Giving at Christmas

       We have just been through what the culture calls “The Holidays” with all of their festivity, the Christmas presents, the dinners, the guests, the madness of the malls and everything that goes with this year end celebration.  New Year’s eve is the last of it when we celebrate the renewal of God’s time full of hope for the coming year.

On Christmas Eve, I was privileged to be with Dr. Harold Lewis and The Rev. Leslie Reimer at Calvary Church in Pittsburgh for their glorious 11:00 service with their massive choir and brass septet, with a procession that wound all around the church to place the babe in the manger and then begin the celebration of Jesus’ birth including a great sermon and the Eucharist. We finished it all, were properly exhausted, went home and went to bed getting up late on Christmas morning because the kids are all grown and are dealing with their own Christmases.  We saw them all later in the day for a wonderful dinner and a second exchange of presents.

What are we to make of all of this?  I am attracted to the short Old Testament reading in Numbers that is essentially the blessing that we are offered at the end of our worship services:

    The LORD bless you and keep you;
the LORD make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you;
the LORD lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace.

      In this Christmas season, we have again been given the gift of the birth of our Lord, and also the blessing of our God.  What more could we want?

Well, we want a lot more.  Christmas has devolved into a season of wanting.  Kids ask for the impossible from Santa and the rest of us try as best we can to take care of their wants.

Christmas, though seems also to have an abnormal number of tragedies,  fires and robberies.  Even charities have been robbed this year.  People have put out boxes to collect for charity and have had what was put in those boxes stolen.  I think this is a sign of the terrible times that we are in.  Joblessness is rampant and there is just not enough money in many budgets to take care of the demands.  So when a festive time like Christmas comes along, the demands loom larger and desperate things are done to provide the means to get along.  It is particularly depressing when charities are robbed, whose aim is to take care of those who have nothing.

I think we ought not to be too quick or too harsh with our judgment.  I remember when the poor box at Trinity Cathedral was stolen, the Dean of the Cathedral was asked about it by one of Pittsburgh’s reporters.  He said, “Maybe the man who stole it was poor”,  an elegant answer that puts into perspective the terrible need that constantly has filled our city and continues to fill it today.

So what do we really want at Christmastime?  We want what God has always wanted for us all.  Peace and joy, certainly and providence in the face of need and poverty.  We are always impressed when the community rises up and provides for those who lose everything in our neighborhoods.  When fires and death ravage us it is helpful when our neighbors come to our aid.

But we don’t have to wait for obvious tragedy to do this.  There are desperate people all around us who are in a more silent need.  When we help them in their grief or their hunger, or their inability to provide for themselves, we add a bit to God’s peace on this earth.  That is certainly the design of Christmas and we fulfill it with our giving to those around us more than with our feeble presents under the tree.

In this Holy season, may we all be mindful of need, wherever we find it and be givers of God’s peace, not only receivers.  This is how our blessed Lord is seen in this world that is full of privation and want.  A small baby in a manger with nothing at all but poor shepherds to come to him is our model for Christmas.  Remember the words of The Little Drummer Boy:

                        What can I give him, poor as I am?
                      If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
                      If I were a wise man, I would do my part,  
                      So what can I give him? I will give my heart.

When we approach the manger in this blessed season, material goods are not what are required as a gift.  What is wanted by our God as a gift to the Christ Child is our selves, ready to be agents of peace in this strife-torn world.  If we can do this simple thing, God’s peace will reign and the angels will sing.

The Greatest Gift at Christmas

      When I was about eight or nine, as World War II was getting underway, my mother took me Christmas shopping.  In one of the large Pittsburgh department stores, in the toy department, there was a large wooden anti-aircraft gun with a seat on it and a wheel to turn it around.  I wanted that thing more than anything I could think of.  I never told my parents about it, but I told Santa at night in the silence and darkness of my bed.  On Christmas morning, I crept down the stairs knowing that large gun would be in front of the fireplace in our living room, and that it would be mine.

The living room had no gun in it, only the sparkling tree with unopened presents beneath it.  My heart sank in knowing that there was no gun for me.

It was, of course, a disappointing Christmas for me.  What I remember was opening packages with a sweater and probably one with a toy of some kind, but that gun was all that was in my mind.  I’m sure that nobody knew the deep disappointment that was deep inside me at that moment, but as the day went on, I slowly got over it.

What I learned that day was the limit of desire.  I’m not sure how I expected Santa to get that gun into the house, or what I would have done with it; but on many levels, I am glad that it didn’t happen.  I think that I never asked for anything so preposterous again, and as time went on, I think I began to wonder what might be a appropriate thing to ask Santa to bring me, or if really there was a Santa in the first place.

All of us grow up, become more mature and understand the world better.  As kids, I think it is a wonderful thing to think about the wonder of a man in a red suit with reindeer who brings presents down the chimney.  But that certainly isn’t the essence of Christmas.  Kids in extreme poverty think about Christmas differently and wonder where their next meal is coming from.  Kids with meals provided think about selfish things like wooden anti-aircraft guns.

So what is all of this gifting about?  What is it that we all want Santa to bring us?   Isn’t Christmas about more than gifts and giving?  Isn’t it really about humankind receiving the greatest gift that has ever been given?

When Jesus was born to Mary in a stable in Bethlehem, he was born into poverty and homelessness.  There was no room for his parents in the inn and we have no record at all of Jesus’ home anywhere.  It isn’t recorded how he got on in his childhood, except the story of his visiting the temple in his youth and being found there by his parents.

As his ministry began, he wandered all around the countryside healing and comforting, never staying in one place very long.  His disciples followed him and kept company with him, but their lives were lived without much comfort for them.  They listened to Jesus and marveled at what he did.  They learned from him and followed him because they couldn’t do anything else.  He was a captivating person with a deep faith that never waned.

We celebrate Christmas because it is the day of the birth of our Messiah, the incarnation of God who came to take human form and to know intimately what it means to walk this earth as a human being with the same yearnings and problems that we all face.  Often, we make a mockery of this by the way that we celebrate this colossal Holy Day.  I am certain that if Christianity disappeared off the face of the earth, that Christmas would go right on.  The economy demands it.  We need “Black Friday” after Thanksgiving and all of the shopping that goes on from that day forward.

There are certainly good things too.  Salvation Army kettles are outside our super markets, on the streets in the midst of the shopping crowds.  These provide funding for the Army’s excellent work.  Most churches have their pledge drives in the late fall, tapping into the hope that our charitable spirit will be touched in this season to help the church with its work.

But it is helpful to remember what giving is all about.  The giving of self is the key to understanding the depth of Christmas.  Our wealth is a small part of what is needed in this season.  Touching each other with our spirits is how we really give at Christmastime.

The point of the Christmas story is the giving by God of his only son to humanity for them to do with as they wished.  What we did with that great gift was to listen for a time, but to finally get so angry at him that we put him on a cross and took his life.  But the giving wasn’t yet finished.  God took that crucified savior whom we put in a stone tomb and raised him from the dead three days later, so that ultimately death was conquered and our salvation assured.

That is the great gift that our God has given to all of us.  Giving forgiveness and love to each other is a small reflection of that great Love that was provided to all of us on that first Christmas.  It is what Christianity teaches and what we all hopefully live out.  That is the only way that “His will can be done on earth as it is in Heaven”.

        May God grant you a wonderful Christmas and a joyous, happy 2012.

God as a Wanderer

       Rosie and I have moved twenty-seven times.  We started our marriage in a little apartment in Indiana, PA.  I was in radio at the time, working as a disc jockey at the local station.  We moved from that apartment at the beginning of a journey that took us first to Texas, in Longview and Sherman, then when I was drafted, back to Pittsburgh and then to Baltimore and back to Texas at Fort Hood.  In each of these places, we found apartments that were wonderfully adequate.  When I got out of the army, we moved again to Texas and I went back to work for the station in Sherman where I had worked before I was drafted.

I then forsook radio for television and we moved to Wichita Falls, then to Midland, where we finally bought a house, for $7500 with a down payment of $150, which I paid in three $50 monthly payments.

There were many other moves (our parents called us gypsies) and we took our kids with us and finally settled down in Johnstown, PA, where I worked in television for eleven years and we had only three houses.  We never thought that there was anything wrong with all of this, it all seemed all right to us.

The point of all of this is that not being settled was a perfectly natural thing for us.  We moved where life took us and found our community among the places where we lived.  I can remember some wonderful friends whom we met in each of these towns and the memories have lasted for us.

