Feb. 6 Sermon

To hear Dean Morris’ Feb. 6 sermon, click the button below:

Foreign Foremothers of Jesus, pt 2: Rahab

Last Sunday, we continued our four part series on the “Foreign Foremothers of Jesus” in which we’re discussing the four women mentioned in the first chapter of the Gospel of Matthew as part of the genealogy of Jesus. We discussed Rahab, the prostitute from Jericho who, as described in the Book Joshua helps the Israelite spies who came to Jericho to get the lay of the land prior to Joshua leading the Israelite army to destroy that ancient Canaanite city.

Rahab’s willingness to sacrifice her city for the sake of her family and her expressed faith in the God of Israel are two of the striking features of her tragic, yet still triumphant story. Click below for the complete text of her story from the Book of Joshua, as well as the references to her from Letter of James and Letter to the Hebrews.

Sermon (12/5): A Little Child Shall Lead Them

I know that last week I preached that Advent is not a penitential season. That unlike Lent, Advent is meant to be a joyful time, pregnant with marvelous expectation.

Well, all that said, today I have a confession to make. I have something for which I may always need to make amends:

I love Will Ferrell. You all know Will Ferrell—the comic genius who got his start on Saturday Night Live and now stars in movies?

Well, I love him. I think he’s great. And as I thought about today’s readings, I couldn’t stop thinking about him. It was the passage from Isaiah that did it, with its famous line, “and a little child shall lead them…”

In our Christian tradition, this passage has long been viewed as a prophecy of the coming of Jesus into the world, as a baby “born of a woman.”

“and a little child shall lead them..”

This got me thinking about a scene from the Will Ferrell movie, “Talledega Nights.” Have any of you seen that one? It’s a send-up of Nascar stock-car racing culture and Ferrell plays a champion racer named Ricky Bobby. There’s a scene in which Ricky, Ferrell’s character, tries to say grace with his family before a meal.

He closes his eyes, clasps his hands and says, “Dear Lord Baby Jesus,” but then his wife interrupts him.

“Um, sweetie, Jesus did grow up. You don’t always have to call him baby. It’s a bit odd and off-puttin’ to pray to a baby.”

Ricky says: “Look, I like the Christmas Jesus best, and I’m sayin’ grace. When you say grace, you can say it to Grownup Jesus or Teenage Jesus or Bearded Jesus or whoever you want.”

That prompts someone at the table to say, “I like to think of Jesus as wearin’ a Tuxedo T-shirt, ‘cause it says, like, ‘I want to be formal, but I’m here to party too.’ I like to party, so I like my Jesus to party.”

That gets Ricky mad. “Look. I like the baby version best, do you hear me?! I win the races and I get the money.”

Ricky begins his prayer again. But now he’s annoyed. He’s going to grind his axe, as only a Will Ferrell character can.

“Dear eight-pound, six-ounce, newborn baby Jesus, don’t even know a word yet, just a little infant, so cuddly, but still omnipotent, in your golden fleece diapers, with your curled-up, balled-up little fists pawin’ at the air, lying there in your manger, lookin’ at your Baby Einstein developmental videos, learnin’ ‘bout shapes and colors…  Thank you for all your power and your grace, Dear Baby God. Amen.”

Sermon (11/28): Getting Into The Advent Mood

This time, Advent, right now, is a season of joyful expectation. And for us, as Christians, we are, in a sense, always in the season Advent. For we are called by God to live perpetually in a marvelously hopeful “not yet,” a transcendently joyful “almost there.”

Every morning, we are to wake up, as Paul calls us to do, and we put on the armor of light and step out into the world and embrace the day, proclaiming that today is the day that Jesus will come again and establish his benevolent reign over all God’s creation. And the whole world will rejoice!

Every morning we are called to wake up and anticipate, as Isaiah puts it, that the Word of God “shall go forth” as “instruction” and God will “judge between nations” and “arbitrate for many peoples” and “they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation will not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”

On most days, of course, none of that will happen, but we are still called to wake up the next day looking forward to it happening on that day. And the next day and the next day and the day after that.

Perhaps today is the day! Perhaps today is the day, when, as our choir sung from the 122nd Psalm: “Now our feet are standing within your gates, O Jerusalem… a city that is at unity with itself; to which the tribes go up… to praise the Name of the Lord… peace be within your walls and quietness within your towers!”

