Christopher L. Webber's Blog, page 15

Making It Known: A Christmas Sermon

A Christmas sermon preached by Christopher L. Webber at the Church of the Incarnation, San Francisco, on Christmas Day, 2013.

St. Luke 2:17 When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child.

Good morning!  I haven’t preached here before so I need to know who I’m talking to – like, how many shepherds are there here?  Or shepherdesses? (equal opportunity)

OK, let me try another approach: how many of you work nights?  Still no hand showing.

So how many watch television in the evening? OK!  So suppose you’re watching the Warriors or antique road show or whatever and you don’t want to be interrupted.  Do you know the feeling?  For example, there are 2.3 seconds left and the Warriors are down 2 and have the ball – so you really don’t want to be interrupted.  That’s the feeling I want you to remember.

I’m trying to get you to see where the shepherds were that night 2000 years ago, with a job to do.  See, the gospel story is a story about shepherds doing their job – a full time job keeping the wolves away and the cattle rustlers and all the stuff that’s out there. Sheep don’t have much sense; they wander off and there are wolves out there and rival shepherds, so you have to keep an eye on those sheep. So the shepherds were doing their job and they got interrupted big time. God had a message for them and God pulled out all the stops: “a multitude of the heavenly host,” angels and archangels and all the company of heaven, and it got their attention.

So the angels tell them what’s up and the shepherds respond: “Let’s go have a look,” and they drop everything and go.  Now, remember this is a full time job and the sheep are in danger if they’re left alone, so the shepherds are taking a risk, risking their investment, risking their property, risking their security. It’s like leaving your car parked on the street unlocked: not smart.  Well, maybe they left a couple of apprentices behind: “Hey, keep an eye on things, guys, we’ll be right back.”   Maybe they did that; we don’t know; but if they hadn’t been needed they wouldn’t have been there. You don’t hire a night watchman if you don’t need one; don’t put two shepherds out there if one will do. So they took a risk to go but they went. When God sends a message, you better go.

That’s the first point: when God sends a message, it doesn’t matter what else you may be doing, what else you have on your plate, you need to respond.  That’s why I was trying to get some sense of what you do that can’t be interrupted, because God has a message for you and me and it’s not getting out. It seems as if we’re staying with the sheep when we ought to be going to Bethlehem and telling people about it.  We seem to be keeping our message down here on 29th when all the people are on Noriega and 19th.

And don’t tell me you haven’t seen the angels; maybe not, but you do know about it.  Why should God send you the whole heavenly host? Who do we think we are anyway to rate the full choir? God has a full time job too; so do the angels; so why should they repeat themselves just for us?  I mean, they sent us the message already and the message is right here in the Bible for us anytime we want it, right there in the book rack in front of you, right here in the gospel this morning: “Glory to God and Peace on earth.”  That’s the message – given once because once is enough.

Once God came into this world in a perfect human life,

once Jesus died for us,

once Jesus rose from the dead.

Just once and that should be enough.

Did your father or mother ever say, “I’m going to tell you this just once”?

If it’s that important and you don’t get it, it won’t help to say it twice.

Once the angels came, and if the shepherds didn’t get it then there wasn’t going to be a repeat performance.

Once the angels came, and you know the message.  Even if you only come for Christmas and Easter, you know the message.  You’ve heard it more than once: “Glory to God and Peace on earth.”

That’s the message.

Now, notice several things about this message:  First of all, notice that it’s not just for you. It wasn’t just for the shepherds and it isn’t just for you. “Glory to God and Peace on earth.”

That’s not just for you and me; no, it’s for the whole world:

“Glory to God and peace on earth.”

Jesus comes for all, died for all, rose for all.

It’s a message for the whole world.

And notice what the shepherds do: they go back and tell others.

The gospel says, “they made known what had been told them about this child.”

They made it known,

they passed it on.

They didn’t just go back to what they were doing.

They came back with a message and they passed it on.

So what are we doing about it?

Are we passing the message on?

I checked out the statistics last week, so I know that there are 7 billion people in the world and one third of them are Christian. So word is getting around.  The shepherds passed it on and the apostles passed it on and the early church passed it on and the people who built this church  – and one third of the population of the world has heard it. So if every Christian told two other people, it’s all over; we did it; everybody knows. Glory to God and peace on earth.  Each one tells two and it’s done, the game’s over, right?

But it’s not that easy, is it?  First of all, how many Christians know the message? Here in America we have three-quarters of the population calling themselves Christian but an awful lot of them don’t get it, didn’t hear what the angels said, didn’t understand it. They thought it was just for them.  A lot of them will tell you, “Yes, I’m a Christian; I’m born again; Jesus is my personal savior.”  Well, OK, but that’s not even half the message. The message is, “Peace to the earth, goodwill to all people,” not “peace just to you.” Peace on earth.

Peace and goodwill to Iraq and peace to Afghanistan.

Peace and goodwill to the Congress.

Peace and goodwill even to the NRA and the Tea Party.

Peace and goodwill to the homeless and hungry.

