Christopher L. Webber's Blog, page 11

The Spiritual Forces of Evil — and Us

A sermon preached at Christ Church Seikokai, San Francisco, by Christopher L. Webber on August 23, 2015.

A dozen years ago we had a storm in Connecticut in October that did unbelievable damage. The leaves were still on the trees, but down came a wet and heavy snow that tore branches from trees and brought down power lines throughout the state.  For weeks afterward we had stories of people shivering in unheated homes, reading by candlelight, food melting in the freezer, stores that couldn’t open and millions of dollars lost in business. I remember reading about investigations into what went wrong and how one or two executives were fired but of course it quickly faded from the headlines and whether anything has really changed we won’t know until the next storm strikes.

It’s a similar pattern, it seems to me, to the bursting of the housing bubble  And what they called “The Great Recession” a few years ago which had much more widespread and long-lasting consequences and, again, an investigation that resulted in very few changes. If anyone was charged with a crime, I haven’t heard about it.  I read a piece the other day that noticed how the statute of limitations would soon expire and the same executives were still in place.  Their firms paid millions of dollars in fines but hardly any specific human being was held responsible. “Mistakes were made,” as they say.

If someone had set out deliberately to cause that same damage, deliberately sabotaged the grid, blown up key generators, and so on, I’m sure they would now be in jail or in hiding.  But it wasn’t deliberate, so it wasn’t a crime.  Clearly “mistakes were made.”  Clearly a number of people acted or failed to act to protect transmission lines and to enrich themselves at the expense of others but they didn’t use guns and we find it very hard to deal with this kind of fraud. It’s easier to steal and get away with it if you can do it smoothly from an executive office.  We find it hard to criminalize conduct that is all done with paper no matter how many people are hurt.

And here we get into theology.  When is a crime a crime? Two weeks ago we read in the Epistle to the Ephesians, “Let those who stole, steal no more.” OK, but what is stealing?  When is it OK to steal money and endanger lives and when is it not OK? If a young man from the inner city breaks into a home or store and walks away with a few dollars, that’s clearly a crime and the perpetrator will be sent to prison if caught.  But if a corporate board puts millions of dollars into their pockets by repackaging mortgages, thousands of lives can be drastically affected and far more damage done but somehow there is no crime and no need for punishment.

Now this, as I said, gets us into theology, and I meant that very seriously.  Today’s epistle talks about a struggle “not with flesh and blood” but against “the rulers, against the authorities,  against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” The King James Version called it “spiritual wickedness in high places” and some people think that refers to Washington, but the new translations say “in heavenly places” and that clearly is not Washington. The larger subject is “spiritual wickedness” – and not just in high places but here, because the passage says “we wrestle with spiritual wickedness.” It’s here within and around us.  But Paul identifies it as “spiritual” and locates it in “heavenly places.”

Within us and yet beyond us. What exactly is it that we’re dealing with?  I’ve known people who sat on corporate boards and they’re no worse than the rest of us. Some struck me as better. But they are in position to make decisions with enormous consequences.  Suppose a manager at PG & E is told that there’s line work that needs to be done, but he or she also knows that postponing it for awhile will increase profits. Maybe no one will even know how you did it but you may even be commended for the money you saved. I mean, who plans for a colossal snow storm in October? So why would you do that if you can make more of a profit by putting it off.

What would you do?  You and I may not be on corporate boards, but we have our own decisions to make and if we have a leak under the sink, but we can use the money to go out to dinner and put off fixing the leak under the sink a few more days . . . what’s your priority?  It may be stupid, it may cost us more in the long run, but we don’t put lives in danger.  On the other hand, every one of us makes decisions every day with enormous consequences we never even consider.

I remember trying for months to persuade myself that I really need an iPad or smart phone or tablet.  It sometimes seems that everyone else has them and can whip them out at a moment’s notice to show me children’s pictures or the best route to San Jose or the latest news bulletin and all my cell phone is good for is phone calls. But do I really – I mean really – need something more? I argue it out in personal terms: a fancy cell phone versus medical bills or dinner out but beyond that is my need for an iPod greater than the need of an African child for food.  Do I need to buy another book for myself when there are children elsewhere who have no books?  If I put my decision-making in global terms, how can I justify my convenience in a world of overwhelming need?

It’s not just bad people who cause problems.  It’s our own short-sightedness and self-interest.  But why do I not think in those terms?  Why is my thinking, my decision making, so narrow, so self-centered? Or think about the anger and division in American politics or in the Episcopal Church. Is it true, as some would argue, that there are really people out to destroy the country or divide the church? No, it’s not true; I don’t think so. But there are good people so blinded by their fears or self-interest that they act in ways that can harm millions and somehow it always looks like the other guy who causes the problem.

I read an article a few years ago about the AIDS pandemic in Africa. I remember reading about a hospital in Lusaka where a child was dying every fifteen minutes, a cemetery in South Africa where people had to wait in line to carry out burials, farms uncultivated because so many have died, children dying of malnutrition because there’s no one to provide food. But the means are there to halt it.  Here and there action is being taken which could halt it if only everyone would work together, but not enough do. Governments and agencies lack the will to concentrate and coordinate resources. And the resources aren’t there because no one dares raise taxes even on the super-rich and pledges to churches and aid agencies are far below what we could do if we really cared.  I saw it referred to once as  “murder by complacency.”

The problem is not the evil that some do deliberately, but the failure of good people to go out of their way at all to do what needs to be done to make a difference. And I believe that’s a theological problem.  It is, first of all, the spiritual sickness that afflicts the human race, that weakens our will, saps our energy, enables us to avoid, ignore, overlook, the work that needs to be done for good to triumph. It wouldn’t take much to make a difference, but that little is somehow beyond our reach. And in this battle it seems to me the diagnosis we heard this morning is critical.  It’s not just “flesh and blood;” it’s “cosmic powers.”

Yes, there’s a lot of evil in each of us, but not enough to produce so much suffering. You and I don’t will bad things to happen.  Give us something direct and immediate to do to help someone else and we’ll do it. But I don’t believe we really understand the nature of the battle, the spiritual forces arrayed against us. Paul is saying there’s more to it than meets the eye.  Left to our own devices, we might be alright; but we aren’t left to our own devices. There’s a power beyond us at work and at work so smoothly and subtly, we seldom have any idea what’s going on.

Someone once said, “For evil to triumph it’s only necessary for good people to do nothing.”  Yes, but even if we do something but not enough – and that’s generally what happens – evil will still often triumph. All this begs the question of what evil is and where it comes from.  The epistle this morning locates it outside ourselves; it defines it as the ruling power of this world.  And there we really identify the theological problem.  Yes, there’s evil in all of us, but not enough to account for the evil around us.  The men and women on the boards of Wall Street firms aren’t evil enough themselves to cause so much suffering.  The people of Afghanistan aren’t evil enough to cause the chaos there.  The people of Israel and Palestine are not so uniquely evil that no one can hope to resolve their problems. The people of Africa aren’t evil enough to cause the millions of deaths, the suffering, that’s afflicting that continent.  No, we are not that evil, but we are weak enough to let ourselves be used by the evil beyond us – what Ephesians calls “the cosmic powers of this present darkness” – and let our good intentions be turned into paving stones on the wide road to hell.

People sometimes see the Bible as taking a negative view of human nature.  I think they miss the point. I think in fact that the Bible takes a very optimistic view of human nature and sees potential in us, possibilities, that we might not have imagined.  The Bible doesn’t condemn us as evil; the Bible on the contrary says God created a good world and put good people in it made “in the image of God.” And the problem is the serpent. Not just in Eden, but here: in Afghanistan and Africa and Texas and San Francisco and in good Christians like you and me.

There’s an epidemic of evil and we haven’t taken the shots we need to avoid the universal infection. Why not?  When an epidemic breaks out people get shots and wear face masks and avoid certain areas.  When winter is coming, we line up for flu shots.  But with the forces of chaos and evil that are always breaking in on us we go on with life as usual and let the epidemic rage.  As long as we aren’t challenged directly, we’re willing to let it rage and we never do see how it’s at work in us, that we are already dying of it. We find it hard to believe that evil is really that bad and really is beyond our ability to resist if we stand alone. But it is that bad and we are that weak when we stand alone. It’s not the Afghans or the Africans or the Taliban or Al Qaeda or the Irish or North Koreans who are the root of the problem, nor is it us.  It’s the power of evil that constantly invades this world from beyond, for the most part quietly, boring from within until it makes us part of the problem, complicit ourselves in all the horror that we could prevent with God’s help.

There’s an obvious question to ask at this point: I talk about “an evil power beyond us;” So you might ask: “Is that the devil?  Do you believe in the devil?”  That’s a big question, and having brought it up, I don’t really have time to deal with it this morning, not adequately anyway. But I will say this: if there is a devil – and it certainly seems that way – he, or she, would be smart enough to keep out of sight. When Paul says in this morning’s reading: “take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one” that’s figurative language. There is no material shield of faith and there are no flaming arrows coming at us, and maybe there is no evil one – but don’t count on it.  What we know for sure is that faith itself is real and we surely need it to protect ourselves. If there were real flaming arrows it would be easier to avoid them and if there were a real devil in a red suit we could spot him and stay away. But a real devil would be smart enough to hide.  So we need to be smart enough to deepen our faith and hold it fast for protection.

We’ve been reading this wonderful letter to the Ephesians for six weeks now and looking at different aspects of it.  It begins quietly enough with an appeal to brotherhood and peace and unity but here toward the end it zeroes in on basics and reminds us that we’re in desperate need of help to achieve the goal. The enemy is stronger than we are and we’re doomed to defeat unless we recognize our need and act on it, unless we fight spiritual evil with spiritual good, the help that’s available here, right here, at this altar, today.  “Take the shield of faith,”St. Paul writes, and “the helmet of salvation,” and “the sword of the Spirit,” praying always and keeping alert.”  We have the means available in prayer and sacrament, the Bible and our faith.  God is already at work within us.  How much more could God do if we opened ourselves more fully to the grace available?  In the battle against evil, are we willing to offer ourselves more fully – our whole selves, our whole lives in God’s service and finally let God win the battle through us?

The Music of Heaven – and Earth

A sermon preached by Christopher L. Webber at Christ Church Seikokai on August 16, 2015. 

Last Sunday I went to a concert at Incarnation, my neighborhood Episcopal Church. One of the members sings with the San Francisco opera company and she brought three colleagues, so we had a soprano, a mezzo, a tenor, and a bass, and we had wonderful music from Mozart to Gershwin and I sat there with sound waves coursing through my ears, the air vibrating in different ways, and came away feeling better about life.

What is it about the vibrations of vocal cords and piano wires and the reed of an oboe or clarinet or the vibrations of an electronic organ that has that effect on us?  Today’s second reading talks about it and it’s worth thinking about it. What is music and why does it matter?

We’ve been reading Paul’s epistle to the Ephesians pretty much all summer and Paul’s letters typically have two main sections: Part I: what God has done for us, and Part II: what God asks of us in return.  So halfway through all Paul’s letters, you usually come to a “Therefore.” Last week we were into the “therefore” section of Ephesians and we had Paul laying out some basics: “Don’t steal, don’t cheat, don’t lie.”  But what God expects of us is not all negative and this week we have Paul giving us a different kind of “therefore”, “Because God has done so much for us therefore we need to sing.”

Here’s my free translation of what we heard:  “Be careful,” Paul writes, “these are bad times; so don’t be stupid about it but pay attention to God’s will for you.  Don’t go and get drunk, but be filled with God’s Spirit and sing out loud and sing in your heart, giving thanks to God always in Jesus’ Name.” Be filled with God’s Spirit and sing.  Sing out loud and sing in your hearts.  You have to sing.  Christians have to sing. If you’re tone deaf, make a joyful noise but do something to praise God with your voice. Don’t be left out.  Music matters.

