucharistic prayer nor given to having their priests vested in chasubles. All well and good but nothing John Nunnally told me when he asked if I would supply on Ash Wednesday, 2010. Had I arrived that night waving either incense or my hands or intoning the entire liturgy, I suspect you would have been surprised. You knew who you were and I would not have “fit in.” That did not happen, thanks be to God.
Yet, every Sunday we throw open our doors and have no idea who might come among us. Those who come, those who are new to this community, have a steep learning curve which we do not always appreciate. No one wants to feel “strange,” we all want to “fit in” but the bulletin and the website do not communicate our boundaries, our ethos, the way we do things. The only way to know those things is to come and get a sense of who we are. Strangers, newcomers, are very quick to pick up on our unspoken rituals, the boundaries we draw without ever even knowing we are drawing boundaries.
If your native language is Spanish, for example, you will be very aware that we do not read the gospel in Spanish. If you are homeless, you will be very aware that this community presumes you have an address and a phone number and probably email. If you are Catholic, you may find it strange that I am a married woman with children.
Now we might and we often do, say: “Well, this is who we are. Take it or leave it.” There is some truth in that but not a particularly helpful truth. Not a truth that brings us to life but only an affirmation that we have found life where we are and we are not going to risk finding life somewhere else. Strangers in our midst invite us to examine our unspoken assumptions about who we are and what we are about.
Strangers challenge us and we would like to be left alone. The leper is a stranger in our text this morning, a stranger calling out for justice, for redemption, for restoration. The leper amazingly puts his trust in Jesus. The leper kneels down before Jesus and says simply: “Help me.” We can help and we can hurt and we usually hurt when we ask folk to become who we are rather than asking who we need to become in order to include them. Saint Paul will speak of this as being all things to all people. You and I resist that because we value who we are and fear becoming something we do not want to be.
But who we are is not a gift we give to God; rather, who we are is a gift God gives to us. Who we are as a community will not be static, but will grow and change as new folk come among us, hoping to find a place at God’s table. We are called to be gracious as God is gracious and who this day, makes a way for a leper long separated from the holy people of God, to return to the community of the faithful. The community was now tasked to receive this cleansed leper, to make a place for him among the “clean.” That is our task as well, to make a place for those who by the power of God have been led to be with us. May God give us all the grace to receive those who God sends to us as friends and not as strangers.
The Last Sunday After the Epiphany 2 Kings 2: 1 – 12
Sunday, February 19, 2012 2 Corinthians 4: 3 – 6
The Rev. Bambi Willis Mark 9: 2 – 9
Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!”
Mark 9: 7
“I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I’m not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.” Award winning children’s author Robert McCloskey offers us a humorous glimpse into the reality of communication: we do not always hear what is being said. What we hear is often quite different from what someone is trying tell us. In our gospel reading this morning Peter does not hear what God is telling him. God tells Peter this morning the glory of God is revealed through suffering and Peter, like all of us, would like to hear something different.
Today in our gospel reading, Peter is overwhelmed by a vision of the glory of God, seeing Jesus “transfigured,” transformed from a man of flesh and blood into an other worldly figure clothed in brilliance, flanked by Moses and Elijah. Peter is terrified and fumbles for something to do, something to say, finally blurting out a suggestion that he make tents in which this majestic company might stay. Poor Peter; as usual Peter appears impetuous, not knowing what to say but saying something anyway.
And then God speaks: “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!”
Listening was a task Peter had to learn. And Peter had to learn like most of us the hard way. Peter, whose unfailing love for Jesus had led him to give up everything to follow this man he believed to be the Messiah, ultimately learned that even he, the most devout of disciples cowered at the cross, denying his Lord three times. Peter heard what he wanted to hear and what Peter wanted to hear was that the Messiah was coming in glory and great power and Rome was going down in defeat. Peter had no clue the Messiah was going to die. Peter heard what he wanted to hear and what Peter wanted to hear was that the promised Messiah had finally come. What Peter could not or would not hear was that this Messiah was going to be crucified.
The story of the Transfiguration, the vision of Christ transformed, radiant in light, glorious in power alongside Moses and Elijah is the hidden meaning of the cross, the truth buried within Christ’s humiliating and shameful death. The glory Peter sees at the Transfiguration will come through suffering, by way of the cross and cannot be known without the cross. The glory of God will be revealed only as Christ gives up all claims, surrenders himself to God completely, dies to any desire to save himself.
The vision Peter sees at the Transfiguration is a vision of the glory of God made known through Jesus’ self-giving love, a love that abandons itself utterly to the will of God. In the Transfiguration, the very glory of God is revealed and a foretaste of the Resurrection is given to Peter. But in the Transfiguration, Christ is robed in white, the color of martyrs. The glory of the Lord will be revealed but not before Christ suffers and dies.
