Saying Yes*

Homily Advent 3A

Sunday, December 15, 2019

St Stephen’s Episcopal Church

New Harmony, IN

Every Advent, the gospel reading for both the 2^nd and 3^rd Sundays

Feature John the Baptist

John always gets his coverage in Advent

Surprisingly, Mary gets very little scriptural attention in Advent

But for today Dr. Beth chose Canticle 15 

The Magnificat of Mary

She chose it as a substitute for Psalm 146---

(The lectionary gives two options)

She chose it because 

though Mary is very prominent in the Liturgy of the hours,

     showing up to conclude every day’s Evening Prayer

From the point of view of Sunday Worship, she is quite hidden

The pink candle 

Always lighted on the third Sunday of Advent candle

Is the Mary Candle

This Sunday is known in liturgical language as Gaudete Sunday

Gaudete means REJOICE

And so the Magnificat of Mary is the perfect text.

I had a professor of Scripture once say to the class… 

(we were studying Luke’s Gospel where all the good stuff about Mary is found)

He said of Mary “She is too important to leave to the kooks!”

Doesn’t sound very nice

But he wanted to help us reimagine Mary

Taking away her blond hair and blue eyes

Substituting practical working clothes 

for the Blue and white silk perfection of the catholic catalog Marian statues

Not that these devotional Mary’s are somehow wrong

But they simply don’t capture the Mary of the Gospels.

My professor wanted us to get to know the Mary of the Gospels.

When I first started working at St Vincent’s as a chaplain

I was surprised to find that many people are attracted to Mary

And not just women…not just Catholics

We had these deep drawers full of plastic rosaries…

And I remember thinking that surely they’d been there for years

But then I noticed that people…all kinds of people…asked for them

And I wondered:

What is it about Mary that makes believers…from Catholic to evangelical alike…

feel a kinship with her?

According to Luke it all begins with Mary’s YES

Could it be that God had been waiting and waiting and waiting

Waiting since the beginning of human life

For someone to respond with a completely free yes

A Yes like Mary’s?

Was God tired of all the half-hearted Yesses?

The Yes, if’s

And the Yes, but’s

And the Yes, when’s…

And the Yes, after I finish….

And the Yes, well maybe’s…

Was God tired of the human inability to make a complete and free YES

To the invitation to bare Christ

To participate bodily in the Incarnation

To be God’s creative partner???

…and then came Mary

Her YES…her free and total YES

makes her the first disciple

The perfect disciple

The mother of the community that is the church

Her YES is what we all strive to imitate

She utters her Yes to God’s plan for her

And she rushes to share her news with her cousin

When they meet, the pregnant Elizabeth and the pregnant Mary,

Mary irrupts in song

All the songs on her top ten play list come from the psalms

The psalms were the soundtrack of every first century Jewish life

She irrupts in psalms of rejoicing

What is this ‘REJOICING’?

How is it different from…say ‘Happiness’?

I think at the root of it

Happiness is dependent on things outside oneself

Whereas, Rejoicing is an internal knowing

A knowing and recognizing the unconditional love of God at work in the world

like being overwhelmed in your whole body with the nearness of God.

And so…I have been thinking

What causes me to REJOICE?

That makes me shake in awe?

That makes me short of breath with delight?

I paid attention and noticed 2 things yesterday

Yesterday morning

I was reading the obituaries

And I read the obituary of Barbara Jean Warfield

And this is what her family wrote of her death:

  On December 3, 2019, 

  Barbara Caught the Morning Train to Glory

  with her family at her side as she departed!

(and Morning Train to Glory was capitalized!)

Who was this woman…so in love with God

That her family was perfectly sure she had a first-class ticket on that Glory Train?

I really couldn’t help but rejoice for Barbara

But not just Barbara

But for her family’s big and bold witness 

     on the pages of Saturday’s Courier and Press!

Later in the day

I read a reference to the California Super Bloom

Which happened in March of this year

…A super-bloom is a rare desert phenomenon

when an unusually large number of dormant seeds

bloom all at the same time!