Peace and goodwill to the people without jobs or opportunity.

I’m glad there are deeply committed people calling themselves Christian but if they think it’s just for them, a personal savior just for them, as a lot of them do, or if they think it doesn’t call on them to make a difference as lots of them do – and maybe some of us – they’ve missed the point.  There’s that last little codicil a lot of us overlook: peace on earth and goodwill . . .  How is it translated in the version we read today?  It’s translated in lots of different ways, you know. Maybe you heard it in the old King James Version that lots of us grew up with: “Peace on earth goodwill toward men.”  That was before we knew about inclusive language and realized that “men” translates the Greek word “Anthropos” – people.  So then it’s “Good will to earth’s people.”  But in today’s latest update, in your Bulletin this morning, it comes out: “on earth peace among those whom God favors.”

Not peace to everybody?  Wait a minute.  I thought God just loves everybody. Maybe not.  Check your Bible again. There’s a lot of stuff in there about Judgment. I mean, we have rules.  We don’t favor people who steal from us, cut us off in traffic, take their assault rifles to the shopping mall. We gave rules.  We favor some more than others.  Is God different?  Does God have no rules?  Did God drop the ten commandments recently?  The verse says:   “Peace to those God favors.”

Does God play favorites?

Well, actually, yes; and Jesus told us exactly who God favors.

Remember the Beatitudes?

It’s everybody’s favorite Bible passage, but think about it: “Blessed are the poor, blessed are those who mourn now, blessed are the peacemakers – peace makers.

So it’s not blessings on everybody.

It’‘s blessings on those in need.

Blessings on those who make a difference.

Blessings on those who need blessings.

If you sit in first class, you probably don’t need any more blessings. But there are those who do and God knows it better than we.

Blessings on those who share God’s priorities.

Blessings on those who give glory to God and make a difference.

Blessings on you when you get the message.

Blessings on you when you share the message.

Blessings on you when you make a difference by being different,

by being people who live differently because you know the message:

that God comes into this world where we least expect it but need it most. God does come – even here, even today, even to us and most especially when we pass the message on and make God’s priorities our own.

I mean, can you imagine what a difference it would make if the members of Congress sought peace on earth as their priority and put the power in their hands to work where Jesus came to work – where the need is greatest: where people are hungry, where children are dying, where people work two jobs and still live in a homeless shelter because they can’t afford to pay rent even for the smallest, cheapest apartment.

Should we raise taxes or lower taxes – let politicians worry about that but let it not become their priority.  First, first of all, worry about human need; make that the priority; ask who needs help and find ways to be helpful. It’s about serving the needs of people and especially the poorest – not, surely not, not the wealthiest. The priority is glory to God and peace on earth and there will be peace on earth when there are decent jobs for all, when there are better schools, available health care less selfishness, less division between rich and poor.  So let’s get people in Congress who can figure it out and get it done or let’s get someone else in there to do it.

And don’t just blame congress; it’s easy to do but let’s be fair.

What about the churches – do the churches reflect Jesus’ priorities?

Do you and I share God’s priorities?

Wwhat are our priorities?

How can it be, the new pope Francis has asked, how can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure but it is news when the stock market loses two points.

Well, I see his point but I think he’s wrong – popes can be wrong – it does happen – but I think the papers do report the death of a homeless man. Sometimes I think the real point – and I think the pope would agree – is that the dailiness of poverty is not news: the grinding hopeless dailiness of never having enough, not being able to escape into the kind of security that has a decent place to live and food enough for three meals a day, basics like food and shelter that most of us take for granted.

What is our priority?  What is the message?

The message is not “Relax and Feel good,”

not “Have a happy day and a big dinner” but on earth peace, goodwill among people” – peace to those God favors.

OK, there’s a message to get out, a difference to make.

But I’ve been preaching this sermon backwards: before the message, before the response, first of all there’s a gift.  Christmas is first of all a gift.  First you open the present, then you show it off, then you share it.  Even if it’s chocolates, I’m sure you share it.

There’s a gift to be opened.

There’s a gift to be received.

There’s a gift to be shared.

There’s a gift for you and every one of us.

This service is a gift.

The gospel is a gift.

Communion is a gift.

God gives God’s own self to us.

God came to the shepherds, but also God comes to us, and I don’t think you can receive that gift – hear that message and receive that gift – and not make a difference.

We’re here today to receive the gift and be reminded of the message.

So today above all days, give God thanks for the gift of life

and find ways to share that gift

especially with those God favors.

and change the world.

What ever became of Halloween?

Do you remember the days when Halloween was really Halloween?  Nowadays it’s all very polite and civilized.  In this San Francisco neighborhood (and most other places, I imagine, are similar) people put up signs inviting trick-or-treaters in and even create Halloween caves in their street-level garages with displays of skeletons and witches on the one hand and supplies of junk food on the other.  “Come and get it!  Have fun!”