After I went to seminary, we came back to Pittsburgh and had two churches in my ministerial career.  The first was in Moon Township, where we stayed for six years, then to Christ Church, North Hills, where I was the rector for eighteen years.  This was the most settled that we had ever been in our lives.  Our youngest daughter, Heather was never in one school for more than one year.  She bounced around with us from place to place and finally graduated from North Hills high school.  Being gypsies was good for all of us.  We saw a lot of the countryside.

In the Old Testament lesson, David wants to build a temple for God.  He calls Nathan, the prophet and tells him See, I am living in a house of cedar, but the Ark of God stays in a tent.  Nathan tells David to go and do all that he has in mind because the Lord is with him.

But later, the Lord spoke to Nathan and essentially told him that David was not the one to build him a house, that God was a gypsy, and has lived in a tent since he had brought out the people of Israel from Egypt.  David had just brought the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem and lodged it in the Tent of Meeting, uniting the tribes of the north with the tribes of the south.  The Ark had a home in the tent.  Finally, Solomon, David’s son would build the temple, but as things worked out, the temples stayed temporary.  All that we have at the moment is the ruin of Herod’s temple, the western wall in Jerusalem, where prayers are said constantly.  There is no permanent temple for God in all of the earth.

I have loved traveling through England where the ruins of old churches seem to be the most spiritual of places, where God has never left.  The old cathedrals seem to have a fragility about them, as do all churches.  I wonder if this is a message to us from God about putting our trust in bricks and mortar.

The apostles in the early church met in homes, where thirty or forty would gather to worship.  Large churches and cathedrals came much later after Christianity had become established.  The early Christians were on the run much of the time.  Being on the run kept them limber and aware of their surroundings.  When we are gypsies, we don’t have as much time to root.  I think it is interesting that narrowness in our culture is called “parochialism”, named possibly for parishes where people huddle together in their pews against those from the outside.

When God came to this earth to become incarnate and live like the rest of us, the way that this was done was to be born of a young woman, a poor woman in Nazareth who wasn’t yet married to the carpenter, Joseph.  When Jesus was born in a crude stable in Bethlehem, there was no home for these parents.  They didn’t even have a place in the inn.  It is fascinating that there is no “home” of Mary or of Joseph for all of us to visit, no residence here on earth of Jesus to attract tourists.  There is only the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem with a silver star under an altar that is supposedly the “place” where Jesus was born.  But we don’t really know.

Even in his death, his supposed “home” is the crypt in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, where the Orthodox priests will give you a candle when you enter it.  There is even an argument over where Jesus was buried.  Is it in the crypt, or is it in the Garden (or Gordon, from the man who discovered it) tomb that looks more like a burial plot.  It is all a silly argument anyway because Jesus rose from the dead and ascended to be with God, leaving us with our memories and our arguments,

The truth of it all is that God has no earthly home, except in our hearts.  That is exactly, I think, what God has in mind.  Through all of his ministry, Jesus lived in no settled place.  He moved from town to town, blessed and healed and was known throughout the land.

So what are we to do?  If bricks and mortar isn’t the way to establish God in this world, what is the way?  I believe that it is only how our lives are lived that God is seen in our communities and in our circle of friends.  How we treat each other is the whole idea.  Our worship takes different forms and can be a wonderful means of keeping us in touch with our God, but it is in our actions that God can be seen by others.  One answer is for of us all to pay attention to Mary’s extraordinary praise in The Magnificat and work to lift up the lowly and the oppressed to continue God’s love for this world.

Our Problem with the Coming of the Messiah

         In the fourth chapter of the Gospel of Luke, Jesus goes to Nazareth to begin his ministry.  He goes to the temple and reads to them what we know as the beginning of the 61st chapter of the book of Isaiah:

                                   The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the LORD's favor. 

  This is a stunning summary of what became Jesus’ ministry:  binding up the oppressed, proclaiming liberty to the captives, release to the prisoners and taking care of all who are impoverished in any way.

This is also the mission of the church that was created after Jesus’ resurrection.  The eleven apostles gathered together, began the church that is described in the book of Acts, and the letters of Paul. Their efforts on behalf of those in need is clearly set out in the scriptures.   It worked well in those early years as the church grew and prospered even in the face of persecution.  I know that the center of the attraction of the early church was its mission to those who were poor.  There is the collection reported in Acts for the relief of Jerusalem, and many instances of healing and great care taken for those in need who were encountered by the Christians in the churches.

Christianity has gotten off the rails over issues of power and doctrine over the years.  We have frequently lost the incredible direction given to us by our Lord and have lusted after all of the things that organized religion has momentarily thought important such as power and ego.  We have lost our way more than once.  This has led to terrible fights within the church and an enormous loss of life.  The statistics on lives lost because of our religious wars are terrible.

At this moment in history, the focus of the fight seems to be against Islam, but there are still small battles being fought all the time.  I think of the people from the Baptist church in Topeka, Kansas, who come and protest at the funerals of soldiers, and the atheists in Wisconsin who recently protested the display of a crèche on the courthouse steps in a local community, and triggered a mob of  “christians” who came out to support the crèche and who would have physically battled with the “atheists” if they had shown up.  We have a terrible record of facing down opposition.  We more often respond with power when we really need to show love.  That is why Jesus taught us, to turn the other cheek when we are facing opposition.

The past fifty years have seen movements of inclusion in our church.  Women have been ordained, and the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church is Kathryn Jefferts Schori, a well educated marine biologist who was previously bishop of Nevada.  She has brought a wonderful breath of fresh air to The Episcopal Church.  We have also had the election of Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire.  Bishop Robinson is a gay man living in a relationship with another man.  His consecration, as well as Bishop Jefferts Schori’s, have created battles in the church, and have sparked the defection of some numbers of priests and parishes to the Anglican dioceses that have sprung up around the world.  This is difficult for all of us, yet predictable.  In an inclusive climate, dissension is expected, though not particularly welcome.  It would be much better if we could all live in accordance with what Jesus taught to us by the example of his ministry.

We all yearn for peace in this world, and that is certainly our profound desire in this great season of hope, Advent.  The cry to our God to come into his creation again and provide us with the peace that somehow we find horribly elusive is unrelenting.

The problem, of course, is not anywhere but within ourselves.  We are the ones who by our prejudices and our unwarranted expectations keep peace away from our doorsteps.  I try to make peace within myself.  One of my Advent disciplines is to try to refrain from criticizing other drivers when I am on the road.  When I can do that and attribute goodness to them instead of deliberate evil when they cut me off, or pull out in front of me, I think I am getting somewhere.  I still fail in this very often, but the sentiment is still there.  I know deep within myself that the peace of God is still far from the center of my being.

In the Judean desert in the first century, John the Baptizer confronted the priests and Levites who came out from Jerusalem to challenge him.  They asked him if he was the Messiah, or a prophet or Elijah.  He told them that he was none of these.  They then asked him “Who are you?”  His response was eloquent:

      I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, “Make straight the way of the Lord,” as the prophet Isaiah said.

Here was the promised herald from Isaiah’s prophecy, telling the world that the Messiah was coming, and was indeed here.  That is the continuing promise of the season of Advent.  We wait not only for the birth of Jesus, but for his coming again to make this world straight as God intended it from the beginning.  There is not a more glorious hope in all of the world.  It is the final revelation of the Kingdom of Heaven on this earth.  We need that more than any of the promised gifts at Christmas.

Where is the Hope?

     There is a powerful moment in the performance of The Messiah when the soloist steps forth and sings Comfort My People.  It is like the skies open up and the hand of God comes down on the stage and lifts up the whole of the orchestra, the chorus, the soloist and the audience.  It is exactly what Handel was trying to craft in that glorious oratorio; the sense that God is coming again among his creation to give us immeasurable hope in the middle of chaos.  Certainly the chaos is caused by ourselves, there is no doubt about that,  but God puts that aside and comes to us with great comfort.

     There is a space between the end of the 39th and the beginning of the 40th chapter the book of Isaiah in most bibles, a space that signifies the end of one thing and the beginning of another.  The scholars call that the break between first and second Isaiah, the first two parts of that great book.  What is at an end is exile,  sorrow and grief, and what is beginning is comfort and compassion.  Here in the expectant season of Advent, what better message could we hear?

     We have a wreckage of a political campaign in front of us.  The Occupy movements are being evicted from their campgrounds, and there seems to be no progress at all on issues that trouble this country; the deficit is still towering, unemployment is a horrible problem, and the average salary of an NBA player is estimated at around eight million dollars.  There only seems to be economic insanity out there.  Bridges and roads remain to be fixed, the public transportation system is in chaos, and US Air is raising the price of a ticket to Philadelphia from Pittsburgh by five hundred percent!

