The Advent Conspiracy

Sermon Preached at St. Aidan’s Alexandria (December 12)
Third Sunday in Advent, Year A: Isaiah 35:1-10, Canticle 15, James 5:7-10, Matthew 11:2-11

"The Almighty has done great things for me, and holy is his Name." Amen.

A couple weeks ago I was introduced to a phenomenon called the Advent Conspiracy. It's a movement, mostly promoted online, that was founded a few years ago by an ecumenical group of ministers whose goal is to re-claim this season from consumerist frenzy. Their web site proclaims: "What was once a time to celebrate the birth of a savior has somehow turned into a season of stress, traffic jams, and shopping lists. And when it's all over, many of us are left with presents to return, looming debt, and this empty feeling of missed purpose. Is this what we really want Christmas to look like?"

The Advent Conspirators' main question is this: What if Christmas became a world-changing event again? They offer a challenge to buy less stuff and give more of yourself, to live more simply (which is a noble goal, especially at this time of year). But they also present a bigger challenge: to redirect some of what we usually spend at this time of year toward creating a better world. They provide some pretty startling statistics. The U.N. reports that 5,000 children die every day from diseases caused by unclean water and poor sanitation. The estimated cost of ending this injustice and creating clean water sources around the world is about $11 billion a year. I invite you to guess how much Americans are expected to spend this year on Christmas presents? [Congregation guesses.] Answer: $450 billion.

For those of you who are feeling an overwhelming desire to "google" right now, I have already done so – because I didn't want to believe these numbers myself. Unfortunately, a number of sources, including reports from the World Water Fund and the Wall Street Journal, confirm these stats – it's not just crazy church propaganda. This message from the Advent Conspiracy is true, and it is uncomfortable.

Speaking of uncomfortable messages, let's turn now to today's Gospel reading. This selection from Matthew doesn't sound much like the Advent we know and love – Isaiah's promises of peace and comfort, or Mary and Elizabeth rejoicing over the children they are expecting. This sounds very different, with John the Baptist sending messengers to ask whether Jesus is really the coming one, to which he receives a reply that seems to raise more questions than it answers. Why would we read about these doubts during this season when we're supposed to be awaiting a world-changing event: Christ's coming? John's questions are puzzling, because early in Matthew's Gospel, in the portion we heard last week, John very confidently proclaims the coming of the Messiah: "One who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals! He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire!" So what has happened since then to shake John's confidence?

For one thing, John now finds himself in prison, and in his day prison was not a final destination – it was a way station where you went to await your fate, which usually wasn't good. So John is having a very close encounter with his own impending death. He is in a place of darkness, and it is understandably difficult for him to see light and hope, and to trust that he has given his life for a worthy cause. But the other thing that's been happening in Matthew's narrative, between John's predictions and these questions, is that Jesus has been healing the blind and the sick, casting out demons, and even restoring to life a little girl who was believed to be dead.

So, in answer to John about whether he is the coming one, Jesus does not offer a simple 'yes' or 'no.' He offers instead a recap of remarkable events: the blind receive sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor hear good news. To Jesus' listeners, this list was a resounding echo of the words we heard today from the prophet Isaiah. But it probably also confused them, because in general their picture of the messiah, the coming one, would have been a king or military hero, who would come among us in great might, who would restore Israel and reign over it with authority and power. Their vision of the messiah didn't include the gentle healer standing before them. Jesus recognizes that he doesn't fit their expectations.

Then Jesus further challenges his followers. He asks them three times: What did you go out into the wilderness to see? Was it a reed shaken by the wind, or someone dressed in soft robes? It helps decode this language to know that King Herod reportedly built at least one palace beside the Dead Sea in the wilderness, and some of his royal coins depicted a reed from the Jordan Valley, so Jesus is probably saying, "Did you go out to see the rich and powerful living decadent lives? Did you go into the wilderness to see the Real Housewives of the Dead Sea?" No, he says, you came to the wilderness to see a prophet who is not glamorous at all, John the Baptist dressed in his camel's hair, eating locusts and honey, with his message that the coming of God's kingdom is about repentance, it's about re-orienting our lives, it's about sacrifice, not splendor.

Something I read about this passage said: "John and Jesus share one crucial characteristic: they are both willing to risk entering the public arena against well-prepared opponents, even when it means speaking truth to those in power, a very dangerous occupation that can land the prophet in prison or on a cross. All of this speaks about how the old age continues to operate. Those in power stay in power. The powerful exploit the powerless. It is a vicious cycle that only an advent can change. Both John and Jesus are part of that advent as it struggles to come to life."

Yes, today's gospel reading would be a lot more palatable if Jesus could answer with simplicity and assurance, "Yes, I am the coming one. Don't worry, John, everything will turn out fine." But Jesus knows that to truly usher in the new kingdom and the lasting peace of God, all of our expectations about how the world works have to be turned upside down first. And that is going to require a great deal of sacrifice. He's reminding his cousin John what exactly he put his life on the line for, and he is reminding the disciples that what they came to the wilderness to see is probably not what they were expecting. Before they can truly see the savior, they have to go through the wilderness.

Almost exactly one month ago, the Burmese democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi was released (again) from house arrest. In the 1980s, Suu Kyi started the National League for Democracy, which led to widespread civilian protests and a surge of hope in a country that has been ruled by a military junta for almost 50 years now. She was actually elected to be the country's leader in 1990 but was prevented from taking office, and she has lived under house arrest almost constantly since then. She has been released twice before, then imprisoned again when she attracted too many followers. She has had almost no contact with her family, not even to be with her husband when he was dying. When Suu Kyi was released before, she could have fled the country to live a normal life near her family, but she chose to stay in Myanmar, because a third of her country's people live on less than a dollar a day, disease is rampant, health care is nearly non-existent. Myanmar is a place that needs an advent in a bad way.

