Tag Archives: sermons

What to do for Gay Pride

JUNE IS GAY PRIDE MONTH. I’m never very excited with the the idea. But not so annoyed as the folks who call it “Gay Shame Month.” I’m reposting this from the Sarx blog. It’s what we all need for Pride Weekend, I think.


I know no one has asked. Many of you may not even know or care to know: Sunday the 27th is Gay Pride Day (or GLBTQF&F Pride day or something) in most major cities. Other cities will hold their parades on earlier weekends in June – so that more people could go to some larger festival that last weekend of the month. Buffalo always has their parade the first weekend.

How do we reach them? It’s too easy for the Neocons and the Pharisees in all denominations to just write off the sinners with some well-chosen and funny words related to sex acts. One conservative Episcopal priest – now a prominent Antiochian Orthodox priest who wrote this in their own (Antiochian) magazine – “Do people actually do… that?” He calls it the “Ick factor”. (I’ll bet he is a LOT of fun in confession!)

Here are people in God’s image. What are you going to do about it?

I once preached a Sermon at St Gregory of Nyssa Church on a Gay Pride Sunday. Several blocks away were hundreds of thousands of people who don’t feel welcomed in Church ignoring not only us – a liberal Episcopal parish – but every other Church as well. How do you get the Gospel to them? If you’re in Church on Sunday, depending on what kind of Church you have and what sort of city you live in, you may see some guests – or you may not. What can you do?

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Sermon Notes: All Saints Sunday

Hebrews 11:33-12:2
Matthew 10:32-33, 37-38; 19:27-30

On the coincidence of All Saints Sunday and Memorial day weekend….

But many who are first will be last, and the last first.

Tomorrow the President will lay a wreath at the tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington National Cemetery, in a ceremony that will be repeated over and over by governors and even mayors all over the country. I remember places in my youth where this weekend serves also as a memorial for firefighters and police. Everyone decked in solemn colours, nationalist and patriotic melodies sung and played. WOmen and men will be honoured for their self-sacrifice in the name of service to their country, their people, their family and friends.

That is one way to read this weekend. A second way, certainly counter-cultural, radical notes that while many stood as patriots – I think here, especially, of the men and women who rushed to offer themselves for service after Pearl Harbour and in the dust cloud of 9/11 – most of them over the last 200-plus years, for all their humanity and love, were pressed into service, drafted or, in the case of many in the Union Army in the internecine conflict of the 19th Century, tricked.

Many who join the armed forces do so because they are offered no other choice in their poverty and lack of education or in their unemployment. Or because they were forced to join – again, because of their class or race preventing them other oportunities.

And in their death – for oil, nationalist conflict, racist imperialism – our culture turns them into propaganda. We call them martyrs and we hold their images and memory up before ourselves to stir ourselves to like-wise make sacrifices. To believe in something that is not real, to cover up the things that are.

And even 70 years later, we ask questions about Pearl Harbour and the motives of the allies and axis in WW2, the establishment of the Military Industrial Complex on the backs of Patriots, or the desires of the Founders to create a working-class nation to, essentially, work for the upper classes and enslave the natives.

But we call them martyrs.

Another reading sees them all as victims of sin: man’s inability to live in the love and peace offered to us by God causes the death of many who might be innocent or even sinful themselves. Regardless of the motive or intention, it is our fallen state for which they die. Rather than some heavenly good, it is only a human good – in our total depravity that’s all we can do.

And I want to accept all of these readings, from the patriot dream to the radical re-vision to the sinful fall. We are, really, all of those things in our daily lives. And I want to not deny that we are all of those things in our political lives and deaths. Adn I want to sing

Crimsoned with the blood of all your martyrs, O Christ, our God, your church cries out to you: Bestow your mercies on all humanity, and grant the world your lasting peace.

For the Church, however, there are Saints and Martyrs and Passion-bearers. These are not classes, or hierarchies of holiness ranked in a legalistic manner. Unlike the Western tradition, there’s no pattern or set of steps to follow to Sainthood. One is either glorified by the Church – with a feast day and hymnody – or one is not. And even when one is not, one may have a local cultus, a local tradition of veneration for, example, Fr Seraphim Rose or King Henry II of England, which may result in eventual glorification by a Church Body – as happened, eventually, to the entire family of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. These are categories in which we place our own sinful reality to relate to it, not ranking of “power” or “holiness” or “merit”.

It is this last category, Passion Bearer, on which I wish to focus this All Saints Sunday.

To be a passion bearer is to live out in one’s own life the faithfulness of Christ, and to meet one’s own death with the resignation and obedience that Christ embodied. One may not “die for one’s faith”, may not be wrestling with heretics or defending the local shrine. One might simply be walking along to the market or caught at school by a pair of crazed gunmen. One may be killed in apolitical action or die on your own bed of some disease or advanced years. One may give one’s life away in service, or some great act of bravery, or some act of common decency.

In the end while some of us are called to be Martyrs, witnesses for Christ in a real life and death sense, all of us are called to be Passion-Bearers, all of us are called to be Saints. In the end we follow a God who chose incarnation – becoming one of us in our flesh – to save us. And now nothing is common.

Here’s the most important, radical, revolutionary thing about Christianity: God has a navel. I don’t know if it was an “inney” or an “outey”. But he has one. More than that, he’s got a penis: and God is a he. In fact, God is one specific man, born in one specific place, among one specific people – although in a melting pot of about many cultures. Surrounding God was Egyptian, Roman, Alexandrian (Ptolemaic), Silk Road, Persian, Fertile Crescent Babylonian, and 5 or 6 that called them selves “Jewish” or “Hebrew”.

More than that, God had diapers. God also probably ran around half-naked urinating and defecating on the ground while adults might have looked and giggled in either embarrassment or parental joy as the child grew up. God had a neighbourhood. God had an older half-brother – and therefore probably suffered from some bullying and maybe even fights like, “Dad loved my mother more than yours.” God had grandparents who spoiled him. God had a mother who doted on him. God had a dad who – according to one reading – was not too highly respected in his community (as a man who worked with his hands). According to another reading God’s dad was quite well respected. God went through puberty and, I have no doubt, suffered from embarrassing erections under his robe, girls flirted with him, and his voice cracked. God had acne and, after a while, back hair.