So the treats have flourished, but what ever became of the tricks?  I remember walking to school (we used to do that, too!) the day after Halloween (sometimes called All Saints Day).  I had to walk abut three blocks and most of it on the main street of our small town.  Trickers had been out late the night before.  The store windows were liberally marked with soap and rolls of toilet paper had been thrown into the trees so that they were hung with toilet paper stalagtites.  I remember hearing the fire bell ring during Halloween evening when older boys got into the fire house and rang the big bell on the roof.  And then there were car horns going off here and there around town when a car was found unlocked (who ever locked their car in our town?) and some fun-loving trickers “pinned” the horn. You took a nice, flexible slat from an orange crate and ran it through the steering wheel, over the horn button (in the center in those days) and under the steering wheel on both sides so that the horn button was pinned down.  You got it pinned and ran.  The horn would blare until the owner came to release it or the battery ran down.

I don’t remember much about treats.  We might have gone to a neighbor or two and gotten a candy bar or two and some candy corn, but the main event was the tricking.  And it wasn’t done simply because no treat had been forthcoming. It was low-level vandalism, I suppose, but isn’t that what it’s all about: evil spirits let loose one last time before the saints take control?

What ever became of the real Halloween?

Who’s Confused?

Who’s Confused? 

A sermon preached at St. Luke’s Church, San Francisco, by Christopher L. Webber on October 27, 2013.

The trouble with being human is we’re so clueless about God. Hardly a clue. You may think that’s an overstatement, unduly pessimistic. But let me make my case.

Of course we do have the Bible. So does the Pope and the Southern Baptists and the Unitarians and the Jehovah’s Witnesses and members of Congress and so many others, so many others.  We read the same book.  But you wouldn’t know it. We’re so clueless about God. 

I’m saying this to put Jeremiah’s words this morning in context. Were you listening?  Jeremiah is trying to figure God out and he really can’t. Now, Jeremiah is a certified prophet – he’s in the Bible – but he can’t figure out what God is up to.  Jeremiah lived through some tough times – war and siege, defeat and exile. I mean, I have no desire to live in Iraq or Afghanistan or a lot of other places but Jerusalem in Jeremiah’s time was probably worse. And yet Israel was God’s chosen nation; so how could this happen?  What was God up to?

At one level, Jeremiah knew and he’d been telling people for years. You forsake God, God forsakes you.  Easy to figure out: one plus one.  But at a deeper level, Jeremiah was baffled: why couldn’t God be more help? Why couldn’t God give them some guidance?  Listen again:

14:8  O hope of Israel, its savior in time of trouble, why should you be like a stranger in the land, like a traveler turning aside for the night?  (Here tonight and gone tomorrow.) 14:9  Why should you be like someone confused, like a mighty warrior who cannot give help?

I have to admire Jeremiah’s guts: He’s saying, “Now listen, God, why are you acting this way? You act like someone bewildered.”  He suggests that God is confused. I mean, its easy to understand Jeremiah being bewildered, but to accuse God of being confused!  You have to admire Jeremiah. But he wanted answers and he lets God know.

Who is there today to challenge God that way?  To make some demands, to ask God “What’s going on; what’s the program?  Listen, God; do you know what you’re doing?”  I think it might help to put it in words. Suppose we put in a prayer on Sunday that said, “Listen, God, we don’t get it!  Where are you?  What’s up?  Are you confused?”

I mean, we’re trying.  Doing our part. The best liturgy, great music, terrific sermons last week and the week before, and we raise money for all sorts of worthwhile projects – but, God, you’re not sending the people.  Where are they? We’ve got empty seats on Sunday and it’s not our fault. So, God, what are you thinking?  Are you thinking?  Here’s your place, your people, we’re doing all we can to build up your church;  Why aren’t you helping? What’s the plan?  Why won’t you let us in on it, O God? We could work with you better if we had some clue. If we could see whether you know what you’re doing.”

I used to live in the country and you could see the stars at night. Now, there are some clues before you even get to the Bible.  When God wanted to give Abraham a clue he asked him to look at the stars and see whether he could count them.  (Gen 15:5) One of the Psalms (147) says that God not only can count the stars, but  calls them each by name.  But do you know how many stars there are?  I’ll come back to that in a minute but first I have a second question: Do you know how many neurons there are in the human brain?

One estimate puts the number of neurons in the human brain at about 100 billion and 100 trillion synapses.  By contrast, the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans has just 302 neurons, making it an ideal experimental subject because scientists have been able to map all of the organism’s neurons. We can really get to know the nematode worm.  The fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, a common subject in biological experiments, has around 100,000 neurons (remember we have a hundred billion – that’s six more zeroes). The fruit fly has a good many complex behaviors which it would be useful to understand, but it’s easier to deal with the nematode worm.  We human beings, trying to understand life, can understand the nematode worm better than the fruit fly, and the fruit fly a lot better than us and us a lot better than God. And, remember, we’re trying to figure out God, trying to help Jeremiah figure it out.