When I was there two years ago, I became swept up in the Burmese people's love for their gentle hero. When Suu Kyi started making headlines again, I picked up a book of her beautiful letters, Voices from Burma. In an introduction to that volume, Fergal Keane describes trying to find out why so many Burmese people risk their own lives to rally around Suu Kyi. He stood with the crowds gathered outside her house and asked them, "What did you come here to see?" He writes: "Perhaps the most eloquent answer to my question came from an old man, standing drenched to the skin outside Aung San Suu Kyi's house on the day after her release. 'We come here because we know that we are the most important thing in the world to her. She cares about us.' To a people who suffer continually the brutality of one of the world's most odious regimes, the notion that a leader might actually care about them, and risk her own freedom to fight for theirs, is indeed unusual."

The common message that the Advent Conspiracy and Aung San Suu Kyi and John the Baptist and Jesus proclaim to us is that unless all of us are free, none of us is free; unless all of us are healthy and safe and warm, none of us is healthy and safe and warm. It's the message that saints down through the centuries have put their lives on the line for, because they truly believe that this world can be turned upside down, that the lowly can be lifted up and the hungry filled with good things, that the vicious cycles of our world can be redeemed.

Before I go back to my seat, I want to be clear about something: I'm not saying that if you buy Christmas presents you're a bad Christian. After all, you're here this morning, which leads me to believe that you have come here to see something more, something more to this season than consumerist frenzy.

But I also want to be clear that the Advent message isn't entirely tidings of comfort and joy – it's also a message of challenge:
a challenge to be re-born with Christ, a challenge to help our world be reborn, a challenge to upset the age-old cycle of the powerless and the powerful, a challenge to give up some of our own comfort so others can come to the table.

To the one who is coming, each of us is the most important thing in the world, and we are called to love one another in the same generous way.

On some great and glorious day, Jesus will usher in a new kingdom where this love will prevail. And every year – every day – we are invited to prepare his way, to help bring about the advent of a new world.

So I invite you to become part of this great conspiracy of Advent, to ponder in your heart that basic question: What if Christmas became a world-changing event again? What if?

[Watch the Advent conspiracy video!]

Jacob's Wrestling

Sermon Preached at St. Aidan's, Alexandria VA
October 17, 2010
Proper 24: Genesis 32:22-31, Psalm 121, 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5, Luke 18:1-8


"I lift up my eyes to the hills; from where is my help to come?
My help comes from the LORD, the maker of heaven and earth"

If you were to glance around my apartment, you would see small bowls of rocks and shells scattered around on nearly every table, dresser, and shelf. It all started with a pocketful of rocks I gathered several years ago when my husband and I helped lead a pilgrimage to South Dakota. At first I picked them up because they were unusual colors that I'd never find in my backyard in Tennessee – orange and dark black and shiny white. But after I returned home they came to represent much more, serving as a reminder of that intensely spiritual journey, one that challenged me in many ways. So in the years since then I've continued to bring back rocks, shells, and the occasional pine cone from places where I have encountered God.

This rock is not one of mine - it was graciously loaned to me today by Barbara Katz. It is from the River Jabbok in Jordan, the setting of the story we read today from Genesis, in which Jacob encountered God. Barbara's friend Bob visited Jabbok during a pilgrimage to the Holy Land many years ago and brought this rock back for Barbara as a reminder of that story. So you see, I'm not the only one who gathers up little pieces of earth as mementos of spiritual encounters…

But if our story tells us anything this morning, it is that encountering God can come in the form of struggle. For Jacob it was a wrestling match that lasted for an entire night. Jacob has been wrestling his whole life. You may remember that he wrestled with his twin brother Esau in the womb. As an adult he wrestled away Esau's birthright as the older son and their tricked their father Isaac into blessing him instead, and everyone was so mad that Jacob had to flee for his life. While he was away he struggled with his future father-in-law Laban for 14 years so he could finally marry Rachel (and, by accident, her sister Leah). When Jacob finally had so many wives and children that he needed to find his own land to live on, he swindled Laban out of his best livestock on his way out of town. So as our story for today opens, Jacob is again a fugitive, and he has been away for home for about two decade. And the next day he will encounter Esau for the first time since that day so many years ago when he cheated his brother out of his inheritance. His best guess is that Esau will kill him on the spot. Jacob still has much to wrestle with.

Over the course of this story, all of this baggage Jacob is holding onto is torn away from him. When you look at this portion of Genesis in its original Hebrew, you learn straightaway that this is a story of deconstruction. Many of the words in this story are echoes of the second chapter of Genesis, which contains one of the Hebrew Bible's accounts of creation. Here are some highlights of that account:

"The Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no one to till the ground; but a mist would rise from the earth, and water the whole face of the ground— then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being…Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.’…So out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them…For the man there was not found a helper as his partner. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man."

Back in the story of Jacob, many of these images reappear. The word for "wrestle" in the original text of this story is derived from one of the Hebrew words for "dust." And here is Jacob standing by a river. Water, dust: flashbacks to creation. But this story is UN-doing what God did in the creation story. In creation, God brought the man animals and a wife as partners and helpers. Now Jacob sends his wives and his livestock away, ahead of him across the river. And so Jacob is left alone, the exact same word as in the creation story, except that just like in the other story there is actually someone else there.

We come to understand by the end of the story that the stranger Jacob has wrestled with all night is actually God. In his encounter with God, Jacob himself is undone. He is struck on his hip– or a better translation might be in the hollow of his thigh joint – deep in the core of his body, deep in the core of himself.

