Our Christmas

           I hope your Christmas was spectacular.  Rosie and I went to Cleveland to see our third daughter and her kids.  This was a great trip and necessary for all of us to celebrate the love that we share with each other.  Our other kids, and our grand-kids and great-grands also celebrated with us this wonderful feast of the Incarnation.  We gave gifts and received them and had a chance to experience the joy that family brings. 

            But family isn’t only our relatives.  We gather in our churches also as family.  We are the family of God, redeemed by our Lord Jesus and called to share the love that God has provided for us with the whole world.  That isn’t an easy job.  Sometimes we feel very much alone in this, especially when we see the privation and hardship that exists is so much of this world, and in our own neighborhoods.  Every time that I turn on the television set, I see stories of shootings and crime.   Stop shooting, we love you signs are up all over the place around here.  We are well aware of the isolation and damage that exists on our own city and our own blocks.   

            So what do we do about it?  It seems to me that the people of Homewood and other places in Pittsburgh where crime seems to be rampant have done a lot.  You have established community groups to talk and to share.  You provide for those who have nothing, and do everything that you can think of to make your neighborhood safer.  I have long admired what goes on in this place to create the Kingdom of God in the middle of confusion.

            Christmas is about hope and inclusion above everything else.  Jesus was born into a time of conflict and terror.  The stories of the killing of the children by Herod the King because of his own paranoia at the news that the wise men brought him about the birth of another King of the Jews, is what set him on this path.  I have always been pleased with the warning that the wise men received from the angel in a dream to go back to their homes another way and to avoid Herod’s invitation to report to him the location of the newborn king.  God had a hand not only in the birth of our Messiah, but in the protection of Jesus in the aftermath of that birth.

            Christianity is a religion that is firmly established in mystery.  We, thankfully for preachers, don’t pretend to have a lot of answers.  We rely on the scriptures to give us the questions to ask and the hope that is offered.  I love the first eighteen verses of John’s Gospel that sets out in poetic form the coming of the Word of God into this world.  The Word that existed from the beginning of time becomes flesh and dwells among us.  This is the essence of the meaning of Christmas; the coming of God to this earth to walk in the shoes of humanity; to feel hunger, thirst, pain, joy, rejection and finally death.  This, for me, is the reason that I can worship this incredible God.  This is God who has lived my life and has known my dreams and my hurts.  This God offers me something beyond my failures; the hope of eternal life with all whom I have loved and with the certainty that there is meaning in all of the things that I see in this world and don’t quite understand.

            Jesus comes to us just as we are, not waiting for us to deserve God’s presence, but in the state that we exist.  God, through the birth of Jesus offers us the beautiful Grace of forgiveness and the promise of hope forever.  I can receive the sacrament of the presence of God with the assurance that my sins are forgiven.  What else could we possibly need?  May God bless you all in this magnificent season.

The Time is Now

            Our daughter gave us a lovely clock which we have hung in our bathroom.  Around the face is proclaimed:  The time is now.  Smell your roses.  Take your walk.  Read your book.  What beautiful words.  I look at them every day and think about how time goes on and how little I make of it. 

            I just celebrated my eightieth birthday.  That might seem like old to some people, but it doesn’t to me.  Our kids came and brought a cake, gave me presents and we all celebrated with a wonderful evening.  I loved it.  But I can’t get that clock out of my mind.  The time is now. That is a constant reminder of where we are.  This is the moment.  It is the one to live, now.  I think that a lot of the time,  I think that time is more flexible.  I can do things later, or maybe not at all.  I need to be hit over the head with that phrase:  The time is now.  This is the moment.  Now. 

            If my eighties are like the rest of my life, they will be filled with events.  In 2005, when I was seventy-three, I had a brain tumor.  Because of a remarkable neurosurgeon named Sabatino Bianco, I was cured of it.  The rather large tumor was removed from the left frontal lobe of my brain, and after about two years of recovery, I had my faculties back and could get on with my life.  That was a profound moment for me.  I remember going into the operating room and slowly becoming calm.  I closed my eyes before the anesthetic was given to me, said a quiet prayer and knew beyond a doubt that things would be all right.  They would be all right whether I lived or I died.  I knew absolutely that God was present with me in that frightening moment.  That time was incredibly important and I had God’s help to regain my life.  

            Restoration is the message of Christmas.  When I read the lessons, they are all about how things have gone sour for the people and how desperately they need to be redeemed.  They are hungry for God’s presence in their lives, in their communities.  And that is what God promises to all of them.  In Isaiah, it is written:  Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel. And in Matthew’s gospel, the angel tells Joseph the same thing and he takes Mary as his wife and they wait for the birth of her son, which at the angel’s command they name Jesus.  

            What a powerful story of restoration and redemption.  That is what Christmas commemorates and how we need to live to mark this glorious season.  May God bless us richly in this time that is now. 

Simply Shaking Hands

            We lost Nelson Mandela this week.  It wasn’t unexpected, he has been ill for a long time, was 95, and obviously near the end of his life.  The world has gathered in South Africa to pay tribute to him.  Four American presidents, including Barack Obama came to the service that honored his legacy.  There have been many wonderful things said about this great man who brought freedom to many in South Africa, but what has surprised me greatly has been the continued use of accusation against him.  He was called a terrorist by Dick Cheney, and a Marxist and a communist by others.  They repeated these things in this past week.  The surprising thing is that these comments didn’t diminish the beauty of Nelson Mandela one bit; instead they reflected very poorly on the people who said them.  And when President Obama shook the hand of Raul Castro at the gathering of heads of state, he was criticized by those who thought that such a gesture would be out of place in this turbulent world where Cuba is seen as an enemy by many Americans. 