If we say – with Paul – that in Jesus the fullness of the Godhead was pleased to dwell, well then, the fullness of the Godhead liked (or didn’t like) to eat the lentils his mom cooked. The fullness of the Godhead liked (or didn’t like) to drink goat’s milk. The fullness of the Godhead liked (or didn’t like) to go to Torah school. The exact implication of “the fullness of the Godhead” is that God had a specific colour of hair, of eye, a specific tone of voice, a specific sort of body odour, and even a certain, rustic lack of bathing.

God stopped relieving himself on the ground and, eventually, grew to – like the rest of his culture – learn how to wipe his dirty butt with his left hand.

Nothing is common any more – and holiness can be found in any walk of life lived in a Godward direction. The last, the least, the lowest of our world has become the gateway to the holiest. The Saints are our greatest exemplars, the Church sings…

To you, creator of all things, the cosmos presents the saints as first fruits of creation. For their sake, O saviour, rich in mercy, preserve us all in holiness and peace through the Theotokos.

But the Passion-bearers, the women and men who met their life as Christ himself…

These are us.

My own Patron Saint, Raphael Hawaweeny, traveled around the US by trian and car and horse, meeting people where they were. He gave his life in the service of his people.

Tsar Nicholas is called a passion bearer because of his Christ-like countenance of the destruction of his empire and his eventual death. He was called of God to lead his people at a difficult time in history and did so to the best of his abilities. The religious devotion and piety of the family is well documented and not seriously contested.

Holy Orthodoxy does not draw boundaries around her saints, for along with the Tsar, the ROCOR has also canonised as Passion-Bearers*, all their servants who were killed with them, including Alexei Trupp, who was was Roman Catholic and Catherine Adolphovna Schneider, who was Lutheran!

We hold these all – and many others – to be holy men and women who lived their daily lives as best and as Christlike as they could.

What more could be asked of you or I than to do exactly this?

Let us praise the baptist and forerunner, with the apostles, prophets, and martyrs; let us hymn the hierarchs and all the martyred clergy, the Christ-like and ascetic men and women, and all the just, together with the legions of angels. With hymns of praise, let us crown them as we should, seeking a share in their glory at the hands of Christ, the saviour.

Our own war dead – both for us and against us – we may never know the real why of their death, but we can assume, I think, that they in their end, died honourable deaths seeking to “lay down their lives for their friends” as Jesus says.

Regardless of their faith – or lack of it – the acts of bravery, heroism and charity of which we read and hear so much at this time (and around July 4th) tell us enough to know of the sort of men and women we honour. Make no political claims about it, these people are little Christs among us.

But so are those teachers and shop clerks, those letter carriers and public servants, lawyers and perhaps even elected leaders that stand among us, giving their selves in service in a world that is where the admixture of “good” and “evil” result in most of us having to run on blind faith if we are to make any action at all.

Doing the best we have with what we have..

In Book ONe of Lord of the Rings, Frodo says, “I wish it need not have happened in my time,”… and Gandalf agrees. “…So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

We are called to meet the day to day world as Christ would, do bear his Passion in our Lives. Come, let us partake of food for the journey. And then do so.


*Added after more research: Since the reunion of ROCOR with the Moscow Patriarchate, some saints are “making it” onto the reunited church’s calendar. Sadly it seems as though Sts Alexei and Catherine are not on the new list – but neither are they “decommissioned” as there is no way to do that. And while we’re on the topic, St Isaac the Syrian was a member of the (non-Orthodox) Nestorian Church.

Sermon Notes: The Samaritan Woman at the Well

Acts 11:19-26, 29-30
John 4:5-42

Christ is Risen!

Then they said to the woman, “Now we believe, not because of what you said, for we ourselves have heard Him and we know that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world.”

Do you have a “fish” sticker on your car?

Or, if not – surely you’ve seen ‘em!

And you know what they mean, right?

Probably don’t have one – not even those of you with cars. I don’t. On the back of my “Delta Sue” is a Blue Ridge Parkway sticker and an Apple logo. There are no political statements and, certainly, no religious ones!

Back in High School, I had a fascination with “Tracts” as we called ‘em. Still do, really, in certain parts of the church, but we’ll get back to that in a minute. In High School I had a huge crush on a Christian Artist. His name was Keith Green. Born in Brooklyn and raised in California, with a swirling ‘fro of dark hair and blue eyes, and a beautiful voice with lots of laid-backness and conviction all at once, Keith was – to my teenage eyes – the perfect man. (I also had a huge teen crush on Love Song, but their band had pretty much broken up by the time I got to be a teenager…)

Naturally, having that much of a crush on Keith, the fact that he wrote tracts made me a voracious reader of his stuff. He would write about all the things a Christian ministry to youth was supposed to write about in the late 70s and early 80s: Jesus, cults, the occult, the Bible and “coming to Jesus”. Unlike the more popular comic-style tracks by Jack Chick, Keith’s were usually heavy on the words (he was a writer, after all) and heavy on the thinking. They appealed to my own intellectual bent. They engaged me and I wanted others to read them. So I ordered a pile and brought ‘em to High School.

Yes, passing out religious tracts in a public high school will get you called to the office to have a talk and yes, passing out tracts on how the Roman ecclesial community is really a cult will cause quite a stir in a good Catholic neck of the woods.

And it’s that last awkward thing I want to focus on here. But it’s a lesson I want to get back to – one other story, first.

Back before 9/11, my then-partner, Alex, and I took a ride around Puget Sound and caught the ferry back from Bremerton. I note it was before 9/11 because I was spooked out that you could see so many Navy Ships so very close from the highway. I hope they’ve fixed that! But we caught the ferry to Seattle and, as we sailed across the sound, someone removed parts of Alex’s “Darwin Fish” from the rear of his car. All that was left was the mouth point. You’d think it was a broken Christian fish just as much as anything else. This – rightly – infuriated Alex. I think he thought just about any Christian was capable of vandalism at that point.