The Hebrew tells us, then, that this is a story of un-doing, of a return to a primal struggle. It also reinforces that this is a story of identity. The name of the river, in Hebrew Yabbok, looks and sounds like the world for wrestle, yabak, and none of this is far from the name of our protagonist, Jacob. It's supposed to be a little bit unclear where Jacob leaves off and the wrestling begins. Because, after all, Jacob has always been wrestling.

Finally, though, his wrestling is blessed. When Jacob clings to the stranger, still not quite sure who the stranger is, and asks for a blessing, he is given a new name. And that name, Israel, means loosely "one who strives with God." The naming and the blessing seem to be one and the same. His new name acknowledges and honors Jacob's struggle with God as part of his blessing.

Jacob leaves this place a changed man. He will limp for the rest of his life, and that is Jacob's bowl of rocks, his constant reminder of his encounter with God. And while what happened in that place altered him and blessed him forever – in his body, his identity, and his heart – Jacob doesn't start a brand new life. He limps back to being a husband and a father and a brother.

Speaking of that, I think it's important to note the next chapter of this story. The next thing Jacob encounters is his dreaded meeting with Esau. He sees Esau coming toward him with what seems like a whole army of people. But instead of killing him, instead of even fighting him, Esau grabs his brother right away in an enormous embrace, and they kiss, and they cry. Jacob says to Esau, "Truly to see your face is like seeing the face of God." Since we know what Jacob went through to see the face of God the night before, we know the full weight of these words he speaks to his brother.

Jacob knows that seeing the face of God involves being alone and vulnerable to God. He knows that seeing the face of God involves being undone. He knows that seeing the face of God involves wrestling with everything he has ever done wrong. He knows that seeing the face of God involves crawling back to the person he has hurt most in the world. But now Jacob also knows that seeing the face of God involves freedom and forgiveness, and he sees this shining back at him from his brother's face.

Barbara's dear friend and colleague Bob brought her this rock because he said he saw in her someone who was always wrestling with God, as she continually explored her faith and discerned what God would have her do. And he knew she was also one to hold on for her blessing, even as things in her life were undone. In the years since then, she has kept this rock with her as a reminder that our deepest wrestling and our greatest blessings are often one and the same.

I know that Barbara is not the only person at St. Aidan's/in this room with a history of wrestling with God. I wonder what moments and experiences are in your bowl of rocks? I wonder when you have been vulnerable, when you have been undone, when you have admitted that you were wrong. And I wonder when you have been able to say with Jacob, "I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved."

(Drawing by Debbi Friedman: http://dlfriedman.com/myblog/category/rock-still-life/)

Senior Sermon

Senior Sermon at Virginia Theological Seminary
September 8, 2010
Jeremiah 18:1-11; Psalm 139:1-5, 13-17; Luke 14:25-33

Listen to Live Sermon

"Indeed, there is not a word on my lips,
but you, O LORD, know it altogether." Amen.

When I was in my first year of college, a friend in my dorm taught me to knit. She gave me some beautiful purple wool, helped me pick out the right needles, and got me started on my first scarf. Stitch by stitch, I started to get the hang of it, and I plugged away for weeks on that thing. Every now and then I would drop a stitch or the scarf would start to look a little too much like swiss cheese, so I would drag it upstairs and Kate would straighten it out. One of those times, though, the damage was too great for a quick fix. Kate declared that we were going to have to pull out several rows of my masterpiece in order to get those stitches back on track, and I watched in horror as she did just that. There are times when starting over is the only way forward. Jeremiah and Jesus offer us variations on that theme in today's lessons.

Jeremiah was writing on the eve of Jerusalem's destruction and the Babylonian Captivity, calling out to the people of Judah to prevent this impending disaster by changing their behavior. Jeremiah probably came from the same community that brought us the final version of the book of Deuteronomy, so he was almost certainly recalling the beautiful words we heard yesterday. But his people had not loved the Lord with all their heart and soul and might; they had not kept God's words in their hearts; they had not bound them into their lives. So Jeremiah warned them again and again to repent, literally in Hebrew to turn, shuv. The prophet knew that if the people of God continued in their broken ways, God would have to unravel their history and start again, and repentance, turning, was the only way to avoid what Jeremiah saw coming. But his message was not heeded; the people did not turn; and within just a few years of his warning Jerusalem lay in ruins and its people were slaves in a foreign land once again. As Jeremiah predicted, God was re-forming his people.

Our gospel lesson is also about starting over, but Jesus is not talking about starting over as something we should try to avoid. Rather, it is a condition of discipleship. Jesus asks us to unravel ourselves and the very fabric of our lives in order to become his followers. "Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. None of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions." The Greek verb for "hate," miseo, has a more nuanced meaning than this English translation implies. It's not referring to an emotion as much as a dramatic shift in priorities – "hating" something means subjugating it to a higher ideal. Being a disciple of Christ has to come first, and everything else – even your closest relationships and life itself – has to come second. So this message is a little bit less harsh than it sounds initially, but it's still a very tall order.

I remember the opening day of VTS orientation, when my class was gathered together for the very first time, shivering in the back of the auditorium. Dean Markham asked us all to introduce ourselves and name the one thing that had been the most difficult about moving to seminary. There were stories about cats vomiting all the way from Kentucky to Virginia, adventures in IKEA, and getting lost driving around Alexandria, and we all had a good chuckle. I realized later that not one of us had given the real answer to that question – not one of us had talked about quitting jobs, selling houses, leaving behind co-workers and church communities, hugging our family and friends goodbye. But those things didn't really need mentioning, because everyone in this room knows what those painful sacrifices were like. I'm really preaching to the choir here today, because you are all well acquainted with the cost of discipleship and the pain that accompanies starting over in service of Christ.

