Christopher L. Webber's Blog, page 19

Creating a New World

A sermon preached by Christopher L. Webber at St. Paul’s Church Bantam on September 16, 2012  

Have you ever noticed that the second thing said in the Bible by a human being is not exactly true?  Or if you noticed it, have you thought about its significance?

God said to Adam, “You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree,” but when the serpent asked Eve about it, she said, “God said we are not to eat of it or touch it.”  Now, God didn’t say that so what does this tell us about Eve? You might say, “Look at that.  Here’s comes this woman and the first words out of her mouth she exaggerates.” Well, maybe.  But if you look carefully, you have to notice that when God said it, she wasn’t there. At that point, only Adam had been created.  So whatever she knew, Adam told her, and maybe he exaggerated to make sure she got the point.

One way or another, I think it may be significant that the statement we have is made by a woman.  Eve is the one who makes a difference in the first chapters of the Bible. She’s the one who changes things – for better or worse. She picks the forbidden fruit and Adam just goes along.  Some people use words to make a difference and some just go along. So we don’t really know  whether it was Adam or Eve who misrepresented what God had said.

In the long run it may not really matter who said it.  What matters is that the first human beuings had the power to lie.  You can call it embellishing the truth, or misrepresenting the facts, or a lot of other things, but whatever you want to call it, it’s a way of using language that goes back a long way. Human beings don’t always tell the truth.

The Epistle we read this morning is upset about that.  It says:



” the tongue is a fire. . . . a world of iniquity; it stains the whole body, . . . set on fire by hell . . . no one can tame the tongue– a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be.”

Now James has a point. The tongue is a flame that kindles great fires.  We can take words like “communism” and “terrorism” and use them to set the world on fire, to define sides in a conflict, to divide the world between us and them, to gain power over others. I remember reading a sermon by a famous Victorian preacher, Frederick Robertson, and came across this statement:

Let any man cast his eye over the pages of the press, — it matters little to which party the newspaper or the journal may belong,—he will be startled to find the characters of those he has deeply reverenced, and whose integrity and life are above suspicion, held up to scorn and hatred. The organ of one party is established against the organ of another, and it is the recognized office of each to point out, with microscopic care, the names of those whose views are to be shunned. There is no personality too mean, there is no insinuation too audacious or too false, for the recklessness of those daring slanderers.

Now that was 150 years ago and you would think he had been watching Connecticut television yesterday and seeing the ads for the Senate candidates. How much has changed?

Did you ever read George Orwell’s book “1984″ and the way he shows words being used to shape thought, to control populations?  He wrote back in the time when we were amazed to hear China calling itself a “People’s Republic” – as if it were a free and open society, but controlled societies use such words to manipulate the truth.  In places like North Korea they use words to turn black into white.

And we are not immune to the virus. Madison Avenue makes a living out of – shall we say “shaping” the truth?  You can’t run for President or be President these days without an army of spin doctors to create phrases like “the Great Society,” “compassionate conservatism,” “hope and change”  “Believe in America” and so on. After 911, the administration rushed a bill through Congress called “The Patriot Act” which got a nearly unanimous vote even though it gave our government new powers and limited our freedom.  But who could vote against “The Patriot Act”?  If they had called it “The Terrorist Act” the result might have been different. But you can’t vote against patriotism. Words make a difference.

But come closer to home.  Have you ever known one member of a congregation to say something hurtful about another? If not, you’re fortunate.  It happens.  This is not yet the kingdom of God and these things do happen. This is a church.  It’s not a sewing circle or bridge club in which we choose our members for mutual compatibility.  So we are not always easily compatible and Christians do get impatient with each other and say things they ought to regret but they are also much likelier to regret it and agonize over it than members of a political party or bridge club.

Words can be used to hurt.  James is making an important point in this morning’s reading: “these things ought not to happen.”  But they do happen and the reason they do is that a) we are not yet perfect Christians, and b) – and this is what’s important – we have the ability to use words creatively. Maybe you’ve actually heard someone describe someone else’s use of language as being “a little creative” – and what they meant was that it went a bit beyond the plain facts.  Like Eve in the story of the Garden of Eden the story has been exaggerated a bit, it’s imaginative to some degree, it doesn’t exactly correspond with existing reality.

But suppose we couldn’t do that.  Have you ever thought about that? Suppose our language were entirely limited to the plain facts, that we had no ability to use language creatively, to imagine, to conjure up visions, that everything we said was just facts. How would anything ever change?

It’s been said that the human ability to make counter-factual statements is the basis of civilization. Or to put it more bluntly, if we couldn’t lie, we could never change things.

They’ve started a program in Litchfield called “Transformation” with a vision of a better community – what kind of place might Litchfield be if everyone worked together toward a common goal?  Some of us see this congregation as a transforming center of life. Is it?  Is that the bare, unvarnished truth?  Well, not exactly.  But if we couldn’t talk that way, what would happen?  Someone would ask you about your church and you would be forced to say “Well, it’s a small number of rather ordinary people who meet once a week and go away again and sometimes get together for pot luck suppers and stuff like that and nobody much notices.”  And that’s probably pretty factual.  But suppose you said, “It’s the kingdom of God on earth; it’s some of the most committed and faithful people in the whole area and they are making a difference in the whole community.” Is that a factual statement?  You can’t prove it with test tubes in a lab, but in some ways it’s closer to the truth than the bare facts.

What do you see when you look around?  Do you see familiar faces doing the same old thing or do you see the saints of God creating the kingdom of heaven on earth?  That may be a counter-factual statement but if it’s what we want then it’s a counter-factual statement that has the power to change things, to enable us to dream dreams and communicate a vision and bring a new world into being.

Now this gets to the very center of what it means to be human – or as the Bible puts it “made in the image of God” – because what God does from the first chapter of the Bible to the last is to create new worlds, bring new worlds into existence.  “God spoke” and it was so: there was light and dark, earth and sea, birds and animals, and human beings made in the image of God – like God, because they could also speak and shape worlds like God, they can imagine a world different from the one we are in and use the magic of words to create that new world.

A character in a play by George Bernard Shaw says, “You see things; and you say, Why? But I dream things that never were; and I say, ‘Why not?’” That’s the difference that words can make.

It’s interesting, I think, to know that the Hebrew language has one word, “dabar,” that means both “word” and “act.” In other words, to the Hebrew mind a word has force, it acts, it changes things.  Our words tend not to be like that.  How many of our words really change things?  How many are just idle chatter?  It’s no wonder Episcopalians have the custom of falling silent when we come into a church. It’s not the town hall, not a club room, not a meeting house.  It’s not a place for idle chatter, it’s a place where the word of God is to be spoken and when we think about that we realize then how completely inadequate most of our words are.

The words we use here are mostly Biblical words, words chosen and hallowed for their power.  Preachers need to remember that pulpits are raised up not just for audibility but because we are speaking God’s word, something above ordinary language, a word meant to change lives, create worlds, make a difference.

Prayer is like that too. The Lord’s Prayer especially imagines a changed world: “your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven.”  Those are words to change things, invoking God’s power to remake this world in the image of a new world, a perfect world, a world in which God is known and loved and served perfectly.  You can’t pray that prayer and accept the world as it is.

Jesus, we say, was the Word of God, God’s Word made flesh. Jesus changed things, created a new world.  We number the years from his birth because with his birth a new world began. We worship on Sunday because it’s the first day of creation and the first Christians called it “The Eighth Day” – the first day of a whole new creation, a new life in the risen Christ.

Today in the Gospel Jesus is asking his disciples about one creative word in particular: do they know who he is?  And Peter has a glimpse of the truth so uses that word and he says, “You are the Messiah.” But that’s a word that Peter doesn’t yet understand and when Jesus begins to tell him that it means suffering and death Peter misses the point entirely and rejects it.  So Jesus tells him not to use the word again until he knows better what it means.  I don’t fully understand what that word means to our world today or exactly what kind of world God is creating now.