So often, Advent is viewed as a time of dreary “waiting.” Some even see it as similar to Lent—that Advent is, in a sense, a penitential season when we must repent in dust and ashes before we’re allowed to finally rejoice on Christmas Day.

Sometimes, I think our Episcopal Church, in particular, struggles to recognize the joy that the anticipation of Advent is all about.

[Click below for the complete sermon from the beginning.]

The Foreign Fore-Mothers of Jesus

Beginning this Sunday and continuing through the Sunday mornings and Thursday evenings in Advent, our Adult Ed hour will delve into what I like to call The Foreign Fore-Mothers of Jesus. Who are these Foreign Fore-Mothers of Jesus? you ask.

Well, at the very beginning of the Gospel of Matthew, there is a litany of “begats” showing Jesus’ lineage going all the way back, back, back to super-ancient times. Included in that lineage are four women (besides Mary), all of whom were foreigners who became Israelites through side entrances, so to speak: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and Bathsheba. Over the four weeks of Advent, as we wait for the coming of Christ into the world, we will revisit in chronological order the stories of these four smart, resourceful and very unusual women, as they are recorded in our Hebrew Scriptures, and we will ponder why Matthew made such a point of including them in Jesus’ bloodline.

This Sunday, Nov. 28, we will begin with Tamar, a fascinating character who stars in Chapter 38 of the Book of Genesis (and is depicted here with her father-in-law Judah–the son of Jacob–in a painting by the Renaissance painter, Arent De Gelder). Click below for her story, as recorded in the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible:

‘Lead Us Not Into Temptation…’

This past Sunday, we held the third and final session of our Adult Ed series on “How Can We Gain Knowledge of God?” by discussing how we may avoid the temptation to worship death (as laid out by William Stringfellow in his book, Count It All Joy). Click below to read the complete Part 3 handout. Here’s my favorite bit, in which Stringfellow argues that being overly worried about “indulgences of the flesh” is, itself, a kind of “indulgence of the flesh.”

There is a distinction between temptation in its theological significance and temptation in its mundane and moralistic meaning… I have in mind pietism, which still flourishes in so many quarters in American Christendom: the “Bible belt” Baptists who regards dancing as consorting with the devil, the Methodist who condemns smoking categorically as a sin, some Presbyterians who regard abstinence in the use of liquor as a virtue, and a host of others from most any of the sects and denominations who think that something that human beings find pleasurable is lust and must be shunned lest the faithful be contaminated…

Some other forms of pietism have been cited here before. There is the all too familiar and peculiar pietism of which Norman Vincent Peale is the prosperous merchant. Here individualistic ambitions are besought and secured by hypnotic incantation, regardless of the costs or consequences to other human beings. There are the dogmatic pietists—seminary professors as well as “Sunday School” teachers are notorious among them—whose pietism consists of threatening damnation to those who conform not to what they say. There are many Anglicans, as well, no doubt, as Roman Catholics, Lutherans and Orthodox… who suppose that God’s relationship with God’s people is somehow jeopardized if the words are not invoked, or incense flung, or the candles not lit, or the gongs not rung at the prescribed times and in the ordained way…

“For Paul, the bondage to pietism is equivocation toward God’s grace. For him, all pietism is “indulgence in the flesh”… Indulgence in the flesh means the aggrandizement of human wants, ideas, pursuits, and enterprises despite the incapacity of any of them to substitute for the work of Christ for all people, including all people who vainly strive in these ways.

I also love this bit on Jesus’ and the Devil:

“Contrary to many ‘Sunday School’ recitations, the wilderness is not a period in which Jesus withdraws from the hurry and hurly-burly of the cares and affairs of the world in order to escape for awhile, practice asceticism, or meditate about the universe. Jesus Christ in the wilderness, so to speak, is not like Ronald Coleman in Shangri-La serenely pondering the ultimate. Nor is it… an occasion in which Jesus finally stops procrastinating about his own office and vocation. Jesus—in the wilderness any more than Gethsemane—doesn’t resemble, as it were, Adlai Stevenson agonizing about whether to accept a nomination…