But my first question was about stars.  There are 400 billion stars in our galaxy – that’s four times the number of neurons in the brain. But then, that’s just our galaxy and there are said to be 170 billion galaxies in the observable universe; (I didn’t do the math to figure out 170 billion times 400 billion but it’s a lot. I remember reading about an Eskimo language whose counting system goes: “One, two, many.”) Anyway: 170 billion galaxies in the observable Universe, each with hundreds of billions of stars stretching out into space 13.8 billion light-years in all directions.  So if you travel at the speed of light for 13.8 billion years you might – might, but who knows because no one has been there – come to the edge of the universe and then what would you see beyond that?

I think we know too much; maybe more than our neurons can really handle. So how is it even possible for us to imagine a God who is creator of such unimaginable numbers? How can we imagine an unimaginable God of an unimaginable universe?  As the fruit fly is to us, so are we to the universe. No wonder it’s harder than ever to believe.  To believe, we have to have some way to imagine. No wonder belief comes so hard to a world that knows so much. We stretch our minds to the breaking point to deal with the knowable.  And then, after that, you still want me to think about the unknowable? I think that’s one reason churches and synagogues are in decline.  It’s too much for our neurons to cope with.

And besides that, at some level, I think belief seems less important these days to lots of people. We live so much longer and our lives are so much more pleasant than ever before. You know, if we were living in the 14th century and the Black Death was washing away up to half of the population — if you could be here today and gone tomorrow and if you could see a few thousand stars and had no reason to imagine more and God wasn’t that big or that far away maybe belief would be less of a challenge and seem more important. God and heaven, if I can put it that way, would seem to be more on a human scale, more comprehensible.

I think there are Christians who try to cope with our world by denial: deny evolution, deny climate change, deny science, and stick with the small-size, pre-modern God. But then, what do we do with all the unused neurons in our brains that challenge us to see the God science is showing us?

I saw something last week that suggested those who have faith in God make God in their own image, project human characteristics on God. Of course we do.  What else do we have to work with?  But anyone who thinks about it knows of course, that God is not as Michaelangelo painted him on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel with a well-muscled body and white beard resting on a cloud. But our neurons need help.  If not that picture, what do we have to hold on to? The knight in Ingmar Bergman’s great movie, The Seventh Seal,  cries out, “I want to be able to reach out my hand and touch God.  Is that so inconceivable?”

No, it’s not inconceivable at all.  I think it’s what we all want: something we can wrap our minds around and hold onto. It’s why the incarnation is so critical to Christian faith. God did send us something to picture and hold on to.  God came among us. As fully as God can be present in human life, God was present in Jesus. And we need that.  It’s critical.

I think it’s part of our problem also that the incarnation, the Jesus story, becomes harder to hold onto as our knowledge grows. How is it possible for the Creator of infinite space to be fully present in one human life? We can’t get our minds around a God that big who could become that small. I think I know why the pews aren’t full.  We’re just asking people to use their minds too much.  It’s asking a lot to believe in our day. But what are all those neurons for?  I know I’m not using all of mine; I wonder whether you are. Maybe we need to figure out how to fire up some more of them.

I saw a movie last Sunday evening I will never forget. It came out four or five years ago so you may have seen it.  It’s called “The Soloist.” It deals with an LA Times reporter who encounters a homeless man who’s a superb musician and schizophrenic, so he’s living on the street, sawing away at a violin with two broken strings. He hears voices.  His musical genius is wasting away because some of his synapses are mis-firing. Out of 100 trillion, its only surprising it doesn’t happen more often and with worse results. But bad enough: he’s out on the street with a broken violin when the reporter finds him and gets pulled into his story. And nothing really gets solved, but the fraught relationship between hard-boiled reporter and bewildered musician is such a marvelous look at human nature, at the ways we hurt each other and try to help each other — it’s a great movie. It looks at the wonder and mystery of human life.

As usual, Shakespeare said it best: “O What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! . . .  In action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world. The paragon of animals. And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?”  The Psalmist says: “When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?”

Why is God mindful of “This quintessence of dust”? How can we ask someone to believe this story of ours, this Bible we read, this Creed we recite?  And if we have a physical world so far beyond our grasp, what chance do we have of comprehending heaven?  Eternity?  What would that be like?  A zillion years to play golf?  I’ve often said I want to learn to play the cello and hope to have time enough hereafter.  Yes, and then what?  Then what?

I can’t imagine – I doubt you can – infinite space, infinite time yet a personal God, a personal God – that’s another hard one to get around.  Think of all those galaxies and you can probably say, “The Force be with you.” That’s not hard; we know about forces. But a personal God who can know me and every single other human being?  Well, what’s three billion human beings to a God who deals in trillions for breakfast? How do we respond to a God who knows me and can be known by me in a very real way, only the fringe of God’s cloak perhaps but real, personal – one with whom I can inter-act. I’m saying I know why that’s hard; it is hard – but to turn away? To turn a deaf ear to the meaning and purpose of this unimaginable universe and it’s unimaginable God – can you really be satisfied to live a tone-deaf life, a color blind life, to think that there is something more, that there is a purpose and I don’t know it? Can we really be satisfied not to know, not at least to explore that possibility?