Bishop Douglas likes to ask, “What is God doing now and here?” I’m not exactly sure – and I don’t think the bishop is – what the Episcopal Church should be doing at this moment in its history. The preacher who tells you exactly what God is saying to us today is probably wrong.  The politician who claims to have all the answers is probably wrong and fortunately the primaries pretty much winnowed out the people who had a really clear agenda.

This is God’s world not ours, and it is God who acts in history and it’s our job to listen carefully and try to follow along.  Human words are never adequate and often, right from the beginning, not quite accurate. So beyond the spoken words of our service there’s a different kind of word to receive and that is the word made flesh at the altar, a word that transcends the limits of human language and acts with a power beyond human speech.

Today’s lesson asks us to watch our words. Remember the power they have to create and destroy,  to help and to hurt.  The world tells most people, “You are worthless; you’re a loser; you don’t count.”  The world is wrong.  We as God’s people know another word that says “You have value;  you are God’s beloved and chosen children. Listen to that word.  Receive it today at God’s altar.  Take it out with you and speak it to your family and friends and strangers alike.  When you do that you can re-shape the world.

Radishes Recipes?

Radishes are my current problem.  I’m looking for help.

My garden, like Gaul, is always initially divided into three parts: one section for corn, one for peas, and one for potatoes.  Everything else gets tucked into the corners.  When the green peas mature in early July,  I pick them and put them in the freezer for future reference.  Then I have the opportunity to grow something else.

There’s time to grow another crop of green peas because an early frost won’t bother them in the fall any more than a late frost bothers them in the spring.  So I planted some green peas and some snow peas and some out-of-date broccoli seed.  Unsure about the viability of the broccoli seed, I planted radishes to mark the row.  It’s a trick often used in the spring to mark a row of carrots since radishes come up fast and carrots don’t.  You can pull the radishes when they’re mature and let the carrots take over.

Well, the broccoli seed needed marking.  Eventually three or four came up but they won’t mature before frost.  But the radishes flourished.  I had other things to do so I let them go and when I finally went to look at them – I had beets!  Here’s the picture.  The biggest is the size of a tennis ball (as illustrated).

But what do you do with a crop of outsized radishes?  I went on line to look for radish recipes.  You can make zucchini bread with extra zucchini and carrot muffins with extra carrots.  We have a family recipe for extra zucchini and tomatoes and onions know as “kalusapati” – variously spelled. Why hasn’t someone invented radish loaf or radish muffins or some kind of radish compote?

So what have you always done with extra radishes?  Surely someone out there has the perfect answer.  I look forward to learning it.

 

Politics in the Pulpit

A sermon preached  by Christopher L. Webber at St. Paul’s Church, Bantam, Connecticut, on  September 9, 2012.

I promised three weeks ago to try to say nothing more about politics this fall – and I kept that commitment for three weeks!  But now that the Conventions are over and the elections, I’m sure, have your undivided attention it seems to me it might be possible to say just another word or two about politics: who to vote for – that kind of thing.

I have two excuses. First, I think we forget how political the Bible is.  A very large part of the Old Testament is history, political history. It’s the story of Israel and its kings and the way they used their power. It talks about social conditions, about wealth and poverty. It talks about justice, and the conflict between God’s justice and human injustice.

The Bible doesn’t know anything about separation of church and state. It only knows about one world which God made all of and for which God has a purpose. The Bible also knows that God’s purpose may sometimes come in conflict with human politics but it doesn’t see that as an excuse for God’s people to remain silent or uninvolved or to say “That’s not my business.”

At the very least, it gives us standards by which to guide our own participation in the political process. A Christian politician or a Christian citizen has no excuse for checking his or her faith at the door of the church. If you have to consider your faith and not just your own self-interest – If you have to consider your faith as well as your donors, your corporate sponsors – that’s bound to make your job harder.  As voters, we need to think more broadly than just who offers the biggest tax breaks. And as a preacher I need to also.  If the Bible is about politics, I can’t just ignore it and preach about something else.

And second, I think we’ve begun to get more comfortable in this country with the interrelationship between faith and politics. Maybe “comfortable” isn’t the right word but I think we are more aware of the relationship, not surprised to find that it exists. Back in the ’60s, liberals became deeply involved in politics, especially the civil rights movement, and clergy and church leaders played a vital role and conservatives were complaining about separation of church and state. But then in the ’80s the conservatives got involved in issues – and still are – ranging from school choice to right to life – and now it’s the liberals who fuss about church and state.

So both sides have had a fling, and maybe both therefore have begun to see that you really can’t be a Christian and not care about God’s world – all of it – and that includes the political process. Whatever wall the constitution establishes between church and state is there to protect the church from the state not the state from the church.

It’s worth noticing also that we Episcopalians come from a tradition that still has an established church in England and it’s odd how Americans love to watch the English pomp and ceremony of kings and queens and bishops and all that as long as it’s safely across the pond. But the Church of England, our Mother Church, assumes not just the right but the obligation to take responsibility for society and tell the state its duty.

And then, of course, we had a reading this morning from the Old Testament, from the prophet Isaiah, directly related to this subject. And that brings it all together in a way that I think makes it helpful to look at the subject more carefully.

So let me ask you to think about what Isaiah is saying to us, not just to his world, but ours also.  We need to go back almost 3000 years to a time when Israel was – well, as it still is – a tiny political entity struggling to survive in the clash of big powers around it. Syria to the north, Persia to the east, Egypt to the south were the big players.  Some things never change.  And the Kings of Israel and Judah tried to find ways to use the big powers to their own advantage. We don’t know a lot about Isaiah, but he seems to have been on close terms with the king – perhaps even a member of the royal court. And we can read of confrontations between Isaiah and the king, in which Isaiah was recommending a policy of non-involvement, to stay clear of power politics and trust God rather than armies.  “In returning and rest you will be saved,” he said; “in quietness and confidence will be our strength.”

Thise are familiar words, but they were spoken first as a policy for a particular nation at a particular moment, not necessarily a general principle for all time. We’re not in the same situation today at all.  As Americans, we are more in the position of ancient Egypt or Babylon, and it’s people like the various modern middle eastern states who are in the position that Israel was in then, small nations trying to play off the major powers to their own advantage. Isaiah might still want to say to Israel, “Stay out of the way, don’t try to get America on your side against Iran but stay out of it, let them fight it out.”  But Isaiah’s message to us might be very different. Would he tell us also to retreat from the conflict, keep a low profile and hope for the best, or would he see that we have no choice but to use our power to attempt to keep the peace?

It comes around to a question of how you read the Bible.  Fundamentalists would read it as saying the same thing then as now, advice to Israel then and advice to Israel now.  Others would say you need to ask why Isaiah said what he did and whether that would be different now when the situation is different.  I think we need to look very carefully at what Isaiah has to say in today’s first reading and why he says it. The first part has to do, as I said, with a particular moment in world history and not much to do with us at least in those terms. But what we often do as a result is to forget the big picture, the political context, and read it as personal advice.  Isaiah said, “Say to those who are of a fearful heart, Be strong; fear not.  Behold, your God . . . will come and save you.” It’s a lot like the verse I quoted earlier:  “In returning and rest you will be saved; in quietness and confidence will be our strength.”  I would bet that most people today take those verses and others like them as personal advice: “Trust God, be confident, never fear.” At one level that’s fine; that’s perfectly valid. Sometimes we need that kind of advice.  Isaiah might have said just that to us. But he didn’t.  He was talking to his king and his people at a critical moment.

What Isaiah knew was that God is the ultimate strength of nations and individuals. God is the ultimate strength of nations: not Persia, not Egypt, not an anti-missile shield, not nuclear weapons, not any amount of military spending.  None of that can save us as a state, a people. That was certainly his first point and it still applies. Political power alone can never save us. But also, at a personal level, there’s a parallel message: we cannot be saved by investments, or insurance policies, or medicine or psychotherapy. Ultimately God alone can save us – nations and individuals alike – only God can save us from the fears and weakness of human life. So we need to know God, to build and cultivate that relationship in worship and prayer and Bible study and Christian service to find the strength we need. And pray that those who lead us will do the same.