So I want to talk about that this morning because I think we tend to take music for granted in church, especially the Episcopal Church and we don’t stop to think about why we have it.  So why is music so important?

Think first how important it is in our world. In two or three weeks it will be Labor Day and we’ll start to hear Christmas carols; music puts us in a mood to buy; restaurants use music to put you in a mood to eat; Dentist’s offices use it to keep you calm.  Music has many uses. But how does music work?  What’s it’s appeal?  Why does it do what it does?  And why do we have the kind of music we have. Does music shape society or does society shape music?  Or does music maybe not shape society but reflect it? Does the music of Mozart tell us something about the harmonies of his world or does it maybe offer us a vision of a world we have yet to see? On the other hand, does the volume and noise of contemporary music tell us something about our world, about the clash and conflict we hear about all the time?

These are not easy questions to answer, but they’re critical. Think how important music is in our worship, especially in service planning. Angela and I spend a lot of time thinking about whether hymns are familiar or not, whether they fit with the readings or not, whether they would be better at the beginning or middle or end, whether they say something worthwhile or nothing much. I gave Angela a list of hymns at the beginning of the month that I thought were a) familiar and b) tied in with the sermons I was planning and Angela went from there. If they’re not familiar to you and you have trouble with the tune, at least pay attention to the words because they have meaning and maybe will say more clearly what I’m trying to say in the sermons. Music matters. Music changes us.

Paul sums his message up this morning as two different kinds of inebriation, two kinds of drunk: alcoholic and spiritual. He says “don’t be drunk with wine . . . but be filled with the Spirit,  singing and making melody in your hearts.” In fact, if you go down the street singing, people may think you’re drunk! They’ll be asking, “Don’t you watch the news?  What is there to be happy about? You must be drunk!” The crowds in Jerusalem said that very thing on the first Pentecost and Peter had to tell them, “We’re not drunk; it’s just a new Spirit.” So these are two opposite kinds of inebriation: one that dulls the senses, one that heightens them; one that we pour in, one that God pours in; one that closes us out to reality, one that opens us up to a new reality; one that isolates us, one that unites us with each other and with God and with the universe.

So think about music and the role it plays in human life. They say that a bird sings to stake out territory and human beings have used music that way too, by chanting war songs, singing national anthems; music can divide us from them.  I remember wondering during the last Olympics whether or not it was a good idea to keep playing the various national anthems and make it a matter of national pride instead of individual accomplishment, maybe deepening national divisions instead of overcoming them.

And church music can divide too.  A lot of the great church music actually came out of the Reformation and served to unite the new Reformed churches on the one hand, and separate them from Rome on the other with its plainsong music centered in the monastic tradition But at its best music is deeply unifying; it shapes congregations and brings them together. At its best – but even in the church today music can be divisive.  There’s a whole new style of church music closely associated with the so-called renewal movement that seems to speak better to a new generation than the music of the last few centuries. There are some congregations that actually have separate services with different styles of music to attract different age groups. So there may be separate congregations but whatever the style, the particular congregation is united through music and feels that unity in a way nothing else quite matches.  Music unites.  Music lifts us out of ourselves.

It’s another of those odd things about it that the words and music are usually provided. We don’t make them up ourselves. Someone else wrote them.  And yet we feel that it wells up from within. When we sing “America the beautiful”  I think it feels as if it comes from deep within and maybe “Amazing Grace” is like that and some of the great Christmas and Easter hymns. “O God our help in ages past” would be in that category. That’s probably why some people fuss so much about unfamiliar music. It isn’t “theirs.”  They haven’t yet let it possess them.  Someone else may write the music but we have to make it our own and the whole congregation has to make it their own so that we find everyone else expressing what seem to be our own thoughts in the exact same way we’re expressing them ourselves. Nothing else makes that possible.  And yet it isn’t spontaneous; it can’t be. We don’t all just naturally express ourselves in exactly the same way. That kind of unity takes discipline and commitment.  If the priest or organist introduces a new hymn with no rehearsal, it’s likely to be a disaster. Human beings are not ants or honey bees; we’re not programmed for cooperative effort. We have to learn how to do it. Human life depends on our ability to work together, but it takes training and a certain amount of work and discipline and paying attention to others to make the result worthwhile.

And yet the unity of music isn’t just a dull uniformity either. In a hymn or choral music there are always several parts.  I like to sing the bass or tenor line when I can, not to be different but to add a richness that comes from the harmony. Even if everyone sings melody, it’s usually enhanced by organ accompaniment to provide a depth and richness that unison voices can’t achieve.  And that’s appropriate too.  The church is not a lot of Johnny-one-notes. Especially the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion. We sometimes think it would be nice to have everyone on the same page but that’s not easy these days.  But the trick is not just that, at least it’s not about getting everyone on the same note. It’s about making the various voices blend.

And sometimes even dissonance somehow enhances that richness of harmony. That’s one of the strangest things about music. Even discord can add richness. Certainly contemporary composers know that but Mozart knew it too: there’s a creative use of dissonance that enriches the effect. There’s a place in the old tune for “The King of love” where the tenor and melody line call for a dissonant B and C, but then the tenor slides down to a harmonious A. It’s a lovely effect. Maybe the Episcopal Church can learn to do that too: to resolve the dissonance into a harmony enriched by overcoming dissonance.  So music is creative; it builds community; it can include discords.

And music is expressive, and that’s perhaps the greatest mystery. Why is it that words plus music  say more than words alone?  Someone once said: “He who sings, prays twice.” If you look it up, some sources say it was Saint Augustine and others say it was Martin Luther. But whoever said it, it’s true and it’s worth remembering: “He or she who sings, prays twice.” And that, I think, is why music is so essential a part of Christian worship. It helps us say more and say it better.  There are no words adequate to speak about God. It requires more than words; music helps a lot.  Why do we find it so difficult to talk to others about our faith? Maybe it’s because words are so inadequate.  Maybe we could sing it better. Music enhances words.  A stage play or movie or television drama gives us a slice of life, but a musical or opera moves the same story into a whole new dimension, somehow enlarged, enriched, deepened.  It’s like the difference between black and white on the one hand and technicolor on the other. There are times when black and white is enough, but other times when the color, the music, somehow enlarges and enriches the story and makes us go home singing it over to ourselves, appropriating it in a way we don’t do, can’t do, with words alone.

It’s worth noticing that the one place in the Gospel, in fact in the whole New Testament where the word “music” is mentioned is in the story of the Prodigal Son. He comes home at last and his father throws a party and as the elder son comes in from the fields and comes near the house, “he heard music and dancing.” And of course the parable is giving us a picture of heaven where prodigal sons and daughters are welcomed home and the Father throws a huge party to welcome us in – and there has to be music.  What else could bring us together in the same way?  One of the few things we know about heaven is that music is a major activity. In some visions of heaven we all get to play harps, but I’ve often said my one plan for hereafter is to learn to play the cello because I would need an eternity to do that. But also because it would be another way to take part in the music of praise that is heaven’s major activity. Actually the word “music” itself doesn’t occur in the book of Revelation but it does talk about singing and songs and, in fact, almost all the references to singing and songs in the New Testament are in that one book that gives us our primary vision of heaven.  There at last we will be able to express our praise perfectly in unity and harmony and even, the Bible tells us, sing a new song without complaints. There at last we will be able to say what we need to say to God and each other and say it with music to say it best. We have no real idea, of course, what heaven will be like and what heaven’s music will be like.  But we do know this: that here on earth music is the best means we have to unite us all in doing what we were made to do which is to praise and worship God.

Paul or Osteen?

A sermon preached  by Christopher L. Webber at Christ Church Seikokai, on August 9, 2015.

Last night, some 40,000 people went to AT&T Park to be inspired.  The San Francisco Chronicle headlined it:  “Preaching pep in a troubled world, Joel Osteen comes to AT&T Park.”  And the paper went on to say,  “On Saturday, he expects to sell out AT&T Park, preaching his power-of-positive-thinking message to some 40,000 fans . . . The Bible will be quoted and Jesus will be mentioned — but it won’t be a church service,  Osteen said. The subject of sin probably won’t even come up. . . . Each month,” the paper continued, “14 million Americans from a range of faiths and backgrounds tune in for Osteen’s 30-minute pep talks, sermons sprinkled with a few religious references — absent hellfire and brimstone. His popularity is a testament to a public drawn to an enticing if debatable mantra: Think like a successful, happy person and you’ll be one.”

If you study American history, you find again and again waves of revival and big name preachers: Jonathan Edwards, Billy Sunday, Billy Graham,  Norman Vincent Peale – here in California there was Aimee Semple McPherson  and Robert Shuller. I grew up in upstate New York in what they called “The Burned Over District” because every new wave of revival  seemed to burn through that area and leave people exhausted afterwards.  That seems to happen in the world  of popular evangelism.  The Chrystal Cathedral went bankrupt when Shuller died.

But, you see, that’s the problem.  Osteen preaches to inspire people and we all need some inspiration. Some get it from a rock concert;  I get it watching the New York Mets. But what happens afterwards?  You have to ask that because no one can have an emotional high  all the time. The party, the game, the concert, the revival  comes to an end.  Afterward we need a structure, a discipline, a pattern that holds us and guides us  in the ordinary and uninspiring events that make up most of our lives.  Osteen’s church in Texas  seats 56,000 –  that’s twice as many people  as there are Episcopalians  in the whole Diocese of California. But what are they there for?  And what do they do  when the inspiration wears off?

We’ve been reading through the Epistle to the Ephesians  this summer,  and the author – who might be St Paul  and might be someone else who thinks like Paul –  never has much to say about inspiration. He talks about grace, he talks about the free gift of God, he talks about the inward power of grace  that might be felt as inspiration but might not be felt at all but still enables us to live as Christians,  as followers of Jesus.

I wonder how often people choose a church because of its theology?  I wonder how many people think about whether the church they go to has a gospel of grace or a gospel of law? But one of the most enduring and divisive misunderstandings in the Christian church  is the idea that the church is about laws  rather than grace. Now, I think if you ask the average Christian for an opinion on whether the church is  about  laws or grace,  if they have an opinion, they would probably opt for grace.  But that’s theology.  That’s when they’re thinking about it. At a practical level, I really doubt grace would win.

It starts with church school. Do parents bring children to church school to learn faith or behavior? to believe in God or learn to behave?  And do they ever, I wonder, check the church school curriculum to see what it is, in fact, that the children are being taught?  There is a difference. I remember meeting a new parishioner years ago who was hired to teach the kindergarten class  in a parish day school of another denomination and she told me that the teacher’s manual on page one said this (I’ve never forgotten it):  “Every child is born in sin and must be made  aware of this from the earliest time.”  Well, that’s one approach. And if you want behavior emphasized, and law emphasized, that’s probably where you’d find it.

The epistles of Paul are not like that.  They always begin with a proclamation of grace and love.  Often “grace is actually the very first word:  “Grace to you and peace from God our Father  and the Lord Jesus Christ.”  Even if he’s about to lay them out in lavender,  he speaks first of grace. Because that IS the gospel: the gospel is good news about love  and it’s about freedom. The Pauline epistles usually  get around to behavior toward the end – sometimes not much after the middle -  but always in a context of love and grace and forgiveness.

What Paul has to say is radical and it’s risky.  He says God has “abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances.”  We read that three weeks ago. But suppose you woke up one morning and turned on the television  and learned that  the small government people  had taken over the Congress  and abolished all the laws and regulations and were counting on all of us to behave nicely toward one another  from now on.  Would you dare to go outdoors?  Well, of course, the small government people have guns to keep them safe.  But we’re not talking about government law,  we’re talking about the pattern we freely adopt  to guide us – church on Sunday,  daily prayer, giving to charity,  helping those in need.

