Christopher L. Webber's Blog, page 13

Come to the Banquet

The Wedding Feast:  a sermon preached at Holy Comforter Church, Richmond, Virginia, by Christopher L. Webber on October 12, 2014.

When my wife and I lived in Japan, we learned about a significant difference  between Eastern and Western customs  when it comes to responding to an invitation. In Japan it is considered impolite  to reject an invitation. The polite thing to do is  accept the invitation and say you will be delighted to come  even if you have no intention to do so. Of course, that creates really big problems, as you can imagine, because you never know who will come to your party  or if anyone will come.



Now, the king in today’s gospel was not Japanese, nor were his guests.  They didn’t want to come and they said so. They had higher priorities.  They had other things to do.  They responded the way Americans would respond. They made excuses.  But the funny thing is that when it comes to relationships with God, Americans are rather Oriental. When it comes to responding  to God’s gracious invitation to come into a living relationship  that can turn death into life we almost always say “Yes.  Yes, of course,  of course I’ll be baptized  and call myself a Christian for statistical purposes,  I will fill in “Christian” on the census form; all that. Yes, of course, I’ll come.”  And that’s very Japanese  because many of us have no intention  really to make good on that commitment.  When push comes to shove,  when it comes to putting on our wedding garments and keeping our commitment, we seem all too often to have excuses.

It’s not that it’s all that difficult to come. God stands ready to provide any help we need.  God says, “I’m glad you said ‘Yes’ but you may find out it isn’t always easy. There may be times when you will need extra strength, sometimes just to get through the day,  certainly to get through the week.  But I’ll be there for you.  So come, come week by week,  come day by day;  let me give you the gifts you need  to strengthen and guide you. Let me feed you with sacraments.  Let me guide you with the Bible.  Let me be there for you whenever you turn to me in prayer.”  And then what happens? Well, then, I think, we’re more American, we have more in common with the guests who made light of it and went their way “Got to check on my business, got other things to do right now;  maybe I can drop by later.  How about Easter? I’d like to come more often  but right now it looks like rain.  Right now I’ve got weekend guests. I’d love to but I’m just so busy. I’d love to but I’m just so tired.”

Can you explain it?  I can’t.  The Creator of the Universe gives us life and then offers us the strength and guidance  we need to live that life and, indeed, to live forever,  and we treat it like one more optional extra. I’ve been trying to think of anything else like it: What other gatherings are we part of:  a PTA meeting, the NRA, the Sierra Club,  the Annual Parish Meeting?  You know the world will continue to turn  whether we go to those or not. So fine. But this is not like that.  This is God speaking; this is the promise of life renewed.  Why would we not be there?

Well, let me guess. Is it because we really do think  this is just one more meeting?  Have we never really understood what this invitation means? Is it because we have all our problems solved already and don’t need any help?  Really?  Wow!  That’s impressive! Or is it because we really don’t understand who God is and who we are? God invites us,  invites us to come to the banquet,  the wedding feast,  the uniting of ourselves  and our God in the sharing of a common life. What valid excuse can we imagine  for not making our response our first priority?

This parable has, I think you could say, three “movements,” like a concerto. The first movement is the invitation and rejection. The second movement takes the same theme and looks at it in a different way. The invited guests didn’t come but the king will still have the feast  and if the invited guests are elsewhere then there will be others invited.  The party will still go on. The experts sometimes suggest that this second movement  was actually added by Matthew himself  as a later reflection on Jesus’ parable. Matthew may have said to himself, “Jesus was right; the intended guests didn’t come. But look at what happened instead.  There are congregations everywhere  and the members aren’t the elite at all, they’re the odds and ends of society,  riffraff, a really odd collection;  but maybe that’s what Jesus  really wanted in the first place.” Certainly this is where we come in.

There have been times, I guess there are places still, where the church is the elite,  more like the king’s original list of guests. When I served in Bronxville, New York, the other church in town had the A-list. If you moved to Bronxville,  someone would be certain to invite you  to the other church  and you would be told it was the place to go to meet the right people.  So the Episcopal Church  was the place  where you could meet the wrong people.  We used a part of one building for a community residence for the retarded  and some of them came to church and they didn’t dress well -  one was decidedly scruffy – but it’s not up to us to winnow Jesus’ guest list.  If that’s who he wants, it’s up to us to accommodate.  In fact, if we are really Jesus’ servants,  then, like the servants in the parable  it’s our job to go out into the highways  and invite everyone we find,  yes, and make them welcome. That other church in Bronxville when I was there required its ushers to wear morning coats. Talk about wedding garments! That sends a message right up front.  The Episcopal Church, after I left, began a service Sunday evening  called the CAYA service – C-A-Y-A – “Come as you are.”  And that sends a message too.

Now, you might want to ask, “How does that fit with the parable. Weren’t wedding garments still being required  and the poor man without one thrown out?  Please hold that question for later.  Let’s look first at where we are.

The Episcopal Church has always, I think, prided itself on being inclusive. We are, after all, descended from the Church of England,  a national church for everyone, not a sectarian church for those with certain beliefs and I think part of the trouble we’re in these days is a result.  People have taken us seriously and all kinds of people have come  and some people aren’t comfortable with the result.  What about standards? What about a litmus test?  If we can’t keep anyone out,  how can I be proud of being a member?  For some people that’s important: they want to be able to brag about the quality of our membership.  “Come with us: you’ll meet all the right people.” But the king in the parable  doesn’t seem to have cared about that.  Maybe God doesn’t either.  Maybe we shouldn’t.

You see articles occasionally about churches  that set various kinds of standards. One won’t ordain homosexuals.  Another used to bar black candidates.  Most of us remember a time, in  fact,  when the Episcopal Church  wouldn’t ordain women. “It’s just about the priesthood,” these churches say,  they can still be members.” Maybe so, but it still sends a message. We’ve sometimes heard the phrase in politics about a party that “looks like America”  or a presidential cabinet that “looks like America.” As Christians, we ought to be concerned to create a church and a congregation  that looks like Jesus  or at least looks like the people Jesus hung out with: tax collectors, publicans, sinners.  We ought to try to build an inclusive church  because you get the impression from the Bible  that that’s what Jesus was up to, that’s what the apostles were up to.

St.  Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, “not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God.”(I Corinthians 1:25-29)  My way of putting it has usually been, “We ought to be a congregation  more varied than the community we’re in.  Let the Elks and Masons and even the Fire Department and PTA  represent the elite of the community if they want to or even the whole community, but let the church represent something far bigger and more inclusive.  Let us invite to the feast all we can find.”  I think that’s the message of Part II of the parable.

But then there’s the Third Movement,  and it seems somehow not to fit with the rest. Did you put that question on hold? The one about the poor man without a wedding garment?  What about him? It’s time to deal with it.  The king has sent this general invitation:  “Y’all come.”  And when this poor man does, he gets thrown out for not being properly dressed, no wedding garment.

Some say that wedding garments  were provided in those days  so he really had no excuse.  Well, we don’t know that for sure,  but what we do know is  that for us they are.  I think the first Christians would have understood because when they were baptized  they were then clothed in a white robe to symbolize the new life  they had been given.  And Paul wrote to some of his converts  urging them to “put on Christ.”(Romans 13:14)  Because, you see, that’s what happens  when we are baptized.  We “put on Christ”  because, in fact, we can’t come into God’s presence “as we are.”  No saint is pure enough or holy enough to come as we are. The only way we have of coming into God’s presence is in Christ, as members of his body.  We have to “put on Christ;” that’s the wedding garment that matters.  Morning coats won’t help and you can’t really “come as you are” either.

That was the problem with the odd man out.  Here’s this poor man who, you might imagine,  had worked hard at being a Christian all his life: served on the Vestry, tithed his income, been in church every Sunday,  sent a special check to the  hurricane relief fund, done it all, respected by the whole community,  and said to himself, “I’ve earned my way in; I can come as I am.”  But no.  You can’t earn it.  It doesn’t work that way.  Only in Christ. Only in Christ. No other way.

There’s an old communion hymn that says: “Look, Father, look on his anointed face And only look on us as found in him . . .”  And how does that happen? It begins at the font  where we were born again in Christ, where we were given a new identity,  where we became no longer plain old Bill Jones or Mary Smith  but Bill Jones Christian, Mary Smith in Christ. We put on that new identity. And then that new identity is renewed and strengthened  week by week at the altar.  The body and blood of Christ implanted in us  is nourished in us:  his body, not ours;  his blood, not ours; constant transfusions  of a new life, a new identity,  so now when we get to the final feast the king will look around and see a sea of faces  red and black and brown and white,  blonde and brunette,  infinite variety but all somehow looking the same, each one looking very much  like the king’s own child,  and all entitled to be there by that identity and no other.

So this is quite a parable. It gives you an agenda an agenda in terms of your mission to this community and beyond this community:  bring in all who will come, let the wedding hall be filled with guests.  And it gives each of us a personal agenda as well: how do I see myself? How does God see me?  what do I need to do to build up this new identity for myself?  Because we have a critical question to answer: When God looks at me, who does God see?