So, the particular situation the prophet spoke to is past and gone, but the basic principles remain valid and maybe even more widely than Isaiah realized: valid personally as well as nationally.  We need to read Isaiah in somewhat the same way that we will still read Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.  When the speeches of this year’s campaign are mercifully forgotten we will sgtill read that speech because it defines who we are as a people in memorable terms and it remains valid.  The Civil War is long over but the basic principles Lincoln spoke of are principles we need to remember again and again to be reminded of our identity. We’re no longer fighting a Civil War but the principle stated in our Declaration of Independence and restated in the Gettysburg Address remains true: that all people are created equal and that governments are created to secure those rights.

But don’t stop there.  Yes, there are basic principles to remember but Isaiah also has something much, much greater in mind.  Listen to what comes next: “Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy. For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water…”  Suddenly we’re looking far beyond individuals and nations and politics.  Suddenly Isaiah lifts our eyes to give us a vision of a whole world transformed, a world in which the deaf can hear and the blind can see and the lame can leap yes, but much more than even that: the desert will bloom with new life: streams will run in the dessert, water will flood the wilderness.

Isaiah gets kind of carried away but the prophets are like that.  They know who God is – the Creator of heaven and earth – and that has consequences. Would you imagine that a God who created black holes and spiral nebulae can’t make crops grow in the Negev?  Of course he can. And than if we look at America we find a country obsessed with building prisons rather than schools, building roads in Afghanistan while our own roads and bridges fall apart, in which the gulf between rich and poor grows steadily greater, in which, for my money, neither party or candidate has been able to look up and show us a vision. If you look at the international situation and find vast areas where children starve and education and health care are simply not available or if you look at this so-called “fragile earth our island home” and find even here in Connecticut rivers so polluted you can’t eat the fish in them and if you find no one willing to act, politicians so indebted to polluters that they can’t do what needs to be done, you can get discouraged and drop out as millions of Americans do. Or you can listen to Isaiah: “Say to those of a fearful heart, Be strong, fear not . . . your God will come . . .”

You and I also know what Isaiah knew: that it is God’s world not ours and God has a vision for it far beyond any we have dared dream of. And we know that God can and will accomplish that purpose with us or without us. God is able to make streams in the desert, and streams here we can fish in and God can create harmonious societies and God can bend nations to the way of peace. Isaiah talks about a Jerusalem in which children play in the streets – without fear of cars or polluted air or guns.  Can you believe that, or even imagine it? Not today, not with the narrow minded and fearful leaders currently in place or running for office here or in Israel or Palestine or Afghanistan or Pakistan or Iran. Not a nickel’s worth of vision among them. So that’s discouraging, but remember the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah lived in a tiny state being bounced around like a ping pong ball in a world indifferent to his dreams and living with leaders as myopic as any of ours today. Their power could change nothing – but God could.  Isaiah knew what was possible with God.

We live in a powerful state with technological and scientific skills even Isaiah never dreamed of. What could God do with us if we looked up and trusted the vision? So where are the prophets now? Why do our candidates have so little vision? Why do we let them get away with such narrow and selfish agendas?  Isn’t it time we too became prophets and dared to dream and encourage others to dream of what might be, yes, and work and pray and vote for it knowing that God can accomplish even more than we have yet dared to imagine.

Solving the World’s Problems

A sermon preached by Christopher L. Webber at St. John’s Church, Washington, Connecticut, on September 2, 2012.

Technology is changing the world.  We all know that. We hear talk about a “global village.” We know it’s coming because when we call the computer help line we find ourselves talking to someone in Bangladesh. We worry about jobs moving out to China  and the Chinese worry about ideas coming in that they can’t control.

I came across this statement the other day  about the way in which we can expect  new technology to make the world  a more peaceful place: “It is impossible that old prejudices and hostilities  should longer exist, while such an instrument has been created for the exchange  of thought between all the nations of the earth.” You might expect that the “instrument” referred to  is the computer or internet, but the trouble is that it was said in 1858  when everyone was euphoric about the new era being ushered in by the  first trans-Atlantic telegraph cable. Now that we could be in such close touch  how could we possibly still have wars?  And of course that was just two years before the Civil War and then the Franco-German War and two World Wars and the Holocaust  and Vietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan and so on. And it rather overlooked the fact  that some of the bloodiest wars in history have been fought between people  who knew each other very well. The Civil War, for example, was between neighbors and family, and the Irish troubles and Balkan Wars were not between people who were exactly  strangers to each other.

I have no hostility at all  toward the people of Outer Mongolia; I don’t even get much upset by people in Iowa. But there are three Episcopal Churches in Litchfield  and the members know each other to some degree but they like having separate churches. Why is it, do you suppose, that we imagine that we can end crime and unemployment  and all kinds of hostility  local and national and international if only we knew each other better? You see claims now being made about  the potential of the internet as a force for peace. One expert has declared that thanks to the internet  the children of the future “are not going to know what nationalism is.”

Well, don’t be so sure.  Early in the 20th century it was thought that the airplane would help end wars – then they invented bombers.  Others thought the radio  would make us better friends -  but then they invented talk radio.  Sometimes when I have nothing better to do  I turn my car radio to a talk show and listen to the way improved communications make people more reasonable.  Try it some time.

No, improved communication,  improved education, is not the answer. There’s a problem we keep hoping to solve,  trying to solve, and not solving, because, I think,  we insist on resisting some age old wisdom. We heard it this morning in the gospel:  “It is from within,” said Jesus, “from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within.”

Do you remember the cartoon strip called “Pogo”?  Pogo said, “We have met the enemy, and it is us.” I think that’s a good diagnosis of the problem.  A diagnosis is not a solution  but you need a good diagnosis  before you can solve a problem.  If you have the wrong diagnosis,  you won’t get very far.  In the gospel this morning,  Jesus is providing a diagnosis,  pointing to the way  people in his society were trying to solve the problem of evil by a careful observance of the laws, ritual washing in particular.  But clean hands wasn’t the problem. Clean hands has to do with physical health,  it doesn’t help our spiritual health very much. Physical problems are the kind we can solve  with better education and so on. But clean hands are not the problem. The problem is within  and we would rather not face it.

We would rather not face it.  We like to imagine that the problem is out there somewhere  and soluble  if only we can communicate better,  bring our technology to bear. We’ve accomplished so much with science,  we have so much wealth  and technical knowledge, we just assume we can get everything worked out  if we just spend a little more or learn a little more  or try a little harder; if we wash our hands more often,  lay more cables across the Atlantic, post more web sites, follow more friends on Facebook and Twitter.

Well, it sounds good, but ask the people of Syria.  or the people of Sharon, CT, where I live. We had Route 4 blocked off a mile or so away  from where I live two weeks ago while the police investigated a murder,  and it wasn’t a random crime. The killers knew their victim very well.  You may not even have heard about it.  It’s a common story.  Hardly newsworthy. Happens all the time  among people who know each other very well and have all kinds of information available.

All today’s gospel really does is remind us  there is such a problem, and that human ingenuity can’t solve it. Because WE are the problem: you and I,  who are human beings, who are not angels,  and from within whom comes the evil.  We deplore it if it happens to make the news  and try to conceal when it doesn’t.  Most often it doesn’t make the news;  it just creates tensions and misunderstandings and flare-ups of anger sometimes escalating into violence and divorce,  often creating divisions in small communities as well as big cities,  sometimes even separating Christian churches.  It is always there; it comes from within; it makes us, if we are reflective,  always dis-satisfied with who we are and how we deal with others.  We know somehow that it doesn’t have to be that way  but we find ourselves helpless to change.

This gospel today is not good news.  All it tells us is the bad news,  the truth about ourselves, but it may point us toward the good news that  we need to hear.  The good news is not in this reading today  but let me tell you about it anyway so as not to end on a negative note.  The good news is first of all, forgiveness.  OK, so human beings have this tendency to evil, and that’s bad, but there is forgiveness, and that’s good.  In fact, the reason there IS a gospel  is that there IS good news, it’s what the word means. There is forgiveness  and it comes from God.