     There was a story on the news this week about a family living in a truck.  They have little money, no place to live and the kids still go to school.  There is not much help for them, they live hand to mouth, but they are very good people, trying as best they can to live their lives with some kind of meaning.  There was another story talked about families racing to the grocery store at midnight on the first of the month, because that is when their food stamp money is deposited.  Both of the parents have jobs at about eight dollars an hour, but they just can’t make ends meet.  The father said that he would go and get a second job, but that would mean that they would lose their eligibility for food stamps.  We don’t live in very hopeful times.

     When I was a kid in the great depression, my parents were feeding people who came to our back door.  We didn’t have very much money either, but we were better off than those who were poor and homeless in that terrible time.  It seems to me that we are in a similar time now.  The strange thing is that we had a better “black Friday” this year because people flocked to the stores after Thanksgiving to pick up bargains.  There were fights over some of the items, one woman used pepper spray on another shopper, another sign of the greed that seems to be rampant in our community, instead of compassion, which it seems to me is an outgrowth and a reasonable expectation of community.

     Comfort, O Comfort my people, says the Lord.  The time of strife is over, the time for healing has begun.  Here in Advent, we are again reminded that the only place that we can with certainty look for hope is the God who created us, who loves us with an immeasurable affection, an affection so strong that he came to this earth in human vesture as our Lord Jesus, and walked among us to know the reality of humanity; to feel the sorrow and pain that we feel and the ultimate joy of relationships.

     One of the most poignant moments in the story of Jesus for me is that moment at Lazarus’ tomb, when John’s Gospel says simply: Jesus wept, when the tears rolled down his face and stained the  ground in sorrow over the death of his dear friend.  He then raised Lazarus so that we could all know that death is only a moment in time and is certainly not permanent.  There is the embodiment of hope eternal, the final answer of Jesus to all of the desperation that dogs humankind.  It is that hope that we carry with us in expectation this Advent as we wait for the coming of our Lord in flesh, that the worries that we all carry rest in the heart of our God, who will redeem us utterly from all of the turmoil of this world, and bring us finally into our true home.

The Advent of God

     How frustrating it is to look at Washington, our congress and our president and their inability to get anything done.  The so called “Super Committee” has just adjourned in failure, unable to agree on any way to trim the deficit.  Fingers are pointed in every direction and there is no hope of a bi-partisan solution to all of this financial trouble.  The Democrats are firm in wanting to raise taxes on the wealthy, the Republicans say no to this and want to trim Social Security and Medicare.  Everybody is waiting for the election of 2012 to solve this problem.

     But it won’t solve anything at all.  The polarity in Washington is beyond repair, the two or three or four sides simply will not compromise on anything, and new faces in the old parties will do little to create a new climate.  What is needed is firm leadership to bring discipline to our politics and to lead this nation into caring for our unfortunate, and using our resources to give to the world what we all want and need so desperately:   Peace, compassion and firm direction.

     With the blame and finger pointing in full swing in Washington, the likelihood of this is minimal.  At the moment, it is nobody’s fault that the government is in wreckage,  no one is willing to take responsibility for much of anything.  It is “their” fault, depending on whom you ask.

     Here at the beginning of the season of Advent, it is helpful to look at what we are and what we are doing.  To see what repentance might look like in our society, and how our contrition might bring us into a more wholesome place, as we wait for the return of our Lord.

     In the 64th chapter of Isaiah, there are words that sound very much like a cry from the present time:

We have all become as one who is unclean,
      all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth.
We all fade like a leaf,
     and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.
There is no one who calls on your name,
     or attempts to take hold of you;
For you have hidden your face from us,
      and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity.

     There isn’t much question of fault finding in this passage.  The fault is within ourselves  We are in this place because of what we have done, because of our greed, our contempt for each other, and our insistence that only our own way is correct.  True community is what is missing in all of this,  and the cry to our God is deep and utter.  Where else can we turn when we have so terribly failed?

     Advent is a time of yearning.  Yearning for the hand and voice of God to come among us to provide us with what we have no ability to provide for ourselves;  to move between us and bring us together in community to make this world into the Kingdom of God.

     It isn’t only the debt crisis that has us in disarray.  It is also our own lives, the relationships that we have with each other,  and the way that we are frustrated so often in our inability to solve our own problems.  Thanksgiving is a time that brings families together.  It is often a time when old frustrations bloom and our ability to agree with each other around the Thanksgiving table fails.  Old wounds refuse healing and our arguments blossom.

     Jesus speaks words of hope in Mark’s Gospel.  They don’t immediately sound very hopeful, he is speaking of the turmoil that his disciples will find on earth,  troubles that we know very well.  You will be hated for my name’s sake, says Jesus  False christs and false prophets will rise up among you and perform signs and wonders to lead astray the elect, Jesus goes on,  but when all of that happens, it is a sign that the Son of Man is coming back.  No one knows the day or the hour, says Jesus, so be awake and watchful.  The point of all of this is that God has his creation in hand and cares for all of us, even in our distress.

     As we look at our failed legislative and family situations, know that there is a positive solution to all of it.  That despite our place among the nations of the world, or our so called illustrious economy, or our difficulties with one another,  we are still subjects of our God, who only cares about our love for each other, not about our economic welfare,  or any of the petty disputes that we have with Uncle Charlie.

     The question that we all have to take seriously is how we are treating each other.  Do our social concerns provide goodness for our neighbors and are the poor and the destitute taken care of?  Not are the rich taxed, or are the middle class benefiting by the way that the government is structured.  Social concerns are what you and I can do something about.  We don’t need legislation for this.  If we spend our time and our talent as well as a portion of our wealth on those who are in need,  we will be fulfilling all that our God requires.  And when finally, in whatever moment our Lord comes back to us, he will discover that we are his worthy disciples, who have done what we can to take care of those in need, his beloved people.  That is all that we are being asked to do.

Let’s keep the division of labor straight:  It is God’s job to save the world, but it is our job to care for all of God’s family, who are loved so very much by our creator.

Are You a Sheep or a Goat?

     Tony Norman had a brilliant observation in his column in the Post-Gazette this week.  He was walking down the Boulevard of the Allies on his way to work when he saw a policewoman standing beside a barrier.  He asked her what was going on, thinking that it had something to do with the Tom Cruise movie that was filming in Pittsburgh..  The cop told him kind of impatiently that it was Veteran's day and that there was going to be a parade.  Norman said that he was embarrassed by this and went on his way.  He commented about how strange it is that we seem to ignore veterans except on this one special day.

     A sparse crowd with flags in their hands watched at lunchtime as the veterans paraded and the marching bands provided music for the event.  In the closing moments, a conglomeration of homeless veterans, dressed in a motley array of uniform parts joined the parade.  Norman commented that what they received from the crowd was respect, even if it didn't amount to anything tangible like a warm bed or a full stomach.

     Homeless and unemployed veterans are all around us, our indifference to this ought to shock us and make us uncomfortable; but only one percent of us have served in these wars that our country is fighting, and when our veterans come home, they sometimes find a country that they don't recognize.  There was a time in the middle of the war in Iraq when the paper published the number of soldiers killed and wounded each day.  We were more involved in that war than we are now.  It was the time after the events of 9/11 and we were all scared and a bit paranoid.  Our wars have now moved mostly off the front page, but the soldiers are still very involved.  they are giving their lives and their limbs every day in pursuit of I'm not sure what in Afghanistan.

    Those homeless veterans are only a small contingent of the people in our society who are in terrible need.  We need constantly to be aware of them and focusing our resources on taking care of their poverty.  Not only their poverty, but all of the poverty and need that is so very much around us these days, with unemployment, homelessness and foreclosures abounding.

     In Matthew's Gospel, the last story in the twenty-fifth chapter tells the story of the final judgement, when the Son of Man comes "in his glory with all his angels with him and separates us from one another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.  He will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats on his left.  He will tell the sheep on his right hand to come into the Kingdom prepared for them from the beginning:  Because when I was hungry, you fed me; when I was naked, you clothed me; when I was in prison, you visited me; when I was sick you took care of me; when I was thirsty, you gave me something to drink.  The righteous said to him:  when did we do these things to you? And Jesus answered them:  when you did these things for the least of those who are members of my family, you did them for me.  Then he told the goats on his left hand that they were accursed and were to depart from him into the fire prepared for the devil and all of his angels, because they did nothing when they saw him in these terrible conditions.