My wife and I have a cat and she lives in our small apartment and sometimes she sits on the window sill and gazes out at 19th avenue and tries to figure out what’s happening out there. But she has no real desire to go out there.  Leave the door open and she cringes back; I mean, who knows what’s out there?  And she doesn’t have nearly enough neurons to figure it out. My wife and I go out sometimes for hours on end and come back, and maybe we’ve been to a meal, maybe a movie, maybe lunch with our family, maybe we’ve been to church – she has no clue. And I have neighbors like that – so do you – and friends who are equally clueless. They see us go out to church and come back and apparently have no more curiosity about what they may be missing than our cat – and that’s a tragedy.

What the reporter from the LA Times had to learn was to accept what couldn’t be fixed. We just don’t know how to deal with schizophrenia.  There are pills to “help manage your symptoms”  but they aren’t a solution.  We don’t really know how to get the broken neurons and synapses lined back up.  Some things can’t be fixed, but they can be forgiven. Isn’t that Jesus’ message?  To accept the wonder and beauty and brokenness around us and embrace it and come here to praise its Creator and open ourselves to God’s purpose strange and unknowable as it may be and like the second man in today’s Gospel be satisfied to say, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”

Ted Cruz and Me

Ted Cruz and Me

As Ted Cruz’ mournful face fills the screen again and again, I ponder our differences and resemblances.  You see, Ted and I had the same education but the result was very different.  So I wonder what difference education makes.

Ted and I both went to Princeton and both graduated from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.  It’s a program designed for people interested in government which I was and am.  So is Ted.  But how can two people study the same subject at the same school and come out with such different notions of how government ought to work?  I notice that Ted’s resume on his web site doesn’t mention the Woodrow Wilson School, so maybe that tells you something.

One thing I remember learning in college was that a two party system tends to draw people toward the center.  The closer to the center you are, the more votes you are likely to get because you will get most of the folk to your left or right (whichever side you tend to) anyway, but you can only get the vast number in the middle by standing as close to the middle as you can.

Maybe Ted didn’t take that course – or didn’t believe it.  Or maybe his theory is that if he gets far enough to the right, he’ll begin to draw folk around from the far left.

Maybe so.  But I think what’s really happening is that he and his cohorts are pulling the Democratic Party further and further to the right. After all, folk on the left have nowhere else to go (unless they see Ted sneaking up on the outside), so Democrats might as well move over to the right and pick up all those center-right people that can’t go as far out as Ted.

There’s another thing Ted doesn’t seem to remember from college.  It’s a slogan they still use there: “Princeton in the nation’s service.”   Ted seems to have a different agenda: “The nation in Ted Cruz’s service.”  Its sort of amusing/pathetic/sad (check one or more) to see even his fellow right wing radicals wondering how to get Ted to think in terms other than self-promotion.  Is there, they wonder, a way to get him to think cooperatively, to think in terms of at least the party if not the nation.

I don’t have any answers.  It sometimes does make me wonder whether education makes a difference.  How can someone with such credentials pursue a path so destructive – of the people and country he ought to be serving.  Yes, and of himself.

What If?

President Obama told world leaders on Tuesday that he was devoting the rest of his presidency to a negotiated end to the Iran confrontation, and creating a separate state for the Palestinians.

And Lincoln spent the rest of his presidency trying to win the Civil War and Roosevelt spent his trying to end World War II.  Great!  So you have an obvious problem and you bring all your brute force to bear and if you are Lincoln or Roosevelt, you bring it off.  But to devote the brief window of opportunity that belongs to a president trying to do what no one has ever done – or can do!  What a waste!



Does no one understand that “a two state solution” is no solution?  Suppose Lincoln had gone for a “two state solution.”  Life would be easier today.  We wouldn’t have to worry about crazed politicians like Ted Cruz or getting a good health care plan in place.  But what would the South be like today if it had gone its separate way?  Still segregated?  African Americans still living in share cropper shacks and getting lynched at regular intervals?  Reconstruction wasn’t a lot of fun and the era of segregation was a real downer, but we forced ourselves to work through it and come out in a better place.

What if Europe had settled for a multi-state solution after World War II instead of trying to build a Europe in which Germans have to worry about Greeks and Italians realize that the Dutch and Norwegians are watching them?

A two-state “solution” – if the politicians get lucky – might even last for a generation or two and that might be worth something.  But what if someone had the vision to go for a one state solution.  What if someone said, “You know, this land isn’t big enough to divide.  It puts all of us in small prisons.  What if we forced ourselves to find ways to live together?

Is that just crazy enough to be worth trying?

As someone once said, “I have a dream.”

How long?

So here we are, on this tiny speck of star dust, the only speck in the whole universe, so far as we know, able to support life, and we have to wonder how much longer that will be true.

We used to say that this is the only speck of stardust able to support intelligent life, but that seems not to be the case already.