All this evil, Jesus said,  comes from inside. So why do we look for solutions  from the same source? If we are the problem,  we aren’t likely to be the solution also. Nor is there anything we can do that  will produce a solution.  The gospel today begins with one more  attempt to solve the problem. Jesus’ disciples are accused of failing to keep the law by washing their hands at the right times.  The issue wasn’t hygiene – they knew nothing of that – but to win God’s favor. We may have sinned,  they thought to themselves, but maybe if we wash our hands more often, we can be forgiven. And Jesus is just pointing out  that you can’t wash off sin. It’s not there on the skin where you can  soap it away: it’s inside and no soap will reach it.

What will reach it?  God.  The reason the disciples went out  to tell the world about Jesus was that they knew at last what was needed  and they knew it was available, that it was free for the asking.  They went out to share that news  and now it’s our job to share it too.

The gospel, the good news is,  that Jesus came, died, rose – for us.  He came to tell us, to show us, God’s love and forgiveness. He came to open a way back,  to free us, to heal us. There are many ways of putting it,  but it all comes down to forgiveness which God holds out to us and asks us to hold out to others.  It begins with recognizing who we are.  The Gospel makes that clear: we’re sinners in need of forgiveness.  We need to know that, know who we are.  Then next we need to know who God is:  a Creator who offers forgiveness  and calls on us to forgive others so that our lives and our society  can finally, really, be changed.

The Power of Evil

A sermon preached by Christopher L. Webber at St. Paul’s Bantam on August 26, 2012.  (See the editorial in the New York Times of August 26 entitled “No Crime, No Punishment.”  Obviously the preacher and editor were responding to the same angels!)

I’m sure you remember the storm last October  and how so many people lost power and how so many lives were disrupted.  We had people shivering in unheated homes,  reading by candlelight, food melting in the freezer,  stores that couldn’t open and millions of dollars lost in business. I remember reading about investigations  into what went wrong and how one or two executives were fired but of course it quickly faded from the headlines  and whether anything has really changed we won’t know until the next storm strikes.

It’s a similar pattern, it seems to me,  to the bursting of the housing bubble four years ago which had much more widespread and long-lasting consequences  and, again, an investigation that resulted in  very few changes.  If anyone was charged with a crime, I haven’t heard about it.

If someone had set out deliberately to cause all that damage, deliberately, sabotaged the grid, blown up key generators, and so on, I’m sure they would now be in jail or in hiding.  But it wasn’t deliberate, so it wasn’t a crime.  

Clearly a number of people acted to enrich themselves  at the expense of others but they didn’t use guns  and we find it very hard  to deal with this kind of fraud. It’s easier to steal and get away with it  if you can do it smoothly from an executive office. We find it hard to criminalize conduct  that is all done with paper no matter how many people are hurt.

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

Now this, as I said, gets us into theology,  and I meant that very seriously. Today’s epistle talks about a struggle “not with flesh and blood” but against  “the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”  The King James Version called it  “spiritual wickedness in high places” and some people think that refers to Washington but the new translations say “in heavenly places” and that clearly isn’t Washington.

The subject is “spiritual wickedness” – and perhaps not just in high places,  but in all of us.  But first of all beyond all of us. Because what is it that goes on here?  I’ve known people who sat on corporate boards and they’re no worse than the rest of us.  But they are in position  to make decisions  with enormous consequences. Suppose a manager at CL&P  is told that there’s line work that needs to be done but he or she also knows that postponing it will increase profits. Maybe no one will even know how you did it  but you will be commended  for the money you saved. I mean, who plans for a colossal snow storm in October? So why would you do that  If you can make more of a profit by putting it off.

What would you do?  You and I are not on corporate boards, but we have our own decisions to make and if we have a leak under the sink but we can use the money to go out to dinner and put off fixing the leak under the sink  a few more days . . . what’s your priority? It may be stupid, it may cost us more in the long run,  but we don’t put lives in danger. On the other hand,  every one of us makes decisions every day with enormous consequences we never even consider. I’ve been trying for months to persuade myself  that I really need an iPad or smart phone or tablet. It sometimes seems that everyone else has them  and can whip them out at a moment’s notice to show me children’s pictures  or the best route to New Haven or the latest news bulletin  and all my cell phone is good for is phone calls. But do I really – I mean really – need something more?  I argue it out in personal terms:  a fancy cell phone versus medical bills or dinner out but beyond that  is my need for an iPod  greater than the need of an African child for food.  Do I need to buy another book for myself  when there are children elsewhere  who have no books? If I put my decision-making in global terms,  how can I justify my convenience in a world of overwhelming need? It’s not just bad people who cause problems.  It’s our own short-sightedness and self-interest.

Or think about the anger and division  in American politics or in the Episcopal Church?  Is it true, as some would argue, that there are really people  out to destroy the country or divide the church? No, but there are good people  so blinded by their fears or self-interest that they act in ways that can harm millions  and somehow it always looks like the other guy  who causes the problem.

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

The problem is not the evil that some do deliberately  but the failure of good people to go out of their way at all to do what needs to be done.  And I believe that’s a theological problem.  It is, first of all, the spiritual sickness that afflicts the human race, that weakens our will, saps our energy,  enables us to avoid, ignore, overlook, the work that needs to be done  for good to triumph.  It wouldn’t take much; but that little is somehow beyond our reach.  And in this battle  it seems to me the diagnosis we heard this morning is critical. It’s not just “flesh and blood;” it’s “cosmic powers.”  Yes, there’s a lot of evil in us, but not enough to produce so much suffering.  You and I don’t will bad things to happen. Give us something direct and immediate to do  to help someone else and we’ll do it.  But I don’t believe we really understand  the nature of the battle, the spiritual forces arrayed against us.

Paul is saying there’s more to it than meets the eye.  Left to our own devices, we might be alright; but we aren’t left to our own devices.  There’s a power beyond us at work and at work so smoothly and subtly,  we seldom have any idea what’s going on. Someone once said, “For evil to triumph it’s only necessary for good people  to do nothing.” Yes, but even if we do something but not enough,  – and that’s generally what happens – evil will still often triumph.

All this begs the question  of what evil is and where it comes from. The epistle locates it outside ourselves;  it defines it as the ruling power of this world. And there we really identify  the theological problem.  Yes, there’s evil in all of us,  but not enough to account for the evil around us.  The men and women on the boards of Wall Street firms aren’t evil enough themselves to cause so much suffering. The people of Afghanistan aren’t evil enough  to cause the chaos there. The people of Israel and Palestine  are not so uniquely evil that no one can hope to resolve their problems. The people of Africa aren’t evil enough to cause the millions of deaths,  the suffering, that’s afflicting that continent. But we are weak enough  to let ourselves be used by the evil beyond us –  “the cosmic powers of this present darkness” – and let our good intentions  be turned into paving stones  on the road to hell.

People sometimes see the Bible  as taking a negative view of human nature. I think they miss the point.  I think in fact  that the Bible takes a very optimistic view  of human nature and sees potential in us,  possibilities, that we might not have imagined. The Bible doesn’t condemn us as evil;  the Bible on the contrary says God created a good world  and put good people in it made in the image of God.  And the problem is the serpent. Not just in Eden, but here: in Afghanistan and Africa and Texas and Bantam and in you and me.  There’s an epidemic of evil  and we haven’t taken the shots we need to avoid the universal infection.  Why not?  When an epidemic breaks out people wear masks  and avoid certain areas. When winter is coming, we line up for flu shots.  But with the forces of chaos and evil always breaking in on us  we go on with life as usual and let the epidemic rage. As long as we aren’t challenged directly,  we’re willing to let it rage and we never do see  how it’s at work in us, that we are already dying of it.  We find it hard to believe that evil is really that bad and really is beyond our ability to resist if we stand alone.