“The wilderness interlude sums up the aggressiveness with which death pursues Jesus from his conception and anticipates death’s relentlessness toward him during his entire earthly ministry—in his exercise of authority over the demonic in healing, in his transcendence of time by renouncing the political ambitions that his disciples covet for him, in his rejection at the hands of his own people, in his confounding of the ecclesiastical and imperial rulers when they seize him and scourge him, in his submission to the last vengeance of death on the cross and in his victory over that humiliation. It is in that context—not as some yoga or mystic or magician, not as a novice about the character of temptation—that Jesus is visited and tempted by the power of death in the wilderness…

“Consider, for [another] example, the intercession of Christ for humanity in the first utterance of the Lord’s Prayer… The summation of the prayer is “lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,” that is “from the evil one,” which is the power of death. Evil does not, in the context of the Lord’s Prayer, mean moral evil in its conventional definition and usage but refers to that which is evil for every person and for the whole of creation and that which is in fact secreted in every thought or deed or wish or word called evil: the power of death or, if one renders the proper name, the Devil.

“I am aware how medieval it sounds to some contemporaries to speak of the Devil, though it is Biblical to do so… At the same time I am not, in using the term, thinking of some grotesque, supernatural, anthropomorphic being as such. I do not apprehend the Devil after the manner of those who conceive of God as a Santa Claus figure enthroned in the sky. Yet it does not offend my intellect or other sensibilities to invoke the name of the Devil to designate that power—distinguished only from God—which is present and militant in this world in all relationships, and to which all other powers are subjected. In a word it is the presumption of sovereignty over all of life that marks the power of death, and it is the notorious vindication of that presumption… that makes the employment of the name of the Devil… wholly apt and, so to speak, respectful of such an exceeding great power…

Temptation is, thus, nothing so mundane or transient or simplistic as choosing “wrong” instead of “right,” or surrendering to pleasure or pride, or being enticed by the ethics of self-interest: temptation refers rather to the incitement people suffer to repudiate the gift of life by succumbing to the idolatry of death.

And sin, hence, does not mean that people are bad, or that people have proclivity for wickedness, or that they are proud or selfish, but, instead, sin is the possession of people by the power of death, the bondage and servitude of people to death, the usurpation of God’s office by the arrogance of death. Saying that people sin does not mean that people are pernicious, it means that they are nihilists.

Sermon 11/21 – Christ the King Rules Us, Even In Our Brokenness

To hear a recording of Dean Morris’ Nov. 21 sermon–in which he discussed the letters of Mother Theresa of Calcutta and her confessed struggles with profound doubt and spiritual darkness–click the button below:

We Don’t Know ‘Right Now’

Where I tend to view myself as both a Christian and an agnostic (see the post below), I just came across a reader of Andrew Sullivan’s blog thoughtfully arguing for an important distinction between Christian faith–even non-fundamentalist Christian faith–and agnosticism. I think this anonymous reader makes the case eloquently, but I also think he/she is too dismissive of the spirituality of non-religious but still thoughtful and spiritual agnostics. I have so many good friends who fall into that non-religious, thoughtful and spiritual agnostic category. And I would uphold them as exemplars of what Jesus teaches and what God has revealed to be righteousness–right alongside any super-virtuous religious folks one might point to. So even though I really like this person’s description of non-fundamentalist Christian faith, I cannot endorse his/her armchair head-shrinking of non-religious agnostics.

Here’s Sullivan’s reader:

The non-fundamentalist Christian experiences doubt within the framework of faith, and above all hope.

We see through a glass darkly; but one day we will see Him face to face. Our unknowing is intrinsically related to eschatology — we experience doubt but dwell within it hopefully, waiting humbly and patiently for the day when all things will be made new. In other words, the uncertainty and humility of the Christian is not a mere admission that we “just don’t know,” but instead is given intelligibility by our hope. It might be better to put it this way: the Christian acknowledges that we don’t know right now. I also suspect — or at least this holds for me — that humility is related to original sin, our flawed and fallible post-lapsarian natures. It is not that our questions are unanswerable, or meaningless, it is that we can’t answer them as finite, fallible beings with minds that still bear the imprint of our aboriginal catastrophe. So we hold our beliefs with some critical distance, knowing that a belief in any God that does not slip into utter anthropomorphism will be aware of the limits of language, of marking with mortal words immortal things.