***

P.S.   Someone asked me after this sermon, “Well, what about Jews and Muslims?”  Good question, but the answer is a sermon for another day!  The church has (almost!) always taught that God deals separately with the unavoidably ignorant: those who never had the opportunity to hear the gospel or for reasons beyond their control were unable to receive it.  Plato and Socrates, for example, never had the opportunity to hear the Gospel so they can’t be blamed.  Then there are all those who grow up in a Muslim society and are taught from childhood that Christians are infidels.  The term used for such individuals is “invincible ignorance.”  The church has (almost!) always taught that God will deal mercifully with the invincibly ignorant.  I hope there are none of those at Holy Comforter!

Render to Caesar: a Sermon for Patrick Henry’s Church

Render to Caesar: a sermon preached at St. John’s Church, Richmond, on October 19, 2014, by Christopher L. Webber

Text: St. Matthew 22:21  Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.

Isn’t that the perfect text for Patrick Henry’s church?  

They asked Jesus about separation of church and state and he asked for a coin and ever since then people have been asking what he meant by what he said.  “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.” But that was the question to begin with.  What does belong to Caesar and what does belong to God? That argument continues today, and nowhere is the argument more fierce than in the United States.

If you look at other countries around the world you see Islamic countries where the idea of separating religion and government is brand new and there usually is no division or separation and you see European countries that think of themselves as secular and in which the churches have almost no influence. But here the churches have always played a powerful role in shaping society and the exact relationship that ought to exist between church and state has always been a battleground.

But let me review some history because I think we forget how churches and faith-based movements have shaped this country, have constantly worked for change and created change. Think of the abolition movement that dominated the nineteenth century, led for the most part by Christians, culminating in the Civil War and bringing an end to slavery.  Think of the women’s suffrage movement beginning a little later in the nineteenth century, led again largely by Christians and churches, and culminating in the Women’s Suffrage amendment in 1921.  Or think of the Civil Rights revolution of the 1960s, again led largely by Christians and churches and bringing an end to segregation and second class citizenship for African Americans.

In all of these, Christians set out to change society by ending restrictions on some groups of people. And in these movements there was anger and violence on both sides – think of Bloody Kansas and John Brown and women chaining themselves to the White House fence and think of Selma and police dogs and clubs.  In the end society was changed, laws were changed, and eventually the changes were generally accepted.

On the other hand, think of the Prohibition movement.  Here again, you can trace a long and growing effort by churches and Christian people to change society and they finally succeeded. Good Christian people were concerned by the impact of alcoholism on children and families and finally succeeded in having it outlawed.  Alcoholic beverages were prohibited. But it didn’t work and it didn’t last. The Constitution was amended but then amended again. But Prohibition was different from the other moral crusades because Prohibition was not an enhancement of freedom but a restriction of freedom and however well intended it just didn’t work.  This time the violence and lawlessness came after the change.  People, it turned out, would rather break the law  than have their freedom restricted and Prohibition resulted in one of the most lawless eras in our history.

I think we need to see our present differences in the light of all this history. It seems to me – and I’m speaking very personally because Christians differ radically on these issues and you have a perfect right to disagree with me – it seems to me that the effort to restrict abortion and to try to restrict homosexual marriage is more like the Prohibition campaign than the Civil Rights campaign, that it aims to restrict freedom, not enhance it.

Now, I think there’s altogether too much abortion but I don’t think the answer is laws.  I think the answer is in learning to use our freedom. Freedom involves risks and danger but the whole course of human history, it seems to me, has been in the direction of greater freedom and learning to use that freedom.

Jesus said, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.” That sounds like a neat division between two separate realms.  But if you look at it twice, you have to realize that it isn’t that at all. If you try to divide the world between what belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God, what would you put on Caesar’s side? What is there in the world God made that doesn’t belong to God?

Think of that, by the way, when you make your pledge for next year.  The question is not, How much should I give? but how much should I keep?  What is there that doesn’t come from God and belong to God?  And besides that, we have a Biblical vision beginning with the prophets and continued in Jesus and culminating in the Book of Revelation of a world remade, transformed. There’s that great proclamation at the end of the Book of Revelation: “The kingdoms of the world have become the kingdom of our God and of his Christ, and he shall reign for ever and ever.”

So that’s the vision Christians have had in mind in working for abolition and prohibition and women’s suffrage and civil rights: a world, a society, that truly belongs to God and in which all have equal opportunity to serve God and offer God their gifts.

But there’s another aspect of our history: Christians in this country come from two very different places in their understanding of government and its role in our lives and when we set out to reshape society I think we have two very different visions and the visions clash.  There are Christian churches, on the one hand, that come from a long tradition of establishment, of working with government for the interests of the whole society. The Episcopal Church with its background in the established Church of England has a very strong tradition of establishment but so do Lutherans and Presbyterians who were part of the establishment in Scotland and Switzerland and Scandinavia and much of Germany. Even the Congregationalists who came here as dissenters became the establishment in New England. So there are those churches on the one hand but on the other hand there were the Baptists and Evangelicals who were never the establishment in Europe or America, never had responsibility to shape a society but existed almost always as a persecuted minority.    Their focus was not on changing society – they couldn’t – but on the hereafter, the end times, when Christ would return and establish his kingdom and set things right for them.

Meanwhile what mattered to them was individual salvation and individual morality. Evangelicals remember when they were converted, Episcopalians remember when they were baptised into the church. The evangelical tradition has been to oppose Caesar and not to imagine that any good could come from government.  Their vision has been of churches working on individual morality, not social issues.  They could get enthusiastic about Prohibition but not Civil Rights. And today their focus is again on individual morality: abortion and homosexuality rather than unemployment and health care and the larger social issues.  Even now, with the evangelical churches playing a major role in our society and electing government leaders it’s individual morality that gets their concern:  The individual right to own a gun, for instance, rather than the social concern for the environment.  A church that puts its focus on the coming end of the world won’t care much about the environment and climate change. Why think about long term when there may not be a long term?  The evangelical churches have tended to understand Jesus’ words to mean, “Let government do its thing and let Christians do their thing and keep government out of our lives.” Even in recent elections, when more evangelicals voted than ever before, the percentage of participation was still below the national average. There’s a long tradition of distrust of government.

I think that’s partly why the government was so ineffective in responding to Hurricane Katrina.  We had a government then and a dominant force in government still that doesn’t really believe in government.  It’s not that they’re indifferent to human need; they will give as generously as anyone and maybe more generously than those of us who think government ought to act; it’s just that they don’t trust government to do the job.  And the tragedy is that these two great Christian traditions have a lot in common and a lot to learn from each other. Just speaking personally I maybe trust government or rely on government too much. Sometimes more government isn’t the answer.  Sometimes it’s up to us as individuals to act. And sometimes it isn’t enough just to go to church and say the Creed. Sometimes we Episcopalians don’t spend nearly enough time reading the Bible and saying our prayers and concerning ourselves with our own sinfulness and need for conversion and God’s love for us as individuals.  And sometimes we don’t worry enough about the end of the world and the coming judgment.

But here we are in a country with more practicing Christians than any other and a chance to make a real difference in our own society and the world and instead of working together we find ourselves at each other’s throats.  Christians are and ought to be concerned about human need; they are, and they ought to be,    concerned about government control over our lives; they are, and they ought to be, concerned about building a personal relationship with the God revealed to us in Jesus Christ. One tradition has perhaps trusted government too much; the other tradition has trusted government too little. So we need to reach out to each other and learn from each other and try together to give God the honor and thankfulness that belong to God.

“Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.” All things belong to God; Caesar is here only to serve God.  And part of our task is understanding what Caesar’s role is: is it to enforce God’s laws or to enhance human freedom?  Both are good, but how do you balance those goals?  Now, these are not easy questions but Christians ought to be able to discuss them without anger, trying to learn from each other, and bearing in mind the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples: “your kingdom come, your will be done on earth.”  That’s the goal. That’s what we need to work for and pray for.

Angels and Us

Christians need to be very careful about what they say and think about angels because, in the first place, the Bible has very little to say on the subject.  It is pretty clear that the idea of angels came into Judaism and therefore Christianity from pagan religions that were not monotheistic. There were pagan religions that imagined all kinds of greater and lesser deities and angels fit in somewhere between the gods and the human race.  And that seemed to make sense to the Jews because it filled a vacancy, so to speak. Primitive Judaism had a clear idea of a God beyond all imagining.   There could be no images of God, no likeness of God, because God was so far beyond.  And true as that may be it, left the Jews feeling a little isolated.

Are there angels?  Well, why not?  The part of creation we know firsthand, the material, tangible part that you can weigh and measure and look at under a microscope involves such a beautifully graded series of phenomena from rocks to clouds and from microbes to jelly fish to sharks and whales and snakes and frogs and cats and dogs and horses and monkeys and chimpanzees to human beings that we should ask, “Why would the series stop there and leave us with that immense, immeasurable gap between us and God with nothing at all in between.  If God can create so much and at the climax of it all the living soul, flesh and spirit human, why not pure spirit? Why not angels and archangels and all the company of heaven?