It’s not the Afghans or the Africans or the Taliban or Al Qaeda or the Irish or North Koreans  who are the root of the problem, nor is it us.  It’s the power of evil that constantly invades this world from beyond,  for the most part quietly, boring from within  until it makes us part of the problem, complicit ourselves in all the horror that we could prevent with God’s help.

We’ve been reading this wonderful letter to the Ephesians for six weeks now. It begins quietly enough  with an appeal to brotherhood  and peace and unity but here toward the end it zeroes in on basics  and reminds us that we’re in desperate need of help  to achieve that goal.  The enemy is stronger than we are and we’re doomed to defeat  unless we recognize our need and act on it, unless we fight spiritual evil  with spiritual good,  the help that’s available here, right here, at this altar, today.

“Take the shield of faith,”St.  Paul writes, and “the helmet of salvation,” and “the sword of the Spirit,” praying always and keeping alert.  We have the means available  in prayer and sacrament, the Bible and our faith. God is already at work within us.  How much more could God do if we opened ourselves more fully  to the grace available?  In the battle against evil, are we willing to offer ourselves more fully  our whole selves, our whole lives in God’s service  and finally let God win the battle through us?

Music Matters

A sermon preached by Christopher L. Webber at St. Paul’s Church, Bantam, Connecticut on Sunday, August 17, 2003.

I’ve been talking all summer about St Paul’s letter to the Christians in Ephesus,  our second reading for five weeks now, and I pointed out a while back     that Paul’s letters typically have two main sections: Part I: what God has done for us, and Part II: what God asks of us in return. So halfway through all his letters,  you usually come to a “Therefore.”

Last week we were into the “therefore” section of Ephesians  and we had Paul laying out some basics:  “Don’t steal, don’t cheat, don’t lie.” But what God expects of us  is not all negative and this week we have Paul saying,  “Because God has done so much for us, we need to sing.” Here’s my free translation of what we heard:

“Be careful; these are bad times; so don’t be stupid about it but pay attention to God’s will for you.  Don’t go and get drunk, but be filled with God’s Spirit and sing out loud and sing in your heart, giving thanks to God always  in Jesus’ Name.”

You have to sing.  Christians have to sing. If you’re tone deaf, make a joyful noise  but do something to praise God with your voice. Don’t be left out.  Music matters.

But why is music so important?  Think how important it is in our world.  Stores use music to put people in a mood to buy; (two more weeks to Labor Day and we’ll start  to hear Christmas carols); restaurants use music to put you in a mood to eat; Dentist’s offices use it to keep you calm.  Music has many uses.

But how does music work?  What’s it’s appeal?  Why does it do what it does? Does music shape society or does society shape music?  Or does music, maybe, not shape society but reflect it? Does the music of Mozart  tell us something about the harmonies of his world or does it maybe offer us a vision  of a world we have yet to see? On the other hand,  does the volume and noise of contemporary music  tell us something about our world,  about the clash and conflict we hear about all the time?  These are not easy questions to answer  but critical.

Think how important it is  in our worship – especially in service planning where Gary Evans and I  spend a lot of time thinking about whether hymns are familiar or not,  whether they fit with the readings or not, whether they would be better at the beginning or middle or end,  whether they say something worthwhile or nothing much. We have a couple of less familiar hymns this morning  because they fit so well with the sermon. If you have trouble with the tune, at least pay attention to the words.

Music matters.  It changes us. Paul sums his message up this morning  as two different kinds of inebriation, two kinds of drunk: alcoholic and spiritual. He says “don’t be drunk with wine . . . but be filled with the Spirit,  singing and making melody in your hearts.” In fact, if you go down the street singing,  people may think you’re drunk! They’ll be asking, “Don’t you watch the news?  What is there to be happy about? You must be drunk!” The crowds in Jerusalem said that very thing  on the first Pentecost and Peter had to tell them, “We’re not drunk; it’s just a new Spirit.”

But these are two opposite kinds of inebriation:  one that dulls the senses, one that heightens them;  one that we pour in, one that God pours in; one that closes us out of reality,  one that opens us up to a new reality; one that isolates us,  one that unites us with each other  and with God and with the universe.

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

Church music can also divide.  A lot of the great church music actually came out of the Reformation  and served to unite the new Reformed churches  on the one hand, and separate them from Rome on the other  with its music centered in the monastic tradition At its best  music is deeply unifying; it shapes congregations and brings them together.

But even in the church today music can be divisive.  There’s a whole new style of church music  closely associated with the so-called renewal movement  that seems to speak better to a new generation than the music of the last few centuries. There are some congregations that actually have separate services with different styles of music  to attract different age groups. So you may have separate congregations but whatever the style,  the particular congregation is united through music and feels that unity  in a way nothing else quite matches.  Music unites.  Music lifts us out of ourselves.

Music helps us express ourselves.  It’s another of those odd things about it that the words and music are usually provided. Someone else wrote them.  And yet we feel that it wells up from within ourselves. That’s probably why some people fuss so much  about unfamiliar music. It isn’t “theirs.”  They haven’t yet let it possess them.  Someone else may write the music but we have to make it our own  and the whole congregation  has to make it their own  so that we find everyone else expressing what seem to be our own thoughts in the exact same way we’re expressing them ourselves. Nothing else makes that possible.

And yet church music isn’t spontaneous;  it can’t be. We don’t all just naturally express ourselves in exactly the same way. That kind of unity takes discipline and commitment.  If the organist introduces a new hymn with no rehearsal,  it’s likely to be a disaster. Human beings are not ants or honey bees;  we’re not programmed for cooperative effort. We have to learn how to do it. Human life depends on our ability to work together,  but it takes training  and a certain amount of work  and discipline and paying attention to others to make the result worthwhile.

And yet the unity of music  isn’t just a dull uniformity either. In a hymn or choral music  there are always several parts.  Even if everyone sings melody, it’s usually enhanced by organ accompaniment  to provide a depth and richness that unison voices can’t achieve.  And that’s appropriate too.  The church is not a lot of Johnny-one-notes, especially the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion. We sometimes think it would be nice  to have everyone on the same page at least, but the trick is not just that, at least it’s not about getting everyone on the same note. It’s about making the various voices blend. And sometimes even dissonance  somehow enhances that richness of harmony. That’s one of the strangest things about music.  Even discord can add richness. Certainly contemporary music knows that  but Mozart knew it too:  there’s a creative use of dissonance  that enriches the effect. There’s a place in the old tune for  “The King of love” where the tenor sings a C and the melody slides from a dissonant B to a harmonious A.  It’s a lovely effect. Maybe the Episcopal Church can learn to do that too:  to resolve the dissonance into a harmony enriched by overcoming dissonance.

So music is creative; it builds community;  it can include discords. And it’s also expressive  and that’s perhaps the greatest mystery. Why is it that words plus music  say more than words alone?  Someone once said:  “He who sings, prays twice.” If you look it up, some sources say it was  Saint Augustine and others say it was Martin Luther. But whoever said it, it’s true  and it’s worth remembering:  “He who sings well, prays twice.” And that, I think, is why music is so essential a part  of Christian worship. It helps us say more and say it better. To speak about God adequately  requires more than words; we also need music. Why do we find it so difficult to talk to others about our faith? Maybe it’s because words are so inadequate.  Maybe we could sing it better.

Music enhances words. A stage play or movie or television drama gives us a slice of life,  but a musical or opera moves the same story into a whole new dimension, somehow enlarged, enriched, deepened.  It’s like the difference between black and white on the one hand and technicolor on the other. There are times when black and white is enough,  but other times when the color, the music, somehow enlarges and enriches the story and makes us go home singing it over to ourselves, appropriating it  in a way we don’t do, can’t do, with words alone.

You might think of baptism  as the initiation of a new voice in the chorus. It’s a very undisciplined and demanding voice  in the early stages  but gradually the baby learns  to imitate the sounds of others, to express herself, and finally to join in civilized conversation,  Parents instinctively sing to a child, maybe just a wordless humming or crooning,  to soothe and quiet them. There’s even been some research to indicate  that a pre-natal infant can be influenced by music.  We seem to know that children  need to begin learning from the very beginning how to respond to music,  how to use music to express themselves. It’s part of becoming who we have the potential to be, not just here but hereafter.