            What stood out for me was that this gesture by our president at the Mandela memorial was very much in keeping with the life of the man who was being honored; a man who forgave his captors and did everything in his power to bring the warring factions in his country together after he was released from the prison on Robben Island.  Here was President Obama extending his hand to the leader of Cuba, without expecting anything in return.  It was a healing moment from which nothing will come except good feelings and the possibility of continued discussion, certainly in the image of Nelson Mandela 

            In the gospel lesson today, John the Baptist is in prison knowing that his own end is probably near.  He sends his disciples to Jesus to ask him if he is the one whom he has expected to come, or if they all should look for another.  This seems to me to be a disappointing thing for John to have to do.  His own expectations have been shattered.  He expected a messiah who would overturn the powers in charge and create a heaven on earth.  This is what John had been preaching in the desert and he was obviously disappointed with what Jesus had turned out to be.  Jesus’ reply to John is notable for its elegance: 

                                     Go and tell John what you hear and see:

                                     the blind receive their sight, the lame walk,

                                    the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead

                                    are raised, and the poor have good news brought

                                     to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no

                                     offense at me.

            John’s disappointment is certainly understandable.  Which of us hasn’t looked at this world at one time or another and wondered why God doesn’t fix it?  There is certainly enough wrong around us to make us wonder what God has in mind with this creation.  I am always amazed that God has put up with so much from us for so long.  We haven’t really been very good stewards of the world that we have been given. 

            Yes, there is a lot wrong; but there are also some wonderful things around us.  We celebrate the life of a man such as Mandela who healed and forgave and brought people together in a country where there had been horrible ripping apart.  The message here is that God is present in the small places of our lives.  When Mary in her song to God after the conception of Jesus, sings of how the lowly have been lifted up and the mighty put down from their thrones, we get a sense of what the real coming of the Messiah meant for her and for us.  This lowly woman was made the greatest in God’s kingdom by the simple act of agreeing to be the mother of God.  There is not a much more awesome moment for me in all of Holy Scripture.  If we want to see God in action in this world, we need to look to the small things that are done to bring us together; to see things like Obama and Castro shaking hands and the life of Mandela celebrated because of the wonder of his forgiveness and his ability to laugh in the face of all of his pain.  God bless us in this Advent season as we wait again for the Messiah.  May our Messiah bring us continued hope and joy.

A Time For Peace

             Billy Crystal has written a wonderful book, autobiographical in character called Still Foolin’ Them.  It is a remarkable statement about aging.  He has reached his sixty-fifth birthday and is reflecting on his life and what it means to get older.  I am also getting older, all of us are, and it is wonderful to read his story and fit it into my own life.  As many people have said, “Getting old is not for sissies,” and I certainly agree with that.  With aging come lots of things that we aren’t ready for.  Medical problems build up and we begin to understand that none of us are going to be here forever.  That ought to be obvious, but it really isn’t.   Most of us live our lives in expectation of their never ending.  We approach the world with a kind of selfishness that causes us problems and doesn’t work too well in terms of what God has in mind for his creation.

            I love the passage from Isaiah that talks about how God will develop redemption of this creation.  A root will grow from the stump of Jesse, says the prophet and that root will produce a branch that will cause the wolf to lie down with the lamb and the lion to be a partner of the kid.  They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says the Lord God.  This wonderful passage is a prophecy of the coming of the Messiah, whom we celebrate at Christmas.  The birth of the Christ who brought the Love of God to this earth, is what this is all about, helping us to understand the strength of Love in the living of our lives.  The way that this Love shows itself is the way that we treat the poor and those treated unjustly by the world; Peace is the result of this magnificent Love.  It is something that is called out of all of us by the God who created each of us.  It is how we are called to live.

            In this Christmas season, we don’t see much of this anymore.  The television set is crying out to all of us to go shopping for more inexpensive bargains.  We are being asked to spend these days in the pursuit of things, not justice; for trinkets, not welfare for the poor.   Living like this is not what God has in mind for us.  He wants the poor to be fed, clothed, sheltered and helped.  Whether this suits us or not is not important.  That there be justice on this earth is required of all of us.  It is not something that God will do in a great stroke of magic.  We are the way that creation will be made whole.  That is why we are here.  

            This Christmas season needs again to be a time of reminding ourselves of what it is that we are called to do and to be.  None of us can fix this world by ourselves; but as communities of those who are led by the Christ, we can be a beacon to the world of what it is that God requires of us all.

Anticipation

          When I was a kid, December was the beginning of my longing for Christmas.  I could hardly stand the waiting.  I would be taken downtown to see the displays in the department store windows, find myself in the presence of Santa Claus, who would ask me what I wanted for Christmas, and I would be terrified of him.  Good Lord, he knew when I was sleeping and knew when I was awake!  I had heard all of the Christmas stories over and over again and at my young age, I believed every one of them. 