The Jewish law, of course, was much more complex – still is for the ultra-orthodox – and I can just imagine how a lot of Jewish people felt back in Paul’s time when they heard a gospel about being  free from the law.  Paul was horrified when he first heard it and so were lots of others. What security would there be without the law? How would you know who was Jewish  and who wasn’t?  who belonged to God and who didn’t?  Abolish the law with its commandments? How would you know how to behave?  What could you now get away with?

The Biblical answer is love is sufficient:  love and faith and grace.  But even Christians have been very reluctant  to give it a try. I mean, I can obviously get along without the law myself,  but what about other people?  Could I really trust my neighbor that far,  or the people across town, or in the next town, or the next country?  It’s a great idea, but will it work?  Or to put it another way,  can we really trust God?  Back in Jesus’ time they had a law and when they studied the law they could answer every question  about God’s will:  how far you can walk on a sabbath day; how much you need to do for your parents  to meet the legal requirement; when you need to wash your hands.  The Pharisees had it all figured out  and if you wanted a well-behaved child that the neighbors would approve of  you would certainly send him to the Pharisees for a schooling.  There were Christians, too, right from the beginning who doubted anything else would work. Peter and Paul had a major fight on the subject. But they decided to give it a try. And they did.  But it didn’t last.  It didn’t take very long for Christians to agree  that it’s just easier to have rules.  Whether it’s fish on Friday  or playing cards on the sabbath  or drinking alcoholic beverages, Christians of every sort have fallen back sooner or later  into the legal mind-set.

People tell me that the churches that are growing are the ones with answers and rules.  Of course.  Make life simple. Give people a sense of security;  easy answers; clear guidelines.  But is it Christianity or is it something else?  I’ll say this for Joel Osteen:  he doesn’t talk much about laws; much more about feelings.

I think the current controversies  in the Episcopal Church  are fundamentally about law and grace.  The one side sees the Bible as a rule book  and somehow thinks  that human sexual behavior can be governed by laws  even if the laws were made in a time that had never heard of the actual situation we face today,  even if the people who make other people crazy are faithful, deeply committed Christians. There will always be some who find law easier and especially when dealing with something new and something out of their direct experience  and something that challenges them to think again about questions they thought had been  settled long ago. It is frightening; it’s risky; laws are always safer.

I would guess that every human society has tried the same thing.  Especially when you’re facing something as powerful and emotionally overwhelming  as sexual behavior,  when it comes to sex,  we tend to think that you’d better have rigid rules  or who knows what might happen?  And of course we do need rules and guidelines – I’m not saying we don’t  –  every society needs laws, but that’s not what Christianity is fundamentally about.  Governments are forever trying to get the church to bless its laws  and teach obedience, but then someone goes and reads the Bible – sometimes, you know, the church has even forbidden people to do that – but someone does it anyway and finds all this stuff about abolishing the law and being set free in Christ  and they take it seriously and then there’s trouble.  Because if you are free to question the laws  there are bound to be differences of opinion  and arguments and disagreements and controversy -  and who wants that?  No one.

The letters Paul wrote are always  having to deal with such issues. People would write to him and ask: What about marriage?  What about this food and that?  What about wearing hats in church and long hair and meat offered to idols  and praying on certain days?     Sometimes Paul actually does suggest some answers, but mostly just so as to keep the peace  and not to offend the neighbors.  But always he persists in trying to show people a new way, a way based on love, a way that trusts God’s grace.

Look carefully at this morning’s reading from Ephesians. There’s lots of stuff about behavior, but notice how it’s grounded always not in law but in grace,  not in conforming to rules but conforming to Christ.  Remember how it begins? “So then, putting away falsehood,  let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors.”  Now, that’s a good rule; lying is wrong.  But why?  Is it because of the ninth commandment?  No: that’s not what Paul says. He says it’s because “we are members of one another.”  We have a unity in Christ that makes falsehood impossible.  Would you lie to Jesus?  That’s who your neighbor is.  And then he says, “Thieves must give up stealing” and work honestly.” Well, yes, of course.  But why? Is it because of the 8th Commandment?  No, Paul never mentions it. He says we should work honestly  “so as to have something  to share with the needy.”  Paul says we should  “Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another.”  Why is that?  You might guess it’s because of the sixth commandment. “You shall do no murder;”  you shall not let anger get out of control.  No, Paul’s letters never appeal  to any of the laws and commandments as a basis for action, but we need to be forgiving because we’ve been forgiven. Law is no longer the basis for action. God’s love is the basis, the foundation.

Paul says that we are called to  “be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us.”  And yes, indeed, that’s risky.  Law-makers don’t like their security challenged.  Jesus was crucified; Paul was beheaded.  If you live by the law,  you can get rid of the trouble-makers.  So let’s be safe, let’s get back to the law that gives us the answers we want. But the gospel is still here and still causing trouble.

Love makes radical demands on us; it makes demands far more challenging than law. It asks us to think, to see things in the new light of Christ, to be changed from the inside out rather than from the outside in. And it leaves us without easy answers to the war in Afghanistan  or the state of the environment or the economy  or sexual relationships or any of the issues that face us;  and some Christians will see these things  one way and some another because grace is not a rule book  and human beings – even Christians – are slow learners  and reluctant still to test our freedom.  But again and again in the readings in recent weeks we have heard what the priorities are: to know ourselves to be a new people – in Christ – in Christ -  living in love, depending on the Spirit. And offering others the same forbearance we want them to offer us. Patience, charity, humility, forgiveness, meekness, gentleness;  these words and others like them  have come up again and again in these readings in recent weeks.  God loves us so much that we are given a vision of people  who find their unity  and their strength for daily living in the grace that produces these qualities  in human lives  and that looks for them here –  right here – looks to see that grace and that faith here, in you and in me.

And what that depends on, Paul tells us, is grace:  not emotional highs, but a daily infusion of grace.  In my research on Joel Osteen  I went to his web site and found two interesting statements: – water baptism is a symbol of the cleansing power of the blood of Christ and a testimony to our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.  …  the regular taking of Communion is an act of remembering what the Lord Jesus did for us on the cross.  But check that against the Prayer Book  and you find something very different: you find language not about symbols and remembering but about a gift of grace, not about remembering but receiving – and it’s not an emotional high  but when we come to the altar today we’re given a gift that makes a difference, that sustains us daily;  undramatically, yes, but in a way that leaves us not burned out  but strengthened and renewed and enabled to serve God day by day.

Poverty, David, and Us

A sermon preached by Christopher L. Webber at the Church of the Incarnation, San Francisco, on August 2, 2015.

The story of David and Bathsheba  is not a love story. In spite of Darryl Zanuck and Cecil B DeMille it’s a story of moral values  in conflict with human passions,  It’s about biological urges,  not love. I said last week  that marriage is an evolving institution. The Bible tells us of wives being purchased,  of multiple wives, of wives and concubines. Love is an occasional aspect of Biblical marriage but not primary, not necessarily expected. And nowhere do we find  the language beloved of conservatives that marriage consists of one man and one woman.

In all the long story of David,  forty-some chapters in First and Second Samuel and the First Book of Kings  love is mentioned maybe a dozen times but never with David as the subject.  David, so far as the Bible tells us, never loved anyone. Jonathan loved David,  and Saul’s daughter Michal loved David, and Judah and Israel loved David, but we are never told David loved anyone.  He didn’t even know Bathsheba’s name until the day he saw her and wanted her.  He wanted her and as king, he got her,  but it was not about love.

We talked about that story last week  and how lust led to murder, but don’t get distracted by the love angle  or even the sex angle.  Yes, this is a story of moral failure  but I think we miss the point if we put the focus on the adultery. That may be more interesting, it may make a better movie or headline, but I think the emphasis is on property  – property and robbery –  and we don’t see it because adultery is more interesting.  But we have to think ourselves back  three thousand years to a day when women were property first of all  and love was an occasional bonus.

What we heard today is the prophet Nathan’s indictment of David and it is put in terms of property.  Nathan indicts David for robbery, not adultery.  David had done his best to cover his tracks  but a king can’t hide. A king is a public figure  surrounded by courtiers and word gets out. Word got out and Nathan knew he had a job to do: because someone needed to call David to account and because no one, not even the king, maybe especially the king, can flout the law of God. Someone needs to call the sinner to account.  Someone needs to call the sinner to account  no matter how much power or money they have. But it isn’t easy to speak truth to power. It’s not easy to get past  the third assistant secretary.

It’s also dangerous to speak truth to power.  Power insulates.  We have separation of church and state not because the church has no role in the state but because it does and can only fill that role effectively  if it is separate and unentangled and free to call the state to account  in a way an established church can’t do. There were priests in Israel  but they were paid to serve the state not to criticize it. Nathan the prophet was free with nothing to lose but his life. David had dealt with Uriah and he could deal with Nathan if he had to.