So again, do you have a Jesus fish on your car?

Or, if not – surely you’ve seen ‘em!

And you know what they mean, right?

When I was a scooter driver, they meant “get out of my way”: the person who just did an illegal passage halfway into the far lane to speed by me on my two wheels probably had a Jesus fish on him. The two idiots who shot my scooter – and me – with paint balls while driving past Ingle’s in Asheville had a Jesus fish on their pickup.

So, you know what they mean, right?

Nothing.

Likewise: those tracts, handed out on street corners or left on counter tops in ATM lobbies. In the 1980s someone scratched the word “pray” on every public telephone in NYC. WTF?

Meaningless.

Today’s Gospel story shows us why – you knew I’d get to the Gospel, right?

Absentee Evangelism: the idea that some left-behind printed text or some random plastic symbol can do for me what I am commanded to do which isn’t to “preach the Gospel” but rather to be the Gospel.

The woman went and called people to come to hear this man – yes. But that wasn’t the evangelical moment yet. And they turned to her and said “we’ve heard for our selves now” yes, but that’s not the evangelical moment either – although both are reactions to or maybe follow throughs to the evangelical moment.

Jesus says, “the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.”

Coming into relationship – into eating and drinking fellowship – with Jesus makes one also into a fountain, makes one into Christ, present to those around one. We’re not here trying to preach, bully or debate someone into a “coming to Jesus” – as Keith Green, himself, says. We need to be drawn in, to sit and feast, to hear him ourselves and know him.

The Psalm says not “God is good, you should try it…” but rather, “taste and see… the Lord is Good.”

We draw people into relationship with Christ by entering into relationship with them ourselves.

Absentee Evangelism is any method that tries to bully, coax, argue or preach someone into “getting saved” without bringing them into a personal relationship in the first person – with another Christian, with me. With you. With us, here in this room.

The first step in “saving someone” being friends with them, the first step in “bringing someone to Jesus”, is bringing them to your own house, to your own heart. The first in “getting to spend eternity” with someone is spending time with them, here, now.

St Photini – this woman, talking to Jesus in Samaria – runs and gets her neighbours. But there’s one other crucial issue here: Jesus comes and gets her. At all.

This woman is Samaritan. Jesus is Jewish.
This woman is rejected by her neighbours (we know because she’s at the well at noon, in the heat of the day, rather than with all the chatting women at dawn). Jesus speaks with her.
This woman is a woman. Jesus speaks to her without a chaperone.

Jesus crosses several cultural boundaries to have this conversation.

Most of us are content to chat with “normal” folks – however we define normal. Most of us are content with reaching out to people like us.

To be Jesus here, we need to reach out to people we wouldn’t be caught dead with.

Who are those people? People who might see you and wonder why you hate them? Who are the people whom you hate for whatever reason: they think you’re wrong religiously, they imagine you to be a heretic, they are certain you are a sinner, they know that God hates you.

Whatsoever is wrong with the world or whatsoever we imagine to be wrong with the world in our judgement or whatsoever God sees as wrong in the world because of our sin, the simple solution is that we fail to love enough. Neither pity nor preaching nor teaching nor liturgy nor praying nor certainly judging will bring one more soul into God’s kingdom as much as simply loving.

Simply being in relationship.

Let’s close out with two things, a story and a song: The story first, this one from the Desert Fathers, as recounted by Olivier Clement in his book, Roots of Christian Mysticism:

There was a saint in Egypt who dwelt in a desert place. Far away from him there was a Manichaean who was a priest — at least, what they call a priest. Once, when this Manichaean was going to visit one of his
confederates, night overtook him in the place where the orthodox saint was living. He was in great distress, fearing to go to him to sleep there, for he knew that he was well known as a Manichaean, and he was
afraid that he would not be received. However, finding himself compelled to do so, he knocked; and the old man opened the door to him, recognized him, received him joyfully, constrained him to pray with him,
and after having given him refreshment, he made a bed for him. Thinking this over during the night, the Manichaean said to himself, “How is it that he is without any suspicions about me? Truly, this man is of God.”
And he threw himself at his feet, saying, “Henceforth, I am orthodox,” and he stayed with the old man.

And one more reference to the Jesus people from the 70s in this song that says what Evangelism really looks like:

TWO HANDS

(Tom Coomes-Chuck Butler)

We’re all gathered here
Because we all believe
If there’s a doubter in the crowd
We ask you not to leave

Give a listen to His story
Hear the message that we bring
Feel the faith swell up inside you
Lift your voice with us and sing

Chorus
Accept Him with your whole heart
And use you own two hands
With one reach out to Jesus
And with the other, bring a friend

Many know Him well, others just by name
If you don’t know for what He stands,
You’ve really much to gain

With faith you can move mountains
These are common words but true
We aren’t quite a mountain
But He’s moved us here to you

Chorus
Accept Him with your whole heart
And use you own two hands
With one reach out to Jesus
And with the other, bring a friend

©1971 Dunamis Music

(You can hear it here, just scroll down to the picture of Tommy Coomes and click on the song title, Two Hands.)

Sermon Notes: St Mary of Egypt

Hebrews 9:11-14
Galatians 3:23-29
Mark 10:32-45
Luke 7:36-50

After faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor.

St Mary Sunday is one of those days in the Orthodox year with two Gospels and two Epistles. The cross-reading of Hebrews and Galatians, Mark and Luke, creates an interesting experience, no? The life of St Mary (as it is read in our Liturgy this week) is equally interesting, important for our own edification as well as our education.

If you read it, you will discover something important. Yes, I know: it seems mythological, perhaps. But “real” or “not real”, take a look at the story that the Church tells herself every year. Notice something. Apart from Fr Zosima, who brings the Holy Mysteries to Mary once in the story, we are told only of one other “church” event in Mary’s life: her confession and communion prior to her departure for the wilderness. Mary struggles and makes her peace with her body and her God on her own without benefit of Church or Clergy, with no books or internet. Yes, she’s a Christian – this we have clear – but she’s not one like we want to be…

You know the rules of the fast, do you not? WHen to eat fish and wine and oil, when meatfare is and cheesefare? You know how to avoid these things when you are out about, right? You know how long to fast before communion, or – if you are well read – the other rules of the communion fast as well.