But I hope you are also here because you have had a glimpse of where that decision is leading you, because you have felt the hand of God beginning to mold and transform your life into a new vessel that is stronger than the old one. Jeremiah introduced us to a God who breaks down and destroys but who also builds and plants, and when the prophet tried to understand the impending obliteration of Jerusalem in theological terms, destruction wasn't the end of the story. Destruction came in service of God's ongoing creation. Likewise, when Jesus set his face to Jerusalem and invited us to leave everything behind and come along, he invited us to witness not just his crucifixion but also his resurrection.

When my friend Kate pulled those rows of yarn out of my scarf, I thought the whole thing would fall apart. But, in fact, the thing that was weakening it most was my own stubbornness in clinging to every stitch as a precious artifact and plowing ahead even when I knew I wasn't doing my best. She could see ahead to a stronger, better scarf, one that I still wear to this day, and she knew that starting again was the only way to attain a final work that was good and whole.

Coming to seminary is not the first or the last time you will re-orient your life for God's service. But amidst the pain of turning and amending our lives, of shifting our priorities, of starting over, we rest in the hands of a Creator God – a knitting God, no less – a God of resurrection. No one says this more eloquently than our psalmist, so I leave you with these words: "You press upon me behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it. I will thank you because I am marvelously made; your works are wonderful, and I know it well." Amen.

The Gospel of 'Glee'

Sermon for the Preaching Excellence Conference, June 2010, Villanova University

Acts 2:1-21
When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.
Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, ‘Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.’ All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, ‘What does this mean?’ But others sneered and said, ‘They are filled with new wine.’ But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them: ‘Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: 

“In the last days it will be, God declares,

that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,

and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,

and your young men shall see visions,

and your old men shall dream dreams. 

Even upon my slaves, both men and women,

in those days I will pour out my Spirit;

and they shall prophesy. 

And I will show portents in the heaven above

and signs on the earth below,

blood, and fire, and smoky mist. 

The sun shall be turned to darkness

and the moon to blood,

before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day. 

Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

Preaching Jesus. That's our assignment for this week, and it sounds simple enough, right? Pick a gospel lesson and go. Actually, as I thought about this topic over the past couple weeks, I found it more challenging than I originally expected. So last Sunday when we read this lesson from Acts for Pentecost, I was glad to be reminded that I'm not alone. The book of Acts is all about those early disciples wrestling with this same question: how to preach Jesus. When Jesus was alive, he did most of the preaching; he told his own story, and the disciples were mostly apprentices. But suddenly Jesus is gone, and the entire burden of spreading the gospel rests upon them. It's really no small assignment, then or now.

So instead of tackling this topic with full force when school let out, I pretty much ignored it. Instead, I parked myself on my couch to watch the entire first season of the hit TV series "Glee." Now I see what everyone was talking about – and enjoying, while I was buried under theology, homiletics, & field ed this year. Before I even got through the first DVD, I was a full-fledged Gleek.

For those of you who have also been living in a cave this year, a synopsis: "Glee" is the story of a passionate, hard-working, very good-looking high school teacher who takes over the school's dying Glee Club and attempts to transform it into an award-winning show choir, with costumes, choreography, and even a little Lady Gaga. Lucky for him, William McKinley High School has a few supremely talented teenagers running around – and lucky for me, it's a really good metaphor for the early church. So I will venture to present five things "Glee" teaches us about preaching Jesus.

1. Strength in numbers
In Glee, the official "Show Choir Rule Book" specifies that in order to be eligible for competition, a group must have at least 12 members. During the first half of the season, nearly every episode deals with the ever-elusive quest to reach and maintain this magical number. At least one person is always walking out or threatening to quit, thereby endangering the entire existence of the Glee Club. But they always come back, restoring the original number, and the show goes on.

With two years of seminary under our belts, we all know how important the number 12 is, Biblically speaking. After Jesus ascends in Acts, the first thing the disciples do is hold auditions for a twelfth member. Before they can even begin to preach the gospel, they have to make sure they're within regulation. In this case, the rule book is that of divine necessity, of fulfilling the scriptures, a major theme for the writer of Luke and Acts. Without a full 12 members, the group will remain divided and thus Israel will remain divided, and God's plan to restore Israel will be ruined. So yes, in reality 11 disciples could have picked up the slack in getting the early church going and spreading the good news, but their insistence on having a total of 12 represents their knowledge of how important scripture and tradition are in providing stability for the message they will proclaim.

Second point: Preaching Jesus requires a common language
Like the original 12 disciples, the Glee Club at William McKinley High School is a rag-tag bunch. They have been called from all corners of high school society – some are football players and cheerleaders at the top of the heap, while the others are regularly thrown in the dumpster or have slushies thrown in their faces by those same popular kids. But they can all sing. And while some of the members originally join the group under duress or with ulterior motives, they soon discover this common language. They discover connections they never would have known if they hadn't joined Glee Club. In one of my favorite episodes, Mr. Schuester, the director, makes everyone spend a week navigating life in a wheelchair, so they can relate to Artie, their fellow singer who has spent most of his life in a wheelchair. To sing and perform effectively as a group, they have to be aware of their differences, but also of the things that connect them.

The author of Acts tells us basically the same thing. Suddenly Parthians, Medes, and Elamites understand each other. It's important to note that they don't all begin to speak the same language, but that they begin to hear one another, each in his or her own native language. The Holy Spirit makes this unity possible, and suddenly the crowd understands that they've all been saying the same thing all along. They have all been "speaking about God's deeds of power." Once they understand each other's languages, and what they have in common, they can finally hear and preach the good news.