An Agnostic Manifesto

Spiritual Envy, a new book by Michael Krasny–host of the nationally syndicated radio show, Forum–has just hit book stores, and it was recently reviewed by Reza Aslan in the Daily Beast. Aslan calls the book “an agnostic manifesto” that takes aim at the fundamentalist certainty of those religious who are so sure of (among other things) “what the Bible says” and “what we are to do,” “how we are to live,”  and “the Gospel” and so on, as well as, on the other side, the fundamentalist certainty of the militant “new atheists” who stridently insist that religion is and has been a solely destructive force in human affairs based on purely magical thinking.

As Aslan puts it:

Pity the poor agnostic these days, caught in the middle of an ever-widening gap between an increasingly assertive religious fundamentalism on one side, and on the other a new brand of atheism whose dogmatic certitude and zealous proselytizing make it appear more fundamentalist by the day. Where in the conflict between these two competing claims of absolute certainty—religious and scientific—is there room for the person willing to throw his hands in the air and say simply, “I don’t know?”

I, for one, have long insisted (echoing a rabbi I had as a professor in seminary) that if we are honest with ourselves–much like our youth group preachers this past Sunday), then we are all agnostics. We do not know with certainty anything about God. We have all sorts of tantalizing clues and evidence in the Bible, in our various religious traditions, in the testimonies and lives of saints and prophets, and in the way our individual human hearts respond to those special moments in our lives when we can deeply feel God’s presence, the undergirding presence of the almighty good.

But certainty? The absence of doubt? As the Letter to the Hebrews says, “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Notice the paradox in each of those two phrases as they pit “assurance” versus “hoped for” and “conviction” versus “not seen.” And as Paul writes in first Corinthians, describing his great hope for God and the Kingdom of Heaven: “For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end… For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.”

To have faith, in my opinion, is not to know, but to hope.

What Would Milton Friedman Do?

This post from Steve Waldman’s economics blog, Interfluidity, interests me in the way that it links economic theory and policy with morality and the way it acknowledges how we Americans tend to link the ups and downs of our economy to our collective relationship with God. In brief, Waldman is pointing out how the long-held American concensus that politically neutral technocrats are best at steering the economy has been largely subverted by the current economic crisis (which, of course, has come about despite, or maybe because of, the economic policies of technocrats).  Waldman is particularly taking aim at the The New York Times columnist, economist, and moralizer Paul Krugman. Here’s the Waldman quotes that got me thinking:

Paul Krugman laments that we have been “mugged by the moralizers” and admonishes us that “economics is not a morality play“.

But the thing is, human affairs are a morality play, and economics, if it is to be useful at all, must be an account of human affairs… It should be no surprise that human collectives do not choose policies that grow GDP and employment when they deem those policies to be wrong or unjust… Political choice combines diffuse personal costs with powerful moral signifiers. We should expect politics, including the politics that determines economic policy, to be dripping with moralism. And sure enough, it is! This doesn’t mean that policy outcomes are actually moral. …But exhortations to policy that cannot survive in terms of moral framing are nullities…

The market itself is a famously amoral creature, yet the outcomes it imposes have become widely regarded as legitimate. That’s all true! …Our deference both to market outcomes and central bank management did not derive from some overwhelming scientific consensus to which the common man wisely deferred. They were the result of an immensely successful ideological campaign that conflated markets with liberty and democracy, and claimed central banks would deliver fair outcomes by virtue of predictably valued money. There is a reason why people are asking What Would Milton Friedman Do? in the same way a Christian might ask what Jesus would do. The technocratic interlude… was built upon scripture that Milton Friedman both penned and evangelized.

We are in a period of Reformation now, with all the turmoil that suggests, and the outcome is not predetermined. Simply assuming the parishioners will remain faithful, or lamenting that they ought to remain faithful, is no way to win the argument…

‘Grass? But it’s so boring!’ sayeth The Lord

Tracy Crow, the leader of The Cathedral’s “Green Team” just sent along this clever dialogue between God and St. Francis over the painfully ridiculous phenomenon that is the American lawn:

GOD: Frank, you know all about gardens and nature. What in the world is going on down there on the planet? What happened to the dandelions, violets, milkweeds  and stuff I started eons ago? I had a perfect no-maintenance garden plan. Those plants grow in any type of soil, withstand drought and multiply with abandon. The nectar from the long-lasting blossoms attracts butterflies, honey bees and flocks of songbirds. I expected to see a vast garden of colors by now. But, all I see are these green rectangles.