            There was a place in one of the toy departments where there was a long chute that I was supposed to look up.  When I did, an elf called out: “How old are you!”  Frightened, I replied in a little voice:  “I’m four”.  Down the chute came a fire truck all wrapped in a ribbon.  I was amazed at that.  After all, at four, I knew that I had been sometimes naughty.  I had been told that by my mother and I was a bit surprised that the elf at the top of the chute didn’t know that.

            All of these elements are a part of our experience here at the beginning of Advent; the time of longing for Christmas.  We all know that we have been naughty, a wonderfully quaint word, isn’t it; and we wonder if we deserve what it is that we really long for:  not toys or really any things at all.  What we really long for is forgiveness, acceptance and peace in this world.  We would love a culture that accepts everyone for who they are and doesn’t make sharp judgments that separate us from one another.  We would love a government that operates for the common good, not only for those who have a lot of money and power. 

            Here at the beginning of this wonderful season of anticipation, we have lessons that speak to us about what God has in mind for creation.  In Isaiah, the prophet talks about the yearning of God for a new creation:

                                    He shall judge between the nations,

                                    And shall arbitrate for many peoples;

                                    They shall beat their swords into plowshares,

                                    And their spears into pruning hooks;

                                    Nation shall not lift up sword against nation,

                                    Neither shall they learn war anymore.

            I grew up during the Second World War.  In my youth, I thought that those five years were eternity.  I remember hearing of the bombing of Pearl Harbor on the radio as I was listening to the Lone Ranger.  We had the blackouts, the rationing of everything.  I learned to take the ration books with me to the grocery store when I bought food.  I knew those years as a time of difficulty, but yet rampant patriotism.  There were no arguments that I heard against the war, we needed to defeat Germany and Japan.  It just seemed right to me.  Later, when Korea and Viet Nam became places that we were engaged, the rationale seemed to me to be less engaging.  When Richard Nixon was inaugurated for the second time, I was one of the protesters in Washington on Constitution Avenue, while the President motored back to the White House down Pennsylvania Avenue after his ceremony at the Capitol.  We were protesting the bombing in Cambodia, and I was a seminary student who had been enlisted as a marshal on 14^th street to keep the parade of protesters from crossing that street.   There were busses lined up ready to take scores of people to jail.  None of them were needed.  

            But war has been seemingly a constant presence in our lives, from Bosnia through Iraq and Afghanistan to the present day Middle East and the conflict in Lebanon and Syria.  How is it that we make any sense out of this kind of turmoil?  I pray that we can find a way out of it and find a world where peace is the driving force.

                       

            Looking at the world as we know it, isn’t that what we really want?  Isn’t that what we really need?  We as a people have known very few times of real peace, and we are very tired of war.  When we even contemplate what it would take to have peace in Syria, we shrink from the probability that it would require sacrifice on our part, even lives lost and billions spent to create a peaceful situation in that country.  Internally, in this country, the arguments would rage over whatever was contemplated.  Finding peace by ourselves seems only a faint hope.  That is why we cry out to our God for help.  Only with God’s good Grace can we achieve what we all really need so very much.

            When will God do this?  There is the question for the ages.  In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus tries very hard to give his apostles the answer:

                                          Keep awake therefore, for you do not know

                                     on what day your Lord is coming. But understand this:

                                     if the owner of the house had known in what part of

                                     the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed

                                     awake and would not have let his house be broken into.

                                     Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man

                                     is coming at an unexpected hour.

            That is what we need to anticipate during this Advent season.  It isn’t the yearning for gifts, or for glitter; it is the hope for peace and forgiveness that is at the heart of the Gospel, and for which Jesus was born and came to us.  May God richly bless us in this season and give us the eternal hope for Peace and Joy.

The Shortness of Life and How We Grieve

           Rosie and I have lost two friends to death recently.  Both of them had been parishioners of mine when I was the rector of Christ Church.  One man had been through a lot of grief, losing his son to a tragic automobile accident, and then his wife to cancer.  The other was a woman who was my long time vestry secretary.  She had had invaluable insight into what the vestries had done through the years.  We went to her funeral this past week and again thought about the shortness of life, the loss of friends, and how it is that we grieve. 

            Hardly a week goes by that both of us don’t think about death.  We are both getting older and the idea that we won’t be here forever is always before us.  We have made out living wills, and regular wills.  We have thought about what we want done when we die, but we haven’t written it all out yet.  We need to do that for the sake of the kids.  I remember when my dad died, my mother seemed to have it all in hand.  Her death was not hard for me to handle because she had told us that she wanted to be cremated and we buried her ashes in the Christ Church memorial garden. 

            Death is certainly a constant in all of our lives.  The ancient monks used to have skulls on their desks to remind them that their lives weren’t permanent.  There was an order of Capuchin monks        who created a scene in a crypt in Rome where skeletons were dressed in robes, with some of them kneeling in prayer.  There was a script written on the floor which said: What you are, we used to be.  What we are, is what you will become.  That is quite a statement to drum home the impermanence of our lives and how we need to constantly think in terms of the afterlife. 

            I am also attracted to John’s Gospel, particularly the 14^th chapter, verses one through six, where Jesus talks to his disciples about what was coming for him.  He begins by saying to them: Let not your hearts be troubled.  Trust in God always, trust also in me.  In my father’s house are many dwelling places.  If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place before you so that where I am, you may be also and my way there is known to you?  Thomas interrupts him to say, Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?