Love, for all of the glory and majesty we ascribe to that word, will inevitably lead us to the cross. If we love we will suffer. Our most intimate relationships bear witness to us of this truth. When we love someone, we suffer when they suffer. The agony of watching someone we love suffer is perhaps the worst agony we can know. Walking with someone we love through trials, sickness, despair and maybe even death, is perhaps the most tragic part of being human, of being able to know the joy of love. Our capacity to love one another is indeed God’s greatest gift to us but is also a most excruciating cross to bear. Compassion, suffering with someone, is not a warm and fuzzy feeling.
Some of the time we can relieve the suffering of those we love. My husband A.G. has on any number of occasions come to my rescue, given me a kiss or a hug or simply said “I love you” and my world has changed. But one day, one of us will be dying and the other will be able to do nothing, say nothing, be powerless to change what is happening and in all honesty I cannot say whether on that day I want to be the one who is dying or the one who is watching. If you do not want to suffer, do not fall in love.
Former Archbishop of Canterbury Michael Ramsey knew something about loving and the cost of loving. And for Ramsey, loving in all of its heights and depths leads us into the very truth of God – God is willing to suffer for the sake of God’s love for the world:
Except for an agnostic patch in my teens, I’ve never doubted the existence of God. But I’ve sometimes found my faith in him so painful that I would rather be without it. But that is the Christian way. Since the early tragedies of my life I have been as sensitive as anyone can be to suffering – to God himself taking on the darkness of alienation. That has made me very wary of any attempt to reconstruct the Christian faith without maintaining the place of the cross of Christ in the redemption of suffering.”
We live in a culture that tries desperately to avoid suffering. We are uncomfortable often with the old or the sick or the dying. We are fed a steady diet of advertising that lauds the young, the proud and the beautiful. And we are embarrassed often by our own suffering and weakness, all those times we feel powerless, helpless and out of control. We so desperately want to “do” something and sometimes we can do nothing.
Nothing but pray: Lord have mercy. Suffering sends us to the foot of the cross waiting upon God’s mercy, pleading to God, knowing God was as present on Calvary as God was present on Easter morning even though no one knew it then. In the face of suffering, our own or that of others, choose your words carefully. “Cheer up. It could be worse” is cheap and hollow in the face of Christ’s words on the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” On the cross Christ experienced the absence of God, the same absence we feel when our lives are falling apart. The cross was not pretend but very, very real. We look to God in the sure and certain hope of deliverance but cannot until or unless we acknowledge we cannot save ourselves.
On Ramsey’s grave are inscribed the following words written by the second century Greek Father St. Irenaeus: “The Glory of God is the living man; and the life of man is the vision of God.” Ramsey knew we live and die between the cross and the hope of the Resurrection. The vision of God and all that God is – all goodness, all truth, all beauty – is precisely what opens our eyes to the truth that the world is not filled with goodness nor truth nor beauty. The vision of God begs us to be with this world, a world so often besieged by pain and turmoil, not offering cheap words nor cheap fixes, but self-giving love. Out of compassion for this world Christ died for us and in compassion for this world we are called not to judge but to love, not to speak so much as to listen, not to “fix” others but to wonder how they may be “fixing” us. What the world needs is not our good advice, no matter how very good that advice may be, nor one more self help book. What the world needs is our commitment to be with this world, not another of our own making, sharing the struggle, bearing one another’s burdens, willing to live and die for one another. Only as we live in this world, a world that does not belong to us but belongs to God, can we with any truth whatsoever pray: “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name.”
Sunday, February 19, 2012 2 Corinthians 4: 3 – 6
The Rev. Bambi Willis Mark 9: 2 – 9
Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!”
Mark 9: 7
“I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I’m not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.” Award winning children’s author Robert McCloskey offers us a humorous glimpse into the reality of communication: we do not always hear what is being said. What we hear is often quite different from what someone is trying tell us. In our gospel reading this morning Peter does not hear what God is telling him. God tells Peter this morning the glory of God is revealed through suffering and Peter, like all of us, would like to hear something different.
Today in our gospel reading, Peter is overwhelmed by a vision of the glory of God, seeing Jesus “transfigured,” transformed from a man of flesh and blood into an other worldly figure clothed in brilliance, flanked by Moses and Elijah. Peter is terrified and fumbles for something to do, something to say, finally blurting out a suggestion that he make tents in which this majestic company might stay. Poor Peter; as usual Peter appears impetuous, not knowing what to say but saying something anyway.
And then God speaks: “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!”