     It is a breathtaking parable, and the summation of what Jesus has taught to all of us in his ministry on this earth.  What strikes me in this story is the intimacy of the people as they help those in need.  The giving of something to eat and to drink, the visiting in prison, the clothing of the naked.  These aren't remote things don by another for our sake.  They are events that involve us in the lives of those whom we are helping.  When we do this, there is a very real possibility that we will get to know these people.  These are events that take our time and our effort, not simply our wealth.  That is the hard part of our charity.

     This is our time for stewardship in this parish.  We talk a lot about money, how we need to meet the budget and how important it is for all of us to give.  We have been reminded of the good things that we do as a parish in response to the human need around us.  They are all good things, and many of us are involved in them, and many more of us could be.  We all don't have to be like Mother Teresa, we can simply do what we can in this world.

     Rosie and I volunteer for Meals on Wheels every week.  It's really no big deal, many of you do things that are even more helpful.  We have done Meals for a long time.  The program is fairly simple.  It takes us into people's homes and lets us see how they are doing.  One of the principal reasons for the program is to keep contact with these people so that we can know their needs other than food. We have casual conversations with them and get some understanding of who they are.  We get to know their caregivers and their dogs.  Volunteers are there every day to see them so that they know that somebody cares.  What is amazing to me is how important that is to all of us.  Simply that somebody cares.  Most of the time, we don't need much, they don't need much, we all get along fine.  But every once in a while, it is nice to know that there is someone to talk to.  Somebody who is able to do something for us, even if it only bringing a meal to the door.

     If you really listen to Jesus' parable, you get the sense that the people who are caring for others hardly know that they are doing anything important.  When did we do these things for you? they ask Jesus.  They are hardly aware of their thoughtfulness.  I think that is what our faith requires of us; to have our love for each other so ingrained in us that we hardly notice it.  That is the key to the Kingdom of God.  Whenever we act like that, a little bit of heaven appears on earth, and the Angels sing.  And most important of all, our Lord notices.

What Are We Going to do About Hell?

     I watched 60 Minutes on Sunday night and was overwhelmed by the pain of the veterans of the Iraq war who returned to Iraq to deal with their problems.  One of them was a soldier who was wounded, and whose lieutenant came to his aid and was killed in the process of retrieving him from danger.  His guilt for his lieutenant's death was palpable.  He spoke of terrible dreams and lack of sleep from the moment of his wounding on.

     The program that took these men back to Iraq was an excellent one that produced some fine results.  Some of the men said that they had been helped by the process and had had a lessening of their symptoms.  It was incredible to me to see the sacrifice that these men had offered to their country, and I was reminded again about how the rest of us more or less sat out the war while they fought.  I also wondered what the members of the last administration would think of these stories of the soldiers' sacrifice in the war that we became involved in without any requirement on our part for sacrifice at all.  We got off Scot free in this war, no matter how we felt about it.

     What I saw in the eyes of those men who had fought in Iraq was the meaning of hell.  We think of hell as the place where bad people go when they die.  That has been a part of our theological thinking for centuries.    But the truth is that we create hell here on earth all of the time.  We do it in the way that we blame others for our problems; for the unthinking way that we treat the unfortunate, and deny care to people who desperately need it.  We do it manifestly in our war making, in the way that we enlist our young to carry on the business of war for the rest of us, then sit back and comment on the progress of it, or don't comment at all and just let it go on.

     Matthew's Gospel has a series of stories in the 25th chapter that demonstrate the meaning of Hell.   We hear about the foolish bridesmaids who are shut out of the wedding banquet because they are off buying oil for their lamps.  That is followed by the story of the frightened servant who buries his talent in the ground because he was afraid of his harsh master.  He has his talent taken from him and given to the man with ten talents and he himself is thrown into outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.  The final story in this Gospel is the story of the sheep and the goats, where the sheep who took care of those in need were accepted into paradise, but the goats, who ignored the poor among them had to depart into eternal fire because of their neglect.

     It is no wonder that hell has become such an overwhelming part of our theology.  If what Jesus is saying in these stories is literally true, then we are all in trouble; because there is not one of us who has not been foolish like the bridesmaids, frightened like the servant with the one talent, or neglectful of the poor like the goats.

     So then, what do we all have in store for us when we meet our Lord?  Are we all destined for the place of weeping and gnashing of teeth?  There was a preacher who was preaching about this and was asked by a member of the congregation, What about the people who have no teeth?  The preacher responded without missing a beat:  Teeth will be provided!


    If our damnation is not the issue here, then what is?  What is Jesus trying to tell his followers in these stories?  It seems to me that the point of all of these parables is the same:  Keep Awake!  Keep watch because we don't know the day or the hour of our Lord's return.  We don't know the moment when the final judgment will occur and we will stand before our God with our lives behind us and eternity before us.  Keeping watch is the essence of what Jesus was teaching his followers and all of us in these stories.

     We are coming to the end of the Pentecost season where we have been reading constantly about the life and the teaching of Jesus.  Matthew follows these stories with the coming of the Passion of Jesus, his betrayal and crucifixion, leading finally to the resurrection on Easter.  But that isn't our story at the moment.  This is a summing up of all that he taught us, a kind of a review.

     Keeping watch is the lesson that he brought to us in these stories.  When we watch what Jesus did with his life, we see the heart of his compassion for everyone who was in need and his unwavering willingness to give himself for the care of others.

     The most magnificent moment in our liturgy for me is the time when the priest stands before me with the wafer in his hand and says:  The body of Christ, the bread of heaven.  The body of Christ, who gave himself on the cross for me, that my life will be redeemed and have ultimate meaning, even as I also know that I haven't been all that I could have been.  That is when I know that I am safe in God's hands for eternity with my Lord standing beside me with all of his forgiving grace.  It is the moment that I know that no matter how I have failed to live up to my Lord's teaching, that I am still received by God in the way that I receive the wafer from the priest.

     That is also what I know about those soldiers in Iraq, or Afghanistan or wherever it is that they are fighting for us.  That their lives, and the lives of their enemies will also be redeemed by our loving God who sees us not as we are, but as how He created us, and who sent his son to show us the way so that we will never be lost.

     

When Will the Lord Come Back?

     I always feel sorry for people who predict the end of the world.   It happens once every couple of years.  Somebody has a prophesy that the Lord is coming back, and we are all in trouble.  The specific predictions always seem to fail, and the prophet looks silly for a little while, until we all get on to something else.

     Generally the comments of Paul in Thessalonians is mentioned in these predictions, about how we who are alive will rise to meet the Lord in the air.  This has come to be called the "rapture", and it is taken at face value by a number of fundamentalist Christians.  Here is another example of how a fragment of scripture can be taken out of context and a whole doctrine built around it.

     Paul's intent in that Thessalonian letter is to provide hope for those people.  He begins the passage with those wonderful words:  We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters about those who have died, so that you do not grieve as others who have no hope.  That is the point that Paul wants to make in all that follows; how at the trumpet call of God, the dead will rise first, and then we who are left will rise to meet the Lord in the air.  Paul was not attempting to create absolute doctrine here, he was offering hope to those who worried about the people who had died and were grieving for them.

     Grief is something that we all have experienced from time to time.  A few years ago when our little dog died, the veterinarian who put her down sent us a lovely poem about "the rainbow bridge", where she is waiting for us.  You have probably all read it, it is a fantasy about how our pets go on after death.  Our vet's sending us that poem was an attempt to console us at the loss of our dog, to somehow mitigate our grief.  It was a thoughtful thing to do, and it helped.  That is also the intent of the funeral services that we have for our loved ones who have died, that we can be consoled by knowing that God receives and loves those whom we have lost, and that many others in our community share our grief; also that the time will come when we will join them in eternity.  Comfort is what we all need in the middle of our grief.

     Loss is never easy.  One of the main reasons that we have community is to have people present for us in our losses and in our joys because loss is inevitable and joy is always to be yearned for and needs to be shared.  What an incredible help community is in providing comfort to us in the middle of these times.

     On All Saint's Sunday, we sang that powerful hymn "For all the Saints, who from their labors rest".  I have come to know all eight verses of that hymn by heart because of the large number of clergy funerals that I have attended.  It is usually sung as the processional at those events and I have always been comforted by the hymn's images, which are all about community; how we are all together in life's struggle and how we will continue in community even after our death.  The last verse is a magnificent tribute to inclusion:  From earth's wide bounds, from ocean's farthest coast, through gates of pearl, stream in the countless host, singing to Father, Son and Holy Ghost, Alleluia!  What more could we ask for in the loving inclusiveness of God for all of us?  In life and in death, that is what our relationship with God is all about.