For the people trying to clean up their homes after the floods in Colorado, there are more immediate tasks to deal with.  For the people in California whose homes went up in smoke, there’s the question of whether to rebuild or move.  For folks on the Jersey shore, there’s the question of how far inland to move to be out of the way of the next storm.

For farmers in Vermont who balance the budget with the maple syrup crop, there’s the question of how early they will need to tap next year to catch the run – and if it’s already two or three weeks earlier than it used to be, when will the maple trees in Vermont no longer have enough cold weather to produce a crop at all?

I remember the story of the man caught in the flood who turned away the rescuers who came to his door to take him to safety.  “I’m saying my prayers,” he said, “and the Lord will take care of me.”  When they came to his second floor window with a boat, he said the same thing.  And when they came over with a helicopter to take him off his roof, he still said the Lord would take care of him.  So when he died and went to heaven he went straight to the throne with his complaint: “Where were you when I needed you?”  And the Lord said, “I sent a rescue team, a boat, and a helicopter; what more could it do?”

So what in the world is our leadership doing to respond to the signals being sent?  Ignoring it.  Hoping it will go away.  Denying the scientific facts and the evidence on all sides.

I hope to move to a safer place before time runs out but I worry whether my grandchildren will be able to tread water.

I read last week about a millionaire in San Francisco who is using his money to oppose the pipeline being projected to bring Canadian oil down through the Nebraska corn fields to Texas.  If they build the line and it breaks, it could wipe out the aquifers that keep the cornfields in business.

But what about the other millionaires and billionaires who seem fixated on keeping their tax rates low?  They spend millions to elect politicians who would rather sink the economy and take food stamps from the poor than take constructive action on any one of the critical issues we face.

What sort of man or woman, raking in over a million dollars a year, puts their luxuries ahead of those on food stamps?  What is the thinking of a billionaire who fights for lower taxes while the signs of climate disaster multiply?

I get appeals every day to contribute to a campaign to control campaign spending, raise environmental standards, elect someone intelligent to Congress and sometimes I send them a dollar or two.  More often I sign their petition but send no money.  I literally can’t send more and still pay my bills.  But unless a few more of us cut back even on necessities to make more of a difference, how much longer will this speck of stardust remain an inhabitable island?

How Long?

So here we are, on this tiny speck of star dust, the only speck in the whole universe, so far as we know, able to support life, and we have to wonder how much longer that will be true.

We used to say that this is the only speck of stardust able to support intelligent life, but that seems not to be the case already.

For the people trying to clean up their homes after the floods in Colorado, there are more immediate tasks to deal with.  For the people in California whose homes went up in smoke, there’s the question of whether to rebuild or move.  For folks on the Jersey shore, there’s the question of how far inland to move to be out of the way of the next storm.

For farmers in Vermont who balance the budget with the maple syrup crop, there’s the question of how early they will need to tap next year to catch the run – and if it’s already two or three weeks earlier than it used to be, when will the maple trees in Vermont no longer have enough cold weather to produce a crop at all?

I remember the story of the man caught in the flood who turned away the rescuers who came to his door to take him to safety.  “I’m saying my prayers,” he said, “and the Lord will take care of me.”  When they came to his second floor window with a boat, he said the same thing.  And when they came over with a helicopter to take him off his roof, he still said the Lord would take care of him.  So when he died and went to heaven he went straight to the throne with his complaint: “Where were you when I needed you?”  And the Lord said, “I sent a rescue team, a boat, and a helicopter; what more could it do?”

So what in the world is our leadership doing to respond to the signals being sent?  Ignoring it.  Hoping it will go away.  Denying the scientific facts and the evidence on all sides.

I hope to move to a safer place before time runs out but I worry whether my grandchildren will be able to tread water.

I read last week about a millionaire in San Francisco who is using his money to oppose the pipeline being projected to bring Canadian oil down through the Nebraska corn fields to Texas.  If they build the line and it breaks, it could wipe out the aquifers that keep the cornfields in business.

But what about the other millionaires and billionaires who seem fixated on keeping their tax rates low?  They spend millions to elect politicians who would rather sink the economy and take food stamps from the poor than take constructive action on any one of the critical issues we face.

What sort of man or woman, raking in over a million dollars a year, puts their luxuries ahead of those on food stamps?  What is the thinking of a billionaire who fights for lower taxes while the signs of climate disaster multiply?

I get appeals every day to contribute to a campaign to control campaign spending, raise environmental standards, elect someone intelligent to Congress and sometimes I send them a dollar or two.  More often I sign their petition but send no money.  I literally can’t send more and still pay my bills.  But unless a few more of us cut back even on necessities to make more of a difference, how much longer will this speck of stardust remain an inhabitable island?

A Love Song

A sermon preached by Christopher L. Webber on August 18, 2013, in St. Luke’s Church, San Francisco.