But you know… Mary knows none of this.

We can run down a long list of the things Mary does not know – save by divine revelation (see how well she quotes the scriptures at the end of her life). But she struggles to know God as best she can, given her life, her place, her own experience. She learns that she needs humility and the help of Our Lady to draw near o the Son of God. But her own struggles, her own journey is her own. Not that of the Church.

This is the story the Church tells herself every year, the Sunday before Palm Sunday, the Sunday before we enter into the Holiest Journey of the Year.

Why?

When I was a new convert to Orthodoxy, one of the things that Converts – especially – use to tell me was about the “infallibility” of the Church. The Romans say that the Pope is infallible in matters of faith and doctrine. The Converts like to say the Orthodox Church is likewise. Of course we have no power to make doctrinal statements about such things, so we don’t have the clarification of “matters of faith and doctrine”. We just have that “perfect church” claim. One priest even told me – several times – that the Nicene Creed posited the Church as fourth in line after Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Those same people like to pretend that things have never changed here – as if this Divine Liturgy we serve has not changed since the upper room, as if the Church calendar, the festivals, fasting rules and rites, were handed to us in toto by Jesus himself, prior to his Ascension. As if our English language prayerbook is merely a new tranlastion of a text used in the 1st century.

But Mary knows none of this. Even if she was raised until 12 in the Church, scholars from Thomas Talley to Alexander Schmemman, from Dom Gregory Dix to Hugh Wybrew will tell you that her liturgy was radically different from ours. The rites and traditions she knew would have been strange to our eyes – involving more processions, more readings at “stations”, more psalms chanted in antiphonal ways.

Mary’s church was very different from ours – as ours is different from the early church. It’s not a case of needing to go backwards to recapture the way it was before (before VAtican II, before the Great Schism, before Constantine, before Paul) but rather it is a matter of our salvation, our wholenesss

Therefore the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor.

What Mary knows she was taught by God. And he, alone, has drawn her to salvation. In his own ways. This is the story the Church tells herself in Lent.

We have it good here: the ways of our ancestors distilled and passed to us to maintain. The ways of the Church from 2000 years, encoded and entrenched. We have texts and the internet, we have music recordings and telecommunications. We can beam this liturgy around the world. But, ultimately, we shall have to each work our our salvation with fear and trembling. We may have it Good – but in the good, we have no easy. If we think we have it easy we are lost.

We want to take the ways of the Church and make them into the Law – another Tutor. But, instead what we have are tools. The ways of the Church are not laws but tools for us to work our our salvation, our wholeness, our communion with one another.

Sermon Notes: St John of the Ladder

Hebrews 6:13-20
Mark 9:17-31

Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!

One of the things I greatly admire in Orthodoxy is her sense of inclusion.

I’ll pause for a minute and let that sink in.

Let me try again: one of the things I greatly admire in Orthodoxy is her willingness to include persons all over the theological spectrum, regardless of their personal beliefs, drawing them all to the table.

You with me?

Orthodoxy means “right belief”, I hear you reminding me, and if someone doesn’t believe rightly, let them be gone – or at least refrain from communion.

Turn to the person next to you and quiz them on their faith…

Do they know what Orthodoxy teaches on minute details about which you, yourself, are 100% sure?

Do they measure up to what you know to be the purest form of Orthodoxy?

If your neighbour isn’t Orthodox enough, raise your hand…

We’ll go back to my opening line…

One of the things I greatly admire in Orthodoxy is her sense of inclusion regardless of your place on the journey of faith.

As a priest not yet burdened with the mystery of confession, I have to admit: if someone confessed doubt in the words of today’s Gospel, I’d be quite happy to admit them to communion. Doubt about anything, including our most treasured doctrines: Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.

Today we commemorate St John of the Ladder. The ladder in question is not a vision or a doctrine, but, rather, a teaching tool used by St John and by the Church to offer us the image of continual sanctification, the process by which one in this life can grow to perfection in the Holy Spirit. It’s not a once-done always-finished thing. We have work to do. But it is a step-by-step process, climbing the rungs of the ladder in order.

The most important thing here is the idea of a ladder: it’s a process, a life-long process by which we grown and, in the end, find ourselves resting in Jesus. Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.

So I confess: The doctrines I accept… but I clearly do not trust them: I want my own way, I want my own things, I want my own wealth (of sin, of gluttony, of hoarding) rather than God’s kingdom of love and peace. So I know them… but I can not bring myself to live as if they are true. Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.

So I say to you turn, again, to your neighbour and instead of quizzing them… realize that part of your growth is to let go of judging your neighbour and to focus on your own sin. I am a sinner. In my eyes, the rest of you are Christ. Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.

How do we climb the ladder? The easy way is the Church, coming, participating, slowly growing, moving up as we age. But next Sunday we will read of a Saint who did most all of it alone. We will find her Sanctified and Holy, well versed in the scriptures and teachings. But how? She did it the hard way – alone in the wilderness.

How will you climb the ladder? There is room inside Holy Orthodoxy for you. Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.

Sermon Notes: Gregory Palamas

Hebrews 1:10-2:3
Mark 2:1-12

On the Second Sunday of Lent we commemorate St Gregory Palamas. Gregory was a writer from the 13th and 14th Centuries, living in Thessaloniki or Thessalonica – which most Americans will know vaguely as a city where St Paul sent a couple of Letter. His writing solved a crucial problem in Church theology and, perhaps most especially, drove a sort of wedge between East and West in terms of our understandings, at least on the surface. There is a lot to read about him on the web staring with the Greek Archdiocese’s webpage on the topic.

Today I’d like to point out two cures from Gregory and also point out a caution for us.

Gregory is the cure for the Mental Masturbation we like to call “Theology” today.