Listening was a task Peter had to learn. And Peter had to learn like most of us the hard way. Peter, whose unfailing love for Jesus had led him to give up everything to follow this man he believed to be the Messiah, ultimately learned that even he, the most devout of disciples cowered at the cross, denying his Lord three times. Peter heard what he wanted to hear and what Peter wanted to hear was that the Messiah was coming in glory and great power and Rome was going down in defeat. Peter had no clue the Messiah was going to die. Peter heard what he wanted to hear and what Peter wanted to hear was that the promised Messiah had finally come. What Peter could not or would not hear was that this Messiah was going to be crucified.
The story of the Transfiguration, the vision of Christ transformed, radiant in light, glorious in power alongside Moses and Elijah is the hidden meaning of the cross, the truth buried within Christ’s humiliating and shameful death. The glory Peter sees at the Transfiguration will come through suffering, by way of the cross and cannot be known without the cross. The glory of God will be revealed only as Christ gives up all claims, surrenders himself to God completely, dies to any desire to save himself.
The vision Peter sees at the Transfiguration is a vision of the glory of God made known through Jesus’ self-giving love, a love that abandons itself utterly to the will of God. In the Transfiguration, the very glory of God is revealed and a foretaste of the Resurrection is given to Peter. But in the Transfiguration, Christ is robed in white, the color of martyrs. The glory of the Lord will be revealed but not before Christ suffers and dies.
Love, for all of the glory and majesty we ascribe to that word, will inevitably lead us to the cross. If we love we will suffer. Our most intimate relationships bear witness to us of this truth. When we love someone, we suffer when they suffer. The agony of watching someone we love suffer is perhaps the worst agony we can know. Walking with someone we love through trials, sickness, despair and maybe even death, is perhaps the most tragic part of being human, of being able to know the joy of love. Our capacity to love one another is indeed God’s greatest gift to us but is also a most excruciating cross to bear. Compassion, suffering with someone, is not a warm and fuzzy feeling.
Some of the time we can relieve the suffering of those we love. My husband A.G. has on any number of occasions come to my rescue, given me a kiss or a hug or simply said “I love you” and my world has changed. But one day, one of us will be dying and the other will be able to do nothing, say nothing, be powerless to change what is happening and in all honesty I cannot say whether on that day I want to be the one who is dying or the one who is watching. If you do not want to suffer, do not fall in love.
Former Archbishop of Canterbury Michael Ramsey knew something about loving and the cost of loving. And for Ramsey, loving in all of its heights and depths leads us into the very truth of God – God is willing to suffer for the sake of God’s love for the world:
Except for an agnostic patch in my teens, I’ve never doubted the existence of God. But I’ve sometimes found my faith in him so painful that I would rather be without it. But that is the Christian way. Since the early tragedies of my life I have been as sensitive as anyone can be to suffering – to God himself taking on the darkness of alienation. That has made me very wary of any attempt to reconstruct the Christian faith without maintaining the place of the cross of Christ in the redemption of suffering.”
We live in a culture that tries desperately to avoid suffering. We are uncomfortable often with the old or the sick or the dying. We are fed a steady diet of advertising that lauds the young, the proud and the beautiful. And we are embarrassed often by our own suffering and weakness, all those times we feel powerless, helpless and out of control. We so desperately want to “do” something and sometimes we can do nothing.
Nothing but pray: Lord have mercy. Suffering sends us to the foot of the cross waiting upon God’s mercy, pleading to God, knowing God was as present on Calvary as God was present on Easter morning even though no one knew it then. In the face of suffering, our own or that of others, choose your words carefully. “Cheer up. It could be worse” is cheap and hollow in the face of Christ’s words on the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” On the cross Christ experienced the absence of God, the same absence we feel when our lives are falling apart. The cross was not pretend but very, very real. We look to God in the sure and certain hope of deliverance but cannot until or unless we acknowledge we cannot save ourselves.
On Ramsey’s grave are inscribed the following words written by the second century Greek Father St. Irenaeus: “The Glory of God is the living man; and the life of man is the vision of God.” Ramsey knew we live and die between the cross and the hope of the Resurrection. The vision of God and all that God is – all goodness, all truth, all beauty – is precisely what opens our eyes to the truth that the world is not filled with goodness nor truth nor beauty. The vision of God begs us to be with this world, a world so often besieged by pain and turmoil, not offering cheap words nor cheap fixes, but self-giving love. Out of compassion for this world Christ died for us and in compassion for this world we are called not to judge but to love, not to speak so much as to listen, not to “fix” others but to wonder how they may be “fixing” us. What the world needs is not our good advice, no matter how very good that advice may be, nor one more self help book. What the world needs is our commitment to be with this world, not another of our own making, sharing the struggle, bearing one another’s burdens, willing to live and die for one another. Only as we live in this world, a world that does not belong to us but belongs to God, can we with any truth whatsoever pray: “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name.”