So Nathan was careful.  He made no direct charge; he simply told David the story we heard  in the first reading this morning, a story about a poor man with only one lamb  and a rich man with many flocks and herds.  But when the rich man had a guest to provide for he took the poor man’s lamb  and served it to his guest. Now that’s robbery.  Nathan’s story has nothing to do with love or lust or adultery,  just plain, old-fashioned robbery. The rich man was a thief.  And David was irate that anyone should be so immoral:  “a man like that should die” said David.  And Nathan simply held up the mirror for David to see himself.  “You are the man.”  And that’s the point at which  we see who David is and why Israel loved him. Whether he loved them, we are never told,  but they loved him; the people loved him and a thousand years later  they were still looking for a king like David. When Jesus rode into Jerusalem,  it was David they were looking for. “Hosanna,” they called;  “Hosanna to the Son of David.” Democrats await the second coming of Roosevelt  and Republicans are looking for Reagan redivivus, but the Jewish people wanted David  for all his sins.  They loved him. And I think we see in this story  why they loved him. Yes, he had his faults, but he was great enough to admit his faults  and to say, “I have sinned.”  The phrase politicians like to use today is,  “Mistakes were made.” Imagine David saying that to Nathan: “Mistakes were made.” No.  “I have sinned.”  What he doesn’t say is, “I have committed adultery”  or “I have stolen.” But in Nathan’s parable,  it’s robbery that’s described and that’s appropriate  because what David did was to steal and the worst part of it is that he stole from the poor man  and he stole the poor man’s prized possession.  He stole from the poor man;  and once we see that we are right in the middle  of one of the central themes of the Bible, perhaps the central theme:  wealth and poverty and responsibility.  What appalls Nathan is  that David, to whom God has given so much, would not simply steal,  but would steal from the poor.  It appalls David, too, when Nathan gets his attention.  He knows what he’s done.  He knows. I wonder whether anyone has ever  done a study of poverty through the ages and attitudes toward it.  I haven’t done a study myself, but I wonder whether any document, any group of people,  any tradition pays as much attention to the poor as the Bible, the book of the people God calls. It’s there right from the beginning,  from the giving of the law at Mt. Sinai. You shall not steal and you shall not covet – two of the ten commandments  have to do with property. That could be just protecting the rich.  But it isn’t. Read on in the law and find: “When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. 10 You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien: I am the LORD your God.”  (Leviticus 19:9)  That’s in Leviticus.  In Deuteronomy we find: “If there is among you anyone in need, a member of your community in any of your towns within the land that the LORD your God is giving you, do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted toward your needy neighbor.  You should rather open your hand . . .  Give liberally and be ungrudging when you do so, for on this account the LORD your God will bless you in all your work and in all that you undertake.  Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, ‘Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land.’”  (Deuteronomy 15:7)  This is basic to the identity of God’s people.  The Egyptians built pyramids  and Roman emperors built monuments,  But God’s people were to care for the poor. The prophets never tired of berating the rich  for the way they exploited the poor.  Now, that’s the Old Testament  but the same theme is even more dominant in the Gospels and epistles.  “Blessed are the poor,” said Jesus and he told the parable of Dives and Lazarus  where Dives ends up in hellfire  simply for being rich  and Lazarus winds up in heaven  simply for being poor. At the Last Judgment, Jesus said, you will be judged,  and you will be judged  not on whether you went to church  but whether you fed the hungry  and clothed the naked.  St. Paul reminds us of what he calls “the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.”  But that’s not Wall Street wealth, it’s spiritual. And Christians, am I right?, ought to be seeking  spiritual wealth most of all. But that spiritual wealth comes  never comes without material giving: giving generously to the poor,  giving generously to those in need.  So how does it come about  that the world’s most professedly Christian country can stand to see almost a third of its children  growing up in poverty? Why is it that we rank 36th out of 41 so-called developed countries in UNICEF’s measurement,  just slightly ahead of Mexico and Greece  but trailing Ireland, Italy, and Bulgaria! How is it that we have candidates for the presidency  suggesting we need to cut back on health care and education and social security? How is it that we so arrange our national life  that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and people claiming to be Christians vote for those who work hardest  for the rich and show no concern for the poor?  Imagine, if you can, a prophet  going in to one of the various candidates for President or perhaps we could imagine  the prophet going to the executive office of Walmart or Amazon or Walgreens  or Apple and saying, “There was a certain poor man who worked two jobs to support his family,  to rent a small apartment, and to clothe his children, and there was a certain rich man  who owned large homes in Tahoe and Hawaii and Beverly HIlls but the state enacted a new minimum wage law to help the poor man pay his bills and the rich man said to himself, I cannot pay this new minimum wage and still buy more cars and houses  so I will have to reduce the hours my employees work.” David would be outraged.  We should be outraged. But that’s much more specific,  much less subtle, that the original Nathan and this modern Nathan would never get beyond  the third assistant secretary anyway. Today’s rich men and women  live in gated communities where prophets are not allowed. They say that a minimum wage worker in California would have to work 92 hours  to be able to afford a one-room apartment.  And yet, one leading candidate for the presidency  recently suggested  that Americans need to work longer hours.  Americans work longer hours already than those of most other developed economies -  longer than the Japanese  or the Germans or the French.  That same candidate tells us we have to cut back on Medicare and Social Security but not tax the rich. What’s wrong with this country that we so resist the very idea  of using government to help each other and especially to help the poor, the very thing the Bible commands us to do?  We need another Nathan  with a parable for today’s rich. We need to update the story  of Dives and Lazarus. We need Bible-believing Christians  who will read their Bibles and act on what the Bible tells them.  And let me take one minute to broaden the scope of the argument beyond this country to the larger world where immigrants from Central America  terrify Donald Trump and desperate thousands drown in the Mediterranean while the rich countries of the world  spend billions on armies and weapons  to defend our shores and very little on the assistance  that would make those desperate millions happy to stay at home.  Poverty, poverty, wealth and poverty.  It’s never enough to say God is a God of love and God loves me.  God does love you,  but God calls you and me to act: to see the needs of the poor  and to say, “I have sinned” and to become, as Jesus was, love incarnate  and to show that love to the poor.  Love and marriage come along with  the horseless carriage – far in the future –  and in many ways, we’re not there yet. David and Bathsheba came along at a time  when marriage was still mostly about passion and property  and biological urges, not about love. There were glimpses, of course.  Jacob served for seven years to gain Rachel and we are told that those seven years  “seemed to him but a few days” because of the love he had for her. And that was long before the time of David.  Closer to the time of David, we read the story of Hannah and Elkanah and how Hannah agonized over the fact that she was childless but Elkanah said, “Why are you sad;  am I not more to you than ten sons?”  (I Sam. 1:8) We do see love trumping biology  from time to time, but not in the story of David and Bathsheba.

David and Bathsheba, Part One: Love and Biology

A sermon preached by Christopher L. Webber at the Church of the Incarnation, San Francisco, on July 26, 2015.

One of the fun things in American politics is the need every candidate feels to write a campaign book – or have one written for them. Sometimes it’s a sort of biography,  sometimes a sort of political credo: who I am, what I believe and why I believe it.  Some of them get in the habit. Jimmy Carter just published another  story of his early life  and one columnist took the occasion to apologize for the way his fellow columnists had dismissed  Carter as a “light weight.” No other president has brought mid-East leaders together and gotten an agreement signed – one still in effect between Israel and Egypt. No other ex-president has accomplished as much after leaving office. And no other ex-president has written so many books about it.

But I think of this because this summer we are reading  the political biography of King David – not an auto-biography, no, far from it,  and not a campaign biography either, but a political biography, yes, and a theological biography: a study of David as King  in the light of heaven: not “how did he look to his colleagues”  or “how did he look to his subjects,” but “how did he look to God,” the God who chose him out as a leader  for the people of God. We should be asking ourselves that question  as we roll relentlessly toward 2016: how do these candidates look  in the light of heaven, do they have any inkling of a divine calling,  do they hope truly to serve God’s people, responding first of all to those whose needs are greatest, and last to those whose needs are least.  That’s a question for all of us in a democracy where we are responsible  for the leaders we get and the decisions they make.  So it’s not just politicians and leaders but all of us, always,  who act in the light of heaven and will be judged accordingly.

We are reading this summer a study of the kings of Israel  written by an unknown chronicler who tells us the inside story  with no holds barred, shows us all the stuff the candidate doesn’t want you to know but that you need to know  to be an informed citizen because what matters in the end  is revealed in the light of heaven.  Now that was not the usual thing in the ancient middle east. Today you have reporters telling you the inside story before the inaugural address is made  and every few weeks afterwards. Not then.  What you got then was mostly what the rulers wanted you to know.  The kings and emperors of those days had their achievements carved in stone  and set up on triumphal arches for all to see how great they were.

The English poet, Shelley, was told once of a desert  where only the remains still stood of such a tribute  and he wrote a memorable sonnet you might have read.

I met a traveller from an antique land Who said:

“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:

And on the pedestal these words appear:

‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Kings can carve monuments  but those will not determine what we sometimes call “history’s judgment.” Saul and David and Solomon probably didn’t have statues made because the commandments prohibited  graven images  but they, too, had their inscriptions  and they had their court chroniclers  to tell of their greatness.

There was, however, also another chronicler at work on what we would call today “the unauthorized biography,” that we know today as I and II Samuel and I and II Kings. We are working our way through some of it  this summer because that unknown, unofficial chronicler is not only remembered,  but still read in churches and synagogues. That unknown Chronicler saw history in the light of heaven, saw history from God’s perspective  not the kings, and wrote what he or she saw for us to read and therefore the chronicle is  not so much a story of what enemies the kings of Israel conquered but how well those kings conquered themselves,  how well they brought their human strengths  and human weaknesses  under control – or not -  used their gifts  to serve themselves or to serve God  and to serve God’s people.

King Ahab, for example, was a strong leader  who won wars and built cities. But the chronicler says not much about that;  instead the chronicler tells us how Ahab  and Jezebel his wife  conspired to rob a poor man of his ancestral inheritance and then, in one of my favorite Bible passages,  the chronicler says, “Now the rest of the acts of Ahab, and all that he did, and the ivory house that he built, and all the cities that he built, are they not written in the Book of the Annals of the Kings of Israel?  (1 Kings 22:39 )  Well, maybe they were, but no one saw fit to keep those annals. Who cares?  Who cares in the long run,  in the light of heaven, what wars he won or what cities he built? What matters in the light of heaven,  is whether he dealt fairly with a poor man or let his greed destroy them both.  That’s the sort of thing  that matters in the light of heaven  and that’s what the unofficial Chronicler tells us.

Now, all this is background to the part of the chronicle  we heard this morning. It begins with one of those wonderful sentences  that the unknown chronicler gives us and that sums up so much of what he wants us to see.  “In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab with his officers and all Israel with him; they ravaged the Ammonites, and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem.”  (2 Samuel 11:1)  “In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle . . .”

Isn’t that wonderful?  At one level, it is a simple statement of fact, but at another level it’s a devastating comment on kings  and possibly presidents and politicians in general. Spring-time comes and kings go out to fight.  The sap rises in the trees and birds build their nests      and kings go out to battle. Like bears coming out of hibernation, like lemmings heading for a cliff,  kings go out to battle. It’s what they do. They can’t help it. Fish got to swim, birds got to fly,  kings got to go and do battle. Yes, but this time was different in one respect:  David stayed home.

Why did David stay home?  It doesn’t matter. The Chronicler doesn’t speculate.  Maybe he was beginning to get bored with it all.  It’s hard to tell why, but “David stayed in Jerusalem.”  Better he’d gone to battle, because there’s another thing kings do when they’re bored as inevitably as they go to battle.  David saw Bathsheba. Well, he didn’t know it was Bathsheba,  What he saw was a woman and she was beautiful.  And nature took it’s course.

Do you see what the chronicler is doing?  He’s showing us human nature in the raw.  Was David in love with Bathsheba?  Of course not.  He didn’t even know her name.  It’s simple sexual attraction. “Birds do it, bees do it  Even educated fleas do it.” That’s a famous Cole Porter song  of which I can’t quote all the lyrics right here – though I like the line that goes,  “People say in Boston even beans do it”  But the refrain to Cole Porter’s song  is completely illogical and unexpected: “Let’s fall in love.” But love is not what the song is about;  it’s about birds and bees  and what beans do in Boston but that’s not love, that’s biology.  And love is not what David was up to either.

The chronicler is showing us human nature in the raw,  and he knows – and he knows that David knows – that human life is something more than a simple set of reflex actions. He’s going to show us that David knows better  and the redeeming feature of the narrative is David’s repentance. You have to come back next week  when we will hear David say, “I have sinned.” But you almost don’t need to hear that because it’s obvious in this week’s episode  that David knows the difference between sex and love.  He knows the difference and he knows he has sinned  and he knows he needs to cover his trail.

The chronicler just gives us the facts  and lets us interpret them, which is not hard. David knows that what he has done is wrong,  he knows that what he did is  not just a simple physical act, it’s an act with moral implications. He knows that he is a human being  made in the image of God and that human actions have meaning and what you do has consequence, has moral implications.  Do you see what the chronicler has done?  He has told us a story in which everything can be explained  in basic biological terms – up to a point. Birds do it, bees do it, David and Bathsheba do it.  But when David and Bathesheba do it, that’s different  because they are human beings made in the image of God and what they do has consequence  because human relationships are intended to move beyond the biological.

Human beings are drawn to do  what birds and beans do but human beings also have an instinct  to move beyond the biological,  because we are made in the image of God. It’s a human instinct to understand  that our acts have meaning because we are made to be more  than a simple collection of biological instincts and urges. We are made to fall in love  and to experience in our own lives the very nature and being of God  who is love itself.  But oh how hard it is  to get that right. Oh how hard it is  to overcome our animal biology and act out of the deeper  and truly human instincts of love and commitment and self-sacrifice.

Why do we read this story?  Because we too are human and we too know the conflict  between biology and morality, between physical attraction and love.  But even governments and churches forget that  and get it wrong. Biology is a powerful force  and often it trumps theology. I suppose it’s not surprising then – although it’s weird when you stop to think about it – it’s maybe not surprising  to find governments and even churches insisting on marriage as a purely biological institution. So twenty years ago, we saw the Congress passing a “Defense of Marriage Act” insisting that marriage is a biological institution.  Popes and theologians, contrary to all logic,  insist that marriage is a purely biological institution.

I read an impassion piece in a church magazine  just this week insisting that marriage must be open to conception. You mean that nobody over 45 or 50 is allowed to marry? I think it’s sad that the Roman Church and the so-called evangelical churches can’t see beyond the biological  and insist that marriage has to conform to certain biological standards,  that it must be between a man and a woman and be open to reproduction. Why do they do it?  They do it because  they can’t see beyond the biological.