Jesus then says back to Thomas, I am the way, the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father except by me.  Not a very specific answer to Thomas, certainly not the answer he was looking for, but those words of Jesus have resonated down through Christian thought for two thousand years. 

            Those are words of comfort to all of us who one day face the certainty of death.  Our Lord has gone to prepare a place for us and will take us to himself.  We can be sure of that, despite all of the theological statements to the contrary.  We are loved by our God.  That is the best news we could ever hear.

Our Stewardship of God's Creation

            We have all watched in horror at a very strong typhoon has destroyed the province of Leyte in the Philippine Islands.  Over 10 thousand people have been killed in this terrible disaster and countless properties have simply been swept away.  There is nothing left in many villages and the people are suffering greatly.  The world has mustered all of the help that is available for things like this; the Red Cross, the United Nations, every nation is pledging help and it is on the way; but such destruction is almost beyond comprehension.

            There are many who say that such storms are a result of our neglect of the climate; that we have been less than proper stewards of our environment, our greenhouse gasses have been released into our atmosphere to make the planet warmer and that this has produced storms of this magnitude.  They say that this will continue until we get it through our heads that climate change is our responsibility and that we need to do something about it before we destroy this planet.  Those arguments have great merit and we need to listen to them; but in the meantime we have the horror of what has happened in the Philippine Islands and that is our more immediate responsibility.

            For these people, we will do all that we can, but it is essential that we don’t stop with the aid that we can give them.  More important is to work for the cleaning up of our atmosphere so that storms like this can’t rise to such strength.  Do we have the will to do this?  Certainly when I look at our divided politics and our lack of leadership, I wonder what it is that we can all resolve to do about much of anything.  Moneyed interests will fight tooth and nail against any regulation of their activities.  Getting legislation passed that will curb the pollution of the atmosphere is going to be a hard job.  But with ten thousand deaths staring us in the face, we certainly ought to be able to put our greed and our self interest on hold for a moment and consider what it is that needs to be done.  Our attention span is so woefully short.  Some other thing will shortly come along and make us forget about this terrible tragedy.  We have seen this over and over again:  mass shootings happen, are in the news for a while and so is our outrage, but that is rather quickly forgotten and we get on to other things.  What is wrong with us?  Can’t we focus on what is going on around us and pay attention to our individual responsibility for these things?

            As we get closer to Advent, our lessons are becoming more and more apocalyptic.  In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus hears people admiring the way that the temple is built in honor of God and he tells them: As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down!  The people ask when this will occur and Jesus goes on to tell them that their lives will seem to be disasters, that they will be persecuted, arrested and even killed because of his name.  He tells them to persevere and that throughout all of the suffering, they will gain their souls. 

            There was another time that Jesus said the same thing.  It was when he told his disciples that he would be tried and killed and then raised on the third day.  The point of this all is that God is in charge of not only this world, but of us.  There is nothing that we can do to lose that love, even though we fail miserably in our responsibility to take care of God’s creation.  The earth may ultimately be destroyed, but we are safe in God’s loving hands.  That basic truth ought to help us to pay attention to the creation that has been placed in our hands.  Could we not be better stewards of what we have been given?  Is it really necessary for ten thousand or more people to be killed by storms that our pollution has caused? 

The Problem of Proving our Faith

            The separation of church and state has been enshrined in our constitution and has been a part of our common life from the origins of this country.  The point of it is that the government has no business telling us how or what to worship and that our religious rights are a part of the basic law of this nation.  That doesn’t stop those who are certain of their religious beliefs from taking over when they can and telling the rest of us what it is that we ought to believe in terms of God.  I think of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, who have a way of inflicting themselves on the rest of us by picketing the funerals of veterans, or holding up signs denouncing homosexuality.  It isn’t hard to be offended by their antics and often there are counter-pickets around them.

            Recently, there was a court case in a town near Rochester, New York about who was chosen to offer prayers at a local meeting of commissioners.  For many years, prayers had been offered by Christian ministers, and others objected saying that this was a stamp of approval of the Christian faith and that those of other faiths had been left out.  The case has moved through the courts, and eventually the Supreme Court will have to rule on this.  It seems to me to be a simple enough problem to solve.  The First Amendment speaks clearly about it and those of other faiths, or no faith at all ought to be able to feel included in the way that we address or fail to address God in our prayers.

            This comes, I believe out of our problem with certainty.  Somehow we think that our belief can be proven to be true simply by using scripture.  The confusion of certainty and faith lies at the root of this kind of argument.  Faith is a beautiful thing that has gotten us through some very difficult times.  It lies at the root of how we surmounted the problems that surrounded the Great Depression, the movement to the west; and it sustained us through the wars that have been fought and the difficulties that have plagued us in so many ways.  It has always been a marvel to me how those in this country imprisoned by slavery used their powerful faith to bring them through.  Some of the hymns that are still sung today tell us about the heartache and pain that was suffered.  There is nothing provable about this faith.  It simply springs from the heart of the believer and reaches a hand to the God who makes whole what human beings tear apart.

            In Handel’s Messiah, after the intermission, the soprano sings the beautiful aria that comes from the Book of Job: I Know That My Redeemer Liveth.  That aria never fails to bring me to tears because it is such a powerful statement of faith.  I Know, not I think, or I hope.  This is what religion is all about for me.  I don’t need to prove anything.  My God is real and understandable in my life because of the ways that I have been sustained and helped.  If I am going to convert anyone to my faith it needs not to be with my words, but with my life.  What they see in me is what my faith means.  That is enough.