God obviously could, so it seems likely God would.  And why?  Well, why did God make giraffes and anteaters and porcupines?  The Psalms and the Book of Job speak of leviathan, the great sea monster, the whale, which, says the Bible, “you made for the sport of it.”  Sure, just for fun.  And so why not angels for the fun of it, for the pleasure of their company, and why not give them something to do when they tire of playing their harps?  Why not use them as messengers, as guides, to provide additional help for human beings, who need all the help they can get?  Why should there not be angels?

The great hymn we will sing at the Offertory describes wonderfully the various roles of angels.  There is Michael, first of all: the commanding general of the armies of heaven: “peacemaker” the hymn calls him, “driving out conflict and hatred.”  Michael: the name means “Who is like God?”  And who better than an angel to remind us that no one is like God?

And then there is Gabriel, the messenger who came to Mary with the news  of the role for which God had chosen her.  And there is Raphael, the healer, “health bringer blessed, aiding every sufferer.”

So the angels are not “one note Johnnies.”  They play various roles,, but all as God’s agents toward us – at least as far as we know.  If there is life elsewhere in the universe, who knows what other roles they may play there?  They play various roles on our behalf but almost always invisible, unseen, even unknown.  And that’s important.  In the Book of Revelation John tells us how in his vision he saw an angel and fell down at the angel’s feet – - and was rebuked.   “Worship God,” said the angel. The last thing an angel would want to do is come between us and God.  And so we are almost never aware of angelic presence –  and shouldn’t be. The angel we see would normally be a clumsy angel. A prompter in a play has a vital role but if you become aware of the prompter, that’s not a good job.  So, too, with the angels.  Normally, we should never see them unless we are very sensitive or, as I said, the angel is very clumsy.

Let me tell you a story.  When I was very small my mother sent me down cellar one day to get something and bring it up.  Now that was back in the days when cellars were serious places, not like the modern paneled and carpeted dens and recreation rooms and TV lounges.  No, I’m talking about a dirt floored cellar with a monstrous great furnace in the middle and flues going up in all directions and cobwebs and dark corners. I said I didn’t want to go; I said it was dark in the cellar and there were wolves.  “It’s all right,” my mother said, “God will send an angel to protect you.”  “But I can see the wolves,” I said, “and I can’t see the angels.”

Now that is very good theology.   That’s the problem with angels.  Most of the time, if they’re doing their job right, you can’t see them. But I think it does help to know we are not alone, not alone when we have to go into the dark cellars and scary places, not alone when we wonder where everyone else is, not alone when we need the kind of help human beings can’t always give. Angels are there for that.

But maybe the most important thing to know about angels in God’s ultimate plan is that we are more important than they.  Angels, you know, have a pretty dull life.  They’re pure spirit.  They are incapable of sin, incapable of change, incapable of progress.

There’s an old Hasidic saying that goes:”The virtue of angels is that they cannot deteriorate; their flaw is that they cannot improve.  Man’s flaw is that he can deteriorate, and his virtue is that he can improve.”

So I think it’s better to be a human being than an angel.  They are what they are and always will be.  But hear what the Bible says of us: “What are human beings that you are mindful of them or mortals that you care for them?  You made them a little lower than the angels and crown them with glory and honor.”

Our destiny is greater than theirs.  At the last, much more clearly than now, angels will serve us.   So give thanks for the existence of angels and the help we will seldom know they provide, but keep them in their place and worship God alone.

Dear Friends

Curious about Dear Friends: The Letters of St. Paul to Christians in America ?  Here’s an example: Paul wrote first to Christians in Galatia; in Dear Friends, he writes a similar letter to Christians in Texas.  Here are some excerpts to illustrate how this works.  First from Galatians:

Galatians 1:1 Paul an apostle — sent neither by human commission nor from human authorities, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead — 2 and all the members of God’s family1 who are with me, To the churches of Galatia: 3 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, 4 who gave himself for our sins to set us free from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, 5 to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen. 6 I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel — 7 not that there is another gospel, but there are some who are confusing you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. 8 But even if we or an angel1 from heaven should proclaim to you a gospel contrary to what we proclaimed to you, let that one be accursed! 9 As we have said before, so now I repeat, if anyone proclaims to you a gospel contrary to what you received, let that one be accursed! . . .

3:1 You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly exhibited as crucified! 2 The only thing I want to learn from you is this: Did you receive the Spirit by doing the works of the law or by believing what you heard? 3 Are you so foolish? Having started with the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh? 4 Did you experience so much for nothing? — if it really was for nothing.

That’s what Paul wrote to the Galatians.                

Here’s what Paul might write to Texans today:

Dear Friends in Texas,

I write to you as an apostle with no commission from human authorities but rather from Jesus Christ, who was raised from death by God the Father.  I write to you on behalf of the members of God’s family who are with me.  Together we salute you and pray that grace and peace may be yours from God our Father and Jesus Christ, our risen Lord, who died to set us free from the evils of this wicked age and open to us a way of life and peace and true freedom.

I find it hard to believe that you have turned away so quickly from the gospel I proclaimed to you and are following a different gospel.  Of course there is no other gospel, but I think you have been confused by some who have their own agenda.  Whoever they are, I condemn them.  Even if an angel from heaven brings you a gospel other than the gospel I preach, let that one be condemned.  I said it before and I will say it again: if someone teaches a gospel different from the gospel I teach, let that one be condemned! . . .

2   Let me give you some examples of what I mean.  Throughout your churches you proclaim rightly enough the saving death of Jesus on the cross and you rejoice in being set free from your sins by the blood of Christ.  That is good, but then you turn back to the law to condemn others and to enforce patterns of behavior for others saying that their lives must be ruled by law.  I am told that you condemn those who live in faithful relationships though many of you have failed to be faithful in your own relationships and have been glad to receive forgiveness and be offered a new beginning.  But if you have failed to be faithful yourselves how can you condemn those who are faithful?  Why should the law you have broken apply to others if you cannot keep it yourselves?

Are you not also returning to the bondage of law when you deny all access to medical help for those who cannot face the difficulties of childbirth?  I myself condemn all those who would prevent life from emerging or restrict the lives of children or shorten the lives of the sick and dying or end any life prematurely.  God is the Lord of life and sent the Son to open the way of life.  I repeat, God is the Lord of life and we have been given no authority to act on God’s behalf to determine when life should begin or end.  But when did Jesus ever erect a law by which we might judge others?  “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged,” was his teaching, yet you judge others and condemn those who disagree with you.  I wish all abortion clinics could be closed this very day, but I cannot force my opinion on others whose circumstances and motives are unknown to me.  I pray for them but I will not turn to the law to compel them against their will.

And how, if you value life, can you as followers of Jesus Christ use the law to bring death to those who have taken the lives of others?  Did not Jesus, dying under the law, forgive his murderers and open heaven to his fellow sufferer?  Can you truly imagine that Jesus would condemn anyone to death? . . .

3  You foolish Texans!  Who has bewitched you?  Tell me this: when you received the gospel did you become Christians by obedience to the law?  Of course you learned the law but that was to your condemnation.  You held up the law to see your failure and found nothing in it to enable you to escape the penalty.  When the law comes, we die, but when grace comes we are set free from the law to live in Christ . . .

Read more by getting your own copy of Dear Friends: The Letters of St. Paul to Christians in America.  Use this link:  http://amzn.com/1631580159

STEWARDSHIP

“Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you. . . ,”  A sermon preached by Christopher L. Webber at the Church of the Incarnation, San Francisco, on the Feast of the Dedication        September 21, 2014.

I have been asked to preach this morning about stewardship – and that’s easy.

I remember the bishop who used to say, “Just give until it hurts.”  He also used to say, “You can’t take it with you; you never see a Brinks truck following the hearse.”

Stewardship is easy.  Did you know that the Episcopal Church years ago adopted the Biblical tithe as the standard? I think it’s one of our best kept secrets!  But tithing makes stewardship easy: no worrying about how much to give: just put down your income and divide by ten and fill in your pledge.  Actually it’s not that easy because some think you should tithe before taxes and some afterwards and some think the whole tithe should go to the church and other charities afterwards and some think the tithe should be divided between the church and the Sierra Club and Red Cross and et cetera.  But the tithe sets a standard.

I’m always amused by parishes that resolve to elect no one to the Vestry who isn’t “tithing or working toward tithing.” “Working toward tithing” provides a lot of room to grow. Is that a five year plan or fifty?  It’s one thing if you are already at 9% and another if you’re at 1%.  The easy way to do it is just do it.

I like the story of the widow with small children and hardly any income who tithed to her church and it concerned the elders of the church that she was giving so much when she had so little so finally they went to her and said, “We’re so concerned for your situation that we’ve agreed you shouldn’t need to tithe.”  And her eyes filled with tears and she said “You are taking away the one thing that makes my life worthwhile.”

I also like the story of the man who began to tithe as a child. He made a commitment to God that he would tithe whatever he had.  When his allowance was a dime, he put a penny in the plate and when he got an after school job and earned a dollar a week he put a dime in the plate. When he got out of school and went to work for a hundred dollars a week (at MacDonald’s?) he put ten dollars in his offering envelope. And he did very well.  He got better and better jobs.  When he earned a thousand dollars a week he put a hundred dollars in the plate and when he earned ten times that he wrote a weekly check for a thousand dollars. But he kept doing better and better and finally he went to his pastor and said “When I was a child I made a commitment to God to return a tenth of whatever I was given but now I’m earning so much that that tithe is just way too big and I want you to ask God to excuse me from that commitment I made.” And the pastor said, “Well, I don’t think I can ask God to let you break your promise, but I can ask God to reduce your income back to where you feel you can tithe.”