It’s worth noticing that the one place in the Gospel,  in fact in the whole New Testament, where the word “music” is mentioned  is in the story of the Prodigal Son. He comes home at last  and his father throws a party and as the elder son comes in from the fields  and comes near the house, “he heard music and dancing.” And of course the parable  is giving us a picture of heaven where prodigal sons and daughters  are welcomed home  and the Father throws a huge party to welcome us in –  and there has to be music.  What else could bring us together in the same way?  One of the few things we know about heaven is  that music is a major activity. I’ve often said my one plan for hereafter  is to learn to play the cello because I would need an eternity  to master it. But also because it would be another way  to take part in the music of praise that is heaven’s major activity. Actually the word “music” itself doesn’t occur in the book of Revelation with its vision of heaven but almost all the references to singing and songs in the New Testament  are in that one book  that gives us our primary vision of heaven.  There at last we will be able to express our praise perfectly  in unity and harmony and even, the Bible tells us,  sing a new song without complaints. There at last we will be able  to say what we need to say to God and each other  and say it with music to say it best.

We have no real idea, of course, what heaven will be like  and what heaven’s music will be like.  But we do know this:  that here on earth  music is the best means we have  to unite us all in doing what we were made to do: to praise and worship God.

Books or Coffee? Law or Grace?

A sermon preached at St. Paul’s Church, Bantam, August 12, 2012, by Christopher L. Webber.

There was a time when bookstores sold books. I still remember it.  In fact, here in the remote northwest corner, they still do.  But go into any major city and you will find that the bookstores compete not on the quality and abundance of their books but on the quality of their coffee and the ambience of their coffee areas.  So people go to Barnes and Noble or the competition not because they have better books but because they have better coffee.

Now that kind of thing happens to churches also. People choose a church to belong to – sometimes – not because God is present in word and sacrament but because they have friendlier people or a nicer minister or – I have seen web sites that say so – because they have a “kid friendly atmosphere” or “global music.”

I wonder how often people choose a church because of its theology?  I wonder how many think about whether the church they go to has a gospel of grace or a gospel of law?  But one of the most enduring and divisive misunderstandings in the Christian church  is the idea that the church is about laws rather than grace.  I don’t know what answer you would get if you should ask the average Christian for an opinion on whether the church is about laws or grace but at a practical level, I really doubt grace would win.

It starts with church school. Do parents bring children to church school to learn faith or behavior? to believe in God or learn to behave? And do they ever, I wonder, check the church school curriculum to see what it is, in fact, that the children are being taught?  There is a difference.

I remember a woman I knew years ago who was hired to teach the kindergarten class in a parish day school of another denomination and who told me that the teacher’s manual on page one said this (I’ve never forgotten it):  “Every child is born in sin and must be made aware of this from the earliest time.” That’s one approach. And if you want behavior emphasized, and law emphasized, that’s probably where you’d find it.

The epistles of Paul are not like that. They always begin with a proclamation of grace and love. Even if he’s about to lay them out in lavender, he speaks first of grace.  Because that IS the gospel: it’s good news about love and it’s about freedom.  The Pauline epistles usually get around to behavior toward the end – sometimes sooner – but always in a context of love and grace  and forgiveness.

What Paul has to say is radical and it’s risky. He says God has “abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances.” We read that three weeks ago.  But suppose you woke up to find that Congress had abolished the law and was counting on all of us hereafter just to behave nicely toward one another. Would you dare to go outdoors?  I can just imagine how a lot of Jewish people felt when they heard what Paul was saying.  What security would there be without the law? How would you know who was Jewish and who wasn’t?  who belonged to God and who didn’t?  Abolish the law with its commandments? How would you know how to behave?  What could you now get away with?

The Biblical answer is that love is sufficient: love, faith, grace. But even Christians have been very reluctant to give it a try. I mean, I can obviously get along without the law myself, but could I really trust my neighbor that far, or the people across town, or in the next town, or the next country? It’s a great idea, but will it work?  Or to put it another way, can we really trust God?

Back in Jesus’ time they had a law and they could answer every question about God’s will: how far you can walk on a sabbath day; how much you need to do for your parents to meet the legal requirement; when you need to wash your hands. The Pharisees had it all figured out and if you wanted a well-behaved child that the neighbors would approve of you would certainly send him to the Pharisees for a schooling.

There were Christians right from the beginning who doubted it would really work.  Peter and Paul had a major fight on the subject. But they decided to give it a try. And they did.  But it didn’t last. It’s just easier to have rules. Whether it’s fish on Friday or playing cards on the sabbath or drinking alcoholic beverages, Christians of every sort have fallen back again and again into the legal mind-set.  People tell me that the churches that are growing are the ones with answers and rules.  Of course.  Make life simple.  Give people a sense of security; easy answers; clear guidelines. But is it Christianity or is it something else?

I think the current controversy in the Episcopal Church is fundamentally about this same issue.  The one side sees the Bible as a rule book and somehow thinks that human sexual behavior can be governed by laws even if the laws were made in a time that had never heard of the actual situation we face today, even if the people who make other people crazy are faithful, deeply committed Christians.  There will always be some who find law easier and especially when dealing with something new and something out of their direct experience and something that challenges them to think again about questions they thought had been settled long ago. It’s frightening; it’s risky; laws are always safer. I would guess that every human society has tried the same thing. Especially when you’re facing something as powerful and emotionally overwhelming as sexual behavior, you’d better have rigid rules or who knows what might happen?

Of course we do need rules and guidelines and every society needs laws, but that’s not what Christianity is about.  Governments are forever trying to get the church to bless its laws and teach obedience, but then someone goes and reads the Bible – sometimes, you know, even the church has forbidden people to do that – but someone does it anyway and finds all this stuff about abolishing the law and being set free in Christ and then there’s trouble.  Because if you are free to question the laws there are bound to be differences of opinion and arguments and disagreements and controversy – and who wants that?  No one.  The Pauline letters are forever having to deal with such issues.  What about marriage?  What about this food and that?  What about wearing hats in church and long hair and meat offered to idols and praying on certain days?

Sometimes Paul actually does suggest some answers, but mostly so as to keep the peace and not to offend the neighbors. Finally, he persists in attempting to show people a new way, a way based on love, a way that trusts God’s grace.

Look carefully at this morning’s reading from Ephesians. There’s lots of stuff about behavior, but notice how it’s grounded always not in law but in grace, not in conforming to rules but conforming to Christ.  How does it begin? “So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors.” A good rule; lying is wrong. But why?  because of the ninth commandment?  No: because “we are members of one another.” We have a unity in Christ that makes falsehood impossible.  Would you lie to Jesus? That’s who your neighbor is.

“Thieves must give up stealing” and work honestly, we read. Why?  Because of the 8th Commandment?  No, but “so as to have something to share with the needy.”

“Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another” the epistle tells us. Why? Because of the sixth commandment? No, the Pauline letters never appeal to the law as a basis for action, but we need to be forgiving because we’ve been forgiven.

We are called to “be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us.”And yes, indeed, that’s risky. Law-makers don’t like their security challenged.  Jesus was crucified; Paul was beheaded. If you live by the law, you need to get rid of the trouble-makers.  Let’s get back to the law that gives us the answers we want.  But the gospel is still here and still causing trouble.  Love makes radical demands on us; it makes demands far more challenging than law.  It asks us to think, to see things in the new light of Christ, to be changed from the inside out rather than from the outside in.  And it leaves us without easy answers to the war in Afghanistan or the environment or the economy or sexual relationships or any of the issues that face us; and some Christians will see these things one way and some another because grace is not a rule book and human beings – even Christians – are slow learners and reluctant still to test our freedom.