The Purpose of Forgiveness

             Forgiveness is one of the hardest things that we ever have to confront.  It is sometimes easy to forgive ourselves, using excuses for our behavior that sometimes we don’t even believe, but forgiving others is incredibly difficult.  We keep slights in the back of our mind for a long time and sometimes they change us.  I have watched people become bitter over the way that they perceive that they are treated by their fellow humans and then treat others with the contempt that they have for the way that they think that they have been treated.

            When I regularly visited in the penitentiary with the men who had killed others, we often talked about forgiveness.  Mostly that fell on deaf ears, because the prisoners couldn’t forgive themselves.  None of them thought that what they had done was justified.  They couldn’t imagine how a loving God could ever forgive what they had done.  They were reconciled to not only living the rest of their lives in the prison, but they looked forward to an eternity in the hell that God would condemn them to because of their crimes.  I talked and talked about what a loving and merciful God we have; who condemns nobody and loves all.  Those words always fell on deaf ears.  I remember one man who had killed two people, who came to me after these discussions and tugged my sleeve and told me that there were two people in the graveyard because of what he had done, and that God was never, never going to forgive that.  There was a moment later on when I knew that he had heard the message.  There was a light in his eyes that hadn’t been there before.  He lived into his mid eighties, and in his final years, other convicts would bring him out of the hospital and across the yard to our group.  Crowds would surround him, wanting to be near the obvious light that seemed to be everywhere around him.  He was forgiven and he knew it.  That was one of the most beautiful things that I saw in the prison.

            Forgiveness seemed be Jesus’ theme on the cross.  First, the forgiveness of those who were responsible for his crucifixion:  Forgive them, Father, they know not what they do!  And then the forgiveness of the repentant criminal on the cross beside him:  Today, you will be with me in paradise!  There is nothing easy about either of these things.  I can hardly imagine a man on a cross, tormented by horrible pain, letting his tormentors go with a statement about forgiveness.  The taunting and the pain continued; the people around him held him in contempt.  What good was forgiveness going to do?  I suspect that it had something to do with Jesus’ peace.  Even in the horrible condition of pain and suffering that he was under, his peace was a high priority.  In order to remain human, in order to continue for all of his life as the messenger of God’s incredible love, he forgave as he always forgave. 

            There is the teaching for all of us.  Keep your peace, forgive as you have been forgiven.  Let the light of God’s love pour forth from you so that others can be attracted and know it also, for their peace is contingent on their forgiveness and their ability to forgive others.  It sounds so easy, but it isn’t.  It requires of us prayer and a willingness to let the things that have been done to us by others go, so that our peace and our love can remain intact. 

Exalted Humility

        Judgement is easy for most of us.  We do it a lot as we go through our day.  I am critical of the way that other people drive; whether they go too slow or too fast; or if they cut me off or beat me to a coveted parking place.  I love to watch people who are around me.  It is easy to wonder at the clothes that they wear; the way that they use their cell phones in public, or the way that they speak to their kids.  Generally, my judgments stay within me; it is not often that I am arrogant enough to voice them to anyone around me.  Sometimes, in the car on the way home, I will comment about someone to my wife, but mostly, I keep silent. 

         I am not pleased by this behavior of mine.  I think it is not a good reflection of who I am, and I try to not do it so much.  I try to watch my own driving and not be so critical of the people who share the road with me.  I think that we would have a better world if we were all able to be less critical of each other.  I am mindful of the passage in Luke 18 where Jesus tells the parable of the two men who when up to the temple to pray.  One of them was a Pharisee and the other a Tax Collector. The Pharisee prayed Thank God, I am not like other men, particularly that tax collector.  The Tax Collector simply prayed, God, be merciful to me, a sinner.  Jesus went on to ask his listeners, I tell you that this man went down to his home justified, rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.

           That isn't what I seem to do most of the time, so I generally need to be humbled.  I don't like that, but when I assess myself, it is certainly true.  I think it is also true for most of us.  What a wonderful world it would be if we were all able to look at our sinfulness and acknowledge it and live in the exorbitant wonder of the forgiveness of God for each of us, just as we are.  

Waiting for God

           I sometimes get weary of waiting for God to make things right.  There is a lot of suffering in this world and it seems to me that if God wanted to alleviate it, it wouldn't be much of a problem to wipe it all out.  The problem with that is that I am a part of the suffering in the world.  I certainly have adequate food and shelter, I have clothing to fit and warm me and a place to sleep.  I also have a wife who loves me and puts up with me and all that I do.  It isn't easy for her sometimes.  I know that she gets tired of my foibles.  But she is always there for me.  I also have daughters who love both of us and make sure that we know it.  So I am really blessed.

           But there are many others who have nothing.  This world is full of people in the pain of poverty, lack of relationships, and no real way out.  We have a lot of private charities that pump millions of dollars into trying to make much of it right, but we face an overwhelming problem.  I am reminded of the story of the man walking along the beach who saw many, many starfish washed up on the shore.  He picked one of them up, looked at it and threw it back into the surf.  The person who was walking with him said, "that doesn't do much to solve this problem", and the man replied, "it solves it for that starfish!"  Rather than attempting to fix all of our problem with poverty and want, maybe it is up to each of us to try to make a difference for the poverty that we find among us every day.