So stewardship is easy to talk about and important to think about and of course it’s not just stewardship of our private resources but of our public resources as well, the water we drink and the air we breath. We’ve only begun in recent years to realize how vital it is that we be better stewards of this earth.  And when we think in those terms, we realize that stewardship isn’t about ten percent, it’s about a hundred percent.  I mean, suppose you tithe, put ten percent in the plate each week and invest the other ninety per cent in industries that destroy the environment. What good is that? What good is it to give back ten percent in thanksgiving for all that God has given us and use the remaining ninety per cent to destroy what God has given us.

Stewardship is about the responsibility we have to God for all that God has given us, for the whole of creation. We have the ability to conserve or destroy.  God put us in charge but only recently did that assume the proportions it now has. There was a time when there was all the clean water we needed and we could burn coal in our furnaces and the air would be as clean as ever because there were so many fewer people and fewer furnaces. Not any more.  This whole blue earth is in our hands to conserve or destroy. But I hardly have to preach about that because we can’t help getting that message if we watch television at all or read a newspaper.

So stewardship is easy.  The church and Bible give us an easy standard and the media take it from there to remind us of the need.

Suppose you went away for a year, a sabbatical, a long overdue vacation, the first year of retirement, or even a work assignment that required living elsewhere for a year. So suppose you look around for someone to live in your house and take care of it while you’re away and suppose you came back and found it almost totally destroyed, trashed. And suppose that whoever you had entrusted your estate to said, “But I kept ten percent for you!”

Jesus told a parable with a similar theme about a man who entrusted three servants with ten and five and one units of wealth and returned to find the first two had invested their fund and made more while the third had buried it and gave back exactly what he’d been given. That was not stewardship and even though he had kept it safe it was taken away and given to those who knew what to do with a gift.

Stewardship is about everything God has given us.  Stewardship is not just putting it all in the plate but caring for it, using it wisely and well, as you would want someone to care for your possessions in stewardship.  So stewardship is easy and I was happy to accept the assignment to preach about it. But then they said, “Here are the readings,” and the readings have nothing to do with stewardship. The readings are all about the anniversary, the dedication of the church. It’s all about buildings. It seems like a totally different subject.

But let me ask you to look more closely.  Look carefully at the first reading. Yes, it’s about dedicating a building, it’s about Solomon dedicating the temple in Jerusalem, but listen to what Solomon said: “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built!”  “Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you. . .”

Stewardship is easy.  God is not.  You can put your pledge in an envelope but can you contain God in your mind or heart? There are those who think church attendance is down because we live in a scientific age and know so much about the universe. We know nothing.  We are children playing at the edge of the ocean and we have hardly any idea of what the ocean contains or what lies beyond.

Solomon, two thousand years ago, probably thought the earth was flat and that the sun went around it. Now we know that the earth is round and goes around the sun.  Big deal. Maybe we know twice as much as Solomon, maybe a thousand times as much, but how much remains far beyond our comprehension? What lies beyond the universe?  What led to the big bang at the moment of creation? What was there before that? What is that God like who knows the thoughts of three billion hearts and cares about each one, each one? Does the terrorist who beheads a captive know that? Does the President who orders a drone strike to deal with a terrorist remember that? Do the Californians who turn back a busload of immigrant children remember that? Do you and I when we distribute our income between ourselves and others remember that? God made and God cares for every single one.

The Prayer Book, you know, contains orders of prayer for morning and evening and suggested readings from the Old and New Testaments. This last couple of weeks we’ve been reading through the Book of Job, that ultimate exploration of the problem of evil. Why do bad things happen to good people? There was a best selling book by that title a few years ago.  The author proposed that there were only two possible answers: either God is not all-powerful or God is not good. His solution was to suggest that God is not all-powerful. So what power is it that limits God’s power?  I think that would be God.

The Book of Job has a better answer: “Consider the hippopotamus.” That is God’s last word to Job: “Consider the hippopotamus,” and Job is satisfied with that answer. Consider the butterfly if you prefer.  But can you begin to create such wonders? So we can make iPads: wonderful!  Yes, and we can throw them away when a new improved model comes along. There’s a small blue butterfly indigenous to Golden Gate Heights just east of here.  There aren’t many left, but we can’t replace them. We can do iPads but not butterflies.

At the end of the book, Job ponders the hippopotamus and realizes that he has “uttered things that I did not understand; things too wonderful for me that I did not know.” Has science indeed answered all our questions and made God unnecessary? God might say to us, “Consider Iraq.  Consider Israel and Hamas. Yes, and the hippopotamus and the black holes and spiral galaxies and let me know when you can answer all my questions.”

One of the psalms asks, “What are human beings that you visit them or human beings that you care for them?” Three thousand years later that question also is unanswered. Why should God care?  Why indeed should God care? And maybe that’s the other side of the scientific coin, if I can put it that way.  Science can say, “We are able to answer all these questions, so who needs God?” Or it can say more honestly, “The universe is so vast and so unknowable that any Creator God is beyond imagining.” True; indeed God is beyond all imagining and the answers we have are childish answers. Does that mean there is no God?

In a few minutes we will recite the Nicene Creed and those are childish statements using our limited vocabulary to paint the best picture of God that we can. Christians have fought and died over those answers as if they were a full and final analysis of the being and nature of God. No, they are far from that and you are free to question any part of it and suggest better answers if you can.  But for the moment, the last 15-some centuries of moments they’re the best we have and they are enormously helpful but let’s not imagine that they are a full and final definition of God. Solomon knew God could not be contained in any human building and we should know that God cannot be contained in our minds or in any form of words.

And yet, the Bible tells us, Jesus told us, the readings today tell us, this unimaginable God cares for you and invites your response.  “Come to him” says the second reading “Come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and 5 like living stones, let yourselves be built1 into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”  “Come to him . . .” Insofar as God can be known God is known in Jesus and our challenge is to know that much and to be known ourselves, to be known to God ourselves.  However little we know about God, God knows everything about us including, to get back to my starting point, the size of the check in our offering envelope.

I cannot imagine a God so small or a God so great that any moment of my life is unknown or unimportant to the God who comes here in Jesus.  How could the Temple in Jerusalem, this hundred year old church, this Creed we recite, this piece of bread and sip of wine, contain the eternal God?  Yet this God would be born in a stable, die on a cross, and, yes, come to us here today in word and sacrament and wait for our response.

MOVING FORWARD

A sermon preached by Christopher L. Webber at the Church of the Incarnation, San Francisco, on September 11, 2005.

Several weeks ago, as many of you know,  I went off on a cruise with my wife and my daughter’s family.  And you know how it is on a vacation: you run out of things to read and I wound up reading the society pages  of the New York Times which someone had brought along.  Specifically, I read the wedding pages and I noticed something disconcerting: here were all these wedding notices as usual, but things have changed.  It used to be that the pictures were always of the bride; now they’re always of the happy couple.  I knew about that.  It used to be that they were always of a man and a woman, but sometimes now the happy couple are of the same sex.  I also knew about that.

But there was another change I hadn’t noticed before because you have to read the text and pay close attention. There was a day  when a substantial number  of the weddings announced  took place in the Episcopal Church. Not any more. Out of forty or fifty notices, I saw that just two were in the Episcopal Church. Well, we knew church attendance was down  but that wasn’t all. Where were these young couples – and some middle-aged couples – getting married? If not the Episcopal Church, where?  It wasn’t the Methodist church  or the Presbyterian Church or the Baptist Church  or Roman Catholic Church  or even some sort of Pentecostal place. No, the largest number were being married in hotels and resorts  and by a minister of the Universal Life Church -  which is not a church at all  but an organization that sells ordination certificates for people who want to get married  and have no church connection. Often the newspaper notice said the wedding was performed by a brother or sister  or friend of the bride or groom “who was ordained for the occasion  by the Universal Life Church.” In other words, there was no real church connection  of any kind.

Now, that’s an amazing transformation  of the religious landscape and social landscape  in one generation. No wonder you don’t see bigger crowds on Sunday morning. I went to a meeting yesterday at which we had a report  that church attendance at Episcopal Churches in the Diocese of California  is down by a third in the last eight years. It’s as if the world has changed in one generation,  as if we’ve come into a whole new world where traditional faith is an optional extra.

Maybe when we think about that we can appreciate better  the situation of the Hebrew slaves  who passed through the Red Sea  in this morning’s reading.  They passed through the Red Sea  into a terrifying new world: a desert stretching endlessly in all directions with no familiar landmarks, with no sense of direction,  with no slave masters  to tell them what to do. Free at last,  free at last, but now what?  How do you begin again  and build a new society?