But again and again in the readings in recent weeks we have heard what the priorities are: to know ourselves to be a new people – in Christ – living in love, depending on the Spirit, and offering others the same forbearance we want them to offer us.  Patience, charity, humility, forgiveness, meekness, gentleness; these words and others like them have come up again and again in these readings in recent weeks. God loves us so much that we are given a vision of people who find their unity and their strength for daily living in the grace that produces these qualities in human lives and that looks for them here – right here – looks to see them in you and me.

One

A sermon preached at St. Paul’s Church, Bantam, Connecticut, on August 5, 2012, by Christopher L. Webber.

I said two weeks ago that the Epistle to the Ephesians emphasizes unity – and I talked about it again last week but even that probably doesn’t prepare you for this week’s reading with its drum beat insistence on unity:

“I beg you,” St. Paul writes, “To maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.  There is one body and one Spirit, . . . one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all.”

The Prayer Book, of course, has made that verse very familiar because we repeat it at the beginning  of every service of Holy Baptism.  You are baptized into one body, you belong to one God.  There was a time when some Christians didn’t recognize baptism in other churches. Those days, thank the Lord, are gone – except for the churches that reject infant baptism. Aside from that, if you are baptized, you are baptized: baptized into the one body of Christ that is one body however divided we are by human divisions.

I think Paul has two agendas here.  First, there is always the threat, the problem of disunity: true in his day just as much as in ours. And I think it’s inevitable.  You set out to bring together in the church people who have nothing in common – nothing except that one Lord, one faith – and you are running up against every basic human instinct.  From the time we get to school-age we divide ourselves. We associate with some and not others. We pick our friends, we join clubs and teams, we form cliques.  We get together with people we like, with whom we have things in common. And then you come to church and here are all these people with whom you have nothing in common, and right away someone is suggesting that you work with them, share your life with them, form a community.

Well, not every church. There are churches that don’t worry about community. It’s really a contradiction in terms – a church without a community.  I said something about that once to a couple who were planning to get married: “Come here on Sunday,” I said, “get to know people.”  They were really surprised.   “My parents go to church every Sunday,” one of them said, “and they never talk to anyone.”  I guess it’s easier that way. But it sure does miss the point.  At least it misses Paul’s point about the church as a body.

I think there are several ways of looking at the church.  One way thinks of the church in terms of law: God said “Go to church” and God keeps score and you need to earn points. And there are churches, too, where the emphasis is on feeling good – hymns and sermon designed to make you happy. But that’s not the church Paul is talking about; that church is a living body of which we are members and we come together to be who we are and to share the life that gives us life.  I sometimes think we could simplify everything if we adopted the other system, if we didn’t talk to each other, just came and got our credits or our emotional fix and went home.

I sometimes think that one of the reasons we have so much controversy in the church is that we do talk to each other and we find out what others believe – and we’re horrified.  Just ths last week, a congregation in southwestern Connecticut decided to leave the church because they disagree about issues.  But the church isn’t about issues, it’s about being a body in which different people have different views and that’s alright. Somewhere in this world there needs to be a place of unity – organic unity – deeper by far than questions of opinion – but a place where we can face and overcome divisions by the grace of God.  Yes, we have conventions and pass resolutions and try to work things out: try to achieve consensus when consensus just isn’t there.  It wasn’t there in the first century either or this epistle might never have been written.

Christians always seem to want the church to be a club, a gathering of like-minded people, and it irritates them enormously to realize that it isn’t like that.  It’s a church: one Lord, yes; one faith, yes – in spite of the differences about liturgy and sexuality and structure and so on – but still one church, one body. why else would we all be here? But always we have to stop and remember: it’s a church, not a club, and the unity is of God, not ourselves. That’s point one.

But when we look closely at this fourth chapter there’s another concern emerging, a more specific focus, and that’s about ministry.  There are different roles in the church. In the one body there are different functions. Christ’s gift to the church, we are told, is that some should be apostles, and some should be prophets, and some evangelists, some pastors and teachers. And that also is a source of division.  We have different gifts, different roles, different functions, different ministries.  And it’s notorious that these gifts are always a potential source of conflict. Apostles are sent out to build up the church; prophets are sent out to speak God’s word which is often a word of judgment on the comfortable way we are living and offends the same people the apostles are trying to unite.  Evangelists have a priority to reach people who haven’t heard the gospel; pastors are there to care for those who have heard it.

In another letter of Paul’s, First Corinthians, there’s a different list of gifts for ministry: apostles. prophets, teachers, workers of miracles, the gift of healing – and then two very practical gifts: those able to help others, and then administration.   So imagine the conflict between the prophets on the one hand and the administrators on the other: those trying to stir up trouble and those trying to avoid it. It’s a classic conflict when people come to choose a new pastor for a church: do you want a pastor, or an administrator, or a preacher?  You probably won’t get all three. And typically, what parishes – and dioceses do – is choose a pastor one time, a preacher the next time, and an administrator after that.  Why doesn’t God package all these gifts in one person?  I don’t know. But that is how it is.  And as St. Paul well knew, it can be a source of division – unless we recognize that gifts are different and learn to rejoice in the gifts we have and compensate somehow for those we don’t.  But don’t blame the pastor for not being an administrator or the preacher for not being a pastor.  They need to be who they are and use the gifts God has given them and it only makes it more difficult when we expect them to have gifts God didn’t give them.  This congregation knows about that because for years you had a pastor without the time to be a pastor and so members of the congregation came forward to do what needed doing. That’s how it ought to be done.

But the most important point this passage makes is still to come: why does God give these gifts? We tend to think of these as the gifts of ordained ministry because we have for so long identified ministry and ordination.  There are churches that refer to their clergy person as “The Minister” with a capital T and capital M.  But pay attention to what Paul says: he says that all the gifts we look to the clergy for – prophecy, evangelism, pastoral skills, etc. are given in order “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ.” And the “saints” are the members of the church, all the members, not just the ordained.  In other words, all these co-called ministerial gifts are, in fact, not the primary ministry of the church at all but background and preparation and training for the real work of ministry.  These gifts are given “to equip the saints,” God’s holy people, you, all the members of the church to do the real work of ministry with their gifts, your gifts, often for those outside the church, those in need of pastoral care, those who have never heard the gospel, people you know because you see them every day, people I will never meet unless you bring them here and people who may never come here but still need your ministry.

And those gifts, too, will probably be divisive, because no two of you will have the same gift.  And why should you?  Who needs a congregation with a hundred church school teachers and no children or fifty covered dish bakers and no one who knows how to set a table?  Sometimes that kind of thing happens all the same.  The parish I served longest had lawyers and bankers by the dozen and no one who knew how to change a light bulb.  Here, we have to get along without lawyers but we have skills that are actually more useful.  But these gifts are given for ministry, for building up the body of Christ – to do the work that needs doing, to quote the baptismal service again: “To seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving my neighbor as myself.” And you can’t delegate that to me because I don’t know your neighbor and you do.

The former bishop of New York liked to point out that in the early days of the church when someone came and asked to be baptized, they admitted them as a catechumen and then spent three years essentially training them for ministry, and then in a long and elaborate service on Easter Even, they baptized them, made them lay members trained for ministry.  In those days, as the bishop tells it, when they needed a new priest or bishop, they would choose someone who seemed right and go ahead with the ordination with no further training at all because they had been trained before they were baptized and they would probably just tuck the ordination in to the regular service on Sunday morning.  Nowadays, on the other hand, we spend an hour or so with parents and godparents before a baptism and do it in a few minutes on Sunday morning, but we send would-be clergy off to seminary for three years and ordain them in long and elaborate ceremonies.  In other words, we’ve reversed the priorities; upgraded the status of the ordained few and down-graded the skills of the baptized many so it’s no wonder the church has problems.