I fancy myself a church geek: I know all kinds of liturgical actions, I know minute sillinesses about when to bow and when to prostrate. I know Byzantine liturgical piety ok – and western liturgical piety very well. I can tell you why the little offices are replicas of the Eucharistic liturgy – and therefore should not be tampered with. I know how to clean up the spill after the wine has been consecrated and I know how to play an obscure game in the Roman rite called “Paten, Paten! Who’s got the Paten?” Sometimes I think I even understand Thomas Aquinas and Gregory Palamas.

But I fail at prayer.

When I get up in the morning I sleep through the offices. I mostly forget at night.

Gregory Palamas… brings us here.

Modern folks like to think that theology is all in the head. All in the mouth. We tinker with theology – trying to iron it out, make it smoother, logical and crisp. We think that the latest cultural trends must show up in theology. So we have “God is dead” and “Postmodernism”.

Let me tell you about your marriage.

Imagine sitting down with your spouse – whom you have loved and fought with and feted and fasted with lo these many years. You tell your spouse – him or her – that you’ve read a new book: we’re all just children of primates, apes with less fur and bigger vocabularies. What does it change? DO you still love her? Argue with him? Feast and Fast the seasons?

Imagine you’ve read another book that says we all have three parts in our personality or that we’re nothing but electrons, or that in the end we’re only dust in the wind.

What does it change about the relationship you have?

If you value the relationship. If you value the person of your spouse more than yourself, more than anything else in the world. Will any book change them? If the book is true it may tell you something you need to know about the relationship – but if it is true it is written by someone who, themselves, has such an intimate relationship. But no book can ever replace the experience of laying in your lover’s arms and whispering secrets. No expert can tell you a thing is true if you know it is not – and how do you know? Because in your dance of Love you know the truth.

So it is with God.

And so it is that the Orthodox say that the “true theologian is the one who prays”.

Gregory Palamas saw this 800 years ago: the man who has only head knowledge, logical arguments and book learning knows nothing about God.

The Church knows her husband. She has lived in various levels of intimacy with him for the last 4000+ years – from the covenant with Abraham to Sinai to Babylon to Hannukah; from the Forerunner to Pascha to Pentecost to Nicea; from Boris and Gleb to Innocent to Raphael to you. He has whispered sweet knowledge in her ear on their bed after lovemaking and sent her love letters of wisdom. And nothing that is not-true will be accepted.

We can no more know God through book knowledge and debate than you can know your own spouse through sitting in a bar and “figuring him out” while watching Oprah. You can learn new things and try them out – yes. But they stand or fall on the results. On the experience. On the relationship itself.

You have to go home and live in intimate relationship before experience gives you the knowledge needed.

So it is with “Theology”. We know that “truth” is not a mental proposition but rather is Jesus. Any mental proposition claiming to be “truth” that is not Jesus… well: I hope the mental orgasm was good.

Gregory Palamas requires some Caution here – especially for us converts. I certainly include myself here. God became man in Jesus. Exactly that we might know God. Might touch God. Might hold God and breast feed God – the God in dirty diapers, as I like to say. Jesus as the Divine Lover of the Church, of Humanity. Palamas’ sharp distinction between “essence and energies”, between the parts of God, if you will, that we can know and the parts we can’t, can trip us up. It can become nearly Gnostic of us if we fail to balance his teachings with the reality of the Incarnation. His arguments are not prescriptive but rather descriptive. He’s talking about what Mystical experiences are open to us in prayer and meditation – not about what is closed to us, nor what limits us. He’s talking about the intimacy we can have and pointing out the parts that don’t work. He is not telling us what we can’t do to get there.

And, like any relationship: this is not a one-sided marriage. Do you know the classic comedy image of a husband and wife sitting at the breakfast table? She’s talking while he is reading a newspaper. Imagine that same thing in your bed. How long would you make love to your spouse if they just laid there? Like a dead fish? Maybe even reading a book?

There is in Gregory another cure: one for a VERY common error today. Gregory is the Cure for Cheap Grace.

Especially in America where we are too-heavily influenced by countless layers of “reformation” coming in attempted (or supposed) isolation from that 4000 marriage-bed conversation, where we are not willing to listen to our elders and all too willingly break with tradition exactly because it is tradition: we have come to think of Grace exactly the same way we think of finding a $100 on the street. We think of Grace as “God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense” (as my Sunday School teacher taught me). We imagine that all we have to do is sit here and showers of “grace” will fall on us.

Gregory points out that “grace” is God’s actual presence in our life. As this bread and this wine that we are about to consume is Jesus, Body and Blood, present with us, so to is Grace the actual energy of God moving through you. It is the light of God radiating from him, through you to others. It’s an actual thing. A presence. It’s not a “transaction” made for Free. Jesus paid for lunch: You’ve Got Grace! Your boss gave you a free vacation – grace! No.

Grace is God in your life.

When I hear good Irish music I start to tap my feet and bang my fingers. I play the Irish drum, the bodhrán, and when I hear goood Irish music, I start to play air drum. When I hear exceptionally good music, I’ll grab a notebook and a pen and start to be really annoying, playing. Barring all that, I’ll get up and dance. We dance a lot here at that house – especially in the kitchen.

Gregory points out that grace is the music calling you to dance.

But the rest of the Orthodox teaching on Grace is that Grace is TOTALLY wasted if you don’t get up and dance. More on that in a couple of Sunday, but that’s my parting shot for today. This idea that we can just sit down and “get graced” is not what Grace is. That idea of a free lunch… let it go.

Jesus didn’t buy us a “get out of hell free” card – he gave us a way to dance our way out. But we have to get up off our asses and do it. When our Divine Lover calls us to the marriage bed, we are not to “lay back and think of England”. He will leave us as cold as we deserve.

AS I said at the top of the mark, this is where I fail. I know all the technicalities, all the “official” goods, but I fail at this intimacy. I’m working on it – but I’m sure those people who think Grace is a free lunch will get it before I do.

Asking your prayers….