I’d heard about it back in March

But I hadn’t taken the time to search for any pictures

And because I had the Isaiah reading on my mind

With its vision of impossibly beautiful happenings in the desert…

Because of that

I searched for pictures

It takes your breath away---even in pictures.

In the desert…

This unexpected and surprising explosion of color!

A carpet of color and texture as far as the eye can see!

It was completely rejoicing-worthy!

God is near!

I paid attention

And it helped me think differently about what was happening in my day

Rejoicing simply must be good food for the soul 

Earlier this week I was talking to my daughter in law, Stephanie

Who is 8 months pregnant

She was telling me about a Church she visited where the Advent Wreath 

has a small statue of a pregnant Mary in the middle of it. 

There just is something about Advent and pregnancy

The Chaplains office at St Vincent’s

is located at the entrance 

to the Hospital for women and children

And several times a day I would see women in varying stages of pregnancy 

walk the long hallway to the elevator

And as pregnancies unfold the walks change

This happened all year long

But Advent made me notice

Eventually…you know... 

The hands are on the hips

The back is a little arched 

And the belly leads the way

At the literal level

We can recognize the growing, and anticipating, and preparing 

that surrounds the bringing to birth of a child

But on the level of mystery

This is an image for all of us

Pregnant Mary is a prod 

…An Advent prod for each of us

A prod to our own reflection

What do I say YES too?

What do I welcome to take up space in me?

What do I birth…what comes forth from me?

The action of Advent is ADVENTING

Adventing means…to bring into being

We…all of us here…

Are Disciples of Christ

We are on a pilgrimage

And as we journey along

We have Mary’s example as first and most perfect disciple

As our guide

We have said our shaky YES in baptism

Yes, to the vocation of Adventing Christ

In what we say

And do

And feel

In how we walk

And sing

And love

Every day we have countless opportunities to bring to birth new life

Perhaps not grandiose opportunities

But near ones

Paying attention is how we will get better

At this REJOICING business

All that I am

Sings to the God

who brings new life

To birth in me

My spirit soars

On the wings of my Lord

(from our singing of the Magnificat version by David Haas…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zIIWVioh-Q)

Bumperstickers or Billboards?*

St. Stephen's Episcopal Church, New Harmony, IN

Homily Advent 1A (late post)

Isaiah 2:1-5

Matthew 24:37-44

The first Sunday of Advent is a problem

There are so many things going on.

We are beginning the new liturgical year

When we will be living in the Gospel of Matthew 

This transition out of the Gospel of Luke is an important thing to note
because each Gospel tells the story of Jesus from a different vantage point

It’s like circling around a large bronze statue 

and realizing that each view looks different…

Jesus in Luke’s Gospel spent time in prayer, 

the Holy Spirit played an active role in the storytelling…

Luke’s Jesus spent a lot of time around dinner tables

Often with questionable dinner guests

the poor and those on the fringes…women, Samaritans, lepers

Matthew will give us a Gospel

Written more from a Jewish perspective

Jesus is cast as a new Moses

There is a lot of language of fulfillment and continuity between Judaism and the Jesus movement

We have a change of Gospel…and we also have a new liturgical season

It is Advent

Advent is more than preparing for Christmas

It is four Sundays calling us…the Church 

To contemplate the meaning of Jesus’ incarnation

In Christ coming in History, Mystery and Majesty

The History is the coming of Jesus

In human form…

Born of Mary in Bethlehem of Judea

Living among us

The Mystery is knowing his presence 

In His Word 

In the Sacrament of the Eucharist

In the body of Christ…the church…the faithful gathered

In the beauty of creation, the beauty of loving and being loved
Of healing and reconciling 

And the Majesty 

Is the fruit of HOPE

Hope is believing in the promise of God

And believing that God has the power to fulfill that promise

We hear language in Advent 

of Being Awake and watchful
of waiting and preparing

But while we highlight this in Advent

Christ’s coming is a continual Advent

God’s presence is continually surprising us

Week 1 of Advent begins with a bang!It starts with Majesty

But…it is far from comforting!