Your Rector had some kind of excuse for asking me to preach today – something about being busy yesterday with an ordination – but I’m sure she doesn’t write her sermons on Saturday so I thought about it and I think I know what the real reason was: I think she didn’t want to have to preach about these readings. Better to get a guest preacher and let him take the blame. And I think I know why these readings come up in the middle of August anyway. It’s vacation time; lots of people away; lots of clergy on vacation. I think the committee that created this schedule of readings looked at these readings and said, Wow! If someone takes these seriously we’re all in trouble Let’s assign them to mid-August.  Maybe most people won’t hear them.

But sooner or later the Bible catches up with you and you’re gonna have trouble anyway. It’s a trouble-making book and it astounds me that so many people read it on Sunday and go home unchanged. There are even people who read it at home for the comfort it gives them! Comfort? How do they do it?

Open it anywhere.  But especially today’s readings. Look at any one of today’s readings. Look at the first verses we heard this morning from the prophet Isaiah: It’s a love song, but what a love song.  Love makes demands; if you’re married, you know that or you won’t be married long. So here’s a love song that makes demands.

Listen to this:  My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill and he lavished every care on that vineyard and looked for good grapes – and got sour grapes. And then it ends up: For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel, and the people of Judah are his pleasant planting; he expected justice, but saw bloodshed; righteousness, but heard a cry!  There’s a nice little play on words there in the Hebrew – sort of like: he looked for right and got riot. Yes. A very fruitful hill.

Isaiah is talking about Israel and what it could have been, what it should have been. God was in love with Israel and what a disappointment. Like a bad marriage where you had these high hopes and were singing happy songs and it didn’t work out. Thinking about it, I remembered John Winslow’s sermon as the Mayflower approached New England and he told his congregation that “we shal be as a city set upon a hill; the eyes of all will be upon us.”  Ronald Reagan used to misquote it and make it a shining city on a hill. But that’s alright; sure; a shining city.  A very fruitful and blessed hill with the eyes of all upon it. The eyes of the world are on ths country for better or worse.

Well, why not?  What more could God have done for the vineyard? How could God have done more?  Isn’t God entitled to ask? Do we live up to our claims of freedom and justice?  When the owner of the vineyard comes looking for grapes, for an abundant harvest, where is it?

“America the beautiful.”  I love to sing that hymn; even Mitt Romney misquoting it again and again couldn’t spoil it for me.

O beautiful for spacious skies for amber waves of grain

For purple mountain majesties above the fruitful plain

America, America what is it we now see?

Polluted skies and fire-swept hills and pain and poverty.

In this God-blessed Christian land, what has the fruitful vineyard produced? Why do some of the people who go to church most often deny there’s a problem?  But why isn’t there a national priority on dealing with all the ways we impact the environment, the vieyard?  And what about concern for the people God placed here?  We spend almost twice as much on health care as any other developed country yet the World Health Organization lists the United States as 33rd in life expectancy just after Bahrain and one notch above Cuba. So we have enacted a brand new affordable care act that lets states opt out if they want and you know who has opted out? Those that have opted out by and large are the states with the most poverty and the worst health care – and the highest percentage of church goers!

Several weeks ago your Rector preached about the Supreme Court decision to allow same sex marriage in California Last week I came across a quotation that seemed relevant: “What is to be thought of a nation boasting of its liberty, boasting of its humanity, boasting of its Christianity, boasting of its love of justice and purity, and yet having within its own borders three millions of persons denied by law the right of marriage?—what must be the condition of that people?” Now that was said by Frederick Douglass in 1842 and he was talking about the states where black slaves were not allowed to marry.  But isn’t it interesting that it’s pretty much the same states that have laws today preventing same sex marriage – and the highest percentage of church members. Douglass stopped going to church after awhile when he saw churches relegating black members to the galleries and offering them communion after everyone else and not taking a stand against slavery for fear of alienating southern members.

We hear about declining church membership and we wonder why. Well, I think I know: if you read in the paper that the largest Christian church in the world is having to defend itself in the courts for protecting sexual predators and trying its best to prevent people who love each other from getting married or if you noticed that the nation with the highest percentage of church members in the world except for Poland also has the largest percentage of its population in prison  – do you know that we have 5% of the world’s population and 25% of the world’s prisoners?

Well, if you were not a church member and wondered what Christianity is all about and read the newspapers or watched television, what would you think? And wouldn’t you maybe be inclined to wonder what difference church membership makes and why on earth you should go?

I’m new in town and I have an outsider’s perspective.  I also don’t have a car so I walk a lot and I walk by churches that are locked most of the time. I found one one day that was open so I walked in – well, the church itself was locked but there was an open courtyard and through an open door in the parish hall I saw some people sitting around a table at a meeting and they saw me but they made no effort to ask how they could help and there was nothing to inform me about the place or invite me back.