The Law of Moses also prohibits non-reproductive sexual acts. Why?  Because the tribe needed soldiers.  It needed to reproduce to survive. You could understand the Congress  passing a Defense of Marriage Act if we also were in need of more population,  if we were an endangered species, but that’s really not our problem.  It’s not more people we need, it’s more love and self-sacrifice and you cannot legislate that  and you cannot limit it to reproductive relationships.  The Supreme Court got it right when it said: “The right to marriage cannot be conditioned on the capacity or commitment to procreate. . . ”  That’s right!  We cannot limit marriage to biology.  Theology is not determined by biology.

Don’t you wish marriage could be conditioned  on the capacity for true and lasting love? Don’t you wish we could legislate that “Marriage shall be limited to two human beings  who have experienced the love of God In their relationship with each other.” Now that would be a Defense of Marriage Act  worth voting for! But, you see, governments can’t do that.  Churches can’t do it either though we try to, and we do try to. We don’t do marriages for just anyone who turns up. We don’t just endorse the biological urge. We have standards.  We cannot perform a marriage  without thirty days notice and time for instruction. We have always had the right  to refuse to perform any marriage but not on physical or biological grounds, not because a couple are too old  or a different race, no, only if we felt that there was no deep understanding  of marriage as a lifelong commitment  based on something more enduring  than mere biology.  But that’s impossible to be sure.

Finally, a few weeks ago, our church took  the logical next step  and put aside that age-old standard  of “one man and one woman”  and recognized that love is not a biological phenomenon and that love is what marriage is all about.  Finally, after all these years!  But even the churches missed that point  until not very long ago.  In fact, down through human history  marriage has usually been  about biology and economics. Marriages were normally arranged between families  and they were sanctified by the church to create stable economic units.  Love did, of course, from time to time rear its lovely head and create trouble.  Read about what still happens in Afghanistan and such places when a young couple  fall in love and threaten the social fabric.  We read about it every now and then in the papers and it’s not nice reading. Western society moved beyond arranged marriages  fairly recently and maybe not entirely even now. After all, what was Charles and Diana all about?

So we read the story of David and Bathsheba  and you can read it  through the eyes of Cecil B DeMille  and turn it into a Hollywood epic which would miss the point entirely or you can see what the chronicler is showing us  and understand better  what at least five Supreme Court justices  had a glimpse of: that marriage is an evolving institution  moving ever so slowly beyond biology and economics and politics  and drawing us toward  a deeper understanding  of what Dante called “the love that moves the sun and the other stars,” moving ever so slowly toward  the love that draws us here in worship, toward the God who made us for love, toward the love we sometimes experience in marriage and sometimes in churches and sometimes in other communities  and relationships and that none of us will experience perfectly in this life,  but that all of us can hope to experience  in the life to come. That’s what we hear about in the second reading  as we jump a thousand years  and hear about a love “that surpasses knowledge.”  That’s what we sang about also in the opening hymn: “a love beyond all knowledge and all thought.”

What we see in the story of David and Bathsheba  is an early stage in the story of that development. David is letting biology control him  but he was made for something more and his failure to move beyond biology, to move up to his potential as a child of God, creates a problem that moves on quickly to tragedy.  You see, love is still not a major part of the story.  It’s not really a story of love vs. biology but biology vs. property.  At the biological and political level  Bathsheba belongs to Uriah, we are still dealing with marriage as property,  and David tries mightily  to get Uriah to come back and claim his property,  but Uriah has a higher loyalty, a loyalty to his comrades in arms, – maybe even a love for his comrades – and finally he leaves David no choice except murder. David has stolen and needs to conceal his crime  and he moves quickly and methodically  to do what he has to do: adultery leads on to murder.

We can read this story simply for that drama  and it’s a great story at that basic airport-book-rack level  but that would miss the point. If we are thoughtful and faithful  we can also read it as another chapter  in the long history of human evolution, the ongoing story in which the Supreme Court  just wrote another chapter. The chapter we read this morning  comes much earlier in the book, much earlier in the story of the long, slow, painful development of our human response to God’s calling: to become who we are called to be,  human beings made in the image of God and moved by love  because God is love  and we are made in God’s image.  David and Bathesheba didn’t know much about that.  That’s the tragedy of this story. You and I are in position to write a new and better chapter, to move far beyond David and Bathsheba because you and I know so much more about divine love and human love. You and I know the story of Jesus,  love incarnate,  and we are called to reflect that love in our lives and relationships and show the world  the infinite, patient, sacrificial,  transforming love of our Creator.

Grace

A sermon preached at the Church of the Incarnation, San Francisco, on July 5, 2015, by Christopher L. Webber.

Many years ago  my best friend and I decided to go to  a conference in Wichita Kansas.  You can guess how long ago this was by the fact that we decided  to drive there from Long Island. We stopped overnight in Pennsylvania  and got to Wichita late in the afternoon,  checked in to the hotel, and went down  to the restaurant for dinner.  It wasn’t a formal conference dinner  with speakers and all that;  just dinner in the hotel restaurant  before the opening session. We sat there for a long time  and finally my friend said,  “Does it seem as if we’re being ignored?”  I just figured the staff was really busy  because the place was full  and they’d get to us sooner or later. Eventually they did.  But my friend was black  and he saw things out of different experience.

On the way back we needed to find a motel for the night  and stopped at one in the middle of Missouri.  I went in first with my friend right after me  and told the clerk,  “We need a room for two.” “Sorry,” he said, “but we’re full.  There’s another place  down the road that might have a room.”  Well, maybe they were full.  It’s not impossible.  I’m sure it happens.  But I’ve gone into a lot of motels  before and since and never been told, “We’re full”  except that one time.  Maybe the clerk was telling the truth,  but because my friend was black,  we couldn’t be sure. And I realized that if you are black in America  that kind of thing happens a lot  and you can’t ever be sure  you’re being told the truth.

I remember another time  when my friend came for a visit,  and arrived in a rage  because he’d been stopped, basically,  for driving while black. Later he became a bishop  but he died before he was 50 of a heart attack.  He had chronic high blood pressure  and nothing in the world we live in  was helpful for that condition.

We’ve been reading through my favorite part of the Bible,  for the last month and will be until almost the end of August,  seven more weeks, working through the six books of  Samuel, Kings, Chronicles. We have two weeks coming up for David and Bathsheba;  don’t miss it!  But we read these books  because they describe the rise and fall  of the first Jewish state.  They show us God at work in history,  shaping a nation and people. It’s a brilliant depiction  of the interplay of personalities and power,  the interplay of a high calling  and the realities of human weakness. Today’s first reading ends:  “David became greater and greater,  for the LORD, the God of hosts, was with him.”  That’s the critical factor:  “the LORD, the God of hosts, was with him.”

You see, the Old Testament is the story  of how God was at work in one tribe,  one nation, “to shape” as the Bible says,  “to shape a people for God’s own possession.”  The project had a brief time of glory  under David and Solomon  and other times, more times,  of exile and defeat. But always there were prophets to call them back  to God’s purpose for them,  to explain to them the relationship  between their faith and their fortunes, to call them to repentance and renewal,  to remind them of God’s purpose,  God’s promise.

And then, two thousand years ago, the time was right  for God to take the next step,  to take the knowledge of God  the Jews had acquired and expand it beyond one nation,  to send the knowledge of the God of Israel  out to every nation, to plant in every language  and tribe and nation and people  the knowledge of a God of love,  the knowledge of a Creator with a purpose,  the knowledge of a redeemer  able to bear the crushing load  of human sin and failure  and take it away for ever.

The early Christians understood  that the gospel was universal;  it was good news for everyone,  for everyone,  unlimited by nation or race. One early Christian wrote that  “Every Fatherland is for them a foreign land  and every foreign land a Fatherland.”  Christians were at home everywhere but never quite comfortable anywhere.  Christianity, in other words,  was no longer to be a national faith  but a transformative faith. As such it transformed the Roman Empire  and survived the collapse of the empire  and embedded itself  in the rising nation states of Europe  adapting itself to northern Europe as Lutheranism  and Calvinism to England as Anglicanism  to southern Europe as Roman Catholicism,  to eastern Europe as Orthodoxy.

So Christian faith was at work  in a variety of ways,  transforming cultures  but becoming divided and divisive  in the process because while Christians had a generally valuable  influence within their various cultures,  they also adapted themselves to those cultures  so that the Christians in Germany  no longer understood the Christians in Spain  and the Christians in Italy  no longer understood the Christians in Holland  and even the Christians in Scotland  didn’t understand the Christians in England and sometimes the Christians in England  didn’t understand each other. And all of those differences came here:  all those multiple expressions of Christianity  enriching this nation and also dividing us but creating the yeast  that would begin to do  what Christianity had not done before: to transform society.

You see, in the Roman empire  Christianity was too young and too weak  to do much more than change individuals  and in the middle ages and later it was too divided to do more than influence nations.  In the Roman empire, slavery was simply accepted.  Peter and Paul just assumed  that there would be slavery and they taught slaves how to be Christian slaves  and owners how to be Christian owners.  It never imagined that slavery as an institution  could be eliminated. It also never occurred to them  that marriage could take new forms  or that human beings could make choices  about the environment. At the end of the Bible we do read of a new heaven  and a new earth,  indeed, the Second Epistle of Peter says,  “we are looking forward to new heavens  and a new earth,  where righteousness is at home.”  Imagine that!  A world where it’s normal  to do justice! But the early Christians couldn’t imagine the details,  couldn’t imagine we could get there  before the second coming. And who could blame them  when you see what a mess we’ve made of it  even here, even here.

But suddenly, just in the last two weeks,  we have been able to begin to visualize  a whole new world in which God is at work in us,  at work in you and me  and even the Supreme Court  to change not just individuals,  not just nations,  not just societies, but the shape and pattern of human life.  We’ve had a shooting in South Carolina,  two Supreme Court decisions,  one about marriage and  one about health care,  and along with that  the constant new weather crises  that begin to make believers even out of  skeptics and deniers. So there are signs of hope.  Change is possible.  We can do better.  We can be moving on  toward a truly transformed society.  Just maybe we can move beyond racism  and tear down the flags that endorse it.  Just maybe we can look at human sexuality  in broader ways and ask God’s blessing on loving, stable relationships  that move beyond the narrow limits of biology.  Just maybe we can look at the violence  that lurks in all of us and begin to limit the use of the weapons  that make that violence so terribly dangerous. Maybe we can move beyond the Affordable Care Act  to a truly universal health care system.  Maybe we can begin to use  the tools available to us to move beyond a fossil fuel economy  to a world that gets clean energy from the sun  instead of deadly, destructive energy  from fossil fuels. And perhaps most important of all  can we as Christians be the yeast that enables those transformations,  the yeast that transforms the lump.  It’s the role of yeast to disappear  as it does it’s work. Jesus said we are to be the leaven in our world,  not to compel transformation  but to be the yeast at work  invisibly, within.

Perhaps the most remarkable  of all the remarkable events in the last two weeks  was the President’s eulogy in South Carolina. Remarkable in many ways,  but not least that it went beyond the usual, political,  “God bless America” to point out that, as I’ve been saying,  and the President said it,  “that to put our faith in action is more than individual salvation, it’s about our collective salvation; that to feed the hungry and clothe the naked and house the homeless is not just a call for isolated charity but the imperative of a just society.”  Yes.  Amen. That’s right. It’s not just about individual redemption  but about our collective salvation.  It’s about dealing with racism and sexism and  violence and self-centeredness  in our world. It’s about seeing, again as the President said,  seeing that the “sweet hour of prayer  actually lasts the whole week long.”

Can we, at last, begin to see that,  can we begin to see that God’s purpose is  far beyond our narrow and petty  individual concerns, can we begin to see that  and to play a truly transformative role  allowing God’s Holy Spirit  to work through us and change society?