I think we may be in the position of the Hebrew slaves  who had lived in a familiar society, familiar landscape, for generations,  and suddenly they were somewhere else and needed to construct a new society,  a new world in which to live.  I wonder how people hear that first reading  if they live on the Gulf Coast and remember  Hurricane Katrina or the New York area and remember Hurricane Sandy.  I wonder how it sounds to come to church and hear about passing through walls of water into a new world.  I think not only Americans  but Japanese and Filipinos and others may come to the story now  with a very different perspective. We have watched the walls of water  sweep in on the coasts of Japan and Mindanao.  We have seen the waves surge through  the streets of New Orleans and New York City,  and we have been reminded of how powerless we are  in the face of water. It gives me a new respect  for those Hebrew refugees who went into the Red Sea  between the walls of water. Would you have done that?

I wonder whether there has been any turning point in history more critical. Suppose they had turned back.  Suppose they had gone back into  the old, comfortable familiar slavery.  Often in years to come they did wish they had done exactly that.  They came to Moses and said, “Have you brought us out into the wilderness  to kill us?  Were there no graves in Egypt?” At least when you’re a slave  you don’t have much to worry about: no bills to pay, no income tax, no elections to vote in. Suppose they had gone back:  did God have an alternative plan to bring down the Ten Commandments  and create a monotheistic faith and send the Messiah? We’ll never know.  But we do know that the Hebrews went into the Red Sea  and came out the other side and had a history that changed the world forever.

What’s that got to do with us?  Well, where are we? Where are we, the Church of the Incarnation, on September 14, 2014?  Are we ready to pass between walls of water and change the world  as we prepare to move into our second century?  Or are we maybe wishing  we could turn the clock back  and have things the way they used to be? Moses made a speech at the end of his life  in which he explained why they were there, why God had called them.  He said:  “The LORD did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because you were more in number than any people; for you were the fewest of all people: But because the LORD loved you . . .” And, you know, that’s a pattern: that’s how God works.  God took a rag-tag mob of slaves and made them a chosen people and changed the world.

Later, when God asked Gideon to rescue the people, Gideon assembled a powerful army but God winnowed out the troops that responded, deliberately, so Gideon was left with a tiny band that coudn’t possibly have defeated the Midianites, the enemy, by their own power and no one could say, “We did it ourselves.” They couldn’t have done it themselves, but with God’s help they did it.

When God called Paul to take the gospel to the Gentiles, Paul wrote to the Corinthians to explain how God works: He wrote: “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God.”  But God used Paul and his little band of converts, weak and despised and persecuted though they were, to change the world.

So where are we, the Church of the Incarnation, on September 14, 2014?  Are we ready to change the world? Or are we maybe wishing we could turn back and have things the way they used to be?  Moses’ rabble of slaves knew exactly how things used to be and the security they left behind, but they went ahead between those walls of water with death on both sides and no telling when the wind would stop and the waters might roll back. They went ahead with no clue what lay on the other side. They went ahead.

I was remembering recently how I used to drive around the northwest corner of Connecticut. Mostly I was alone and going on church business but once in awhile I’d go somewhere with someone else driving and then I would see things at the side of the road I didn’t know were there: a house, a garden, a waterfall.  It was interesting, but it was never anything I needed to know to get where I was going. So I didn’t see it when I was driving myself because I had to keep my eyes on the road ahead.

Now, picture those slaves stopping to look at those walls of water: I’ll bet there were things to see they would never have seen any other time: sharks maybe, or shipwrecks, or a rare shell. Suppose they had stopped to pick something up. How long was that wall going to stay in place?  What are the walls around us?  Have you stopped to look? I have. What is it that so threatens us that we sometimes wonder whether we’ll make it through? When I stop to look around I see some threatening walls of water that make me wonder sometimes whether we can make it through. There’s apathy: that’s the wall on the left.  Apathy: all those nominal members who don’t really contribute much. Maybe they come to church whenever they can, but lots of things can get in the way. Maybe they even make a pledge but not enough to affect their life style. I wonder if their neighbors would ever guess that God is calling them to make a difference in this community.  Apathy could swamp us; the wall of apathy could just sweep back and we would be sunami victims, refugees on the Gulf Coast.

The wall on the other side might be – well, there are various terms you could use, but let’s try “personality clashes.”  Jerry can’t get along with Suzie; Sam can’t stand working with Griselda. I’ll bet some of those fleeing slaves had built up a whole lot of those over the years.  “I just can’t work with Caleb because I’m trying to build this pyramid and he’s always talking about what he saw on television last night; drives me crazy.”  You can stop and look at those walls if you want and agonize over them, but wouldn’t it be better to keep on walking and get through the Red Sea and find out what’s over there on the other side before the water rolls back and the opportunity is gone?  You take time to stop and critique someone else’s performance or non-performance and you may never make it across.

Water is dangerous stuff.  People in Japan and New Jersey and the Philippines and New Orleans know that now if they didn’t before. But have you stopped to wonder why people choose to live in places like that anyway? Why would anyone settle down that close to the water when we know what water can do? Well, they live there because water is also a source of life. You can make a living out of fishing and out of commerce. Who would live in the midwest if not for the Mississippi? Who would live in San Francisco, or New York or London if not for the water-borne commerce? The Book of Revelation pictures a stream of water flowing through the new Jerusalem and wherever the water comes it brings life.  Rivers bring life. They also bring floods, and bring death.

I like to point out to parents of a baby to be baptized  that water is a sign of death. We symbolically sink that child down between the walls of water, bury the child in the water, because that child needs to pass through death as we all do to come to the place of life. Baptism is a symbol of life in the church; it’s what the Hebrews were doing in the Red Sea; passing through death to get to life. But we get there by keeping our eyes on the goal, on the road ahead, not being distracted by what other people around us are doing or not doing; just keeping straight on, doing what needs to be done.

And don’t worry about the Egyptians either.  Yes, they have a pretty big army and all the latest equipment: chariots with real wheels on them, horses that can outrun you without trying.  Much good it did them.  Why are we so fixated on the numbers game?  If we need more people, God will know that before we do and provide. But maybe we have all the people we need to do what needs to be done. It’s not about success; it’s about serving God.  We Americans have the strongest army in the history of the world but that isn’t going to decide the course of world events. It’s not size and human power that determines the outcome. If you read the Bible, you can’t help getting that message. The Romans had the biggest army in the middle east but the Roman empire crumbled and the Christian church survived. When God calls people to serve the Kingdom, God provides the means to do the job. Not the power we might have liked to have but enough with faith, just barely enough, to do what needs to be done.

And one more thing: did you notice what Moses did by way of leadership? Stretched out his hand. That’s all: just stretched out his hand.  Was he the first one through or the last? The Bible doesn’t say.  Maybe he just stood there with his hand out and let people do their thing. Sometimes people who want to be leaders can get in the way.  Moses maybe knew that and just stood back and watched. It’s not leadership to do things for people; that cripples them. It’s leadership to stand back and let people do what needs doing themselves.

The Chinese sage, Lao-tse once said: A leader is best when people barely know he exists. Not so good when people obey and acclaim him. Worse when they despise him. But of a good leader who talks little, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: “We did it ourselves.”

And indeed that is what God wants you to say.  Because you are the people of God in this place. Tsunamis and hurricanes are probably not much of a threat in the Sunset, the Red Sea is a long way off, but our situation is not much different from that of Moses and the Hebrew people or Paul and the people of Corinth. God has given us amazing resources: a wonderful building, deeply committed people, and a job to do. We have much for which to be thankful and if we keep our eyes on the land ahead and keep walking, keep on walking, just keep on walking with confidence that God will get us through God will keep those walls of water right where they are as long as necessary for us to cross over. And we will cross over, and we will give God the praise.

Yes, Nancy, you have

On 8/15/2014 3:20 PM, Nancy Pelosi wrote:
Sorry to email you again, Christopher. (I think it’s the 4th time this week?)

I know you’ve gotten emails from President Obama and Vice President Biden, as well.

I promise it’s all for good reason.

We keep emailing because we have to catch up to Boehner.

This week, he launched $30 million worth of anti-Obama attack ads. And voters around the country will be seeing those ads from now until election day.

The only way we can respond to this barrage of attacks is if you keep chipping in. We’re down to our last 6 hours and still coming up $26,629 short. Can I count on you today?


On 8/15/2014  3:54 PM  Christopher L. Webber wrote:
Yes, Nancy, you have mailed me often and so have many others – but the lesson I took away from Eric Cantor’s recent loss was that money doesn’t determine outcomes.  I will not give simply to try to match Republican or Koch brothers spending because they will then have an excuse to spend more and there’s no end of it.  If I saw the President taking a bold stand on immigrants or climate change or a dozen other issues, I might be more motivated but as it is I think I can make more of a difference supporting the ACLU or Sierra Club or an organization dedicated to making more of a difference than the Democratic Party seems able to do.

Christopher L. Webber

The Same Lord

A sermon preached by Christopher L. Webber at the Church of the Incarnation, San Francisco, on August 10, 2014.

Suppose St. Paul were alive and well today and living – well, maybe in Tel Aviv, maybe in Istanbul – and suppose he were still writing letters. Of course, today I think that he would use a computer and a voice dictation program; a good scribe is hard to find these days.  But if he were working today, I think he might write a series of letters to American cities: Washington, Dallas, San Francisco, New York.  And he would have a number of issues to deal with, but I think the one we would all be waiting for would be the letter to Washington – probably a pretty long letter, covering all sorts of subjects.