     In his book "The Great Divorce", which is a kind of answer to William Blake's "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell", C. S. Lewis talks about how the people in the "Grey City", which is essentially Hell, get on a bus to go to Heaven.  When they get there, they often see people whom they don't think ought to be there and so they get back on the bus to go back to the Grey City, where nobody has a relationship with anybody and it rains all the time.  It is a good book and it makes a powerful point.  None of us really understands what Heaven is all about, even though we yearn for it and want above all things for our loved ones who have died to be there.

     At the beginning of Matthew's Gospel, Jesus tells the story of the ten bridesmaids and their lamps. Five had lamps as well as oil for them, and five had only the lamps.  When the shout of the coming of the bridegroom was heard, all of them trimmed their lamps.  The ones without oil asked the others to share their oil with them.  The others said that there wouldn't be enough for all of them if they did that, and to go and buy some.  While they were away buying oil, the bridegroom came and the wedding banquet started.  When the foolish bridesmaids came back the doors were locked and the banquet had started and they couldn't get in.  The story ends with the admonishment to "keep awake, for no one knows the day or the hour".

     Now, I can argue with the story.  Why would the bridesmaids not share their oil, and why not let all of them into the banquet?  That seems to me to be more in line with Jesus' teaching that the Love of God extends to all of us; but that destroys the point of the story, which is to remind us all to keep awake and to keep looking for the return of the Lord to this earth.  That is what I think is at the heart of the message of those "predictors" of the rapture.  They, like all of us, want the Lord to come back so that Justice and Mercy will rule in this world where there is so much misery and hardship.

     At the end of the Book of Revelation, when finally the story is told and is at an end, comes that very special word Marenatha, come Lord Jesus, come quickly.  That, in the end is what we all really want, for God's will to finally be done on earth as it is in Heaven.

Humbling and Exalting

     In 1983, when we visited the Holy Land, we landed in Amman, Jordan and entered the West Bank by way of the Allenby bridge over the Jordan River.  Israeli soldiers entered our bus halfway across the bridge, looked us over carefully and directed us to continue to the entry building.  There, we were frisked, our luggage was opened and checked, much more than in our airports today and we continued our journey to Jericho.

     It was an eye-opening experience for us in terms of the animosity that then existed, and still exists in the Middle East.  When we were in Israel, our passports weren't stamped.  Instead, the Israeli stamp was on a slip of paper inserted into them, which was removed when we left the country by way of Rafah at the extreme southern end of Gaza, when we entered Egypt.

     When we were crossing the Allenby bridge, I thought of Joshua and the horde of Hebrews, led by the priests carrying the Ark of the Covenant crossing the Jordan river on dry ground by the will of God just as Moses had led the people out of Egypt on the dry ground of the Red Sea.  Here we were, crossing the river at another time of conflict, trying to comprehend what all sides were feeling in this seemingly endless dispute.

     What we found in 1983 was turmoil.  While we were in that country, terrorists bombed the United States Embassy in Beirut and it wasn't long before our marines were pulled out of there.  Palestinians and Israelis were at loggerheads over their territories, and they still are.  The Jordan river still flows under that bridge to the Dead Sea and the two sides (or are there three?) are still fighting over the same territory.  Will there ever be an end to this struggle?  Will the United Nations recognize Palestine as a member country and will Israel end its entanglement with these people?  It certainly isn't likely.

     Radical Orthodox Israelis keep the pot boiling over what they believe to be God's great gift to the Hebrew people through Moses.  It is almost impossible to talk to anyone about the political situation with the religious overlay that infuses itself, sometimes only subtly into any discussion.  People on both sides want to talk about freedom, justice and mercy, but quickly all of that is submerged in the religious expectations that are never quite laid on the table.

     It is dangerous for us to take sides in this dispute.  Jewish lobbies in this country heavily influence how congress thinks, and one crosses them at one's peril.  All of us know this, but we put it aside as the dispute rages on.

     In Matthew's Gospel, Jesus is talking to his followers about the extreme religious leaders in his time.  He talks about how they prance up and down with their broad phylacteries and their long fringes to show how religious they are.  "Listen to them", says Jesus, "but do not do as they do, because they don't practice what they preach"  We all know the truth of that.  Over the years, I have had some extreme religious people in my congregations.  They were always harsh judges of other people and didn't always practice the religion that they preached.

      Certainty is a terrible affliction.  It blinds us to our own failings and makes us sure of the failings of those around us.  It is the reason that we are afraid to love one another.  First, they have to change, then we will love them.  But change is not what God is asking us to require of our neighbors.  God says simply, "Love one another, as I have loved you."  That love comes from God without requirement.  It is the love that makes us change.  It is our love for one another that will produce change in our society.

     We have countless examples of this.  Martin Luther King took his crusade for human rights all over this country.  Who can forget his great speech at the Lincoln Memorial when he spoke of his great dream.    How all of us, white and black, will walk together hand in hand and this nation will be knit together in harmony.  He spoke like Moses, looking over the promised land from the top of Mt. Nebo, and like Moses, he died before reaching that exalted place, which we are still striving to reach.  But King's example is ever before us.  Because of what he did and what he made us look at in ourselves, African-Americans, women, gays and many others have the benefit of possibilities that he created with his life and his mission.

      This church continues to move forward in mission today because of the work and leadership of those who are not afraid of God's call to us to be inclusive.  Jesus told his disciples that those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.  That will always be true, especially for those who listen to the Gospel and follow where Jesus leads us.  May God continue to bless us on this journey.

Loving One Another Isn't Always Easy

     There is a lot of discussion in the media about the Occupy Wall Street protests, mostly agonizing about what it is that they want.   It seems to me that the media is mostly blind to what is going on.  But let's look for a moment a what these protesters want.  The answers to this are varied, but add up to the same thing:  they want the top one percent of those in power to stop controlling the rest of the country.

     That isn't hard to understand.  Certainly there are some strange people involved in the protests, enough to provide some humor for us all; but the essence of it all is economic:  how to get the homeless off the street, and find ways to provide jobs for the many, many unemployed people who are trying to find a way to provide for their families.  The fact that the media and the politicians don't quite get it is more of a symptom than a problem.  Actually, it is somewhat amusing to see the well fed pundits and politicians criticizing the occupiers, because what they really want is for things to stay the same as they are and for all of the troublemakers to disappear.  Their own welfare is tied to an economy that has shut out many people and allowed the profit to rise for the one percent who control the money.

      At the Republican debate this week, Herman Cain lambasted the protesters.  He said, "Don't blame Wall Street.  If you don't have a job and if you aren't rich, blame yourself!"  There is the problem in a nutshell.  The powerful don't understand, and they don't want to understand.

     In Matthew's Gospel, the Pharisees confronted Jesus after he had silenced the Sadducees.  The Pharisees were the ones who kept the law perfectly and looked down their noses at everyone who didn't, according to their own judgment.  They asked Jesus, "Which commandment in the law is the greatest?"  Jesus answered them with a sentence that has become what we call The Summary of the Law:

     "Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, your soul and your mind.  This is the first and greatest commandment, and the second is like unto it, love your neighbor as a person like yourself.  On these two commandments, hang all the law and the prophets."


     There, again in a nutshell, Jesus gives us the law and teaches us to love one another as ourselves.  The gospel says that the Pharisees eventually shut up and didn't ask him any more questions.  That seems to be wise of them, but they were simply biding their time, waiting to bring Jesus up on charges, which they certainly did before Herod and Pilate before crucifying him on Good Friday.  Their charges were that Jesus didn't keep the law, preached heresy and rebellion among the people.  Certainly he did some of these things, but his teaching is so wonderful about God's attempt to get creation back to the way that it was intended from the beginning.

     If we would simply pay attention to what Jesus told us about the law we would be almost there.  He asked us to "love one another as we love ourselves"  That is simple enough, isn't it?  Certainly we do a lot for the poor, we contribute to food banks and other charities that take care of human need, but that isn't all that we are being asked to do.  Loving our neighbor as ourselves means not only the person afar by also the person near.  The one who lives beside you on your street, or who sits in the pew next to you or behind you.  Jesus would like us to make this loving as personal as possible.  That we have failed in this is demonstrably obvious.  But every once in a while we are reminded about our obligation to love one another.