This leads me to point #3, which is that preaching Jesus is often misunderstood
On the ladder of popularity, being a music nerd barely gets a foothold on the bottom rung. I can speak from experience on that one. In Glee, the football players and cheerleaders who take up singing have the hardest time explaining themselves to their peers. Their fellow jocks aren’t able to hear their common language of music and the connections it reveals between us, because that would upset their carefully crafted social order. So the "popular" Glee kids begin to experience the same threats and derision their nerdy counterparts are long familiar with.

Doesn't this remind you of the response of the crowd to the descent of the Holy Spirit. It's not: "Wow! This is amazing! How do I get to be part of this?" but "Ah, they're just drunk." Sometimes, even when we're doing our best, even when the Holy Spirit is speaking through us, the message can fall completely flat, by no fault of our own. The gospel doesn't always sound like good news the first time around (or the second, or the third), and no one knew that better than Jesus himself. But if it makes everyone feel comfortable and satisfies the status quo, it's probably not the true gospel. Preaching Jesus in a genuine way rarely leads to popularity.

4. We have to preach Jesus out of our own experience
Of course there are a lot of show stoppers in Glee, but it's not all song and dance. The music is set against the backdrop of each kid's individual life, and there's a lot of drama: Kurt has recently come out of the closet to his dad; Quinn was disowned by her parents and kicked off the cheerleading squad when she got pregnant; Fin's mom has just started dating for the first time since his dad died; and even Mr. Schuester has his own fair share of drama. All of this affects their performance in various ways, good and bad. At one point, Kurt (the one who just came out of the closet) tries to regain his dad's affection by ditching his usual designer wardrobe and dressing in flannel and truckers' hats. When he breaks out into a John Mellencamp tune, his friends politely point out that, while it is technically a fine performance, it's just not him.

The original disciples each had an individual relationship with Jesus. They had all witnessed the same person and the same events, but each one interpreted them through the lens of his own life and his own connection with Christ. While we don’t have the same physical connection 2,000 years later, we do all have our own relationship with Jesus. Our parishioners don't want to hear us preach someone else's gospel. They want to hear us preach about what the stories of salvation have meant in our own lives, so they can figure out the same thing for themselves. As preachers, we are not islands. We are real people living in time and space and relationships. To be authentic, we have to meet Jesus in our own lives and preach about what we find.

Finally, and perhaps most important, preaching Jesus requires passion and joy. Or, shall I say, glee. I've now used this word about a hundred times in this sermon, but it's one that's fallen out of common English usage for the most part – least of all in reference to religion. I think one of the reasons Glee has been such a popular show is that everyone wants to relate to that feeling of spontaneous song and dance, the unmatched excitement of choreography and jazz hands. We all want to think we could let go and have that much fun.

Even in our Pentecost lesson, Peter turns to Hebrew poetry from the prophet Joel to best express what is happening among the disciples – he pretty much breaks into song. “In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams." It's beautiful, and moving. I think we're all here because we hope our preaching can move people in the same way, and we know that it can be much more than brushing up on a few commentaries and listening to the sound of our own voice for 12 minutes. I'm not saying that preaching on sitcoms is the answer, but tapping into whatever it is that brings passion and joy into your life, because that is where Jesus dwells. So as we walk through this week together and then go our separate ways again, I hope you will find yourself surrounded by prophesy, visions, and dreams, preaching Jesus with a song in your heart.

Potty Talk

Do you know how, when you go on a trip, there's usually one image that sticks in your memory as the first one that comes to mind when you think back to that adventure? For me, when I recall my month-long immersion in Myanmar last January, the first thing I remember is the day we spent in the small village of Hmawbi.

We ten seminarians worshipped on Sunday morning at the village church, St. Michael's, and afterward we were divided into small groups to visit parishioners' homes. I had three or four students from Holy Cross Theological College guiding me around, translating, and making sure I didn't embarrass ourselves too much with cultural faux pas. My group visited three or four homes, and at each one I was seated in a central place of honor and asked to tell my story - where I was from, what my family is like, what I'm studying, what my ministry involves. Then I was asked to pray for the family gathered around me. (At one home I was asked to sing a song.) And then I was fed - and fed, and fed, until I thought I would pop. In these small grass huts in the Burmese countryside, we were showered with fruit and cake and tea in china teacups. It was not unlike the feeding of the 5,000.

We learned a great deal that day about radical hospitality and generosity to the point of giving beyond your means. We knew that in almost all of those homes we were being given gifts that those families really weren't able to give, but they did because that was what it meant to them to live in a Christian community of welcome. So when we received a request from the people of St. Michael's to help them build two modern toilets with plumbing, it seemed like a small gesture of generosity on our part. We appealed to the seminary community for 100 people to give $10. For us, $10 is well within our means. It is the cost of a movie ticket or, in Alexandria at least, going out for a pretty cheap dinner - two things that the people of Hmawbi will probably never in their lives do.

The World Toilet Organization estimates that every dollar donated to improving sanitation in developing countries ends up brings $9 in value to a community. So a $10 donation will benefit the people of Hmawbi with a value of $90 or more. We ended up with the equivalent of 160 people giving $10 to help their Christian neighbors around the world. This money will travel home with our dear classmate Lwin Thida when she returns in May. She will bring the gift of this money and a strong message of communion from the VTS community to the people of Hmawbi.