           Jesus told us to love our neighbor as a person like ourselves.  I think that God has presented us with the means to solve the problem of poverty and want in this world.  The solution is each of us.   When we simply open our eyes to what is happening around us, we can find many places where our help is not only needed, but welcomed.  Our problem is that we are overwhelmed by the difficulty and we keep waiting for someone else to solve it.  We want the government or the charities, or anyone to throw money and effort at taking care of the millions of people who have absolutely nothing.   These organizations have a significant place in making things work, but their efforts aren't enough.

           What is necessary is the concern of each of us as we go through our day to be sure that we do what we can for the people whom we meet along the way who have needs.  This isn't easy.  Sometimes we will feel that we are intruding in other people's lives, but the reality is that our intrusion is helpful.  Even when we overstep, our efforts are often appreciated.  Giving of our selves is an elegant present to the world.  In Matthew 25, when Jesus talks about the separation of the sheep and the goats, he tells his listeners that when he was hungry they fed him, when he was thirsty, they gave him drink and when he was in prison, they visited him.  They asked him, "when did we do these things?"  He said to them, "whenever you did this for anyone in need, you did it for me."  That is our mission, and it is also how God enters the pain of this world.

Our Lives in Exile

             Rachel Maddow had a wonderful analogy on her program the other day when she was talking about the looming crisis over the debt ceiling and what ignoring it would mean for the country, our economy and the standing of the United States in the rest of the world.  She talked about Captain Ahab chasing the White Whale.  She said that there was a boat launched from the Pequod with the Captain and members of his crew.  They hit the whale with a harpoon that was tethered to the boat by a rope.  The angered whale began to swim, towing the boat with it.  If the whale sounded, meaning diving to the bottom of the sea, the boat would go with it and they would all be drowned.  The captain had a hatchet on board that could be used to cut the rope and free the boat from the whale; but the rest of the crew protested when he wanted to use it and kept him from cutting the rope.  Maddow suggested that this is what is going on with our congress and Speaker Boehner; that a small group in congress, the most radical of the Tea Party members, is keeping the speaker from finding a solution to the debt crisis. They are all willing to go over the edge into whatever comes in the name of decreasing the government and defunding the Affordable Care Act. 

            Her analogy certainly makes a lot of sense to me, particularly since the “full faith and credit” of the United States is being placed in jeopardy by this move by congress to not pay the bills that they have incurred.  We wonder what will happen if we indeed go over the edge and the debt ceiling is ignored.  There is no doubt that a lot will happen.  Interest rates will likely go up and middle class people will find it more difficult to obtain loans for cars or homes.  Other nations will cease to look to us for leadership and the dollar will cease to be the standard used by the rest of the world.  Much of this could be devastating in terms of our standing among the nations of the world.

            The words of Jeremiah the prophet strike me today as being good advice for all of us if we are headed into a place of exile from the country that we love so very much.  He tells the Hebrew people who have been taken hostage by the Babylonians not to despair, but to continue to live their lives; to build houses and to live in them, to create families and offspring and to live as close to normality as possible.  He tells his people to seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.  That seems to me to be excellent advice for a people headed for trouble.  We all need to continue to live our lives, regardless of what a rebellious congress decides to do.  The next election will certainly be an opportunity to weed some of these people out of the national legislature; but the final answer to this is the rest of us cleaving to whatever part of normality that we can find until a final answer is created.  That might not seem like much at this moment in time.  But our prayer continues to be that God’s Grace may always precede and follow us that we may be continually given to good works.  Our trust in that Grace is all that keeps us from ultimate failure, regardless of what people in congress may do.

The Meaning of Forgiveness

            Not long ago a controversy erupted in Connellsville, near Pittsburgh, about a replica of the Ten Commandments that had been erected on public property.  They were banned by a court and the people erupted with anger over this decision.  The other day, a group of these citizens began erecting signs showing the Commandments all over the place.  One of the members of the group said that “if people would simply obey these simple rules, all of the wars would cease and we would live very happy lives.”  That is certainly true, and it is exactly what God had in mind when the Ten Commandments were handed to Moses on Mt. Sinai after the freeing of the Hebrews from Egyptian captivity. 

            Of course, it didn’t work.  Humanity has its own idea of what the rules ought to be and the Ten Commandments aren’t a part of it.  The truth is, all of us have broken every one of them.  This is why God repeatedly returned to us with new ways to help us to understand what the thinking behind the Commandments involves.  The prophets were sent to point out our failures; and when that didn’t work out very well, finally God sent Jesus to come among us to show us the meaning of Love as the way for us to live, so that the Ten Commandments could really be obeyed.  “Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul and mind, and love your neighbor as a person like yourself”, said our Lord when he gave us what we call the Summary of the Law.  We still recite this in our liturgy as a reminder to us every week of what it is that we ought to be doing in our lives.  Of course, we don’t do it very well.  We still don’t obey the law in the way that our God would like for us to do. 

            That is why the confession of our sin is such an important part of our liturgy every week.  It is no accident that the confession and absolution is given to us right before the Peace.  So that a congregation of forgiven sinners can embrace each other in newness before God right before we begin all over again with the celebration of the Eucharist.  The intention of this is always to make us a new people; people who can let the past be the past and get on to new relationships without the shadow of the past.  Forgiveness is the issue.  When we can learn to forgive in the same way that our God forgives us each week; then our relationships will blossom and our lives will be filled with the wonder of God’s love.