What the President told us  and what we need to remember is  that it’s the work of grace,  God’s free unmerited gift of grace working through us toward God’s purpose.  God’s grace at work:  that’s a powerful theological statement and I don’t know of a time  since Lincoln’s second inaugural  that a President has seen God at work  to challenge and transform a nation  and a culture  and used specific Christian theological language  to say so. But isn’t it time we Christians  tried to come together then  to open ourselves  to the work of that amazing grace?  We have been blind,  but now we can see: we can see God at work to root out racism  and provide health care for the poorest and neediest  and we can thank God for what’s happening  and come together to let God work  through us to fulfill the dreams  that God plants in every human heart.

Some people, especially on the liberal side  of the political and social spectrum, scoff at the notion of American exceptionalism, the notion that God had or has a special purpose  for this country.  I don’t scoff at it at all. In fact, I think it’s pretty obvious  that this country has always been  like a city on a hill  with a torch lifted beside the door to draw others, on the one hand,  draw others from all over the world  into a unique experiment and on the other hand to serve as a model  to other nations and people that need models  and are inspired by this nation  to hope and work for  a similar freedom. “David became greater and greater (we read) for the Lord, the God of hosts, was with him.”  David served God’s purpose -  royal exceptionalism – chosen out, not for his own benefit,  but for the sake of others. And David wasn’t always a paragon of virtue,  far from it;  he failed his people in numerous ways, but God used him nevertheless,  and for all our faults and failings  God can use this country nevertheless.

You know, it’s not the force of our arms  that will transform the Middle East,  but the example of a nation where Christians and Muslims live together in peace.  Didn’t we learn as children that you can make the other child say “Uncle”  but it doesn’t change anything. It’s not superior force that makes a difference  but the examples of others. I remember being told once by a missionary in Japan  that the most effective  Christian missionary in Japan was Martin Luther King, Jr.,  but Martin Luther King never visited Japan.  He never visited Japan but he made a witness  to the transformative power of love. People on the other side of the world  saw a country being transformed by that power  and it made a difference.

So I believe in American exceptionalism. No country influences the culture of the rest of the world  the way this one does.  And that’s in spite of the lingering racism  that I felt myself through my friend, it’s in spite of the violence that tore us apart  in Sandy Hook in Connecticut;  it’s in spite of the people and parties  that drag their feet  on all the work that needs to be done  to serve the poorest and neediest,  to break down barriers of sex and race  to remember our founding documents with their affirmations of human equality,  and of certain unalienable rights  which are still far from realized.

Martin Luther King used to ask,  How long? How long will we have to suffer injustice?  And he would answer his own question: “Not long! Not long, because the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice.  How long will justice be crucified and truth buried?  Not long! Not long, because:  Mine eyes have seen the glory  of the coming of the Lord;  His truth is marching on.”  Let that be a vision we renew this  Independence Day weekend  and ask God to help us  make a witness to God’s purpose.

O beautiful for spacious skies, For amber waves of grain

For purple mountain majesties Above the fruited plain . . .

O beautiful for patriot dream That sees beyond the years

Thine alabaster cities gleam  Undimmed by human tears!

America! America! God mend thine every flaw.

America! America! God shed His grace on thee.

Amen.

Storm-Stiller

A sermon preached by Christopher L. Webber on June 21, 2015, at the Church of the Incarnation, San Francisco. 

I said last week that I did not choose the readings for these last two weeks but I couldn’t have chosen much better.  Last week we had some thoughts about choosing leadership. This week, more on a very similar subject.  I looked up the readings for today weeks ago and when I came back to work on them it turned out that I had misremembered what the gospel was about and thought it was about Jesus walking on water. So I’d been thinking what a great opportunity that made to talk about what you should look for in a priest. It’s actually a pretty standard thing to say when parishes start thinking about what they want in a priest and walking on water is a pretty good summary.

But, in fact, that is not today’s Gospel: today’s Gospel is a simpler matter of stilling the storm – but it may be even more relevant. I mean, is it useful to have a priest who can walk on water? Under what circumstances would it be helpful? Maybe if you were in Texas or Oklahoma this last week it would be a useful skill.  But not here. Here’s there’s not enough water to walk on even if somebody could.  But stilling storms . . . that I can see would have value. We can pray that our next President can do it; he or she will need to. And most parishes also will find themselves needing a good storm-stiller from time to time. And maybe we have our own storms to face and need to remember the Lord who asked the storm-tossed disciples, “Why are you afraid?

So let’s think about what’s going on here and what relevance it has for us.  I think the first question a lot of people want to ask about stories like these – stilling a storm, walking on water, whatever – the question we ask in the scientific age is what are the facts? What really happened? And the problem we have is that there’s no one who can answer that question. Well, there are people out there who will say, “The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it.”  But Episcopalians aren’t usually that easily satisfied.  We like to talk about “Scripture, tradition, and reason” as our sources of authority, how we settle things.

It’s easy for Roman Catholics: they have the pope to settle things or maybe unsettle things when he starts to talk about climate change. And it’s easy for fundamentalists: they can look it up in the Bible. But we’re Anglicans and we’re not satisfied with just the pope and not just the Bible, and not just tradition, and not just reason, but “Scripture, and tradition, and reason.”  Is it in the Bible is always the first question.  That counts for a lot, but for us it’s not the whole story.  There’s also tradition: is it something that comes from long tradition like worshiping on Sunday?  That’s not in the Bible, but it’s a pretty strong tradition. We should pay attention to such traditions. But there’s still a third question: is it reasonable?  Most churches ask only one of these questions: if it’s in the Bible, that’s all that matters, or if the Pope said so, that’s all that matters, or if it’s reasonable, that’s all that matters. But we want it all: Scripture, and tradition, and reason.

So when we come to a story of Jesus walking on water or stilling a storm, the fact that it’s in the Bible counts for a lot but we still need to weigh in with reason. Is it really likely that this happened? Is it reasonable? Part of our problem then is that they didn’t ask those questions in the first century when they were writing these stories down. It was what we call a “pre-scientific world.”  Some events were more unusual than others, but there was no dividing line between natural and supernatural. So the idea that Jesus could walk on water or still a storm didn’t particularly surprise them.  Yes, it was unusual, but unusual things happened all the time.  Lightening flashed and thunder rolled and the stable earth quaked and no one knew why so they blamed it on God and if God created storms, God could certainly still storms. So they told this story because it showed Jesus doing one of the things that God does.  In particular, it showed Jesus fulfilling scripture which spoke of God stilling storms.

Take Psalm 107, for example, a hymn of praise for a God revealed in nature. That psalm talks about a storm at sea and the fears of those involved, and it says:

28 Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress.

29 He stilled the storm to a whisper * and quieted the waves of the sea.

30 Then were they glad because of the calm, * and he brought them to the harbor they were bound for.

31 Let them give thanks to the LORD for his mercy * and the wonders he does for his children.

God can still storms. The Jews were a desert people and a storm at sea was a fearful display of God’s power. What could be more wonderful than the quieting of such a storm?  And, you see, that’s exactly what the story shows Jesus doing: doing what God does, ruling over nature. So if Jesus was doing what God does, what does that tell you about Jesus? That’s the point of the story. That’s what interested people in the first century – and, actually, most centuries until we got scientific.

But we live in that new and different world and we ask new and different questions. We want to know what really happened, don’t we?  And I’m not going to tell you, I’m not even going to offer an opinion. I don’t know what happened; I wasn’t there.  There’s really no way of knowing. The Bible says so and that certainly counts in its favor but if I use the God-given gift of reason I can’t be sure. Mark wrote this story down thirty or forty years after the fact. But even so, it has remarkable details that sound like an eye witness account So perhaps there was a sudden storm and perhaps Jesus did rebuke it and perhaps it did calm down. But what does that prove to us scientists?  Not much. A scientist has to repeat the experiment: do it ten times in a row and I’ll begin to take you seriously.  Just once could be a coincidence. Let’s see you do it again. But our God is one and does unique, unrepeatable things and frustrates the scientists.  Jesus speaks to the storm in the same words he uses to cast out demons, evil spirits that get control of people or – and we use language like that ourselves – psychiatric storms that unpredictably gain control of human beings.

So maybe you can believe that Jesus did for the storm what he did for people, restoring peace, or maybe you prefer to believe that the storm just happened to die down at that moment; that’s up to you. But those who were there saw Jesus calm in the midst of trouble and restoring peace for his disciples with a power and confidence they had never seen before. Either way, they came away with a deeper sense of who he was and a deeper trust in his power to shape events and a greater confidence that they could face their own fears and troubles trusting in Jesus.

And that’s the point.  That’s the real point. That, it seems to me, is the critical faith to have as you and I move forward into a future that is always uncertain.  We live in a world more frightening, it seems to me, than theirs.  We survived the Cold War with the fear of atomic bombs but we were up against an enemy who at least played by the rules. You could meet and negotiate and even fight wars in Korea and Vietnam but you knew who the enemy was and where the battlefield was.  And we don’t know that anymore. And if the fear of terrorism isn’t enough there are all the uncertainties of an ebola virus and weird strains of flu and global warming – which is now becoming a theological issue with the pope on one side and Republican politicians on the other, and that would be fun to watch if it weren’t so serious. But we live in a world with forces at work that we can’t seem to control and that threaten to overwhelm us. And it’s frightening to live in such a world. That’s why some people prefer to deny it, close their eyes and hope it will go away.

But it’s not going away and I’m not sure the world has ever been all that different or all that safe. A century ago there was a world wide fear of anarchists – anarchists shot down President McKinley and triggered World War I by shooting down the Austrian Archduke. They were intent on destroying established governments everywhere and you never knew where they would strike next.  But anarchists merged into communists and communists perhaps merged into Islamicists. There always seems to be somebody mad at the world and in this country you have a right to pack a gun and shoot them.

There are people who thought the problem with that Bible study group in South Carolina was that they didn’t all have guns. Permit guns in churches, they tell us, and these things won’t happen. But they don’t happen in England and Japan and places where no one has guns.  Could we learn from them? Wouldn’t that be reasonable?  I grew up in this tradition and learned to value reason. I’d like to bring it to bear on some of our national problems.

There are real reasons in our world to feel insecure and politicians will play to our fears if we let them. But for Christians to react irrationally, fearfully, angrily, is faithless. We know one who can calm the storm.  And the wonderful part of being a Christian and being joined together with other Christians in a worshiping congregation is that we see the evidence of God’s calming power day by day in people right here who have every bit as many reasons to be afraid of the future as we all do. It’s a frightening world, we have every reason to be afraid. But here I meet with people who are not afraid, who go on in calm and cheerful confidence that God is walking with us reaching out a hand to steady us in the midst of the waves and the storm.

That’s what we need to know and what we need to tell others. You and I have a gospel to preach in words, yes, but also in our lives. There’s no reason to be afraid of the storms. We know one who can calm the storms. and is with us here today.  I don’t expect the members of the Mother Church in Charleston will be packing guns this morning. They know that’s not the answer.  Violence will not solve the problems, the storms, most of us face daily. But faith can.  God can.  We know that and it’s why we’re here and it’s why this congregation can go forward unafraid.

There was a song that was popular some years ago that put it simply and clearly. Anglicans, Episcopalians, might think it a little simplistic, unsufficiently sophisticated, but maybe once in awhile something simple may say it best. Remember how it goes?

Put your hand in the hand of the man who stilled the waters

Put your hand in the hand of the man who calmed the sea . . .

put your hand in the hand of the man from Galilee.

Choosing and Growing

A sermon preached at the Church of the Incarnation, San Francisco, June 14, 2015, by Christopher L. Webber.