     At Trinity Cathedral a number of years ago, we had a funeral for a man who was then our suffragan bishop.  All of the clergy were there, the pews were filled from front to back.  When the time came for communion, the family left their pews to go to the altar to receive.   Down the center aisle came a bedraggled person dressed essentially in rags, a Pittsburgh street person.  He settled into the pew that had been vacated by the family.  Quickly, ushers in tails and cravats moved him out of there.  He then went into one of the pews that were vacated by the clergy who had then gone to the altar to receive the sacrament.  Again, the ushers moved him out of there and he walked unsteadily down the aisle.

     There was an empty pew between the clergy and the lay people.  Here he settled, but the problem wasn't over.  Two priests came down to give communion to a woman in the first row of the laity.  Again the ushers moved the man out, and he worked his way farther down the aisle.  As he was moving in the church somebody asked, "Who is that man?"  Quickly the answer was almost whispered, "It is the Lord"

     When we left the church in procession, I saw him in a pew on the end near the back of the church where he had found a place.  He never gave up.  If that wasn't the Lord who came into the cathedral that day, it was a close approximation.  He went to all of the places where he couldn't be accommodated but eventually found a place to be comfortable.  He stayed among us and never left.   I have thanked God for that experience that day more times than you can imagine.  I learned a lot from it about how it is that we receive one another.  Our Lord comes to us in curious garb sometimes.  It is always important for us to receive him.  He may be sitting next to you now.  What are you going to do about it?

About Golden Calves

      We have protests going on on Wall Street even as we speak. People are camping out in a nearby park, the police are thickly patrolling and the signs abound.  The signs speak eloquently sometimes of greed and ask how long the merchants of wealth will forget the people who are without jobs and enough money to pay their mortgages.

      There certainly is a profound worship of money in this country.  It is almost as if some of the lawmakers and the corporate giants are lusting after the nineteenth and early twentieth century, when greed abounded.  When the poor were forgotten in an era of absolutely unchecked corporate avarice.  There is a shamelessness about it.  Many of the commentators seem to be afraid to call this avarice for what it is as they kowtow to the CEOs.   There are many others who seem to be enamored of those who create wealth for the few at the expense of the many.

     The excesses of the past were dealt with by creating government regulations that reined in the greed and established in the New Deal years of the Roosevelt administration programs such as Social Security for those of retirement age and jobs through the Works Progress Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps for those who were hopelessly out of work in the throes of the Great Depression.  In the Sixties,  under the Great Society, Medicare was established for the elderly who are in need of health care.

      That was a more compassionate time.  Our hearts were more open to care for those in need and we weren't so afraid of our own welfare.  It seems in our time, we have lost our focus on the poor and the outcast, and our economy is in despair that consumes our political parties in endless confrontation and debate.  We have skyrocketing unemployment and jobs being exported overseas at an alarming rate.  When was the last time that you called on the phone for help and didn't get someone from Mumbai to answer your questions?

     When Moses went up on Mount Sinai to receive the Tablets of the Law from God, his brother Aaron was left in charge of the Hebrews at the foot of the mountain.  Aaron told the people to bring their rings and their ear bobs and other gold to him.  He melted it all down and created a golden calf which was erected before the people.  "Here is our god," said the people as they worshiped the calf.

     Up on the mountain, Moses was told by God that his people were behaving shamelessly and that He was about to destroy them for their disobedience.  Moses pleaded with God to withhold his wrath from the  people.  He then went down the mountain and confronted the Hebrews with their insubordination and their flaunting of Moses' rules.  Moses had after all told the people that it was the Lord God who had brought them out of Egypt, and the people had seen the might of God in the destruction of the Egyptian army at the Red Sea and the parting of the waters to allow the tribes to cross over on dry land.  There had also been manna provided for the people to eat when they were hungry and water from the rock for them when they were thirsty.  Now, when Moses was away, they created and worshiped a false god with impunity.

     If all of this sounds quaint and strange to you, look at our own behavior.  The reason that people are protesting on Wall Street is because of the same worship of gold that infected the Hebrew people in the absence of Moses.  We have created a new god to worship who is more tangible than the Holy God who brought us all out of misery and gave us this bright new land.  We even want to restrict immigration because we are afraid of dark skinned people taking over our jobs in this difficult economic time.  We are not a bit different from the Hebrews at the foot of Mount Sinai.  We love our wealth and we are afraid of those who have a lot of it.

     The Wall Street bankers made a lot of mistakes when the various bubbles burst, but they were bailed out by the government.  Now many people are making noises about taxing the rich.  Those who oppose this call them "job creators" although there is little evidence that any jobs have been created.  They want the government to reduce spending by cutting programs, even Social Security and Medicare, which makes people very nervous.  They even want regulations that restrict corporations reduced or eliminated so that the lust for wealth can continue unchecked.

     We live in a frightening time.  What needs to be the response of Christianity to this mess?  I would suggest that remembering Jesus' command to us to care for the poor and the outcast is primary to our lives and to the worship of the God whom we all profess to love.  Keeping the rich happy is not a part of God's agenda, nor should it be a part of ours.  Giving of a part of ourselves and what we have to help our neighbors is God's command to us.  Above all other considerations, we need to take that seriously.  Political considerations are not at all a part of God's plan.  We have been told what to do.  The agenda is clear.  We simply need to be about this critical work.

The Cornerstone of the Kingdom

     I loved to ask my confirmation classes to put the Ten Commandments in order of their importance.  Not killing usually came in first, followed closely by not stealing.  Coveting generally came in last, with adultery somewhere in the middle.  Sometimes I would have to explain to them what "coveting" and "adultery" meant, though the second one always produced snickers.

     The purpose of all of this was to create a discussion about the Law, why we have it,  and what it means for all of us.

     The Ten Commandments was the first of God's attempts to set our creation right; to reproduce the purity that was lost when Adam and Eve listened to the serpent and acquired the ability to know about good and evil, an acquisition that has plagued us ever since.  God wanted to establish a set of principles that we could follow to make this world a better place; to return God's creation to the way that it was intended to be from the first.

     We love to enshrine the Ten Commandments in stone, to hang them up in court rooms and outside schools; to embroider them and create wall plaques with them prominent.  We all know the value of the commandments very well.  The problem is that we can't keep them.     

     When it became obvious to God that we couldn't keep the commandments, God sent us the prophets, who pointed out to us how we have failed to keep the law and be the people of God.  The Pharisees in Jesus' time believed that they kept the law perfectly and they despised those whom they believed didn't keep it very well.  They accused the disciples of Jesus of breaking the law when they cut grain on the Sabbath because of their need; and accused Jesus of breaking the law when he healed on that day, even though the healing brought great good to the people who needed it.

     Not honoring the commandments was one of the charges leveled against Jesus when he was arrested and brought before Herod and Pilate.  The parable that Jesus tells the Pharisees and the Chief Priests follows right on the heels of the story that he told them earlier in the Gospel about the two sons who both obeyed and disobeyed their father.  Both of these stories are aimed right at the religious leaders.

     The parable tells the story of the father who sent his servants to the tenants of the vineyard to receive the produce.  The tenants beat one of them and killed another, so the owner sent another group of servants to the tenants.  They did the same thing to the second group.  He then sent his son to the tenants, but the tenants conspire to throw the son out of the vineyard and kill him because he is the heir to the vineyard.

     Jesus asks his hearers, "now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what do you think he will do to those tenants?"  They answered Jesus, "he will put those tenants to a miserable death and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at harvest time"  Jesus then asked them if they had read in the scriptures, "how the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone, and the Kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to people who produce the fruits of the Kingdom."


     The gospel goes on to say that the chief priests and the Pharisees heard those parables and realized that Jesus was talking about them.  They wanted to arrest him, but were afraid of the crowds, who thought that Jesus was a prophet.

     So there, in this parable, we have the whole story of how God tried to perfect his Kingdom:  first, we have the Law, the Ten Commandments.  When God knew that we couldn't keep them, the prophets were sent to remind us of our responsibility to our God.  When we didn't listen to the prophets, God sent Jesus, his Son, and as it says in the parable, we threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.

     Now, what is God going to do to us?

     The wonder of the story of the crucifixion of Jesus and his resurrection is the incredible mercy of God to all of us who participated in that event.   We crucify Jesus just about every day of our lives in the way that we disobey God and his law.  Despite that, we have God's mercy before us as the enduring proof of God's eternal Love.

     Jesus forgave from the cross those who crucified him.  That in itself is astounding, but forgiveness is the cornerstone on which the Kingdom of God is built.