Doubting Thomas

Sermon Preached at St. Aidan’s Alexandria (April 11)
Second Sunday in Easter, Year C: Acts 5:27-32; Psalm 150; Revelation 1:4-8, John 20:19-31

Earlier this week I took an online quiz on the web site beliefnet.com called "What is your spiritual type?" It was asking all sorts of questions about what you think about the afterlife, scripture, the created world, prayer, etc. And when you completed the quiz you were placed into one of several categories based on the number of points you scored. So here's the bad news: to make it into the "candidate for clergy" category, you had to score between 90 and 100 points. But I, your St. Aidan's seminarian, only got 71 points. And that score landed me squarely in the category of "Questioning Believer."

At least I'm in good company. I imagine that many of you in this room could also classify yourselves as questioning believers. And you, like me, might breathe a sigh of relief when you hear the story of Thomas in this morning's gospel. This story is often read as an advertisement for taking a leap of faith, for leaving doubt behind. Nowadays, we don't call someone a 'Doubting Thomas' as a compliment, but rather as disparagement when we think they're being a stick in the mud, too cautious or too timid. But I think this story could actually be an endorsement of doubt.

Let's take a closer look. Thomas makes his terms and conditions very clear: "Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe." And so a week goes by, a week where Thomas is still wrestling with whether the other disciples are pulling his leg, and where the other disciples are probably nagging him or feeling annoyed at him because he won't believe their eyewitness account. But then Jesus appears again, and after his greeting of peace, he turns right to Thomas. And he invites him to do all of those things that he said he needed in order to believe.

What Jesus says to Thomas as he makes this offer is translated for us as "Do not doubt but believe." However, in the original Greek it says fairly clearly, "Do not be disbelieving but believing." There is a big difference between doubting and disbelieving. Jesus knew that Thomas had doubts. He just hoped that those doubts would ultimately lead him to believing, rather than disbelieving, and that's why he returned to that room. He wanted Thomas, one of his original disciples, to be able to go out into the world with conviction, proclaiming the message of the resurrection. He said that it's great if you don't need to see to believe, but he doesn't condemn Thomas for needing that. Thomas needed to see to believe, and Jesus made that happen for him.

There's a radio program that I usually listen to on my way to St. Aidan's called "Speaking of Faith." It comes on at 7 a.m. every Sunday morning – apparently our public radio schedulers have assumed that the only people who would be interested in a show with a religious focus are the ones who already get up early on Sundays. And they may be right. Anyway, a few months ago they did an interview with poet and historian Jennifer Michael Hecht, who had written a book about the history of doubt. Hecht makes the point that Christianity is the first major religion to develop after a tradition of skepticism had become part of our greater cultural mindset, thanks to the Greek philosophical tradition. Before that, religion was mostly about doing the right thing, like making sacrifices at the right place and the right time, and as long as you did the right thing it didn't matter so much what you believed. But the Skeptics and the Cynics taught people in Greek and Roman societies that they could question their traditional pantheon of gods. Some rejected religion altogether, but others turned to Christianity instead. Hecht says that only very recently has doubt become narrowly equated with total rejection of faith rather than a healthy process of discernment. It used to be one of that ways early Christians arrived at their beliefs. Doubt is part of our DNA as Christians.

John spoke in his Easter sermon about belief as something that can be gradual, something that we live into little by little. Some of us can't just jump into the deep end of a pool. We have to start in the shallow end, waiting for the water to warm up before we step farther. The story of Thomas is reminding us of the same thing, acknowledging that there are many different varieties of believers in this world. In fact, the last verse of this lesson is really unusual, in that it is directed at us as readers and hearers of this story, especially those who are still hanging out in the shallow end of the pool. "These are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name." None of us will have the chance to see Christ's resurrected body the way Thomas did, but now these stories become our witnesses. Maybe they allow us to take small steps toward the deep end, until eventually we come to realize that we are swimming in a pool of living water.

So that hokey quiz I took, about my spiritual type, was actually for one of my classes at seminary. It's a class where, for six weeks, we're looking at the growing phenomenon of people who describe themselves as "spiritual, but not religious." So far the class has been fairly depressing, because it has highlighted the great variety of reasons why more and more people end up defining themselves in this way, many of which involve having been hurt by the church. To many people, the word "religion" is loaded: it means sex scandals in the Catholic Church or suicide bombers or being told they're going to hell because they weren't saved in the right way or mechanical liturgy that doesn't leave room for spirituality. Why would anyone want to wade farther into those waters? Unfortunately, these are often the only images of religion and faith that get projected in our culture. And we as believers often aren't very skilled at conveying our own faith, at articulating it so that others will have a deeper understanding of the life we have in his name. I wonder how the other disciples tried to convince Thomas of what they'd seen. Did they describe what those healing wounds looked like and how they felt when they saw them? Did they tell Thomas what Jesus was wearing, or mention those familiar mannerisms that let them know this was really their lord? Or did they say, "Hey, you just had to be there, man."

I think Jesus commissions us with three things in this story:

Number 1: Don't be afraid to doubt. Doubt is the constant companion of maturing faith. It means that we're not accepting things just for their surface value. Jesus invited Thomas to name his doubts, to bring them forward. He invites us to do the same. And this very room is one of the best places to offer up your doubts – bring them to worship, bring them to coffee hour, just don't keep them locked away, pretending they don't exist.

Number 2: At the same time, be imaginative and active in seeking those things that help you wade into deeper waters. The evidence of God's saving love, of Christ's passion, is all around us. But what helps you "come to believe" is not necessarily what helps the person sitting next to you come to believe. If the definition of what you think you're supposed to believe feels too narrow, widen your scope. Name what you need to see to believe, and then be on the lookout for it. It may appear right in front of you, in a room you thought was locked.