            I have always loved the 137^th Psalm.  It is the one that was supposedly composed after the captivity in Babylon happened in 587 BC and the Hebrew people were taken far from their home in Jerusalem in to the bondage that they suffered for so many years.  They tried to sing, but the words just wouldn’t come to them. The words of the Psalm tell the story very well:

                By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept, *
            when we remembered you, O Zion.

            As for our harps, we hung them up *
            on the trees in the midst of that land.

            For those who led us away captive asked us for a song,
            and our oppressors called for mirth: *
            “Sing us one of the songs of Zion."

            How shall we sing the LORD'S song *
            upon an alien soil?

            Indeed, how can we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?  That captive people remembered the happy times in Jerusalem, when life was free and times were good.  After their captivity, that all vanished and singing the songs of Zion seemed to them a mockery of what their lives had become. 

            Sometimes we get bogged down with our problems and our sins.  We all know that we haven’t lived our lives in the way that God has intended, yet we are a forgiven people.  That is the good news that lets us live for today, not for yesterday.  Accept your forgiveness and live your lives in the knowledge of God’s perfect love.  I know that is hard, but it is the key to renewal and the essence of faith.

The Measure of Our Wealth

            Almost every day we get more catalogues in the mail, inviting us to buy more things.  Mostly we throw them away, but sometimes we see something that we want.  Not need, want.  We don’t really need very much, mostly housing and food.  Over the years, we have acquired many things that we love.  I’m always impressed with what people do when there is a fire; they rescue their families, their pets and their pictures.  They keep their memories.  This is a beautiful statement about what it is that is important to us; what we need and what we can do without.

            In 1993, Rosie and I lost the beach house that we had had for fifteen years.  We loved that place, went there every year and took our kids there.  When the ocean ruined it, we took down a truck and got out much of the furniture and the appliances.  What we have remaining at this moment is the large sign that I made to name the cottage:  Someplace Special.  That sign hangs in our garage as a reminder of those wonderful times; but the house is gone.  We and the kids retain the memories. 

            The story of the Rich Man and Lazarus is a great reminder to me of what it is that is important in this life.  Poor Lazarus sat outside the rich man’s house day by day and begged.  As the Gospel says, even the dogs came and licked his sores, but the rich man simply walked by him as he left his house.  Finally, they both died and Lazarus was nestled in Abraham’s bosom and the rich man languished in Hades.  The rich man, no longer rich, called across to Abraham to send Lazarus to touch his lips with water, because he was very thirsty in this place of torment.  Abraham told him that there was “a great chasm” fixed between them and that no one could cross from one side to the other.  The rich man then asked Abraham to send Lazarus to his father’s house to warn his five brothers.  But Abraham told him that they have Moses and the prophets and it really wouldn’t matter if they saw someone who had risen from the dead.

            What a powerful story that is.  All that the rich man wanted was what he had denied Lazarus for all of those years, a small drink of water.  And it certainly was true that nobody would have believed one who had risen from the dead.  Certainly the world struggles to believe what Jesus told us, even though he rose from the dead.  

            Are we rich, or are we poor?  What is it that we do for those whom we meet who are in need?  This is the measure of our faith and our wealth.   Certainly,  God loves all of us, and holds all of us in great Love.  How we treat each other is the issue that faces us day by day.  Do we simply walk by, or do we provide what is needed?  That is how wealth is really measured.

Our Paralyzed Congress

             It would be wonderful if we could find some way out of the constant bickering in congress over the Affordable Care Act and take care of the poor people who need their food stamps and do something about the decaying infrastructure in this country.  Somehow our legislators seem paralyzed with their certainty and are unable to act unless they absolutely get their own way.  There is profound sin in all of this, some of it on the heads of the people in office and some of it on our own heads. 

            I don’t think that the next election is going to change much of anything at all.  We will continue to have an African-American president, which I think is a large part of the problem.  Until the Republicans in congress are able to get over that stark fact, I don’t think that they will do anything that looks good for him.  Their aim is to destroy anything that he tries to do.  It is a terrible thing, but I think we are stuck with it. 

            The sin that is on all of us is our inability to convey to the congress the magnitude of their destruction of our country.  We just continue to go on our way and hope against hope that somehow things will miraculously change.  They won’t.  We need to make our needs known in absolute terms to the people in office.  How we do that is something that we need to consider, but it needs to be done.  

            It has worked in the past.   When Martin Luther King descended on Washington with the march for freedom that ended with his iconic speech at the Lincoln Memorial, it changed everything.  That was the beginning of the remarkable effort that ended with the passage of the Civil Rights legislation that has meant so much to so many in this country.  There was a terrible price paid for it.  We lost Dr. King and many others to the violence that preceded this work; but we also gained a great deal.  

            We need to do the same thing again.  Somehow we need to impress on the minds of those in congress that we will not tolerate their constant bickering and delays and that we demand that the laws that we need so desperately are passed and this country’s problems are adequately addressed.

            What are our priorities?  Are they our own lives, or do we also care about those around us who are in desperate need?  This country needs health care that is affordable for everyone and we also need to have the poor fed and the rich kept in their place.  I don’t think that is too much for us to ask. 