Ash Wednesday Joel 2: 1 – 2, 12 – 17
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 2 Corinthians 5: 20b – 6:10
The Rev. Bambi Willis Matthew 6: 1 – 6, 16 - 21
“Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.”
Matthew 6: 1
“Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.” Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of our observance of Lent. And every Ash Wednesday we hear a reading from the gospel of Matthew warning us not to be like the hypocrites who flaunt their piety before others. Do not sound a trumpet when you give alms, like the hypocrites do, Jesus warns; do not stand on the street corners praying like the hypocrites do; and do not look dismal when you are fasting, like the hypocrites do. Hypocrites, Jesus warns, are those who seek to be praised for their piety.
“Beware of practicing your piety” is not exactly how the Greek text reads. “Be careful not to demonstrate your righteousness before others with the aim of being seen by them” is closer to the Greek.
A hypocrite is someone who says one thing and does something else. A hypocrite is someone who pretends to be something they are not. In our reading, a hypocrite is someone who says they love God with their whole heart, and mind, and strength, but also loves others telling them how wonderful they are for loving God with their whole heart, and mind, and strength.
Hypocrisy is a most unpleasant word which I daresay none of us wish to have applied to ourselves. And, yet, Lent always begins with a warning against hypocrisy. Hypocrisy suggests that you and I are capable of a great deception, capable of thinking we are doing God’s will when in reality we are only following “the devices and desires of our own hearts.” Hypocrisy suggests that our hearts are not pure, but torn between love of God and love of ourselves.
“Create and make in us new and contrite hearts,” we prayed in our opening collect tonight. Tonight we are invited to begin a forty day journey into the secrets of our hearts. During Lent we are asked to “examine ourselves” and to consider the many ways we seek to serve ourselves rather than God. We will begin that process of self-examination tonight, saying together a Litany of Penitence. We might want to return to that litany throughout this Lenten season, in private, as we seek to make known to ourselves what God already knows.
“Purity of heart,” wrote the Danish theologian Soren Kierkegaard in 1846, “is to will one thing.” And willing one thing – that God’s will be done – is not something we are very good at. We never simply want God’s will to be done. We always want something else. We want to preserve our reputations or our friendships or our good name. We want to avoid conflict and controversy. Sure we want to do God’s will but we also want to save our skins. Loving God above all else means willing one thing and you and I are creatures who want many things – the praise of others, power, security, certainty, and creature comforts, to name a few. Tonight we are invited to tell the truth about ourselves and acknowledge that we have many desires and not all of them are holy.
Holy desires draw us closer to God and to one another. Unholy desires pull us away from God and from one another.
Holy desire – the desire to know and love God with our whole heart, and mind, and strength - is God’s gift to us, an outpouring of God’s love and desire for us. Episcopal theologian and professor of theology at Loyola University, Mark McIntosh writes: “It is this yearning Holy Spirit who ignites our desire and draws us into the life of Christ.” God’s Holy Spirit draws us into the life of Christ and away from lives focused on ourselves. God’s yearning Holy Spirit bids us away from ourselves, from our desperate attempts to secure a place for ourselves in this world, and into what McIntosh calls “the truly great adventure” of doing God’s will.
Lent so often sounds like doom and gloom, as we mark ourselves with ashes and are called to examine ourselves and repent. Lent rarely sounds like preparation for what McIntosh describes as “a truly great adventure.” But our lives of faith are a truly great adventure as we hearken to the pleadings of the Holy Spirit to lose ourselves in order to find ourselves in Christ. We need not be afraid for God is faithful even when we are not. Lent is much more about trusting in God’s faithfulness than trusting in our righteousness.
In the early church, the season of Lent was the time when folk were prepared for baptism at The Great Vigil of Easter. If you remember the service of baptism we celebrated when Bishop Gulick came to visit several weeks ago, one of the questions asked of our baptizands was: “Do you put your whole trust in Christ’s grace and love?” Lent invites us to trust in that love, not our own righteousness, for we can be deceived.
Trusting Christ’s grace and love, we can risk giving ourselves away, not fearing what we might lose but anticipating what we might become. For as a nineteenth century Anglican theologian puts it:
You can never win any kind of peace or self-possession unless you have risked all to get it. Ask yourself for one moment what have been your feelings on the eve of some act involving courage…Have you not felt something like this? “I cannot do this. This is too much for me. I shall ruin myself if I take this risk. I cannot take the leap. It is impossible. All me will be gone if I do this, and I cling to myself.” And then supposing the spirit has conquered and you have done this impossible thing, do you not find afterwards that you possess yourself in a sense that you never have before, that there is more of you?...You know you are something different from what you were before, and something more.