Somewhere along the way, I suppose, the lay people got tired and passed more and more of their role onto the clergy and told them to do the ministry.  But that’s backwards. No wonder there’s so much disunity.  If we were all out doing our ministry we’d be so busy with the task at hand there’d be no time to argue or criticize how someone else was doing it.  So maybe what it comes down to is trying to be clear about the things that unite and the things that separate. In the world, we’re separated by age and sex and language  and education and income and politics  and job description and title  and dozens of other factors that ought to – not divide us in the church but enrich our lives.   Here there’s a unity that – ideally at least – accepts these differences and brings them together and enjoys them and benefits from them.  Because there is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, these potentially divisive differences can be seen as gifts.  And the separate gifts God gives us for living: talents for administration, skills in music, in organizing a chicken barbecue, in visiting others and building relationships – all these gifts of ministry that you have and use though very different, enrich our lives in this community because the unity is in God – one Lord, one faith, one baptism – in God, not in us.

One last point: these gifts for ministry are to be cherished and valued – as this morning’s reading reminds us – “with humility and gentleness and patience, bearing with one another in love.” And that’s a gift also – a great gift.  Pray that God gives it generously to all the church of Christ so that we will be that one Body that serves Christ in the world.

Knowing rthe Unknowable

A sermon preached by Christopher L. Webber at St. Paul’s Church, Bantam, Connecticut, on July 29, 2012.

One of the great phrases of 21st century America is: “Who knew?”

“You can get it for less at Walmart.”  “Who knew?”  Well, actually, if you didn’t, you were living in an igloo in northern South Dakota or totally beyond the reach of computers, cell phones, and Facebook.  But how about, “They’ve discovered that milk is generally bad for adults:” “Who knew?”

We live in a time when it seems that we stumble on something new every day and find out that what we learned in first grade is dead wrong.  Who knew? I remember learning in elementary school that oil comes from dead dinosaurs and there’s enough to last until at least 1980 but now I know it’s not mostly from dinosaurs and there’s enough to last another couple of years.  I learned that the resources of the sea were largely unexplored and inexhaustible. Who knew we would ever run out of fish?  We live in an age when yesterday’s common knowledge turns out to be wrong again and again and things we never imagined like computers and Facebook and capitalism in Russia and China and revolutions in Islamic countries are taken for granted.  But we take it all in, take it for granted, see kindergartners taking things for granted that were unheard of ten years ago. I have grandchildren who know things nobody knew when they were born.

Paul in this morning’s reading reminds us, however, that there are still things beyond our knowing.  He wants us, he says, “to know the love of Christ that passes knowing.” He wants us to know what can never be known.

Now, there is a whole field of study called “epistemology” which has to do with what we can know and how we know it. Most people never worry about it and probably don’t need to. Most people probably say, “I know what I know” and let it go at that. But human beings have a capacity no other life form has as far as we know and that is to continue to learn as long as life goes on. I say, “As long as life goes on,” because we all know people who become brain-dead long before they stop breathing. They take polls every now and again that show us that half the population doesn’t believe in evolution and probably thinks the earth is flat.  No wonder we elect the kind of representatives we do; they’re as uninformed as we are.

But can you imagine being no longer curious, no longer wondering, no longer exploring, closing your mind to new ideas?  Some people think that’s what religion is all about and certainly some people seem to take refuge in religion rather than think things through or even look at new ideas.  But an ancient rabbi once said,

It is forbidden to grow old – for a child knows how to be amazed, everything to him is new – the sky, the sun, the stars, mother, father, the doll. . . .  Adults unfortunately have ceased to be astounded.  They see no mystery; freshness is hidden under names and categories.

Exactly.  We put labels on things and think we understand. But a child sees everything for the first time and asks, “What is this?” and may see in it what we have failed to see because we know the familiar label but not the possibility.

But why would we close our minds to a fuller understanding of God’s creation? It seems to me that we need to remain childlike in that openness to new understanding and growth. And all that we learn exposes us to new areas of ignorance. The more we know, the more we can see how much we don’t know. Until Columbus opened up the other side of the planet Europeans only knew that there was more to learn about Europe and Asia.  Suddenly they knew there was a whole new world and they knew almost nothing about it. By learning of its existence they doubled their ignorance. Science does that for us constantly – and so does faith.

Until Jesus came along,  God’s people thought they knew most of what they needed to know: God was powerful and just and had certain laws to be obeyed but then suddenly they began to understand that God’s love was so great it could become enfleshed in human life and die for us and rise again and suddenly God was to be known supremely not in power and law but in love and self-sacrifice, and who knew God’s love for us was that great? Who knew we were called to love God and our neighbor that much? Who could get it into their heads that God’s love was that great?  Two thousand years later we are still working out what that means.

So my job this morning is to tell you what I can’t tell you. Like St Paul I want you to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. I want you to know the things you can’t know and all I can do is point in that direction and remind you how little we know about anything.

The world is full of people who think they know it all, have all the answers, and the first step in becoming wise is recognizing how ignorant we are.  The second step is recognizing how many kinds of knowledge there are.

You hear people say things like, “Jones has more knowledge in her little finger than Smith in her whole head.” Yes, and we do have knowledge in our fingers that isn’t stored up in our heads. The organist in the parish I served for many years used to talk about getting a piece of music into his fingers. There isn’t time for the eye to take in all the notes and pass it on to the brain to tell the fingers; the fingers have to absorb it themselves so they know what to do without being told. I guess it’s like walking and breathing: the legs and the lungs know what to do without being told. And what kind of knowledge is that?  And have you ever tried to explain why you like one piece of music more than another? How does music work anyway? Or what does Picasso’s painting tell us or Rembrandt’s or Goya’s?  Do you understand it? And if you do can you explain it? There’s musical knowledge and artistic knowledge and maybe social knowledge.  Can you explain what it means to be an American, or a Christian, or in love? We know those things more deeply than we can ever explain.

So then think of a patriot’s love for their country, or a mother’s love for a child or the love of the bride for the bridegroom or the love of a carpenter for a fine piece of wood, or a musician for his instrument, or a sports fan for a close, well-played game. Can you explain those things?  I’m not sure, come to think of it, that I can really explain why one plus one is two because sometimes one plus one is one.  Sometimes two rivers make one lake and one bride plus one groom make one new being and there are things we know so deeply that we can never explain them but we know them just the same and they are often more true than the things we can explain.  But we do know them. And we know that we know.  And Paul is inviting us to know something even beyond that: to know what we cannot fully know, to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge; that’s what he wants us to know.

And in a very real sense we do know that unknowable love.  We know it when we come to the altar to be fed, to take the love of God that we can never fully know in our hands and digest it.  We know it when we put our pledge in the plate and help out at a chicken barbecue or serve on the Vestry or help with the soup kitchen in Torrington.  Those are all ways of saying and knowing what words can never say and the mind can never fully know.  They are ways of knowing that can never be put into words.

My point is this: when Paul tells us he wants us to know the love of Christ that passes knowing we ought to remember first of all how much we do know that can never be put into words. I told you two weeks ago that I have two commentaries on the Epistle to the Ephesians and together they are well over a thousand pages of small type but I should also tell you that you can read them both and not know much more than you know already about the love of God. There are people who never went to college who know more about the love of God than the authors of those books.  There’s a lot we do know about the love of God that we could never put into words and Paul is pointing us even beyond all that.

However much we know already there’s infinitely more: not simply enough for a lifetime of learning but for an eternity. And we always need more. How much love would it take to transform American politics? Would you believe there is that much love available?  Paul tells us there is. How much love would it take to transform our neighborhood and to create a community in which there was no need for soup kitchens and food pantries? Is there that much love available?  Paul tells us there is. Not in us, but in Christ, but the love of Christ can become real and effective in us and there’s more available than we can ever know.

So we have looked at the first three chapters of one of Paul’s letters and he has talked about unity and love and knowledge. Next week we begin looking at what it all means, what should we do about it. I don’t think there are many surprises.  I think we know in many ways what God calls on us to do, know it but fail again and again to do it and we always will because we can never love God or our neighbors as much as God loves us. And that’s why we need to come back again and again to these first three chapters of Ephesians and remember not simply how much we need God’s help but how infinite that help is, how much God loves us.  God loves us more than we ever can know but never more than God will pour out on us when we come and ask for that help.