I would use the word troubling

Two in the field one taken, one left

Two at their days work,
One taken…one left

I bet most of you have seen 

some version of a RAPTURE bumper-sticker

They read something like:

“Warning: In Case of the Rapture this vehicle will be unmanned”???

And then there’s the cheeky bumper-sticker response:

“In Case of the Rapture…
Can I have your car?”

It’s really just bad theology

…in today’s text…is it even obvious???

…do we really know???

Whether it’s better to be taken or left behind???

In the story of Noah the ones left behind were Noah, his family and the animals.

So wasn’t it the ones taken who were the losers in that story?

Here is what I believe Matthew wants us to hear in this very vivid text:

The through line 

Not just in this text

But throughout the Gospels is consistent 

“the day or the hour…no one knows”

We. just. don’t. know.

But that is so hard for us…

I like to know things

Knowing things is power

Knowing things makes me feel in control

I. love. Knowing. Things.

And having things in order 

Because doesn’t knowing things…translate into control?

NO! How many times have I learned and unlearned this lesson!!!

I had the perfect plan 

for bringing my Dad to Evansville to celebrate 

a perfect thanksgiving 

with my perfectly healthy family

Gathering from far and wide…perfectly on time!

Alas…I had absolutely no control over weather, and illness, and mishap!!!

…things just didn’t end up at all like I planned!!!

We can’t know the when and the how

But we can

Live life awake…attentive…ready

This isn’t some hypervigilance born of fear

Rather it is living a life grounded in a vision

In a promise

This is where I found myself drawn to the Isaiah reading and the Psalm

Did you hear it? And see it in your mind’s eye?

That beautiful image from Isaiah?

He’s not making a prediction

He’s having a dream!

An unquenchable dream! 

A dream that inspires

It inspires us to Live and to work to beat swords into ploughshares

And spears into pruning hooks

And this dream…this vision

Of All the nations and all the peoples

Living in the light of the Lord

Is because… no one…has taught them about war.

I couldn’t help but think of Wayne

I remembered him 

Just out front of this church

(maybe it was last year’s Kuntzfest?)

He was giving us a visual…heating and beating that metal

I saw that it was hard work

His pounding… 

His repetitive constructive action 

was propelled by a vision of what could be

something new…a thing of beauty and practicality

So there is an Advent question for us

It’s a question of WHAT and HOW

What does beating swords into ploughshares look like in the particulars of my life?

How do I live in the meantime

in the already and not-yet world of Advent?

The already is our faith in the promise

And the not yet is the VERY obvious 

“Not. Yet. Fulfilled.” status of that promise

I think our texts this morning offer us a gift

Set in the context of Advent

When we watch the light grow

From one week to the next 

…it is a kind of pilgrimage

Advent is a practice in pilgrimage

And there is always a towards in pilgrimage

We are always headed somewhere

And it’s best to know where!

The where is the vision

Today we have Isaiah’s version in poetry and promise

And the vision is fueled by HOPE

What is HOPE?

Hope is to look back on our lives and see no need

To the count the losses 

Or underline the hurts

Play the victim

Or stew in bitterness

To look back and see these

Is to live like a hamster on his treadmill

…wondering why the view never changes

To look forward in HOPE is to know that all that has gone before 

Is redeemable in the promise

So we begin this Advent and every Advent

With the end in mind

It is calling us to wake up

To reset the vision

But from what?

And toward what?

That is for us to figure out

It is our Advent exercise

Can I name what steals my hope?

And

Can I name what feeds my hope?

And then having done that naming

Can I improve the balance?

What steals my hope is the almost constant temptation to pronounce the vision

WILDLY UNREALISTIC…

Just pretty words

…pretty words to make people feel better

What steals my hope is the parasite that attaches to this temptation…
that comes along for the ride trying to go undetected…
that sneaky but constant 

Simmering low-level despair 

What feeds my hope is listening

And being interested

And being unrushed

What feeds my hope is doing the things that hope makes easy to do!

What feeds my hope is being here 

and being uplifted by the hope shared in this space

What if we make this Advent a kind of “boot camp”

A time to pay attention…and to talk about

What steals our hope?