Lent is the journey we make toward becoming something different and something more. But only insofar as we are willing to risk it all. “The survival instincts of our nature,” McIntosh comments, “weigh us down like gravity, telling us not to risk the very thing that most enlivens us.” What brings us to life and what keeps us in life is not our righteousness but God’s righteousness, the goodness and love of God made known to us in Christ and whose power, in the words of Saint Paul, “working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.”
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 2 Corinthians 5: 20b – 6:10
The Rev. Bambi Willis Matthew 6: 1 – 6, 16 - 21
“Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.”
Matthew 6: 1
“Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.” Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of our observance of Lent. And every Ash Wednesday we hear a reading from the gospel of Matthew warning us not to be like the hypocrites who flaunt their piety before others. Do not sound a trumpet when you give alms, like the hypocrites do, Jesus warns; do not stand on the street corners praying like the hypocrites do; and do not look dismal when you are fasting, like the hypocrites do. Hypocrites, Jesus warns, are those who seek to be praised for their piety.
“Beware of practicing your piety” is not exactly how the Greek text reads. “Be careful not to demonstrate your righteousness before others with the aim of being seen by them” is closer to the Greek.
A hypocrite is someone who says one thing and does something else. A hypocrite is someone who pretends to be something they are not. In our reading, a hypocrite is someone who says they love God with their whole heart, and mind, and strength, but also loves others telling them how wonderful they are for loving God with their whole heart, and mind, and strength.
Hypocrisy is a most unpleasant word which I daresay none of us wish to have applied to ourselves. And, yet, Lent always begins with a warning against hypocrisy. Hypocrisy suggests that you and I are capable of a great deception, capable of thinking we are doing God’s will when in reality we are only following “the devices and desires of our own hearts.” Hypocrisy suggests that our hearts are not pure, but torn between love of God and love of ourselves.
“Create and make in us new and contrite hearts,” we prayed in our opening collect tonight. Tonight we are invited to begin a forty day journey into the secrets of our hearts. During Lent we are asked to “examine ourselves” and to consider the many ways we seek to serve ourselves rather than God. We will begin that process of self-examination tonight, saying together a Litany of Penitence. We might want to return to that litany throughout this Lenten season, in private, as we seek to make known to ourselves what God already knows.
“Purity of heart,” wrote the Danish theologian Soren Kierkegaard in 1846, “is to will one thing.” And willing one thing – that God’s will be done – is not something we are very good at. We never simply want God’s will to be done. We always want something else. We want to preserve our reputations or our friendships or our good name. We want to avoid conflict and controversy. Sure we want to do God’s will but we also want to save our skins. Loving God above all else means willing one thing and you and I are creatures who want many things – the praise of others, power, security, certainty, and creature comforts, to name a few. Tonight we are invited to tell the truth about ourselves and acknowledge that we have many desires and not all of them are holy.
Holy desires draw us closer to God and to one another. Unholy desires pull us away from God and from one another.
Holy desire – the desire to know and love God with our whole heart, and mind, and strength - is God’s gift to us, an outpouring of God’s love and desire for us. Episcopal theologian and professor of theology at Loyola University, Mark McIntosh writes: “It is this yearning Holy Spirit who ignites our desire and draws us into the life of Christ.” God’s Holy Spirit draws us into the life of Christ and away from lives focused on ourselves. God’s yearning Holy Spirit bids us away from ourselves, from our desperate attempts to secure a place for ourselves in this world, and into what McIntosh calls “the truly great adventure” of doing God’s will.
Lent so often sounds like doom and gloom, as we mark ourselves with ashes and are called to examine ourselves and repent. Lent rarely sounds like preparation for what McIntosh describes as “a truly great adventure.” But our lives of faith are a truly great adventure as we hearken to the pleadings of the Holy Spirit to lose ourselves in order to find ourselves in Christ. We need not be afraid for God is faithful even when we are not. Lent is much more about trusting in God’s faithfulness than trusting in our righteousness.
In the early church, the season of Lent was the time when folk were prepared for baptism at The Great Vigil of Easter. If you remember the service of baptism we celebrated when Bishop Gulick came to visit several weeks ago, one of the questions asked of our baptizands was: “Do you put your whole trust in Christ’s grace and love?” Lent invites us to trust in that love, not our own righteousness, for we can be deceived.