Making the Weaker Ones Stumble

The Sunday of the Last Judgement: Meatfare Sunday

Epistle: 1 Corinthians 8:8-9:2
Gospel: Matthew 25:31-46

But take care that this liberty of yours does not somehow become a stumbling-block to the weak… So by your knowledge those weak believers for whom Christ died are destroyed. But when you thus sin against members of your family, and wound their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ.

We are given liberty in Christ. But Christianity is, at heart, a religion of communion: communion with God – but that communion with God is only ever experienced (except in rare cases) as communion with each other, here. Our healing, our salvation, our purpose in life is found in the other, in the stranger, in the person next to us, in our neighbour. The Lord says to “love your neighbour as if he was your own self.” In essence: that person over there is me. I am not. He is.

I am defined in my relationships, only.

My personhood is only present in communion with others.

You do not define me (that would be judgement) and neither do I define me (that would be pride). Rather: our relationship defines us.

Paul hints to this in the Epistle today. Jesus touches on it in the Gospel: At the Judgement we shall be judged on our relationships to others as if each relationship to another was to Jesus himself. As if each action we make is somehow for or against this inter-personal communion and as if each action, therefore, effects our relationship with God.

I was 38 before I did something that I’ve regretted for years and can not undo.

Each of us must have a story of “the one that got away”, but I have a story of someone whom I drove away.

And I can not undo it. And daily I regret doing so; live with guilt over doing so, even though I know he is unabashedly more happy now than ever he would have been with me. But I was an ass and I caused him pain – not once but twice in the break up – out of my own pride and my own inability to love back. And I deserve what I get for that, what “karma” I pay for that. And I shall be asked on Judgement day about that.

There are a number of sins that I shall be asked about, I’m certain. The questions won’t be about rules I broke, per se: none about fasting or commandments or mitzvot. Rather, I shall be asked how I made each relationship better or worse. Did I feed or clothe those whom God has given me to love? Or did I send them away scratching the dirt?

The EPistle today makes it clear: we don’t give up meat today and for all of Lent because eating meat is a sin; but rather we do so to train ourselves to love our neighbour. This process is painful. It’s a struggle. But in the end we set out to heal by God’s grace all the things we’ve broken by our own pride. Some of the healing can be done in this life – and some not at all.

Healing, don’t forget, is just another word for Salvation: and no one of us can be saved alone. Salvation is a restoration of that communion we enjoy fully in God.

There are those who read the Gospel today to refer only to other Christians (specifically, in the first century context, to Christians in prison for their faith). There are others – including me – who read these verses to refer to *anyone*. This latter reading forces us to consider those who are not up to snuff, who are not really “Our sort”. Nudge nudge, wink wink.

There are many who don’t want to hang out with “my sort of Christian” (Define that however you will). But these verse don’t ask me to consider that: instead even if they want to make me stumble and fall – I need to take care not to make them fall.

In the light of today’s Epistle, the questions at the last judgment are not summed up as “Did anyone make you stumble?” but rather “Did you make anyone else stumble?”

CS Lewis has his Tempter Demon, Screwtape, say this:

We have quite removed from men’s minds what that pestilent fellow Paul used to teach about food and other unessentials–namely, that the human without scruples should always give in to the human with scruples. You would think they could not fail to see the application. You would expect to find the ‘low’ churchman genuflecting and crossing himself lest the weak conscience of his ‘high’ brother should be moved to irreverence, and the ‘high’ one refraining from these exercises lest he should betray his ‘low’ brother into idolatry. And so it would have been but for our ceaseless labour. Without that the variety of usage within the Church of England might have become a positive hotbed of charity and humility.

Now – be mindful that for those reading the book in situ, the language of “altar” vs “table” or “mass” vs “holy communion” were issues of idolatry vs irreverence. They were clearly doctrinal issues related to salvation. To us they might sound silly but these questions hold exactly the same place in their time that questions of sex and sexuality hold for us. Questions of sacramentology and praxis are exactly the same issues as sex.

How do we deal with Church in such a way as to avoid saying “we’re right and they are going to hell”?

My first project this lent to to ask forgiveness of the person I harmed. My goal is to get that done this week or next, in our liturgical context of Forgiveness Sunday. Will he forgive me? I don’t know. Will God?

I believe God will ask him first.

How will each of us fair on Judgment Day? Let us each ask our neighbours.

Always Coming Home

Epistle: 1 Cor 6:12-20
Gospel: Luke 15:11-32

The Sunday of the Prodigal is always a hard one for me: not because I am a failure, but because I need nearly every day – to “come to myself” as the Son does in the story, and realise that life in my Father’s house is so much better than here, in my own place.

How many times must I repent?

A Christian Bookstore is full of easy answers:

Praying the “sinners prayer” is supposed to make you “once saved, always safe”. Some Christian communities opine that Jesus paid the price once and for all and that once you “come under the precious blood” you’ll be fine for all eternity.

I think they miss the point: making “salvation to be about paying debts for sins imagined or real. They make God out to be angry and duped – angry at us for our petty offenses and duped by his son into thinking that, even though we continue to commit them they do not matter any more, look, here’s some blood.

The Orthodox Tradition – ancient, Historic Christianity – is rather focused on God as the Father in this parable. The God who – like many parents in our world – loves his children almost to error. When we want to go, he gives us his blessing. When we come back, he’s weeping.

My own life is one of constant conversion – each turn, each new thing, is a blessing for a while, but then I know I have to go further on. Does that mean that I’m getting closer or getting further away?

Each of our paths is different, even within the Christian tradition. Some of us don’t get to walk “inside” for very long and yet our goal is the same: the Father from a long way off running towards us faster than we’re getting to him.

In some readings of this Parable, the younger son is the Gentiles, whilst the older, jealous son is the Jews. I don’t want to imagine that’s what Jesus was saying here. But how many times are we, each of us, in the roll of the eldest son? How many times do we look and see someone having it easy whilst our road is hard? How many times do we look and imagine that they are getting all the blessings and yet we, here, have all the struggles?