To be honest, I’m thinking about this because I have a book coming out next month which is a collection of the letters I would write today if I were St. Paul and there are two letters to the Californians to replace the two to the Corinthians. (I have to admit that I wrote those before I had moved to California or even thought about it.  They might be different if I were to write them now.)  There is, of course, one to Washington, the capitol of the modern empire to replace the one to Rome, the capitol of the old empire.  Some of the advice Paul gave the Romans would still be relevant: “Owe no one anything,” he wrote to the Romans, “except to love one another.” That’s a message for the members of Congress to ponder! But I’ll leave that for others and move on to inter-faith relationships.

When Paul wrote to the Christians in Rome, he used much of the letter to write about inter-faith relationships. He wrote specifically about the relationship between Christians and Jews. He agonized about it. That there should even be a division between them was a grief to Paul. It seemed so clear to him that the ancient purpose of God had been fulfilled in Jesus. Everything the Jews had been waiting for had been fulfilled in Jesus. So for three complicated chapters Paul wrestles with the issue and last week, this week, and next week we get brief excerpts from that passage in which Paul is agonizing about why the great majority of the Jews probably 90% have not accepted the Messiah and how it could be that God would have let it happen.

If God had been planning for centuries to do the most dramatic thing in history, how could God be satisfied with a 10% approval rating?  Even the United States Congress gets better ratings than that! (Not much better, but some!) But now the long-awaited Messiah had come. God had come into this world in Jesus of Nazareth and most of his people had rejected him. So what happened? What went wrong?  Why this division?  Paul had had years to think about it and in writing to the Romans he gives them his theory. And it’s all set out in Chapters 9-11 of the Epistle to the Romans.

Now, the readings we are assigned skip over some of the best parts of the story Paul tells, but the gist of the argument is simple: God is wiser than we are and God has a plan. God’s plan is to take that rejection and use it to accomplish far more than God’s people could ever imagine.  Did the Jews reject Jesus? Yes, but look at the result: the result is Gentiles turning to God in record numbers. Because of the Jewish rejection of Jesus the apostles turned to the Gentiles and look at the result. If Paul were writing now he could feel even more justified in his logic. Look it up on the web, there are now about 13 million Jews in the world, but 2 billion Christians. That’s what God accomplished out of human failure.

So what could God do for an encore? When Paul wrote to Rome he imagined a time when Jews and Christians would be brought back together, separate branches with a common root, and all to the glory of God. And you can really begin to imagine it today with Jews and Christians talking together at more depth than ever and with a greater desire to understand each other.  But if Paul were writing to Washington now, I don’t think Jews and Christians would still be his priority. I think he might feel that his projection about Christians and Jews was on target and no need to worry, but he would also certainly see, looking at the world around him and the world around us, that there are bigger issues, bigger problems, bigger questions.

Two thousand years ago it seemed so obvious that when the Messiah came God’s purpose would be fulfilled.  All that might remain would be the job of getting the message out.  But that was far from simple.  What remained to be done, in fact, was a world-wide mission, still only one-third complete.  2000 years later there is still a long way to go: there are hundreds of millions who have never heard the gospel or even about one Creator God.  So, OK; in God’s timing it will take a little longer and the reuniting of Jews and Christians is still to be done.  But who in Paul’s day would ever have imagined that a whole new form of monotheism would come on the scene and even for awhile seem destined to replace both Judaism and Christianity.

Do you know that five hundred years ago, there were more Muslims in the world than Christians and Jews together?  How does that fit the picture? What was God doing in that?  Well, if Paul were writing to Washington today and felt that the people there needed some guidance – and surely they do! – he could certainly begin with the same analysis he brought to the question of Christians and Jews 2000 years ago. We’ll hear a little more about this next week but you really ought to read chapters 9-11 of Romans yourself to get the full impact. In brief, what Paul says is that God has used the Jewish failure to accept Christ to make the gospel known to the Gentiles. His own words are: “a hardening has come upon part of Israel, until the full number of the Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved . . .”  God has, so to speak, put 13 million on hold until billions more are gathered in.

But now go back to the 7th century. Christianity had been established in the Roman Empire but the Roman Empire had fallen and Christianity in the west was struggling to survive in what has been called “the Dark Ages.”  It really wasn’t clear that the church in the West would survive at all. And in the East, the eastern church, centered in Constantinople, had become the established church of the Byzantine empire with all the problems that go with establishment: a comfortable existence, certainly, but not much missionary zeal. And the Byzantine Empire was crumbling anyway.  So the prospects for Christianity weren’t all that bright.  And then, into this situation, came a man named Mohammed with enormous energy and organizational skill and a vision of one God and a pattern of life centered in prayer and alms giving, and concern for the poor.  And, no, they didn’t know Jesus but they did affirm one God and prayer and alms giving and carried it to millions who had not yet learned any of that.

So why doesn’t that fit into God’s purpose? If that vision and zeal in less than a hundred years could carry this new monotheism from Spain to India and bring into its fold millions upon millions why could that also not be fitted into God’s final plan?  Jews and Christians in Paul’s day were utterly irreconcilable. Christians and Muslims from Mohammed’s time to our own  have been utterly irreconcilable but Paul had faith that God could do more than even he could imagine and bring together people who had much in common already. Why can’t the same faith be ours?

Listen again to today’s epistle:

There is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him. For, ‘Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’

Now, there’s a simplistic version of this that you often hear: stuff about “all roads lead to Rome” and “we all believe in the same God” and “we’re all going to the same place eventually” and so on. I’ve had to argue with Vestry members about the importance of mission. I’ve been asked.  “Why should we try to change other people to our beliefs?” That’s not what St. Paul was saying.  It was certainly not St. Paul’s opinion that it didn’t matter what you believed. If it had been, he could have stayed home and been a successful rabbi. Instead he gave it all up to endure enormous hardship:

Thrice was I beaten with rods,” he writes, “once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep; in journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; 27 In weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness.

Paul didn’t endure all that because he thought it made no difference.  It did make a difference. It still does. Christianity today, for all its divisions, for all its failures, is light years ahead of Islam in terms of dealing with the 21st century world, light years ahead in terms of working through issues of sexuality and human relationships.  Not that we are doing all that well, but at least we are working openly on these issues and making progress.  Islam by and large has yet to recognize these problems at all.  And I believe we are working on these issues simply because at the heart of the Christian faith is a knowledge of the triune God and a belief in the incarnation that requires us to approach this world in a very different way and a way that makes a vitally important difference.

Islam, Judaism, and Christianity have been called religions of the book but Christianity is not fundamentally about a book though lots of Christians forget it.  Christianity is a religion of God incarnate, God known to us in human life, not distant, not only in a book, but here beside us and in us. We come not simply to hear a word read but to take that word in our hands.  So would it have been better for the world if Islam had never come to be? I can’t see that it would. As it is, the vast majority of the world’s peoples have come to believe in one God, a merciful God, a God who works to give all people a knowledge of the God who created us and cares for us.  That’s a lot to have in common.   I think St. Paul could write to Washington today that “There is no distinction in God’s sight between Jew and Greek, between American, Iraqi, Egyptian, and Afghan; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him.”

Well, but isn’t the present state of the world a messy way for God to be working? Is God really at work in the current events in the Middle East?  Yes, of course, absolutely. That’s not to say that God would have deliberately chosen Plan A or Plan B as worked out in the Pentagon as the ideal way to proceed; no, maybe not. But it is to say that God is able to bring out of this chaos as out of many previous chaotic worlds far more good than any of us could ever have imagined. Now for the first time Christians and Moslems are forced to take each other seriously: not as an enemy to be overcome but as human beings who see life differently, who understand God differently, but with whom we need to learn to live – and who, in living together, must come to a deeper knowledge of the God who calls us all and is at work in us all.

If the one at war with us is simply a terrorist, no, we have almost nothing in common, no easy way to begin a conversation. But if the deepest reality of that person is Islam, is faith in one God, then we do have something vital in common, a place to begin a conversation.  And that’s what’s hopeful about where we are.  The fifty-year confrontation between east and west over politics and power, communism and capitalism, has been replaced by something far more important and yes, oil, and politics is still very much at the center but so now is faith, so is faith.

When the television news shows us again and again pictures of Muslims at prayer that demands our attention. Faith matters. Faith may divide, but only faith can bridge that divide.  Only faith, only a deep understanding of who we are and what God calls us to be, can ever unite us.  And it still can. It still can.  God is able to use even this for the unity of God’s people and the glory of God. That’s the hope Paul held out to the Romans 2000 years ago and it’s the hope still held out to us today.

The “Unspeakable Comfort” of Predestination

The “Unspeakable Comfort” of Predestination

A sermon preached by Christopher L. Webber at Christ Church Seikokai in San Francisco on July 27, 2014.   

When was the last time you heard a sermon about predestination? My guess is it could be a long while. I think it’s not a subject Episcopalians usually worry about.  John Calvin, on the other hand, talked about it a lot and it always used to be a major theme in the churches of the Reformed tradition – the Presbyterians, Dutch Reformed, and Congregationalists.  But I don’t think they worry about it anymore. Ask your Presbyterian friends when they last heard a sermon about predestination. But in the second reading today St. Paul has a lot to say about predestination and if we want to learn from St. Paul, we need to spend some time with the subject.