Trusting Christ’s grace and love, we can risk giving ourselves away, not fearing what we might lose but anticipating what we might become. For as a nineteenth century Anglican theologian puts it:
You can never win any kind of peace or self-possession unless you have risked all to get it. Ask yourself for one moment what have been your feelings on the eve of some act involving courage…Have you not felt something like this? “I cannot do this. This is too much for me. I shall ruin myself if I take this risk. I cannot take the leap. It is impossible. All me will be gone if I do this, and I cling to myself.” And then supposing the spirit has conquered and you have done this impossible thing, do you not find afterwards that you possess yourself in a sense that you never have before, that there is more of you?...You know you are something different from what you were before, and something more.
Lent is the journey we make toward becoming something different and something more. But only insofar as we are willing to risk it all. “The survival instincts of our nature,” McIntosh comments, “weigh us down like gravity, telling us not to risk the very thing that most enlivens us.” What brings us to life and what keeps us in life is not our righteousness but God’s righteousness, the goodness and love of God made known to us in Christ and whose power, in the words of Saint Paul, “working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.”
The First Sunday in Lent Genesis 9: 8 – 17
Sunday, February 26, 2012 I Peter 3: 18 – 22
The Rev. Bambi Willis Mark 1: 9 – 15
And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.
Mark 1: 12
The season of Lent began this past Wednesday and as we celebrated the liturgy of Ash Wednesday, we heard that in the early church the season of Lent had a twofold purpose. On the one hand, Lent was a time when “notorious sinners” were restored to the fellowship of the church. On the other hand, Lent was time when new converts were prepared for baptism. Lent was both a time of penitence as well as a time of preparation. Over time, the dominant emphasis in Lent fell on penitence rather than preparation.
A couple of weeks ago, when Bishop Gulick came to visit, we welcomed our four baptizands into the fellowship of the Church with great fanfare and a lovely reception. The church was full, the altar flowers glorious and pictures were taken of smiling baptizands with the Bishop.
This past Wednesday, our liturgy was somber as we marked ourselves with ash and kneeled for a long litany of penitence. The crosses are now covered in purple, we have only greenery at the altar and the church most probably will not be full again until Easter. The gladness of baptism has given way to the gloom of penitence and gloom rarely draws a crowd.
Our challenge during this Lenten season is to recover the ancient connection between baptism and the way we live our lives thereafter as those who have been baptized. At baptism we are given a new identity, “marked as Christ’s own forever.” During Lent, we are asked to remember that we are people who, in the words of the proper preface I will use at the eucharist this morning, “live no longer unto ourselves, but unto him who died for us and rose again.” During Lent, we are asked to remember who and whose we are.
This morning in our reading from Mark, our text begins with the story of Jesus’ baptism when a voice from heaven proclaims: “You are my Son, the beloved; with you I am well pleased.” This is good news; the long promised Savior of the world has come. In Jesus, God is acting to set us free , to rescue us, and like the announcement to the slaves in Egypt that God was rescuing them from the oppression of Pharoah in Egypt, this is news to celebrate.
But then we hear: “And the Spirit immediately drove Jesus out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.” This is not especially good news but rather like learning that once you cross over from slavery to freedom through the Red Sea, you will discover yourself struggling to survive in the inhospitable Sinai desert. And not for a day, but for forty years.
Following his baptism, Jesus is immediately driven into the wilderness to be tempted or “tested” in other translations. This testing is an immediate consequence of Jesus’ baptism; the same Spirit which descends upon Jesus at his baptism now drives Jesus out into the wilderness. The Spirit which anoints Jesus at his baptism immediately leads Jesus into the wilderness. Jesus is led into the wilderness and tried because of his baptism.
At his baptism, Jesus is given a new identity – the Beloved Son of God. At our baptism, we too are given a new identity – we become “members of the household of God,” as we say in the baptismal liturgy. After Jesus’ baptism, his identity is tested and tried; after our baptism, our identity is also tested and tried. Over and over again, we will be asked what it means to live as a member of the household of God. Temptation lies in the ever present possibility that we will forget who we are.
In the wilderness, Jesus is tempted and tried by Satan. Satan, remember, is not a red tailed devil, but the one who in the book of Job, is an agent of God, sent to test Job, to determine if Job will indeed abandon his faith in God. Satan is an adversary insofar as Satan tempts us to deny our faith in God. Satan tempts us to forget who we are.
In the early church, once Christians were no longer being fed to the lions in the Roman Coliseum and the Roman Emperor Constantine embraced the Christian faith in the fourth century, the Roman Empire became a comfortable place for Christians. Christianity was no longer an alien religion that “called us to new life in Christ,” forsaking all other lords save Christ. After the fourth century, Christianity was the accepted religion of the Empire.