So even now, at the end of the sermon, I’ll loop back to the beginning. How do we deal with those Christian communities that are offering the whole “once saved always safe” idea?

The traditional answer is for pious Orthodox Christians to pretend those folks – Lutherans, Church of Christ, Evangelicals, Charismatics, etc – are not even Christian at all. They’re heretics and schismatics. And we are right.

“Once saved always safe” has a parallel, liberal teaching, a mirror image: never not saved. Liberal Episcopalians, Catholics, etc offer this. And Orthodox Christians – many ex-Episcopalians, etc – come back again with “not even Christian at all.

Ah, the joys of being the elder brother.

And the standard reply: “It’s not pride and arrogance to simply state the Truth. We’re right and they are wrong. When they come to their senses, God will throw them a party, too”

When do we get to be the younger brother? Our sins are surely not as big as theirs. We do not wallow in heresy or schism, here in the arms of Mother Church.

Have you nothing that weighs heavily on your heart? Paul says all things are lawful – but not all things are beneficial. Here is a place where we need to look.

I know that there are ways in a man’s heart that sex and lust can take hold and dominate. Perhaps it is true, also, of a woman’s heart. I know there are ways in times of abundance, when feasting and gluttony can take hold in my heart and even my own desire to loose weight for health’s sake can not overcome my desire to eat one more bon bon.

Did the prodigal come straight home, or did he have some turnings?

When Paul speaks of prostitutes, I think he is, in fact, speaking in the first person. He’s been widowed and without a wife for sometime now. Traveling on the road, seeing homes where happy families cavort. He is, after all, a man. What should he do?

Perhaps for you or me, the prostitute is not sexual: I’m getting older now where a warm coat and a gourmet meal are more important than another warm body in bed…

But I can still find myself downstairs chatting with an attractive someone, even as time for Church draws near.

Once the prodigal got home, did he never stumble again?

Time to repent again and come to my self.

That is, God. My true self – not the false self image I craft for my ego’s sake.

Lent is the time to make this journey. To find God before us weeping for Joy. To realise how far we’ve yet to go and how much more we’ve yet to overcome by his Grace in our lives.

The only thing that is once for all is our life in him.

What things hold you back?

Up a tree Zacchaeus Sunday

1 Timothy 4:9-15 (NRSA)

Luke 19:1-10 (NRSA)

It’s falling very early this year, no? It’s still mid-January. January 4th if you’re on the old calendar! (I wonder if, on the OC, it’s possible for this Sunday to fall in December? Anyway…) Nex Sunday the Triodion starts. We prepare for Lent. The Journey starts today! And I confess I love Lent! It is my favourite part of the year, my favourite time to stand with God.

I’ve been reading Fr Schmemann’s great introduction to Orthodoxy, For the Life of the World. Most recently I was reading the section on Chrismation and there is a tie-in for us here on Zacchaeus Sunday. We’ll get there in a minute… His journey is not a long one – from his house, up the road, and finally up the tree. He had, of course, a life time of journey before that, all bringing him to this fateful day. The Gospel seems to boil it all down to the symbolism of his tree-climb, which the Fathers saw as a mark of his desire.

Zacchaeus climbed a tree and where have we gone?

When I decided I didn’t believe all of this Christian stuff any more – at the ripe and wise age of 25 or so – I left the (Episcopal) church and journey on a long path through several different religions and “spiritualities”. I also added new levels of meaning to the word “publican” which, at least in the British Isles, means “bar tender”. For a time I was a minister in a non-Christian group – which required an ordination ceremony. My mom was there – along with people from about 5 or 6 different religions. I said on that day that the Holy One sure was full of surprises: because no matter where I went, there He was.

At that ceremony in that non-Christian tradition, two Christian musician friends of mine led the gathered group in a song by Sylvan Dunstan. The first verse reads,

Bless now, O God, the journey that all your people make,
the path through noise and silence, the way of give and take.
The trail is found in desert, and winds the mountain round,
then leads beside still waters, the road where faith is found.

Zacchaeus went up a tree, where have we gone?

Finally, after all that decade of journeying I found myself going, again, to a Church in San Francisco and working for a Roman Catholic university, my Mom laughed and said, “you can’t get away from the Lord.”

Lent is a Journey: everyone will tell you so. Those who make a spiritual practice of reading St John’s great work “The Ladder of Perfection” begin to see the journey as climbing Jacob’s ladder upward. Those who paint icons will tell you of the journey to that inner vision of beauty. Spiritual elders will tell you of the journey to the vision of the Uncreated Light. Today the Gospel tells us of a journey up a tree.

We could talk my journey that brought me here – of your journey that brings your here… but if we focus only on the journey that Zacchaeus makes, we might miss the point: all by itself, climbing a tree to see God-Incarnate can be just as useful as building a Tower to Heaven.

Our Lord was walking that day up the road towards Zacchaeus. A curious thing happens: climbing the tree, Zacchaeus finds that Jesus was already coming to see him. He says, “Zacchaeus, make haste and come down, for today I must abide at thy house.” You almost want Him to say, “What are you doing up that tree, I’ve been waiting for supper all this time, now stop playing and come down!”

It’s not enough that Zacchaeus was looking around: God was looking for Zacchaeus. Mom has it right: you can’t get away from the Lord.

St Nicholas Cabasilas says, “It was not we ourselves who were moved toward God, nor did we ascend to Him; but it was He who came and descended to us. It was not we who sought, but we were the object of His seeking. The sheep did not seek for the shepherd, nor did the lost coin search for the master of the house; He it was who came to the earth and retrieved His own image, and He came to the place where the sheep was straying and lifted it up and stopped it from straying. He did not remove us from here, but He made us heavenly while yet remaining on earth, and imparted to us the heavenly life not by leading us up to heaven but by bending heaven to us and bringing it down.”

That is NOT, however, the only aspect. If we let St Nicholas take us along we’ll imagine that nothing we do is important. God is not some massive chess player with us as pawns waiting to be moved or not. Our desire, our passion, our quest for God is needed as well. James says, “Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you” (James 4:8)

But there is more…

Jesus comes to Zacchaeus’ house! There is more than just desire, more than just seeing. You can’t do everything God wants from the ivory tower from up in the tree… you have to come down. Relate to God. Relate to People. You have to be in fellowship. Be in communion. It won’t work otherwise.