I was serving a small congregation in Connecticut the last four years and a year and a half ago we elected a new church treasurer. Those are usually the people who nag you about your pledge and worry about balancing the budget but in real life this was a man with a small company that does what Mitt Romney did when he wasn’t doing politics: they buy up companies and turn them around; they look at the bottom line and ask, “What are you doing wrong?” So this new treasurer who’d been kind of on the periphery – well, his first question was about publicity and his second question was about parking. We had parking behind the church for maybe fifteen cars and the choir members always got there first because they had to rehearse and that took at least half the spaces before I got there and took another. Then we had two marked for handicapped parking and they were always used, so suppose someone took it into their head to join us – where would they park? The new treasurer showed up at a Vestry meeting a few months ago with maps he had gotten from the town office showing the church property and the adjacent property and the status of the ownership of the adjacent property on both sides and in back – like, which ones might be for sale and maybe available to us to expand our parking. We all knew we had a problem – but no one had acted until an outsider came along with a new perspective and began asking questions.

We get so comfortable with things as they are it sometimes takes a newcomer to see what’s needed – and some old timers willing to listen and respond. I mean, even if you happen to be producing good grapes you have to make them available. I love that first reading: let me sing you a love song – sure, happy to listen. Let me sing of rejected love and pain. Let me sing of self-centeredness and indifference to others – oh, that’s different!  But that was our first reading.

So would you rather pay attention to the psalm? It’s the same story in different words: I brought a vine out of Egypt and planted it so why have you broken down the walls and let the wild beasts tear it apart? Restore us, Lord God of hosts.  There’s an alternative Old Testament reading for today that talks about the prophets who prophesy lies, the preachers who tell people what they want to hear: same subject – better put it down for August.  Well, then there’s the epistle that talks about the witness made by God’s faithful people who were “stoned to death, . . . sawn in two, . . . killed by the sword; who were . . . .destitute, persecuted, tormented.  With the current mood in this country it might be just that hard to be faithful. And then we have Jesus in the Gospel saying: “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth?” Jesus asked; “No, I tell you, but rather division!” That’s another mid-August text.  You don’t want that in September with more people around.

But we need to hear the whole gospel at least in August if not more often and ask ourselves where we are lining up.  Jesus said, “I came to bring division,” and Jesus is here and there is division.  On the one hand are people who think of themselves as Christians who are building walls across our southern border and on the other hand there are others out in the desert with jugs of water looking for the people who are dying of thirst.  Jesus said “I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was homeless and hungry and you took me in and gave me food.” Jesus said, “I came to bring division.”  Which side are you on? The Bible says to welcome the stranger and there ought to be more Christians making themselves heard on the issue of immigration. Which side are you on?

Jesus said, “Woe to you who are rich now,” and maybe it’s in response to that that fewer and fewer people In this country are getting richer and richer and there are more and more who can’t make ends meet, more and more in this rich country who need food stamps to get by, and Congress is trying to cut the food stamp program. I’m not surprised the churches aren’t growing.  I am surprised that they can’t make more of a difference when the issues seem so clear.

So what should we do?  Well, I’m out of time so its over to Dana to tell you next Sunday. But we know already, don’t we?  Pray. Daily.  Regularly.  Read your Bible.  Daily. Regularly. Listen to it.  Act.  Make a difference.  And when August is over and your friends come back tell them what they missed and challenge them to help transform the vineyard, the shining city, the land and the people of God.

Who Said This?

“What is to be thought of a nation boasting of its liberty, boasting of its humanity, boasting of its Christianity, boasting of its love of justice and purity, and yet having within its own borders three millions of persons denied by law the right of marriage?—what must be the condition of that people?”

Answer:  Frederick Douglass at a Public Meeting Held at Finsbury Chapel, Moorfields, London, on May 22, 1846

Somehow it seemed very relevant to recent events!  But surely you remember this quotation:  “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”   George Santayana

To Ocean’s Farthest Coast . . .”

“Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes

He stared at the Pacific—and all his men

Look’d at each other with a wild surmise—     

Silent, upon a peak in Darien.”

It’s taken two weeks and a few days but I finally took the last few steps to find myself on the brim of”ocean’s farthest coast,”  that western sea that “stout Cortez” with his eagle eyes “stared at . . . . silent, upon a peak in Darien.”  It’s a long way from Connecticut but if you are looking for change, the leap from a dirt road in Connecticut to the corner of 19th and Lawton in San Francisco certainly qualifies.

It’s been almost twenty years since we moved from the suburbs of New York to the forested hills of Litchfield County and some wonderful years in a home of our own.  We’ve always known the time would come when we needed to be nearer to family and this was that time.  Our daughter Caroline and her husband and their two children seemed best positioned to provide the support we need and they have been marvelous about scouting out alternative housing and getting it ready for us to move in.

Vintage Golden Gate is a relatively small retirement community located in a former Masonic children’s hospital on a busy street in the Sunset area of San Francisco.  It’s within walking distance of Golden Gate Park to the north and (2.3 miles) of the Pacific Ocean to the west.  I made that walk today – over and back in well under two hours.  So now I’ve seen it for myself and know exactly where we are in continental terms.

Those interested in a mailing address can use 1601 19th Avenue, San Francisco, 94122, but the same e-mail address is good.  The web site is till there as well and I will get back to doing some regular postings.  We’ve left behind a number of good friends on the east coast but in this era of instant communication we do hope to hear from you.