Number 3: When you have those experiences of swimming in living water, keep building your toolbox of how to share that with others. If those of us who aren't afraid to define ourselves as "religious" aren't able to explain why, or answer questions about the deep riches of faith and tradition, we'll be swimming alone. So come to adult forum (hint hint – I'm starting a series this morning about the prayer book, hope to see you there), try daily Bible reading, keep asking questions in coffee hour, maybe even get up next week at 7 to listen to "Speaking of Faith" on public radio (or download their podcasts)! No matter what, keep learning new vocabulary to describe whatever it is that brings you here on Sunday mornings – not just "You have to be there."

I would be interested to hear more about the things you doubt, the ways you discover Christ's love in your life, and what you want to learn more about. And I invite you - from one questioning believer to another. Come on in – the water's fine.

Good Friday meditation

April 2, 2010
St. Aidan's, Alexandria

What part of this story could we leave out and still have the story we need? That is a question we ask sometimes with children in Godly Play, when we are "wondering" about the stories of scripture. What part of this story could we leave out and still have the story we need?

Of course we can't leave out Jesus, or the cross. They are the focal point of this story, the focal point of our faith. Generations of theologians have spelled out the necessity of this moment for our salvation. Christ's sacrifice is not something we can leave out of our Christian story.

But there are many other characters in our gospel lesson for this day. What about them? Could we leave them out? Are they distracting us from the main focus of what Good Friday is all about?

There's Judas and his betrayal. Judas came to the garden with soldiers and weapons, in fear and defense, even though Jesus gave himself up without a fight. Only hours after the Last Supper, Judas gave up his Lord to his death. Why did it have to be someone in Jesus' inner circle, someone who had followed him and his teachings, who gave him up? It would be nice to leave this part out.

There's Peter and his denial. Peter denied his connection with Christ; he denied being a disciple; he denied even being seen with Jesus. One of Jesus' most beloved disciples, the one who was the first to recognize him as the Messiah, failed him when it mattered most. Jesus' betrayal and death are cruel enough, without this extra layer of disloyalty from one of his most faithful friends. This part is hard to reconcile with the rest of the story.

There's Pilate and his conviction. Pilate wrestled with his conscience, and with his power. Pilate knew that Jesus was innocent, but he was afraid to take responsibility for releasing him. Instead, he passed the buck. He tried to prevent his own guilt by handing Jesus back over to the angry mob, knowing full well what they intended to do. If Pilate had just been a cruel or careless dictator, it might be easier to accept his decision. But he knowingly condemned an innocent man to death, over his better instincts. How do we reconcile this part of the story?

Mary and the other disciples also trouble us in this story. Mary, the mother of Jesus, looked up at the cross remembering her baby boy. The other women probably tried to keep her away, but she had to be there. She who had witnessed Jesus' first moments of life had to be there to witness his last. Why did she have to watch her child die? I would really like to leave this part out.

And then, right at the end, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus came out of hiding to honor their savior. They acted quickly and furtively, to prepare Jesus' body before the Sabbath. They brought expensive spices, doing work that normally would have fallen to the women of the community. And then they disappeared as quickly as they had come. Is their role important to our story?

You may have discovered someone among this cast of characters that you would like to leave out, someone who complicates the story too much or makes its heaviness too much to bear. But there is a danger, when we talk about Jesus' death on the cross, to speak of it as a concept rather than as a real, live historical event, something that happened in real time with real people. So these other folks, who are huddled around the cross in various ways, anchor this moment in history and in humanity, and they also help us anchor ourselves in the story. Because, ultimately, WE are a part of the story that can't be left out. We betray and deny and convict, but we also wait and suffer and anoint. When we look into this story, Judas and Peter and Pilate and Mary and Joseph of Arimathea reflect pieces of our own image back at us.

One of the Holy Week hymns in our hymnal says:

“Ah, holy Jesus, how hast thou offended, that man to judge thee hath in hate pretended? By foes derided, by thine own rejected, O most afflicted. Who was the guilty? Who brought this upon thee? Alas, my treason, Jesus, hath undone thee. ‘Twas I, Lord Jesus, I it was denied thee: I crucified thee. For me, kind Jesus, was thy incarnation, thy mortal sorrow, and thy life's oblation; thy death of anguish and thy bitter passion, for my salvation.”

We now have a few moments to sit with this story and to sit with the cross. If you’d like, you may move closer to the cross, to look at it and contemplate it more closely. And as we move through this time in silence, I invite you to do your own wondering. Where do you find yourself in this story? How have you participated in Christ’s moment of suffering? How do you accept this sacrifice?

You can write your reflections on your piece of paper and, as you feel comfortable, lay your paper in the offering basket at the foot of the cross.

Sermon Preached in Class (December 8) and at St. Aidan’s Alexandria (February 28)
Second Sunday in Lent, Year C: Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18; Psalm 27; Philippians 3:17-4:1, Luke 13:31-35

The LORD is my light and my salvation;
whom then shall I fear? *
the LORD is the strength of my life;
of whom then shall I be afraid?

Of all the powerful stories in the Hebrew Bible, today’s reading from Genesis is one of the very most significant. This story is the story from which all those after it will proceed, the moment when God makes a solemn and binding covenant with one man and all his descendants, marking them as chosen by God. This is the story that was told around the campfires and dinner tables of those chosen people for generation upon generation until it was finally written down several centuries later. But even though Abram is ultimately remembered as the patriarch of the Hebrew nation and the father of faith, his story was recorded in such a way that we can see that he wasn’t exactly chosen because he had his act together. Abram obeyed God’s initial call a couple chapters earlier to leave his home and everything familiar to settle in the land promised to him in Canaan, but he ended up in Egypt for a spell, where he tried to pass off his wife Sarai as his sister so she could join Pharaoh’s household and gain his favor. And after getting kicked out of Egypt, Abram separated from his nephew Lot, the only family he had left. On top of all this, Abram and Sarai have never been able to have a child. So when God re-appears in this morning’s passage, Abram has been wandering in the wilderness, literally and figuratively, and he’s had just about enough.