So what is predestination?  It’s the idea that God has destined some people for salvation from the very beginning – and others for elsewhere.  It’s the belief that salvation is God’s decision made before we were born.  Predestination is not the idea that everything that happens is predetermined, that God has every event all planned from the downing of a Malaysian jet to the day you will die – when, as they say, your number is up. Predestination is not about that; it’s about your salvation, your eternal destiny, and it’s the notion that God determined that even before you were born.

Now, that is obviously unfair and even un-American. We’ve all been brought up to believe that you should make something of yourself, that it’s up to you what you achieve, that you can go as far as you want in this country and so we also tend to think that if you’re a nice person, and pay your taxes, and don’t upset the neighbors you will be rewarded hereafter.  Predestination seems to say just the opposite: Predestination seems to say that it’s all decided in advance and we’re just playing out the game with no hope of changing the final score.

If you look in the back of the Prayer Book, however, you’ll find a short essay on predestination on page 871 which says “the godly consideration of predestination . . . is full of sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort to godly persons.”  So I hope that includes us and that we can find some unspeakable comfort in thinking about a subject that’s not very appealing at first.

What St. Paul tells us in this morning’s passage from Romans is that God first foreknew, then predestined, then called, then justified, and finally glorified.  In other words, God chose certain people and then worked in them and on them to save them – and only them.  I don’t know about you, but I instinctively don’t like that.  It goes against everything I believe about the way things ought to be.

So what I’ve been asking myself as I ponder the matter is, what would be a better plan.  If not predestination, then what? What are the alternatives? I think there are really only two alternatives. One alternative would be that God simply saves everyone: no choosing, no favorites, no standards, everyone wins.  What about that?  Well, I have to admit, I don’t like that any better. In the first place, it gives carte blanche to all our worst instincts.  You want to make a killing by insider trading, buying up banks with political influence, destroying the economy so you can rake in billions?  Go to it; it makes no difference to God.  You want to covet your neighbor’s wife, batter your spouse, neglect the kids?  That’s cool; God loves you anyway and we’ll all be saved no matter what.  Now, can you really imagine a universe built on those principles:  the idea of universal salvation?  What kind of heaven would it be if there were no alternative place for Hitler and Eichman and Stalin? I think I prefer predestination to that.

There is a second alternative.  What about a world where you are free to choose and to earn your reward? What about the American ideal: a level playing field on which each is rewarded according to the choices they make and the deeds they do? Of course, there isn’t a level playing field and we all know it – some people get born with a silver spoon in their mouths, some people are born in San Francisco, others in Gaza or Iraq or Afghanistan. But God can probably compensate for that. God would see that some had an innate advantage and some made bad choices out of ignorance but it wasn’t really their fault so God would balance out the natural advantages and forgive the sins of invincible ignorance and judge everyone with absolute fairness and heaven would be for those who truly deserve it. Why wouldn’t that be fair?

Well, It sounds good at first, but the fact is I think such a world would also be a terrible place.  In a world like that we could all take full credit for our accomplishments.  It would be our doing, not God’s. But what kind of heaven would it be where finally God had to let in those who measured up and keep out those who didn’t? One great advantage of predestination, in fact, is that it rules out human pride and human boasting. Earlier in this same epistle St. Paul says, “Where then is boasting? It is excluded.”  No one, says St. Paul, should be able to boast in God’s presence.  And besides that, it takes God almost out of the picture, as if God had no say in who wins heaven and who gets sent elsewhere. God becomes – as Grantland Rice put it long ago – “the One Great Scorer” who simply adds it up and announce the results. And, as I said, the losers, simply get left behind.

Of course, this does have a certain appeal because it’s a lot like the present system in our world.  The communist system was supposed to be different, but it was actually even worse.  So we’ve given that up and now it’s free enterprise for all and democracy for those who can get it.  I’m afraid I don’t know a better human system, but I hope God does and I hope we can figure one out eventually because our system still leaves too many people out in the cold, back in the dust, unemployed, homeless and hungry, without hope, on drugs, in jail. Even predestination might be better than that.

So I may not like predestination, but even less do I like the alternatives.  I don’t like a God with no standards who opens heaven to all, nor do I like a God who keeps score and lets in only the winners. And notice this: neither alternative involves a God who acts in human life. God doesn’t do anything to change anything, just waits for us and either lets us in or not but never gets involved in our lives here and now. That’s a pretty useless God.

So I think the only real choice is a God who is involved, who chooses, who predestines. What does our text really say? What it says, it seems to me, is that God does act and that God has worked from the beginning of time for you to belong to God. God loves you that much.  Before the planets spun away from the sun, before the earth ever cooled or the first amoebas swam in the primeval ocean, God knew you and knew you would respond, and so God called you and died for you and justified you and glorified you.  God was at work in your life long before you knew it and all for the purpose of sharing God’s glory with you.

Now, what’s wrong with that? Only one thing, of course: what about everyone else?  How is it fair for God to choose some and not choose others.  Well, if that worries you, let me suggest three answers. First, what others? Choosing some implies not choosing others, of course, but who is not chosen?  How many are not chosen?  We can’t answer that.  The Bible gives no numbers.  Perhaps it’s only a few not chosen: Hitler and people like that. But maybe no one. We don’t know.  So that’s God’s problem, not ours.

Second, Paul says that first God knew and then God chose: “those whom he foreknew he also predestined…”  So the choice, perhaps, is not arbitrary but based on foreknowledge of our response, our free choice.

But third, and most important: is this, in any event, something to worry about, to lose sleep over?  God chose you. What business is it of yours to ask why? If they tell you that you won the lottery, is it your first concern to ask Why?  Do you worry about the losers?  If someone you love asks you to marry them, do you worry first about all those who were not asked? God loves you.  That’s what predestination is all about. God loves you. What else matters?  Shouldn’t our first response – and maybe our only response – be gratitude and love?

You know, there are lots of problems, we won’t work out this side of hereafter anyway; this isn’t the only one.  There’s the Trinity, the Incarnation, evil, suffering, pain.  I don’t expect to get final answers on any of these either any time soon.  But what are the problems as compared to the answers? What matters to me is the fact that the Creator of the universe cares enough about you and me to choose you and me, to call you and me, to die for you and me, to make you and me the free gift of eternal life and glory.  If everyone gets that gift regardless, what’s the thrill of that?  If you have to earn it, what chance does any of us have?  But if God gives me this gift for love alone, that is truly glory.

One more question:  What is glory? We use the word all the time in church and seldom ponder it.  But glory is God’s nature, God’s splendor, God’s very life.  And we, to quote a contemporary English priest, must come to realize:

that we are the glory of God . . . we live because we share God’s breath, God’s life, God’s glory.  Take this,” he writes, “as your koan (a phrase to be repeated).  ‘I am the glory of God.’ . . . You are the place where God chooses to dwell . . .and the spiritual life is nothing more or less than to allow that space to exist where God can dwell, to create the space where God’s glory can manifest itself.  (Basil Allchin)

You are the glory of God. God chooses to dwell in you and calls you to eternal life. So do you believe in predestination?  What other choice is there? So give thanks for God’s love.  Give thanks that God chose you and called you to share God’s glory.

God’s Garden or Darwin’s?

A sermon preached by Christopher L. Webber at the Church of the Incarnation, San Francisco, on July 21, 2014.

The gospels last week and this week are giving us gardening lessons and that’s useful in mid-July. I was coming up 23rd Avenue last week and somewhere between Judah and Lawton I came across a garden about two feet wide and four feet long where someone was raising corn. Now, the Bible tells us that God made us to take care of a garden and that’s still a very strong instinct in lots of us and we try to act on it even in the unpromising soil of 23rd Avenue. I think that’s why the Bible gives us lessons in gardening.

Last week’s gospel was about planting which is the easy part. This week’s is about weeding and that’s the hard part – but weeding is what gardening in mid-summer is all about especially if you go away for a few days as I did one summer and had to spend the rest of the summer trying to get back in control.  This morning’s gospel is very helpful in that connection. It says in effect, “Don’t bother!  You’ve got weeds?  Don’t worry!  Let them grow!  Let everything that comes up grow together until the harvest and you can sort it out then.”

Now that’s great advice: always put off til tomorrow what you don’t want to do today!  You know, there are people who read Jesus’ parables and say: “See how much he knew about sheep or about housekeeping or about fishing. But did he really understand gardening if he thought you didn’t need to do weeding?  Would this approach really work?

Actually, It just might, in some cases.  When I used to pull up the weeds in the corn, for example, some of the corn would tend to topple and I’d have to hill it up to keep it from falling over. If I left it alone it might do better.  I remember a time when I was pulling up weeds around the tomatoes and found myself with an uprooted tomato plant in my hand. You get careless and lose what you were trying to save.

So maybe Jesus did know something about gardening and knew how compulsive gardeners can be about weeds and used this parable to make a useful point because we do have this compulsive tendency to pull up weeds.  I’ve done it right in front of the church, maybe you have too, tried to neaten it up, whether it’s good for the plants or not.