For some, that comfort felt like compromise and they fled the great cities of the Roman Empire to live life in the desert. Those Desert Fathers as they came to be called, found life in the cities to be filled with distractions that kept them from following Christ. Over time, some would establish monastic communities, attempting to pattern their lives on Christ without the lure of “worldly things.” What the Desert Fathers knew is that we can become distracted, forgetting who we are and losing our way.
Our greatest temptation is the temptation to believe that we are doing what God wants us to do. Our greatest temptation is to rest self-satisfied that who we are and what we are doing does not need to be examined. We are tempted to baptize God into our lives rather than acknowledge that it is we who are baptized into God’s life. Lent is that time in the church year to remember who we are and to seek anew to follow the Spirit of Christ.
The wisdom of the ancients lay in a very simple acknowledgment: We are not able to hear God unless we listen. “Be still and know that I am God,” the psalms tell us. In the desert, the Desert Fathers sought stillness, a quiet not to be found in the cities. The cities were filled with a clamor of voices; distinguishing God’s voice from all the many other voices was difficult.
You and I have the same challenge. We live in a world of televisions and telephones, of cell phones and computers, of schedules and appointments and the need “to get things done.” Being still, being alone, being quiet is difficult. Indeed, being still feels like “doing nothing,” and “doing nothing” is not high on our list of virtues. And yet, how can we hear God if we do not listen?
Perhaps, we are afraid to listen. Perhaps, we intuitively fear the stillness of the desert, afraid we too might meet up with wild beasts. We might of course. But Jesus encountered not just wild beasts in the desert but ministering angels as well. We may be surprised by what we find when we are still.
Lent calls us to lose ourselves so that we may find ourselves, our true selves, the selves God wants us to be. In the wilderness, in the desert, alone before God, we become very aware of our limits, our vulnerabilities, our need for God. There is no pretending in the desert. In the desert, there are no superheroes, no saints, and no magicians. In the desert we are all the same – mortal human beings who cannot save ourselves. That power belongs only to God.
What we lose in the desert is the belief that we know what only God can know and what we must seek over and over again. Our ancestors in the faith would have gotten quite lost in the desert had God not given them a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night to follow. And we, too, will get lost if we fail to pay attention to the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, at work within us and among us.
What we seek during Lent is God’s will for us. What we may discover during Lent is that our wills are strong and unruly and not readily changed. We are no less than were our ancestors in the faith “a stubborn and stiff necked people.” But God chose us - we did not choose God - and God must have known what God was doing when God called us into the waters of baptism. God did not call us into baptism only to forsake us once the water on our heads dried up.
As we begin our journey through Lent, I would like to close this morning with a prayer of self-dedication from The Book of Common Prayer. Let us pray:
Almighty and eternal God, so draw our hearts to you, so guide our minds, so fill our imaginations, so control our wills, that we may be wholly yours, utterly dedicated to you; and then use us, we pray, as you will, and always to your glory and the welfare of your people; through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Sunday, February 26, 2012 I Peter 3: 18 – 22
The Rev. Bambi Willis Mark 1: 9 – 15
And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.
Mark 1: 12
The season of Lent began this past Wednesday and as we celebrated the liturgy of Ash Wednesday, we heard that in the early church the season of Lent had a twofold purpose. On the one hand, Lent was a time when “notorious sinners” were restored to the fellowship of the church. On the other hand, Lent was time when new converts were prepared for baptism. Lent was both a time of penitence as well as a time of preparation. Over time, the dominant emphasis in Lent fell on penitence rather than preparation.
A couple of weeks ago, when Bishop Gulick came to visit, we welcomed our four baptizands into the fellowship of the Church with great fanfare and a lovely reception. The church was full, the altar flowers glorious and pictures were taken of smiling baptizands with the Bishop.
This past Wednesday, our liturgy was somber as we marked ourselves with ash and kneeled for a long litany of penitence. The crosses are now covered in purple, we have only greenery at the altar and the church most probably will not be full again until Easter. The gladness of baptism has given way to the gloom of penitence and gloom rarely draws a crowd.
Our challenge during this Lenten season is to recover the ancient connection between baptism and the way we live our lives thereafter as those who have been baptized. At baptism we are given a new identity, “marked as Christ’s own forever.” During Lent, we are asked to remember that we are people who, in the words of the proper preface I will use at the eucharist this morning, “live no longer unto ourselves, but unto him who died for us and rose again.” During Lent, we are asked to remember who and whose we are.
This morning in our reading from Mark, our text begins with the story of Jesus’ baptism when a voice from heaven proclaims: “You are my Son, the beloved; with you I am well pleased.” This is good news; the long promised Savior of the world has come. In Jesus, God is acting to set us free , to rescue us, and like the announcement to the slaves in Egypt that God was rescuing them from the oppression of Pharoah in Egypt, this is news to celebrate.