And

What feeds our hope

And then, together, to be about the business of improving our ratios

This is how we will become

…Not cheap bumper stickers…

But BILLBOARDS! 

Billboards of hope

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi*

November 10, 2019

32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Proper 22

22nd Pentecost

Luke 20: 27-38 

                                 

1. I find this a most strange and off-putting Gospel

There is so much trouble here!

To begin with
the lectionary has skipped a bunch of the story
     not really skipped but saved for Holy Week

the last few times I have preached 

we have been moving toward Jerusalem
and the tension has been mounting 

And now…we are there

We are in Jerusalem

But what we haven’t heard is

Jesus making his triumphant entry

With all the crowds shouting
“Blessed is the King who comes…Hosanna Hosanna…Palm Sunday 

And Luke’s Gospel says that there are
Multitudes of disciples around him

Then he goes to the Temple
…not to worship but to drive out those merchants…
     turning over the tables…making a BIG ruckus
That will get people’s attention

And then Jesus takes up residence there---teaching in the temple

“every day” that’s what Luke says
“He’s teaching in the Temple EVERY DAY” 

The tension is reaching a crescendo
New opponents each day 

Seeking the opportunity 

     not just to trip him up but to kill him

That’s where we are today.

Today it is the Sadducees' turn.

This is the one and only time the Sadducees show up in Luke’s Gospel

So…Who are they? And why haven’t we met them yet?
They are the Jerusalem elite
They are attached to the Temple
     .....the Temple authorities

The business of the Temple can’t run without them

And nobody else is allowed to do it!

So that’s why we haven’t met yet
The Sadducees stay in Jerusalem…they don’t venture into the boondocks!

Now when Luke is writing

There are no more Sadducees 
they disappeared when the Temple was destroyed in 70AD
in the great Jewish Revolt.
No Temple - no Sadducees

They were a sect that recognized only the first 5 books of Moses

…the Pentateuch

So…we might say---super-biblically-conservative

And because they found no evidence of the resurrection in the first 5 books
it was not a part of their beliefs

In today’s episode

It is the Sadducees 

…who after the whole Temple-Table-Turning business are like: 

Look, buddy, how 'bout you go back to your Galilean backwater 

They come having practiced their tricky little plan

And they pose their crazy scenario
Even in the 21^st century, we can tell they are playing a game

So it has to do with the Levirate Marriage
…the Levirate marriage law in Deut 25
It sounds so strange and uncomfortable---plain weird
And the woman! Really! The woman is passed down like a used car!

I can't let myself get stuck here...
Because…the intent of the Levirate marriage law
was to ensure the preservation of the family name.
Why is that so important?
Well. In a world view without resurrection
the only way to quell your anxiety over death is to have children
     ...your offspring allow you to live on through your name

So it’s very important

The plan…The scenario takes the law to the extreme 

     in order to show that the whole idea of resurrection is downright foolish.

But Jesus responds by playing their game 

He stays in the first 5 books and he counters their argument
Using one of their most beloved texts
taken from the burning bush scene

And surprise! He wins the day because of 
verb tense

I AM...the God of  Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
Not...I WAS

The bottom line 

The really important bottom line seems to reside in the last line:

“He is God, not of the dead, 

but of the living; 

for to him, all are alive.”

SO…This isn’t about marriage
Or the patriarchal system once again making women into property

Jesus is getting closer and closer to the cross.

So this is a text about RESURRECTION.
What does RESURRECTION even mean?

And what difference does it make?

The Sadducees speak as if resurrected life is just…more of the same
…the same old rules apply
They simply. don’t. have. the imagination for it!

But the scriptures…especially Paul…remind us 

that while we are certainly gazing into a mystery

the one thing we CAN say 

is that it is both 
qualitatively DIFFERENT
AND 
somehow continuous.

Different but continuous.