I did not choose the readings for this week or next, but I couldn’t have chosen much better. The Gospel tells us how the church grows and the Old Testament talks about choosing someone to serve. How do we grow?  How do we choose people to serve, How do we make choices? What could be more relevant for a parish in transition.

Let’s start with choosing, choosing someone to serve God’s people. What happened when the Jewish people needed a king? The Old Testament deals with that question and it tell us that they didn’t appoint a search committee. They just went to the bishop and said, “Give us a king.” Now the “bishop” in this case was Samuel and he’d been around a long time and the way he saw it was, “You don’t need a king.” They had, after all, survived for centuries with no king. When they needed help God raised up a judge, someone who could do what was needed and go home again. But there was no king, no hereditary leader, in fact, no continuing leadership at all because God gave them the unity and the guidance they needed.

So Samuel told them, “You belong to God and God will provide what or who you need, but you don’t need a king; your job is to serve God not a human ruler.” But the people weren’t satisfied with that; they insisted on a king and God said to Samuel, “OK, tell them what will happen if they get a king and then let them have it.”

So Samuel chose them a king.  Twice Samuel chose them a king.  The first one chosen weas Saul and the one qualification the Bible tells us about is that he was head and shoulders taller than anyone else, so when people saw him that was all they needed to know. He looked like a king so he ought to be the king. Somewhere I’ve seen statistics on American presidential election: almost every time the taller candidate wins.  You can understand that when you are choosing a basketball team, but that wasn’t what Israel was doing and it’s not what most parishes and dioceses are doing.  It’s not what our country ought to be doing, but we do it just the same. Israel did it when they chose Saul. So they made him king and lived to regret it.

Now Saul had some good qualities – he was brave and strong and he looked like a king but he was also jealous and insecure; he couldn’t stand sharing the glory with someone like David. And his insecurity finally undid him.  That’s when God told Samuel to find someone else – which brings us to the reading for today.  Once again Samuel narrowed down the field until he came to the sons of Jesse and one, the resading tells us “had beautiful ehyes and was handsome.  So they chose him.

David like Saul had many good qualities.  But weaknesses also.  He indulged his son Absalom until Absalom decided to overthrow his father and take it all without waiting.  And we know about David and Bathsheba.

So what do we learn from these stories?  We learn that choosing leadership is fraught with problems.  Two kinds of problems. First, we are all too likely to choose people in the hope that they will do our jobs for us. And second, we are all too likely to chose someone outwardly impressive but inwardly insecure.  It’s all too easy for clergy and people to follow that pattern. It’s all too easy for people to do it at any level of choice. Whether we’re looking for a President of the United States or a parish priest, we’re all to likely to choose someone outwardly impressive who seems likely to make our job easier but can’t rise to the challenge, can’t delegate or share responsibility, someone perhaps concerned with his or her own achievements, serving his or her own needs, rather than serving the needs of others. So bear that in mind.  Don’t look for someone who will do your job for you but for someone to work with you and do the things you can’t do, not the things you can do.

Ministry is a task that ought to be shared.  Each of us has a ministry to do. It’s a bad use of a priest’s time to do things you can do better and that ranges all the way from taking care of coffee hour to the work of evangelism. Thirty church members by definition have thirty times as many friends and acquaintances as the priest and thirty times as many opportunities to invite people here, thirty times the opportunities for evangelism.  The priest can’t do it alone. Especially as a newcomer in the community, the priest can’t be the primary evangelist.  He or she can make a difference once you get them here, but it’s got to be a shared ministry. Ministry has to be shared to be effective.

There are, of course, charismatic personalities who draw people like flies to honey, but they draw them to themselves not to Jesus and not to the church. That looks good for awhile, but it doesn’t last, it’s not solid. It isn’t properly centered.  Ministry has to be centered on Jesus. But this Old Testament reading about the problem of choosing ministry comes to us today side by side with the gospel reading which is all about church growth and the two subjects fit together.

Jesus in the gospel uses the planting and harvesting of a crop as a parable of church growth.  “How does a crop grow,” he asks? And he answers, “You don’t know how it grows and you can’t control how it grows. You can plant seeds but God gives the increase.” That’s probably not what we want to hear; we want answers, we want instructions, we want to be told how to do it. And that’s not what we get.

Now, I have a problem with this parable.  I don’t want to be critical but I have to ask how much Jesus knew about farming. He was said to have been a carpenter. What do carpenter’s know about farming? “You plant the seed,” he said, “and the crop just grows by itself.” Well, not exactly.  There’s weeding to do and watering and maybe fertilizing.

“The earth produces by itself,” said Jesus.  Well, not exactly. The weeds grow by themselves, that’s a fact; the earth produces weeds by itself, but not the crop. But no parable is perfect and no parable should ever be asked to make more than one point.  Jesus does have one point. The church is a lot like a field crop. You scatter the seed and it grows and you can’t make it grow. Botanists know a lot more today about exactly how a seed grows and they can alter it a bit and they can change its growth characteristics, but we still can’t make seeds in a lab or create growing things ourselves. There is, in fact, a lot in the process that we can’t change and can’t control.  And there’s a lot about church growth also that doesn’t come about because we are smart or faithful or use the right techniques.

Before I retired, I used to get invitations all the time to seminars on church growth given by pastors of mega-churches who are all too eager to tell you how they did it (for a fee) and you should be like them. But numbers isn’t the only goal and even if a specific formula gets results and gets people in, you need to ask: into what? is it a church, a worshiping community of faithful people, or is it a performance, a crowd pleasing attraction, a show that has little to do with the gospel as we have received it?  We live in a culture that measures everything by numbers and profit, that judges success by numbers. The Bible warns against that again and again.

That first. Church growth is not a matter of technique or numbers. Jesus’ point is that growth depends entirely on God.  We can plant and we can harvest but there will be no harvest if it depends on us. However much we weed or fertilize there will be no crop without the rain and sun over which we have no control.  There will be no growth unless God blesses our efforts.

The parable is too simple and I think Jesus would have been the first to recognize that. A good parable makes one point and the point here is our dependence on God. There are other parables that make other points. Yes, church growth depends finally on God but Jesus chose and trained apostles because God will not do everything for us, God calls us to serve, God calls all of us to ministries, and God gives us enormous responsibility. God calls us to various kinds of ministry and empowers us for the ministry to which we are called.  As we move forward, we need to be clear about ministry. What goals do we have?  What kind of community are we? What kind of community do we want to be? What sort of person will best help us reach those goals?

I think today’s readings give us a lot to think about as we make those decisions in the coming weeks.

The Mystery of Faith

A sermon preached by Christopher L. Webber at Christ Church Seikikai, San Francisco, on Trinity Sunday, May 31, 2015.

Last Monday I had the opportunity to take part in the annual Japanese memorial day service in the cemetery in Colma. We sat there in a heavy mist and a cold wind while representatives of the Japanese community, Shinto, Buddhist, and Christian, recognized, each in their own way, what we sometimes refer to as the spiritual aspect of human life, each one affirming a pattern that changes lives as they come into contact with that spiritual reality.

I said something last week about the way Japanese spirituality has recognized the kami, the divine, in places of natural beauty, quiet lakes, and shrines, and strangely shaped rocks. And there they were: great columns of irregular stone with beautifully inscribed kanji commemorating individuals whose lives had made a difference.

I had been asked to read a passage from the Book of Joshua that told how the Hebrew people after crossing the Jordan River took stones out of the river and set them up as an enduring memorial of that historic river crossing into the new land God had promised them. I wondered, when I was asked to read it, how that was connected to the memorial event but I hadn’t seen Colma at that point and didn’t know about the memorial stones. But the Presbyterian pastor who coordinated the event tied it all together in her homily: the stones from the Jordan river and the stones of Colma, memorial stones, ways of remembering, ways of marking the spiritual with the physical, ways of marking the enduring aspect of human lives and events. It made me think of the great monument in England called “Stonehenge” that was put in place thousands of years ago by people of whom we know nothing except they were like us in one way: they too had a sense of an aspect of life beyond the physical and used the most enduring physical markers available to say, “There is an aspect of human life that is more than the physical, more enduring than the greatest stones, more important than transient human life.”  You can call it the “spiritual” or the “metaphysical” or not name it at all but it’s real, and it matters. It’s more real even than earth itself and there’s a natural human instinct to want to acknowledge it and know what we can of it and use it to center our lives and to guide them.

Now let me leave that subject for a minute to talk about the Bible and make connections later.

The Bible contains a number of different types of literature: there’s history, there’s poetry, there’s prophecy, there are visions, there are letters, there’s teaching – something, you might say, for everyone – but there’s just one book, the Book of Job, that is pure fiction.  The Book of Job is a made up story about a man who never was and it’s there because sometimes fiction is truer than facts, because sometimes fiction can sum things up, can crystalize, can clarify in a way that history cannot, in a way that straight forward teaching cannot.  I can tell you that God’s ways are beyond human understanding and maybe you knew that anyway but there’s nothing like a story to make the point and nothing like the book of Job to make it in the most dramatic way possible.

Job was a good man but everything went wrong for him his children died, his herds and flocks were scattered, he himself contracted a terrible disease. His friends said, “It’s because you did something wrong.” His wife said, “Curse God and die.” But Job rejected the easy answers and challenged God for an explanation.  “Where is God,” he asked, “when I’m looking for answers?” “If I go forward, he is not there; or backward, I cannot perceive him; 9 on the left he hides, and I cannot behold him; I turn to the right, but I cannot see him. (Job 23:8)

Job has a thousand questions but God provides no answers, offers no explanation; instead God challenges Job. “Where were you,” God asks, “when the oceans were formed, when the mountains were shaped, when the stars where set in place?” “ and furthermore God says, in the clinching argument, “Consider the hippopotamus.”

Well, yes, consider the hippopotamus.  Can you make one of those?  Well, no, but I doubt we are as impressed with that as Job was. I mean, we can go to the zoo and see a hippopotamus anytime or an ostrich or a kangaroo and besides that we know about dinosaurs and Job didn’t and we know about evolution and Job didn’t so the hippopotamus is not such a mystery for us. Today God might say, “Consider the computer . . .”  There’s a mystery, at least to me. And mystery is the point.  At last Job has to acknowledge that there are mysteries beyond human comprehension, a spiritual reality that is essential to meaningful human life but not subject to human reason and logic. There is a mystery to be recognized if our lives are to be complete.

Now, the readings today all point us to the mystery at the heart of our faith which is what the Book of Job looks at directly. Today’s readings do it less directly and they do it from three radically different perspectives: first, an overwhelming vision – Isaiah’s vision of God high and lifted up in the holy temple in Jerusalem and surrounded by angelic beings and clouds of incense; second, a letter from St. Paul with a discussion of our human experience of spiritual things, of something deep within that responds to something beyond the material world, and last, there’s a very simple, deceptively simple, discussion again of that Spirit, a discussion between Jesus and a Jewish scholar who was looking for answers to the mystery at the heart of human life.

I think every one of us is here today because of that mystery, because in one way or another we know that life has a deeper meaning than the purely physical – eating, breathing, sleeping. We know there’s more to life than that.  I expect if we were asked to try to identify one moment that made the difference in our life between being here on Sunday morning and being somewhere else we would each have a different and distinctive answer.  For some it might be the influence of a friend, for another a relative, for still another an experience at a critical turning point in our lives. Some few of us might have had an overwhelming experience such as Isaiah did others of us may have found help in a dialog with a friend, the wisdom of someone like Paul, and some may have found help in dialog with Jesus like the one Nicodemus had which is still a real experience for many who turn to prayer and find answers, who speak to God and find guidance.

I think, too, that there are some of us who can’t point to any specific moment, any particular turning point or influence, but just over time found ourselves involved with other Christians in some specific organized way – like coming here on Sunday mornings – and realizing at some point that we had in fact made a commitment without ever perhaps being really conscious of it, but realizing that we are here because we need to be, because somehow it makes our life complete, that something happens here that we need to give our lives meaning and purpose.