     I worked in Western Penitentiary for twenty-two years as a part time chaplain.  I had a man in my group who had killed a woman about ten years before I met him.  He had a life sentence without any possibility of ever getting out of prison.   He wouldn't talk about his crime in group, although the purpose of the group was to create enough trust to allow that to happen.

     One day, he got a letter from the parents of his victim.  They wanted to come to see him.  We talked about that letter in group and decided that it was important for him to honor their request.  When the day came for the visit, he went to the visiting room and found the father and the mother of his victim.

     "We have come to forgive you," said the father.  "Please know that this comes after years of anguish over the death of our daughter, but we need to bury her and get on with our lives.  Let me tell you how serious we are.  When you were being transferred from the county jail to the court house for your trial, I was on a roof down the street with a rifle.  I wanted to kill you.  But I couldn't do it, so we have come here to forgive you, and as much as it is possible to put this terrible thing to rest, and get on with our lives."


     My group member came back to us with his story.  Over the succeeding weeks, it became apparent that their forgiveness had changed his life.  He talked about his crime and got on with his life behind bars in a different, much less bitter way.  Forgiveness changed him and it changed that family, as it is supposed to do.  It really is the foundation on which the Kingdom of God is built.

     May God's blessing be upon you and may God's forgiveness become the cornerstone of your lives.

What is the mission of the Church?

     When Rosie and I were in Jordan a number of years ago, we visited Petra, a stone city in the south of the country.  We rode donkeys down a long trail through cliffs until we came to the carved tombs where the Nabataen pirates buried their dead.  Legend has it that these cliffs were the place where Moses struck the rock to provide water for the tribe of Hebrews who were on their way to the promised land who were both hungry and thirsty and who were blaming Moses for bringing them out of Egypt simply to perish in the desert.

     Legend is a chancy thing; who knows if this story is true as it stands, or if Petra was even the place where it all happened, but it was wonderful for us to be there and to think of the Hebrews preceding us there.

     There is a lot of experience in our collective past, experience that speaks of a closeness with God.  A closeness that we don't notice so often today.  We have become much more self sufficient and need God's help in less critical ways.

     Those who sleep in doorways or under our bridges who are without homes and jobs are still hungry and thirsty and need God's help in very specific ways.  They pray that their primary needs will be filled.  I think that is our task and our ministry in this terribly broken world.  To touch the poor and the outcast with the healing touch of God is the highest calling to which we can aspire.

     Often it is the outreach portion of the parish budget that feels the ax most quickly when we need to find balance.  We only have so much resource, we say and the electric bills are so high and we have all of this real estate that we have acquired, and outreach after all is discretionary spending, isn't it?

     That is certainly true as far as it goes, but the problem is that the outreach is the reason that we are here.  It is the reason for the electric bill and the real estate and indeed all that we have.  We are here to make a difference in God's world for God's people.  It is certainly clear enough in all of our scripture that the poor and the outcast are the primary object of God's concern.  Jesus held them up constantly as those whom he favored.  He chose his disciples from among the common people.  Some of them were fishermen, one at least a tax-collector, and all of them were simply people looking for something beyond themselves.  Jesus pointed to the needy as the object of his ministry and instructed all of us to pay attention to them.

     He healed, he taught and constantly urged his followers to pay attention to the people around them who were in need.  Like the Hebrews who were hungry and thirsty in the desert, Jesus' stories are instructive to us.  There is the one about the widow who puts her "mite" in the box while the religious leaders put in much more of their wealth.  He says that she has given all that she has, while the others put in a pittance.

     In Matthew 25, Jesus talks about the sheep and the goats.  The sheep are the ones who feed and clothe him when he needs it and care for him when he is sick or in prison.  The goats simply pass him by.  It is honestly very hard to understand why Christianity hasn't gotten the message in all of its more than two thousand years.

     When we were in England, we visited many, many cathedrals.  These were beautiful buildings that had the effect of increasing my faith.   The dedication of the workers at Salisbury in the eleventh century is astounding.  They built that place as an offering to God.  In Yorkshire, there is a place called Fountains Abbey, a place that was built about the same time by a group of monks who were caring for the poor in that area.  Eventually, the abbey fell to ruin, but it remains one of the most spiritual places that we visited on our trip.

     Down the road about two miles is Ripon Cathedral, a modern church trying to be a Christian center in a time when Christianity is becoming increasingly out of favor.  It occurred to me that the only difference between Ripon Cathedral and Fountains Abbey is that both are ruins, but one doesn't know it yet.

     In the twenty-first chapter of Matthew, the Pharisees ask Jesus by what authority he does his work.   Jesus asks them in turn if the baptism of John was inspired by heaven, or if it was of human origin.   Sensing a trap, the Pharisees tell Jesus that they don't know.  Jesus then tells them the story of the man who had two sons.  He told the first to go to work in the vineyard.  The son said that he wouldn't, but later changed his mind and went and worked.  The second son told him that we would go and work, but didn't do anything at all.  "Which of these did the will of the father", Jesus asked.  "The first", replied the Pharisees.



     That mission hasn't changed one bit in all of the years since.  We are still called to be the visible face of God in this world.   That mission involves not only our real estate and our electric bill, but primarily our outreach.  And God will bless richly what we do.

Forgiveness and 9/11

     When I hear that powerful story of the crossing of the Red Sea by the Hebrews, with Moses stretching out his staff to part the waters, I think of Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments, and I smile to myself because it is such a wonderful image; standing above it all with his arm straight out, his beard giving him a gruff appearance, and his stentorian voice leaving no doubt that he will save his people.  Computers today would make that scene even more realistic, but what they did in that movie was enough.  It almost became  a caricature, but it certainly stuck in our minds.  I almost felt sorry for the Egyptian soldiers who were drowned in the sea, but in the biblical economy, the lives of oppressors don't have much traction, especially in the Old Testament.  God is always smiting Philistines, Edomites and others who have created havoc in the lives of those whom God loves.  Those are people we have a hard time forgiving for anything that they did.

     We are in the process of commemorating the tenth anniversary of the events of September 11, 200l, 9/11 as it has become so vividly known to all of us.  On that day airliners smashed into the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon, and into a field in Shanksville, PA, killing over three thousand people.

     I'll never forget where I was on that day and neither will most of us.  I was returning from taking the dog for a walk.  The television set was on and the first plane had just hit the North Tower.  In that brief interval, we thought that it had been some kind of terrible accident.  In moments, the second plane hit and then there was no doubt at all about what had happened.  This was something infinitely larger.  Then the third and fourth planes crashed and we knew that there had been a monstrous attack.  None of us will ever forget that day and the feelings that mounted up inside us.  As the days went on, these became feelings of grief and anger and also gratitude for the first responders and the New York firefighters and police who gave of themselves without question.

     But for our anger, we wanted revenge.  That is what took us into the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and fueled what we so blithely call the "war on terror", as if terror is an enemy that can somehow be defeated by our military.  Our reaction to this terrible day has changed all of us and has changed our country.  We have lashed out at Muslims and become paranoid about air travel and immigration.  We turned on each other and have created sometimes ridiculous scrutiny of persons entering buildings or boarding aircraft.  All of this seemed perfectly understandable, we have been under threat and our government has been trying to keep us all safe, even if in the process, it has created considerable inconvenience for us all.  How else could we have responded?  It was a horrible day for everyone.   The stories of people falling from the buildings, the charred bodies, the sifting dust all over everything.  We have carried those feelings with us every day for these past ten years, and we have hated with a passion those who created those events.

     I think that our passion has erupted in the terrible disagreements that we have had in our political system over so many things in recent times.  If we can't quite forgive the perpetrators of 9/11, can't we find a way to forgive one another?  That is what I believe lies at the heart of our problem.

     I was disturbed at the recent Republican debate when moderator Brian Williams asked Governor Rick Perry of Texas about the 234 executions in his state, that the audience erupted in spontaneous applause at the question.  Applause not for the confrontation, but for the executions!  What is the matter with us?  Have we become so callous that the deaths of so many people can be met with applause?