2. There is a maxim…a rule in theology that says

Lex Orandi…Lex Credendi
it means that how we pray witnesses to how we believe
…we pray AND SO we believe

The tradition of prayer…Our tradition of prayer 

In the first instance
arose naturally…organically
…nobody sat down at a writing desk and composed our liturgies
or our prayers and then decided what they meant

The tradition of prayer grew as an expression of belief

When we proclaim after hearing the Gospel on Eucharist Sundays

(And these are ancient prayers and proclamations found in the Didache
a text from the 1^st Century)

After hearing the Gospel read we proclaim:

“Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ” 
we are confessing our belief in God’s presence
in the reading of the scriptures…in our shared story

And in Holy Communion

Our holy communing…
we hear and respond
“The Body of Christ! Amen!”
We confess our belief in the Living God present and active in our midst
and indeed in our very bodies.

And in the funeral liturgy 

We hear these words…spoken by the Presider in the name of all gathered: 
“For your faithful people, O Lord, life is changed, not ended”

And here is where we confess our conviction...
Our faith...in the deep deep mystery of the resurrection. 

As we pray this way we are professing: 

God has nothing to do with death 

There is no death in God

3. Well…Easy for God to say!
For us…it seems rather obvious
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob…they died

They are very long dead
My Mom is dead
All the people on our ALL SAINTS list are dead
Because for us…most of the time…

we can only define being alive as being “NOT DEAD”

Not so for God!

For God, being alive is just being alive
it has nothing to do with death!!!

What if WE lived all of life
       believing that being alive has nothing to do with death?

How would it be different?

Would we be free from fear?
Would we be free from living ‘scared to death’?
Would we be free from choosing to spend 

     so. much. time. money. energy. avoiding or postponing death 

Rather than LIVING?

We are a Pilgrim People
that means we are always…at least somewhat UNFINISHED

that means we don’t always remember what we say we believe

About death…or about God

But sometimes…we do!

Don’t we live ‘resurrected life’ whenever we experience ‘new life’

Literal new life---like in the joy of a child’s birth?
or those first crocuses peeking out as winter fades?
And don’t we taste ‘new life’
When…through the tough work of contrition and repentance

our own un-forgiven-ness------bursts into NEW LIFE as we reconcile and reunite?
Isn’t that experience of being forgiven by others and by God
a very real taste of living resurrected life?

I believe so.

4. Today’s Gospel tells us how JESUS thought about God

The law about levirate marriage

Was for people who didn’t believe in an afterlife

It was a way of overcoming death

The way to overcome death was to have children to keep the name going

A world without resurrection is a world full of anxiety about overcoming death!
And it seems to me that we…pretty much…live in the midst of such a world 

If only we really believed ONLY in life

And not life as just… “not dead”

Jesus came to bring Good News

And that good News is that God is in a category of one

Entirely different from anything we can imagine

Death, for God

Just…ISN’T

“To God all are alive”

The real toughness of this text 

is that Jesus wants us to turn away from anxiety over death 

and turn away from the poor decisions and sufferings 

     that always. follow. such a fascination (we could talk about what those are for hours!)

Instead Jesus wants us to meet the God of the Living
Jesus wants us to share this Good News about God's ALIVENESS…

     today and every day and forever

It is a mystery…a deep deep mystery…
but WE, my friends, we have the imagination for it!

5.

My very first thought when I read today’s Gospel was for my Dad.

How will my newly widowed 87-year old Dad hear this?
Will he hear that he WON’T be re-united with Mom on the other side of the grass (as he likes to say)?

But then I thought --- NO
He’s had 87 years of faithful practice choosing to live in God’s ALIVENESS.
When he talks about Mom…which is darn-near always…

He talks about how she’s probably bossing everyone around up there

Reorganizing for maximum efficiency

Getting all in ship-shape---making it ready for him

Because that is what she did
she always thought about him

And then…he will SIGH and say

“I don’t know why I’m here…I just want to be with her”

…then there will be another pause.
And another deep sigh.
“I know…we can’t even begin to understand! 

I mean there is NO TIME in God…How does that compute…Beyond TIME…

how in heaven’s name are we supposed to even begin to grasp that!”
And with that, he rests…he rests in comfortable faith and easier trust.

“I AM THE GOD OF THE LIVING

TO ME ALL ARE ALIVE”

Lex Orandi

Lex Credendi

SO WE PRAY

SO WE BELIEVE