I remember a woman telling me years ago that she began coming to church because she wanted her children to be in the Sunday school and that was at the same time as the church service and she had to wait for them somewhere so she came to the service and at first, she told me, she sat there resenting the fact that she had to be there while her husband stayed home reading the paper. “But after a while,” she told me, “I realized that I liked being there.”  God works in many ways to get us where we need to be, but at some point it has to be our decision; our choice, our commitment to Jesus as Lord.

I’ve always liked the saying, “God has no grandchildren.”  We can’t accept God’s role in our lives just because God was important to our parents. Their witness, if they were Christians, if they taught us to pray, if they read to us from the Bible, if they brought us to church, surely made a difference but I doubt if any of us is here today just simply because our parents told us to come or used to bring us.  We must become God’s children ourselves. At some point we have to decide for ourselves, we have to recognize a need in ourselves or a power moving in our lives and whatever it is, it leads us to believe that life is not bread alone, not just the material and physical, but something deeper and more important, something for lack of a better word that we call the “spiritual.”

The reason we turn again and again to the Bible is that we find there so many different expressions of that fundamental reality. We may or may not share Job’s sense of wonder at the hippopotamus but we may well share his realization that there are mysteries we will never grasp, realities more important than our bank balance, or the latest thing on our iPhone. In various ways, we recognized that aspect of life in the ceremonies at Colma cemetery on Monday and in the stark contrast between the flowers that were offered that will be faded and gone in a day or two and the great stones that will stand there for centuries. The Bible says human life is like the flowers of the field.  It says our days are like the grass, “we flourish like a flower of the field; When the wind goes over it, it is gone, and its place shall know it no more.” But the stones from the Jordan, the stones of Stonehenge, the stones of Colma, bear witness to something else, something enduring, something that remains when the physical comes to an end.

Trinity Sunday is the one Sunday all year that brings us face to face with that mystery at the heart of creation.  There’s nothing explicit in the readings today about the Trinity. In fact, there’s nothing in the Bible that tells us something direct and specific about the Trinity, about this fundamental doctrine of Christian faith. It took almost three hundred years for Christians to find a way to put into words what they had come to know in the life of Jesus and the presence of the Spirit and the life of the church. What they came to affirm was a dogma, a statement, not an explanation, an affirmation of a mystery: that God is fundamentally three and yet one, fundamentally one and yet three. And mystery though it is, “incomprehensible” as the ancient Athanasian Creed tells us, it is also a practical, everyday, reality without which Christianity is not significantly different from Islam or Judaism or Buddhism or Shinto.  Those religions may be vague about God as Buddhism and Shinto are or definite in affirming one God as Judaism and Islam do but they do not know that that one God or that vague sense of the holy became flesh and blood in Jesus Christ and indwells every one of us in the Spirit.  They do not know that the reality of God is not simple, but complex – One but also Three, Three but also One.

God is One, the Creator who fills the unimaginable distances of the universe, distant beyond all imagining. But God, that same God, is present also in the human life of Jesus, a life like ours, present in the mysteries of birth and death, and present in a fragment of bread at the altar. And God, that same God, is present and at work within every one of us: One God: above, beside, within; One God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity. The Triune God is all of that and more: the mystery at the heart of our faith, above us, beside us, within us: beyond all knowing yet also known and present now and always in your life and mine.

The Gift of Languages

A sermon preached on the Feast of Pentecost, May 24, 2015, at Christ Church SeiKoKai, by Christopher L. Webber.  Christ Church SeiKoKai is the historic Japanese congregation in San Francisco.   

Thousands of years ago, so the story goes, people came together on a plain in the Middle East and set out to build a tower up to heaven – to put themselves in God’s place. And so, to prevent that from happening, God confused their languages so they could no longer understand each other and work together. That’s the story of the Tower of Babel as told in the Book of Genesis.  It’s the story behind the story of Pentecost.  It’s the Bible’s answer to the question, “Why do human beings speak different languages?”

Logically, it makes no sense to use different languages. It’s far more effective to have one common language so we can all read the same newspapers and buy a loaf of bread in any store and go abroad to study or maybe go to the same church. Why don’t we do the sensible thing and all speak Japanese or English – or Latin or Esperanto? Some say that Hebrew is the language of heaven and we will all have to take a crash course.  But wouldn’t it be simpler if we all spoke the same language? Why don’t we?

The Bible’s explanation is strange:  it tells us that human beings had set out to take God’s place, so God confused their languages to make that impossible.  I think I would explain it differently: yes, it would be more effective if we all spoke one language but maybe we don’t want to be effective.  Maybe we would rather be able to conceal our thoughts and plans so our enemies won’t know what we’re up to. Maybe that’s why government officials today stamp “Top secret” and “Confidential” on all their documents.  I think we’ve learned to like having separate languages and secret languages. We can even develop our own language, or we can talk in code, or we can mark things “Secret.” So no one else will know what we’re saying and what we plan to do and still we try to build our tower to heaven, our anti-ballistic missile system or whatever it is and keep others from knowing what we’re up to.

We’ve learned to like having separate languages.   Teen-agers almost automatically develop their own language so their parents won’t understand them. God doesn’t need to scatter our languages; we do it ourselves. And here we still are today nationally and internationally divided by language as much as anything – still unable to understand each other and work together in a common cause. God has nothing to fear from us.

But of course, it’s deeper even than language because members of Congress may all speak English but even so they seem to have lost the ability to find the words of a common language and work together for the common good. God doesn’t need to scatter our languages; we do it to ourselves. I do sometimes wonder whether it was necessary for God to confuse the languages we speak. Even where we have a common language, it’s so hard to understand what someone else is saying, so hard to find words to speak to each other, to communicate, to unite.

When the first missionaries arrived in Japan they set out to learn Japanese so they could tell the people of Japan about God. But it seemed to them that the Japanese didn’t have a proper word for God. The nearest Japanese word was “kami” – but “kami” was not a personal God like the God of the Old Testament or the God Jesus addressed as Father. “Kami” was not so much a person as a quality.  Kami are elements in nature, animals, creationary forces in the universe, as well as spirits of the departed.  Fuji-san was “kami,” a strangely shaped stone was “kami,” and so was a lake or a beautiful view.  “Kami’ was holiness, a sense of the mysterious, the holy, the divine, but it was too vague a word to satisfy the missionaries who wanted a nice, clear, narrowly defined word like the Latin word “Deus” that they understood.  Finally they decided they couldn’t use the word “kami” to talk about God. They decided they would have to fall back on Latin and just tell the Japanese that they came to teach them about “Deus,” and they would tell them about the very specific Deus revealed by the prophets as One who acts in history, who demands justice and gives mercy, the Holy One of Israel, a personal God, not an impersonal kami.

You know the story of how the first Christian mission in the 16th century was suppressed by a ruthless wave of persecution and when Christianity came back 300 years later, in the middle of the nineteenth century, to make a new start with new missionaries they decided they would use the word kami after all but they would have to redefine it. You have a sense of awe and reverence, they said, but what you sense in Fuji-san and in your shrines and in your places of beauty was embodied in Jesus the Messiah. “Kami,” they said, came to earth and was made known in Jesus. So kami was redefined to mean the personal God revealed in Jesus Christ. In the bi-ingual edition of the liturgy of the Nippon Seikokai if the word God is on the English side, the word kami is on the Japanese side. It’s not an exact translation but it works – more or less. “Kami” for Christians today is the God of the Bible.

But, of course, the Japanese language is right also. God is not just the God of the Bible. God is also present and made known in the beauty of a snow-capped mountain and a grove of trees and a rock and a body of water. The west has been too often blind to the beauty of nature even the holiness of nature and could learn from the Japanese sense of kami. Maybe if the western world had that sense of the holiness of created things we would have been less destructive of our environment and would be more concerned now to preserve it.

The words we use always tend to be too narrow, too limited, and the words of one language are far too limited to capture all we might want to say.  We can come back from Yosemite or from visiting a grove of red wood trees or from a trip to Alaska or Africa and find ourselves saying, “I don’t know how to describe it.  Words can’t do it justice.” Sometimes it’s our own inability to find words but sometimes there just aren’t any words. Sometimes other languages have words that don’t exist in English. The French have words for some things like “Coup d’etat” and “savoir faire” and for wine and food that don’t exist in English and so we lapse into French to express our meaning better. We learned about algebra from the Arabs and “amore” from the Italians. Theologians seem to need German to talk about zeitgeist and sitzimleiben and the numinous. They say that the Navajo language is better for discussing nuclear physics than European languages.

So the multiplication of languages isn’t altogether negative. The existence of various languages broadens our ability to put labels on things and understand things in different ways. It would in some ways be a loss, a diminishment, if we all spoke the same language.  The first missionaries to any new language area will be frustrated to find that the people of that new area may have a word or words for God but don’t give it the meaning the Christian missionary wants to express.  But maybe the native language can say things that the missionaries need to know.

So ideally both sides can grow in understanding as they come to understand each other. After all, the Bible itself is the story of how human beings have come to understand what the word God means. The God of the early books of the Bible is sometimes a rather angry tribal deity and one God among many.  Gradually over the centuries God’s people learned that God was always more than they had understood or imagined: a God of power, yes, but also a God of justice yes, and also a God of mercy. When Isaiah says “God,” he says God is so far above us that the inhabitants of the earth look to him like grasshoppers Well, when I use the word God I mean the Creator of a universe that contains 100 billion galaxies and who knows how many universes.  I can use the same word that Isaiah used but I need to stretch it far beyond anything the prophets or apostles could have begun to imagine. The inhabitants of the earth seem to us today as we look down from one of our satellites like specks of dust – if we can see them at all – in a universe vast beyond all imagining.

And how can we still believe in a personal God who knows each of us and cares about each of us and grieves for our failures when we know the vastness of creation? No wonder fewer people go to church.  It’s harder than ever to believe in a Creator who could bring galaxies into being and still care about human beings. But also, it seems to me, harder than ever not to believe. Could all this be a mere accident?  I can’t believe it.

So our task this year at Pentecost is, as it has always been, to break down barriers of language. God the Holy Spirit sets us an example.  As the apostles were sent out into the streets of Jerusalem and able to communicate across the walls of language so we are sent out into the streets of San Francisco and urged to find words to communicate the love of God to a city and civilization where God is scarcely known.  We are like missionaries to a world where the word God still needs to be explained and translated. As the first missionaries in Japan tried to explain that kami was too small a word for the Christian God so we need to find ways to explain some of our most basic words about God.

Take the word “love” for example.  The Bible tells us, “God is love.” If you really know what live is like, you will know what God is like.  But if God is unknown in our world, so too is love. Oh yes, our world talks about love but love as it’s used around us is too narrow a word for the love made known to us in Jesus.  I read an interesting article last week about the way the new pope is trying to shift attention away from abortion and birth control and talk instead about social justice. Yes, because to talk about abortion and birth control is to talk about a very narrow even negative understanding of love.  Some would say the way the Roman Church has talked about sexual matters has done nothing to communicate a message of love.  Maybe talking about social justice will do better. Maybe if the church advocates for better health care and a justice system that treats everyone equally people will begin to understand what the love of God is like.

The Bible says that Jesus is the word of God.  His life and death spoke so powerfully of the love of God that human words took on a new depth of meaning.  The Gospel according to St John says, “In the beginning was the Word and the word was with God and the word was God . . . and the word became flesh and lived among us and we saw his glory.”  What does the word “God” mean?  Look at Jesus. What does love mean?  Look at Jesus. Yes, but also look at Jesus’ followers.  You and I are living words about God. If we go out from here to act in a way that shows people what God’s love is like then barriers are overcome and the people of San Francisco will see and hear and understand the full meaning of those small words that have changed our lives and are able to change the world.