And it’s not just in gardens.  Take an example from a completely different area of life, the United Nations. There’s always someone who wants to weed that patch.  For years it was the United States. We couldn’t stand the idea of Communist China being in the UN. Then we decided that it would be alright after all and China could come in but meanwhile the Arab nations began to want to weed Israel out and there were African counties that wanted to weed South Africa out. Lots of countries want to purify the UN garden by their own narrow standards. But all of them were prejudiced standards.  You can only play if we like you and if you agree with us. But what good is a world organization without the whole world represented? Once you start purging, you start choosing up sides for the next war. We may not like certain countries or approve of their way of life but it may still be better to talk than to fight.  And who knows what may come of talking? Who knows what may develop in this weedy, unpromising field? But nothing will grow that’s uprooted, that’s for sure. And that’s the choice.

But bring the parable closer to home.  How many times do we judge a church by its members? How often do we wish certain people went elsewhere?  Or maybe we decide to go elsewhere ourselves or we stay home because of the kind of people in a particular church? Or how often do we invite nice new neighbors to join us and fail to invite someone we don’t much care for? There are churches that deliberately look for attractive people – young couples with 2.5 children – so they can boast to others about what really wonderful people go to their church.  But you can’t help noticing the way Jesus was criticized for not associating with the right kind of people. Jesus seemed to practice what he preached when it came to being selective. We may be looking for a garden without weeds, a church without thorns. But the world God made, the church Jesus created, isn’t like that. It’s full of what look like weeds to us.  There are weedy people, aren’t there, mixed in with the ones we like. But God is the gardener, not we.

So maybe there should be a word on behalf of weeds.  Weeds, too, have value. Did you ever read one of those books by Euell Gibbons, books about weeds and wild plants and how to eat them, how to make dandelion wine and cook fiddlehead ferns and put purslane in your salad and so on? But the fact is there are weeds that are really good for you, full of vitamins and minerals.  You may not like dandelions in the lawn but they’re really good for you in a salad.

And then there’s the problem I have with weeds early in the season because I’m never quite sure what I might have planted and forgotten about. Is this unidentified green sprout coming up something I planted and didn’t mark?  or something from last year that self-seeded?  But even harder to judge than the merits of different plants are the merits of different sorts of people. We value some plants for their foliage, some for their blossoms, some for their roots, some for their scent. If someone says to you, “Do you prefer lilies or tomatoes?” the obvious answer is, “For what?”

So how does God value us?  Does God value success in business or the warmth of a smile or the way we dress or courage or patience or joy? Does God value those who make headlines: like Derek Jeter and Sarah Palin, Buster Posey and Jerry Brown?  Or is it location that matters: are people from San Francisco more desirable to God than folks from Oakland or Los Angeles or even New York or Connecticut? Or do you think God has a preference for Americans more than Afghans or Iraqis or children from Guatemala?  Or does God put a higher rating on intelligence or emotional stability?  College graduates more than high school graduates; stable family people more than residents of a halfway house or reformed drug addicts?

And then we might ask whether now that we are gaining ability to indulge in genetic manipulation and select a child’s genetic makeup whether we should weed God’s garden ourselves?

I discovered recently from some reading I was doing that back less than a hundred years ago people got enthusiastic about Darwin’s ideas of evolution and natural selection.  Darwin had written that in the natural world the weak and inferior stock is eliminated, but:

“We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick: we institute poor laws and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to smallpox. Thus the weak members of civilized society propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man.”

That made a lot of sense to people and laws were passed in two-thirds of the states to enable what they called “eugenics” – weeding the human garden.  In California, some 20,000 people, more than in any other state and many of them still alive, were forcibly sterilized by the state between 1909 and 1963.  In the same way, we shaped our immigration laws to filter out certain nationalities and ethnic groups. Then we read about the holocaust and Hitler’s program to improve the human race by weeding out Jews and gypsies and homosexuals and others and we began to reconsider.

So is it possible that God is not like us when it comes to gardening -  as today’s gospel implies?  Is it possible God sees something in human lives beyond what we see: something simpler, something deeper, something of more lasting value? Is it possible that the differences in ability that seem so important to us are not so important in the eyes of God?

These are not all easy questions to answer, but I think this parable of the wheat and weeds indicates something of God’s answer and something of the sort of answer God hopes for from us. But let me broaden the field – if I can put it that way – and bring in the other two readings to throw more light on the same subject. Father Miner pointed out last week that the readings in Pentecost are not tied to a common theme. What we are doing in Pentecost is reading consecutively through three different parts of the Bible.  We’re getting distant background in the Old Testament and it’s a great story to follow through week by week.  Then we’re given sequential readings from Paul’s epistle to the Romans – probably the most important letter Paul ever wrote – and we’re also working our way through Jesus’ teaching ministry in the gospel readings from Matthew. There are people like me, you know, who sometimes have two or three books going at the same time and that’s what’s happening on Sunday morning. We have three books going that have no necessary connection at all and I don’t know how any congregation can be expected to take in three disconnected readings this way and make any sense of it.  I mean, I like reading the Old Testament in sequence and I value the epistle to the Romans and you wouldn’t want to go home without hearing about Jesus but how can we take it all in?

(Parenthetically, I went to church one Sunday several years ago in a Protestant church where they had only one reading -  from the Old Testament. Can you imagine going to church and not reading from the Gospel or at least the New Testament?)

But back to my point – we’re asked to do some serious thinking about three different books and we probably ought to take a break after each reading to discuss it.  But all that is by way of noticing that today’s readings by sheer coincidence do have a common theme and that theme – put as broadly as possible – is the same one I found to talk about last month, the last time I preached here – which is “God’s purpose.” If you remember – you do remember, don’t you? – I talked about the question the new bishop of Connecticut likes to ask which is – you remember? -  “What is God doing now?” I can imagine people asking Jesus that.  “If we are God’s chosen people,” they might have asked, “how come the Romans are running things and putting their idols in our temple?  How come we have to pay taxes to an alien army?” And if they came to Jesus with questions like that, that might have been the day Jesus told them the parable of the wheat and tares.  That might have been the day they came to Jesus to ask, “What are you up to?  What makes you think you can bring in the kingdom of God with this motley crew?”  What was Jesus doing with half a dozen fishermen, a reformed tax collector, a couple of people so insignificant their own friends couldn’t remember their names when they came to write the gospels. Can you name the twelve apostles?  Maybe you can but Matthew and Mark and Luke came up with different lists when they tried to write about it years later.  Who was that twelfth man anyway? Well, we all have trouble with names when we get older.  But couldn’t Jesus have chosen someone His close friends would still remember thirty or forty years later?

There’s an old story about how Jesus returned to heaven after the crucifixion and resurrection and was welcomed home by the angels and archangels and asked “What now? What’s the next step?”  And Jesus told them, “I’ve chosen a dozen men to carry on the task?” And the angels say, “But that’s not a very impressive group.  What if they fall short?”  And Jesus responded, “I have no other plan.”

So we’re it, friends; we’re it.  I could go out to Noriega Avenue and find a dozen people out there, lawyers and doctors and teachers, respected leaders in the community, but they’re not here and we are so we’re it.  We’re the ones chosen to carry out God’s plan. “Wheat and tares together sown” as we will shortly sing in the offertory hymn.  We’re it.  God chooses to go with us. That’s the Gospel.

Now look at the Old Testament: pure coincidence, but what’s happening there?  Jacob as the story begins is fleeing for his life.  We don’t get that context in the reading; just “Jacob left Beersheba and went toward Haran.” You bet he left Beersheba; his brother was after him and aimed to kill him. He was afraid for his life and at that moment of despair God gave him a dream and told him, “Your offspring shall be as numerous as the dust of the earth.  Never fear, I have a purpose for you and I will accomplish it.” But what was God up to in choosing the younger son, the dreamer, the trickster, over the stronger and more deserving Esau? God does not make the obvious choice but God has a purpose.  God knows the difference between the wheat and the tares.

And isn’t that just exactly what Paul is talking about in the second reading? He’s writing to the little band of Christians in Rome.  They’re persecuted and discouraged and the worst is yet to come. And he tells them who they are.  You are God’s chosen.  I remember a former bishop of New York who liked to tell how, when he was a teenager, his mother would send him off on a Saturday night with the words, “Remember who you are.”  Paul is saying that to the Romans:  “Remember who you are. You are the children of God.  And you didn’t get that title to fall back into fear. You are joint heirs with Christ, and you may need to suffer with him in order to be glorified with him, but whatever suffering you know now doesn’t begin to compare with the glory of the promise.”

So we have three readings this morning that show us one picture, point toward one future, spell out one promise. What is God doing?  Short term, I have no idea.  Long term, God is building a future so glorious we can’t even begin to imagine it.  If we sowed good seed, what are these weeds doing here?  If you want a harvest for the kingdom why do we have these empty seats on Sunday morning?  What is God up to anyway?  It requires, it seems to me, great forbearance, great patience, and very great understanding. It requires us to remember that we are in God’s garden – you and I – by God’s choice more than our own and it is God’s garden to shape, not ours. This gospel parable implies that God hopes for a greater harvest than we can yet imagine and in that harvest, by the grace of God, perhaps you and I also will have our share.