But then we hear: “And the Spirit immediately drove Jesus out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.” This is not especially good news but rather like learning that once you cross over from slavery to freedom through the Red Sea, you will discover yourself struggling to survive in the inhospitable Sinai desert. And not for a day, but for forty years.
Following his baptism, Jesus is immediately driven into the wilderness to be tempted or “tested” in other translations. This testing is an immediate consequence of Jesus’ baptism; the same Spirit which descends upon Jesus at his baptism now drives Jesus out into the wilderness. The Spirit which anoints Jesus at his baptism immediately leads Jesus into the wilderness. Jesus is led into the wilderness and tried because of his baptism.
At his baptism, Jesus is given a new identity – the Beloved Son of God. At our baptism, we too are given a new identity – we become “members of the household of God,” as we say in the baptismal liturgy. After Jesus’ baptism, his identity is tested and tried; after our baptism, our identity is also tested and tried. Over and over again, we will be asked what it means to live as a member of the household of God. Temptation lies in the ever present possibility that we will forget who we are.
In the wilderness, Jesus is tempted and tried by Satan. Satan, remember, is not a red tailed devil, but the one who in the book of Job, is an agent of God, sent to test Job, to determine if Job will indeed abandon his faith in God. Satan is an adversary insofar as Satan tempts us to deny our faith in God. Satan tempts us to forget who we are.
In the early church, once Christians were no longer being fed to the lions in the Roman Coliseum and the Roman Emperor Constantine embraced the Christian faith in the fourth century, the Roman Empire became a comfortable place for Christians. Christianity was no longer an alien religion that “called us to new life in Christ,” forsaking all other lords save Christ. After the fourth century, Christianity was the accepted religion of the Empire.
For some, that comfort felt like compromise and they fled the great cities of the Roman Empire to live life in the desert. Those Desert Fathers as they came to be called, found life in the cities to be filled with distractions that kept them from following Christ. Over time, some would establish monastic communities, attempting to pattern their lives on Christ without the lure of “worldly things.” What the Desert Fathers knew is that we can become distracted, forgetting who we are and losing our way.
Our greatest temptation is the temptation to believe that we are doing what God wants us to do. Our greatest temptation is to rest self-satisfied that who we are and what we are doing does not need to be examined. We are tempted to baptize God into our lives rather than acknowledge that it is we who are baptized into God’s life. Lent is that time in the church year to remember who we are and to seek anew to follow the Spirit of Christ.
The wisdom of the ancients lay in a very simple acknowledgment: We are not able to hear God unless we listen. “Be still and know that I am God,” the psalms tell us. In the desert, the Desert Fathers sought stillness, a quiet not to be found in the cities. The cities were filled with a clamor of voices; distinguishing God’s voice from all the many other voices was difficult.
You and I have the same challenge. We live in a world of televisions and telephones, of cell phones and computers, of schedules and appointments and the need “to get things done.” Being still, being alone, being quiet is difficult. Indeed, being still feels like “doing nothing,” and “doing nothing” is not high on our list of virtues. And yet, how can we hear God if we do not listen?
Perhaps, we are afraid to listen. Perhaps, we intuitively fear the stillness of the desert, afraid we too might meet up with wild beasts. We might of course. But Jesus encountered not just wild beasts in the desert but ministering angels as well. We may be surprised by what we find when we are still.
Lent calls us to lose ourselves so that we may find ourselves, our true selves, the selves God wants us to be. In the wilderness, in the desert, alone before God, we become very aware of our limits, our vulnerabilities, our need for God. There is no pretending in the desert. In the desert, there are no superheroes, no saints, and no magicians. In the desert we are all the same – mortal human beings who cannot save ourselves. That power belongs only to God.
What we lose in the desert is the belief that we know what only God can know and what we must seek over and over again. Our ancestors in the faith would have gotten quite lost in the desert had God not given them a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night to follow. And we, too, will get lost if we fail to pay attention to the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, at work within us and among us.
What we seek during Lent is God’s will for us. What we may discover during Lent is that our wills are strong and unruly and not readily changed. We are no less than were our ancestors in the faith “a stubborn and stiff necked people.” But God chose us - we did not choose God - and God must have known what God was doing when God called us into the waters of baptism. God did not call us into baptism only to forsake us once the water on our heads dried up.
As we begin our journey through Lent, I would like to close this morning with a prayer of self-dedication from The Book of Common Prayer. Let us pray:
Almighty and eternal God, so draw our hearts to you, so guide our minds, so fill our imaginations, so control our wills, that we may be wholly yours, utterly dedicated to you; and then use us, we pray, as you will, and always to your glory and the welfare of your people; through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