Politics and Bigotry

            I read a wonderful old book recently.  It is The Man by Irving Wallace, written in 1964.  It was made into a movie starring James Earl Jones, but the book is a rich, full story of a senator who because of the death of the president and the speaker of the house, and the fact that the man who was Vice President had died earlier, is forced into the presidency because he is the president pro-tem of the Senate.  The crux of the story is that the man who has become the president happens to be black and the complications arise primarily from that issue. 

            In the course of the story, President Douglass Dilman comes to understand that others in the government are keeping him out of the loop and he fires his secretary of state.  This brings down the anger of the party, particularly the southerners on his head and they impeach him.  They offer four articles of impeachment, but at the trial in the Senate, his lawyer offers a fifth article that he says was inadvertently left out:  that Douglass Dilman is an African-American who has illegally occupied the White House.  The Presiding Officer, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, refuses to allow this article to be introduced, but it has been subtly put forward on the television screens to all of the country.  When President Dilman appears at the trial to testify, his color is certainly prominent.  In the end, the impeachment fails, but the story is certainly powerful. 

            It reminded me of what we have in this country today:  an African-American president who is stymied in every way possible by a reluctant opposition who see his color as an issue before us all and who oppose everything that he does, good or bad, simply because they don’t like him at all.  Here in the twenty-first century, it seems to me that we perhaps ought to be a bit less bigoted, but we have our history behind us, and it won’t go away easily.

            Fifty years ago this Sunday, on September 15, 1963, the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama was bombed by Ku Klux Klansmen and four little Sunday School girls were killed.  This was a terrible tragedy that happened five years before the assassination of Martin Luther King.  This was an awful time in this country’s history.  Our blatant racism was laid before all of us.  Those four little girls, Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Denise McNair were young martyrs in a terrible struggle that isn’t really over yet.  We still have a lot of work to do to ease the bigotry that lies in each of our souls and to be the inclusive church that our Lord created. 

            When I was in Seminary in Virginia, I worked for a while out of a Lutheran Church at Sixteenth and “V” street in Washington, in the area north of Thomas Circle that was burned out after the King assassination.  I walked those streets and saw the hate and the poverty first hand.  I understood very well what our racial bigotry has done to us and how it has kept good people out of the marketplace of ideas and continued to make us leery of each other.  This still needs to change, and has needed to be changed for a long time.

            In the letter to the Galatians Paul tells them that since we have put on Christ, that there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave or free; neither male nor female, that we are all one in Christ Jesus.  To that we ought also to add black or white, red or yellow; that our races also have ceased to divide us because we are united in Christ.  That is a hope, not a fact.   Certainly we are divided and it always gets in our way.  The moment we can truly put aside our differences and receive each other for who and what we really are, that is the moment that the Kingdom will finally be realized on this earth.  May God move us in that direction and help us to put aside our hurtful bigotry and learn to love each other in the way that our Lord intended.  May God bless us in this important and necessary work. 

In the Hands of the Potter

            When I look back at my life, I wonder how many times that I have been made over.  What I mean is that what I was becoming was not particularly pleasing to God or to myself and I needed desperately to be changed.  I had no idea what that change ought to be, but somehow it showed up and I came to follow another path. 

            When I was just out of high school, I decided to pursue a career in forestry.  I was attracted to it by a supervisor that I had when I worked over the summer for my town.  He was a gracious man who seemed to always understand what I was doing and how I was doing it.  He had a wisdom that was beyond his profession.  It was a great pleasure working for him.  So I went to college to try to become a forester.  I learned dendrology, trigonometry, and spent a long time working in the woods coming to understand the logging industry and how conservation was an absolute necessity in this world.  At some point, I think I understood that this profession was not for me and I lost interest in it.  After I spent another semester trying to come to terms with what I was doing, both the university and I came to understand that I was obviously made for other things than forestry.  I left school, came home and eventually got into the broadcasting business where I had a twenty year career.  In the course of this, I met Rosie, we were married, and went on together.  My marriage changed me.  I came to understand responsibility in a different way.  When we had our children, I took on another role, that of father to kids who needed both of us. 

            After I went through a bankruptcy at a television station where I worked, I was out of work and needed to change again.  I had always been interested in my church, so I called my rector, spoke to the bishop and was enrolled in seminary to become an Episcopal priest.  This was another fortunate change for me.  In my career as a priest, I have had wonderful experiences that have changed my life.  I never would have predicted that it would come out this way, but looking back, it all seems of a piece, a smooth transition from one thing to another. 

            I think of all of this when I read Jeremiah’s account of God telling him to go to the potter’s house because he has something to tell him.  The potter is making and reshaping pots that haven’t worked out the way that he intended in the first place.  God tells Jeremiah that he works in the same way, making and reshaping people and groups when they go astray.  I know that God’s hand has been in my life doing this constantly.  I have been shaped and reshaped by God until this present day.  I also know that God is not finished with me.  What reshaping is in the future, I can’t say, but if it is in the same pattern as the rest of my life, I need have no fear.  It will give me God’s blessing as I have had it up to now.  This is an enormous comfort to me.  It makes all of the pain and strain of the changes that have happened make great sense.  I am in the hands of a gracious God who loves me and has an agenda for my life.  What more can I ask?