God shows up in a vision with words of reassurance and promise, but for Abram those words are hollow, because in his culture God could give him the entire world, but it wouldn’t matter if he didn’t have offspring to pass it on to. Without a son, the inheritance of land that God has promised is basically worthless. So even though Abram has in many respects just won the lottery – he’s an ordinary and sinful guy who has been hand picked by God for an amazing inheritance – he doesn’t rejoice or even say ‘thanks.’ Instead, he vents! “O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless?” Dialogue in Hebrew is typically back and forth, with people politely taking turns, but Abram interrupts God to take another turn, in case that last point wasn’t clear. “You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born of my house is to be my heir!” In other words, this makes no sense! God has picked the wrong guy!

God waits like a patient parent for Abram to finish his fit and soon realizes that words are not getting the point across. So God gently nudges Abram out the door and asks him a trick question: “Can you count the stars?” Unfortunately, most of us are usually in places where we can count the stars, but Abram would have seen a whole sky-full, so dense they looked like a gauzy film across the dark sky. God doesn’t explain the meaning of this exercise right away, so I imagine this space between sentences as the time where Abram actually tries to count, and you can just imagine him craning his neck, leeeeeeeeeeaning back to try to get a good look.

A couple summers ago my husband and I had the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to look at the night sky from Mauna Kea on the island of Hawaii. Some of the largest telescopes in the world reside at Mauna Kea’s summit – it is 300 miles away from the nearest big city, and at over 13,000 feet its views are unpolluted by light or obstacles. Our guide for the evening, Buck, spent two hours mapping out the night sky for us: all the major constellations of the zodiac, Orion, the Big Dipper, the Pleiades, and a special treat – the Southern Cross. I have never seen so many stars, and I probably never will again. But, since then, every time I have been far enough out of a major city to see more than a handful of stars, I have been transported back to that wild, amazing place, and I can hear Buck’s voice explaining how those stars are all connected in an intricate and beautiful pattern.
Most of the stars I saw that night are the same ones God pointed out to Abram. And when Abram saw them he suddenly understood that God was serious, that God hadn’t chosen the wrong guy. He understood that he wasn’t expected to do anything except move forward as if God’s promise was true, even if it didn’t make sense, and that’s how he came to be known as an example of faith. And every night a visible reminder of that promise appeared in the sky above him, so when he forgot, when he felt unworthy, when he felt like he would never be a father and would never have a home again, all he had to do was look up. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: “If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would we believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their smile.”

Abram didn’t receive offspring right away, and he was still surprised when he did, but for the rest of his life, when he looked at those stars, he could remember that vision, he could remember God’s voice showing him the map of his inheritance, that intricate and beautiful pattern. When he finally had a son, he told him this story, and the son told his son, and he told his son…on and on until this very morning. And each of us is one of those stars, an heir of God’s promise.

But here’s the catch: To see an infinity of stars, you don’t have to be an ancient Middle Eastern shepherd, and you don’t have to be on Mauna Kea, but I think you do have to be in the wilderness. It is hard to see the stars from, say, Times Square, where we are surrounded by a glow of prosperity. When we are surrounded by light, when we are surrounded by prosperity and fulfillment, our eyes are clouded and the sky may look dark and empty. God sent Abram into the wilderness so that his vision could become clear. And as Abram’s story continues through his descendants, the wilderness is where the Israelites will always encounter God. That’s why Jesus spent 40 days in the desert, and that’s why we send ourselves into a metaphorical wilderness during this season every year.

Last year during Holy Week I joined a few folks at seminary in doing a juice fast. From the afternoon of Palm Sunday all the way until the evening Maundy Thursday service, we drank only juice and broth. It was kind of crazy, and to be honest I didn’t really think I could make it through the week without cheating, but it seemed like an important thing to try at least once. The fasting got really hard every evening around what would have been dinnertime, and that’s when I came the closest to running to the cupboard to have just one little bitty Cheez-it, or maybe two. On the second night of this, I was sprawled on the couch in misery, trying not to think about my kitchen cupboards, feeling weak and certain that I would not get through the rest of the week. But at that moment my eyes fell on a statue I had brought back from a seminary mission trip to Myanmar last year, a statue of a woman who is kneeling in fervent prayer, with her hands raised up and her face gazing straight up toward heaven. It reminded me of all the people I met there who are hungry every day, and not by choice, who live in a type of wilderness that I will never know. And so that hungry time each evening, when I wanted to throw in the towel, became a time of prayer for me, a type of raw, vulnerable prayer that I hadn’t experienced before. I probably sounded something like Abram, listing off the things that were just not adding up. But overall that is a week that I remember as having great clarity. I wasn’t ravenously hungry all the time, but I became keenly aware of food, and I realized how often and how much I eat during a normal day. Suddenly I was able to see the abundance that had been existing all around me, abundance that I had never asked for: food at my fingertips all the time, my loving family, opportunities to travel and explore and study. I saw God’s grace in my life. I saw stars.

I’m not recommending that you try juice fasting at home, and the jury’s still out on whether I’ll do that ever again, but it helped me to see the importance of separating ourselves for a time from the abundance and light that can cloud our vision. Whether our wilderness is something symbolic that we undertake during this season, or the dark places of our lives that we already inhabit, God will meet us there. That is how we too become people of faith, by allowing that hand to lead us outside, by craning our necks to look toward heaven. There is no wilderness that is too dark for God’s light. In fact, that is where we are most able to see it.