     Jesus has a parable for us in the eighteenth chapter of Matthew's Gospel.  I am somewhat startled to see in this parable that those who don't forgive others are destined for the same fate as the Egyptian soldiers in the Red Sea.  Peter asks Jesus a question:  "Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how many times should I forgive, as many as seven times?"  Jesus replies to him: "Not seven times, Peter, but seventy times seven!" An exaggeration that simply means infinity.  He tells them a story about a servant who was forgiven an enormous debt by his master who then goes out and refuses to forgive a small debt by a fellow servant.  The master hears of this and throws the first servant into prison to be tortured until he pays the whole of his debt to him.  Jesus goes on to tell his disciples that is how we will all be treated unless we learn to forgive one another.   That is a particularly difficult parable for all of us, especially in light of our feelings about 9/11.  What we are taught by this is God's absolute priority for forgiveness.  Not only does God forgive us for what we do and what we are, but he expects us also to forgive each other.  As we say in our confession, "we have not forgiven others as we have been forgiven, we are truly sorry and we humbly repent."  But forgiveness isn't easy, it is one of the hardest things that we do in our lives.  Forgiveness is most times the last thing that we want to do.

     But the truth of forgiveness is that it isn't for the person whom we forgive.  It for us.   We are the reason that we need so desperately to forgive.  If our lives are to be more free, more clear, we need to put aside those things that so terribly divide us, not only between nations and cultures, but between each other.  That is only way that we can help our God to build his Kingdom.

How do we deal with the issues that divide us?

     Political rhetoric has been heating up in this country in advance of the 2012 Presidential election.  Charges are flying fast from one camp to another, people trying to genuflect to one issue or another.  Certainly the right wing has had a field day blaming the president for every ill that the country is suffering.  I am surprised that he hasn't been blamed for the earthquake and for hurricane Irene.

     We certainly pull out the stops when we want to make a point, and often we don't seem to care whom we hurt in the process.   I know that politics is a messy business and that politicians have been saying rude and hurtful things about each other for generations, and also that it isn't necessary to take seriously everything that they say.  But I want for a moment to look at our Christian roots in all of this and to say something about how we ought to treat each other in the middle of our disagreements.

     Many of the candidates emphasize their Christian roots.  Sometimes simply to make points about gay rights or abortion, or the influx of Islamic religion into our country.  But if Christianity is the basis for their politics, I think it ought more so to be the basis of their morality.

     In Matthew's Gospel, Jesus discusses a method of dealing with conflict that might be helpful, not only to politicians, but to all of us as we deal with the minefield of issues on our doorstep.  It is a rather simple formula that tries to put feelings above the conflict.  Jesus is talking about church members, but his formula is certainly applicable to a much larger community than that.

     He says to his disciples:  "If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fact of that to him when the two of you are alone."  He is being careful here to keep the conversation at the lowest possible level.   He goes on to advise, "But if you are not listened to, take two or three others with you, so that the evidence can be confirmed by several witnesses."  Again, he is here being careful to keep the conversation at the lowest possible level.  It is only when the conversation fails at this time that he advises his disciples to "tell it to the church."  In other words, to involve the larger community.  If the offender refuses even to listen to the church, we are advised then to treat the offender "like a Gentile or a tax collector."


     What is somewhat amusing here is that Jesus treated Gentiles, like the woman near Tyre with the afflicted daughter, or the tax-collector Matthew who is the author of this Gospel with great care and compassion.  But such as that is, let's look at what this formula means for all of us as we deal with the myriad of issues that seem to be driving us at the moment.  Wouldn't we be much better served if we could keep our conversations about these things that divide us at the lowest possible level?  Wouldn't it be better if we could somehow stifle the name calling and assume the best rather than the worst about each other?  Again, this is not only true for politicians, but for all of us.

     We certainly have opinions and disagreements about a lot of things these days, but it is our certainty that drives our passion and our anger about it all.  There is a more useful middle ground that we can inhabit that can lessen our anger and increase our compassion for each other.  That is the real basis for compromise, and compromise is the essence of democracy.  Compromise is the only thing that will get us out of the dilemmas that are confronting us: the deficit, the economy, the dearth of jobs and also all of those things that divide us culturally.  How can we care best for those who are marginalized, the poor, the outcast and the deprived.  Certainly not by name calling and blame.  Keeping everyone in the game is essential.  Respecting everyone's stands on issues is very important to our mutual life.  It is how we come to understand the solutions to the problems that lie at the root of our common life.

     Speaking softly is essential.  Our "Christian" politicians need to continually reflect on their religious center and keep their Christianity before them.  If they did, we would be much richer for their input and for the good sense and compromise that would naturally result.

The Problem with Certainty

     The horrible massacre in Norway by a strangely religious man really got our attention.  Certainly the killing of anyone is a tragedy, but these multiple killings were unique in that they came from a mind that was poisoned by religion.  Like Timothy McVeigh and his bombing in Oklahoma City, the reason for all of this came from an irrational mind; a mind focused on eliminating people who believed in a system that was unequivocally rejected by the killer.

     Those kids on the island in Norway were seen by their killer as foreigners, non-believers who threatened his way of life.  He set out to kill the younger generation of people who were outside of his narrow belief in Christianity.  He styled himself as a "modern crusader", in the image of the Knights Templar, who stood up for the truth that is at the core of Christian doctrine.

     He is not alone.  We have always had crazy people in the ranks of Christianity.  The Templars fought Muslims on Malta with horrible bloodshed on both sides.  The Inquisition killed thousands for their beliefs.  There was Father Coughlin and his rejection of the Jews back in the forties.  Religion has been responsible for millions of deaths over the centuries.  People are still dying in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia and many other places, all for the sake of religion.

     There is a long list of religious fanatics who have graced our television sets and our radios, trying to convince us of one doctrinal thing or another.  Most of them are satisfactorily ignorable.  

     All of our religious denominations stand for moments in time when we had profound disagreements.  The split with Rome produced first the Orthodox church, then the Protestant Reformation, which itself split into numerous factions.  Calvin and the radicals in Geneva gave us the Presbyterians, John Knox in Scotland opposed the Anglicans.  Some of it was peaceful, such as the Wesley brothers creating Methodism out of their Anglican roots and the Anabaptists who gave us the Quakers among others.

     But others were not so peaceful.  The oppression of the Huguenots in France is an example of violence in the name of religion, and the killing of dissenters in England during the time of the Tudor kings and queens.  Even Islam has its splits and dissension.  The Sunni and Shiite division continues to affect our world.  Religion is a subject that does not generally submit to easy solutions and compromise.

     The problem is certainty.   When a group of people become certain that their way is right and everyone else is wrong, then trouble starts.  Certainly the dust up that the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh has had with the "Anglican" churches leaving the diocese is another.  We need to be able to receive one another with more love than this.  Our religious disagreements are certainly not ultimate, even though there are those who claim that they are; that if we don't all believe in a certain way, we are headed for Hell, or whatever it is that God has in mind for non-believers.

      "Who do people say that I am?"  Jesus asked of his disciples in Matthew's Gospel.  The disciples offer several possibilities; Elijah returning, John the Baptist, one of the prophets.  He then asks them, "But who do you say that I am?"  Peter unhesitatingly answers him, "You are the Messiah, the Christ"  Jesus tells Peter that he can't possibly know that of his own accord, but that it has been revealed to him by God.  Then Jesus says to him, "You are Peter the Rock, and on this rock I will build my church".  The "rock" that Jesus is referring to is the unwavering faith of Peter.

     Peter was certainly less than perfect.  This "Rock" denied Jesus three times after the crucifixion, and after the resurrection,  Jesus forgave him three times on the shore of the sea of Galilee.  Peter became the center of the Christian movement, and was eventually crucified in Rome for his beliefs.  The Christians were seen as a threat to both the Jews and the Romans; the Jews, because they were seen as heretics, and the Romans because they were a political problem.

     Jesus never advocated violence.  His ministry was one of persuasion by living out what he believed and then sending those who were converted to do the same.  That, I think, is the essence of our religion and our mission.

     After Jesus' resurrection, the church grew through the efforts of the apostles.  They gathered people in homes, worshiped and preached.  They took care of the poor and the outcast, which was Jesus' model for the church.  The book of Acts tells us a bit about this, but only hints.  Paul's letters describe the struggles of the early church; the arguments in Corinth, the problems of the Ephesians, the acts of the stupid Galatians.  These were ordinary people who were trying as best they could to come to terms with the risen Jesus, and to incorporate his life into theirs.  That hasn't changed much over the centuries.  We are still trying to do that.  All of the theological books that inhabit my library are attempts to come to terms with God's gift of life, forgiveness and resurrection.

     "Who do we say that he is?"  That is a question that still haunts us.  If he is indeed the Christ, as Peter tells us, then our mission is clear:  to take care of those on the margins and to love all of humankind to the best of our ability, doing all of this in the name of the God who loves us all so very much.  That is what we are here to do.

     The rest of our religious bickering is nonsense.