Remind yourself where you were when God found you. Yes, even there: come here, Jesus says to you, we’re going to have a meal together – This day is salvation come to this house. Salvation – the Greek word root is “sozo”, healing, health, wholeness. It means not that this man was “Saved” that he’s getting out of hell when he dies. It means this man is restored to relationship with God and with others.

Zacchaeus is, for us, a model of repentance. But for us, in this community, there is something more: the crowd doesn’t really like Zacchaeus, yes? Verse 7 says All who saw it began to grumble and said, “He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.”

You and I know how people in Church can be. This man was seeking God. God was seeking him. This man and God embraced. And all the “good people” said, “YER DOING IT WRONG!”

The second verse of that song I heard sung so long ago echoes the prayer we utter at each liturgy “for all mankind” – Christains or not, knowing or not, we are all seekers.

Bless sojourners and pilgrims who share this winding way,
whose hope burns through the terrors, whose love sustains the day.
We yearn for holy freedom while often we are bound;
together we are seeking the road where faith is found.

We are all on this journey together – that includes not only us standing in Church. St Paul calls God “Savior of all people, especially – but he does not “only” – of them that believe. Everyone is on this journey. Some may not get there in this life time: and we continue to pray for them after they are gone. Some of us may think we have finally arrived when, as Zacchaeus found, there was something more to do. He thought he wanted only to see this cool guy he heard about. Instead he found himself saying, “Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have taken anything from any man by false accusation, I restore to him fourfold.”

How’s that for a costly tree climb?

Lent is this journey for us. Today, Zacchaeus Sunday, is the day we realise not only that we are seeking God, but, lo, God is seeking us. All of this prepares us for our Baptism – our bringing of our life to Christ. You may remember the beginning of this sermon… where I said I’d been reading Fr Schmemann.

Zacchaeus is not asked to give up much: be is asked to do something different with it, yes. But he is not asked to Stop being Zacchaeus. He doesn’t leave this story as anything other than the Publican he was: he’s just a repentant publican.

When he stands up before the God who has come into his house to have a party… Zacchaeus has his own moment of catching the Spirit. Jesus’ presence, God there, is the Spirit’s presence as well, no? You can’t have on without the other…

Chrismation, confirmation (which we do daily, I think) is each our own Pentecost, says Fr Schmemann.

“Confirmation is thus the personal Pentecost” of each of us, our “entrance into the new life in the Holy Spirit, which is the true life of the Church. It is is our ordination as fully human, for to be fully human is to belong to the Kingdom of God. And again, it is not our “soul” alone – our “spiritual” or “religious” life that is thus confirmed, but the totality of our human being. Our how body is anointed, sealed, sanctified, dedicated to the new life: “The seal of the gift of the Holy SPirit,” says the Priest as he anoints the newly baptisxed, “on the brow, and on the eyes and the nostrils, and the lips, and on both ears, and the breast and on the hands, and the feet.” The whole person is not made the temple of God, and her whole live is from now on a liturgy. It is here, at this moment, that the pseudo-Christian opposition of the “spiritual” and the “material” the “sacred” and the “profane”, the “religious” and the “Secular” is denounced, abolished, and revealed as a monstrous lie about God and us and the world. The only true temple of God is the full human and through us the whole world. Each ounce of matter belongs to God and is to find in God its fulfillment. Each instant of time is God’s time and is to fulfill itself as God’s eternity. Nothing is “neutral.” …

To be fully man means to be fully oneself. The confirmation is the confirmation of each of us in his or her own unique “personality”. It is, to use again the same image, the ordination of each of us to be him or herself, to be what God wants him or her to be, what God as loved in me from all eternity. It is the gift of vocation.

Zacchaeus, the newly-illumined, the saved saint of God, stands up and realises what he has – gives it away. Realises he’s sinned – repents. ALL in response to God’s coming to him, God’s eating with him, God’s presence in his life.

The final verse of that song relies on symbolism that St Gregory of Nyssa found replete in the Song of Songs. His commentary on that work is nearly scandalous for in many passages that we must admit would be “banned in Boston” for sexual imagery, we find the true meaning of God’s searching for us.

Divine eternal lover, you meet us on the road.
We wait for land of promise where milk and honey flow,
but waiting not for places, you meet us all around.
Our covenant is written on roads, as faith is found.’

You are here, now. You feast with God, the eternal lover of your soul and your body and your heart and your mind. Closer to you than any friend or friend with benefits, or friend we cuddle with or spouse we love! When you rise from this table confirmed in your whole self, in your full personhood with God, what will be your covenant? What will be the response that you bring? What will be your life, your fullness, your salvation?

Zacchaeus climbed a tree. Where have you gone? You can’t get away from the Lord.

Two Spayed Jesuses

  • 1 Kings 8:(1,6,10-11), 22-30, 41-43
  • Psalm 84
  • Joshua 24:1-2a, 14-18
  • Psalm 34:15-22
  • Ephesians 6:10-20
  • John 6:56-69

Year B – Season after Pentecost – Proper 16 (21) : Revised Common Lectionary

Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him.

BECAUSE OF This? Because o what?

In the preceding verses Jesus walks through the most essential teachings of sacramental Christianity: eating of his flesh and blood. Jesus, God in the Flesh, gives us his flesh to eat. And we are what we eat: we become him, present and active in the world. We are him, when we love each other and love the world as he loves it, giving ourselves (him) up for the life of others.

And one other thing…

When even this teaching offended his listeners, he made an exclusive claim. And people walked away. How, they wonder, could the Gospel be offensive? Did they walk away because of the Body and Blood thing? Did they walk away because of the exclusivity? The text it unclear. Most sermons I’ve heard indicate the early Jewish followers would have stumbled on the “body and blood” passages. But we post-modern people are bothered by the seeming exclusion.
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