St. FRANCIS: It’s the tribes that settled there, Lord. The Suburbanites. They started calling your flowers ‘weeds’ and went to great lengths to kill them and replace them with grass.

GOD: Grass? But, it’s so boring. It’s not colorful. It doesn’t attract butterflies, birds and bees; only grubs and sod worms. It’s sensitive to temperatures. Do these Suburbanites really want all that grass growing there?

ST. FRANCIS: Apparently so, Lord. They go to great pains to grow it and keep it green. They begin each spring by fertilizing grass and poisoning any other plant that crops up in the lawn.

GOD: The spring rains and warm weather probably make grass grow really fast. That must make the Suburbanites happy.

ST. FRANCIS: Apparently not, Lord. As soon as it grows a little, they cut it–sometimes twice a week.

GOD: They cut it? Do they then bale it like hay?

ST. FRANCIS: Not exactly, Lord. Most of them rake it up and put it in bags.

GOD:  They bag it? Why? Is it a cash crop? Do they sell it?

ST. FRANCIS: No, Sir, just the opposite. They pay to throw it away.

“Hallelujah” in the Cathedral of St. Macy

A few readers have sent me this YouTube clip of a couple-hundred singers from the Opera Company of Philadelphia performing a surprising rendition of Handel’s “Hallelujah” chorus in the middle of Macy’s while weekend shoppers looked curiously on.

I honestly find the clip a little creepy. The images of a crowded department store full of (extra early) Christmas shoppers singing praises to God feels, you know, kinda wrong.

This Eucharist is Your Eucharist

Trinity Episcopal Cathedral out in Oregon is planning a Woody Guthrie Eucharist, in which all of the music will be compositions by the great American, Depression-era folk singer. Personally, I’d take that over a “U2-charist” (something once offered out at San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral–where I was ordained). The music of Bono and The Edge pales in comparison to “This Land is Your Land” and “Christ For President.” I’ve also experienced a “Godspell” Eucharist at The Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City–in which, as you might imagine, all the service music was drawn from the musical, “Godspell”–but Guthrie’s music is something uniquely special, in my opinion.

Youth Group Sermon 11/14: What’s the Deal with Heaven?

Today, we hear the prophet Isaiah take on the voice of God and proclaim:

“I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight… no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it, or the cry of distress… They shall not labor in vain, or bear children for calamity… for they shall be offspring blessed by the LORD… Before they call I will answer, while they are yet speaking I will hear… The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox… They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says the LORD…”

A week ago, last Sunday evening, I met up with four members of our senior youth group—Courtney Crosby, Molly Goodwill, Ben Wintrip and Carlynn Crosby. We got together over at the NOLA coffee shop and ate beignets and drank coffee and we talked about this passage from the Book of Isaiah.

In our Christian tradition, this passage has long been viewed as one of the earliest visions of heaven. Here, Isaiah imagines that once the Israelites return from their long and terrible exile in Babylon, God will empower them to rebuild Jerusalem as the ideal city—a city re-created by God as a place where “no more shall the sound of weeping be heard,” where “the wolf and the lamb shall feed together,” where no one will “hurt or destroy.”

So, in discussing this passage, we naturally began to discuss “heaven.” More particularly, we asked ourselves: What is heaven? Does it exist? Is it a place? Is it something we go to after death? Or is it a state of being we can access right here and now? Is it open to everyone? Or do we have to somehow earn entry into it?

In short, as Jerry Seinfeld might say: “What’s the deal with heaven?”

After our discussion—and after all the beignets had been eaten, the teenagers then took up pens and paper and wrote out their own individual reflections of what they think about heaven. Here they are:

The Evident Reign of Death vs. The Actual Reign of God

Click below for the complete handout for Part 2 of our “How Can We Know God?” series. Again, all quotes come from William Stringfellow’s Count It All Joy. Here’s my favorite bit:

To ask God in faith for the knowledge of God—knowledge that embraces the profound knowledge of self in relation to the rest of creation—is to enter upon an estate of utter helplessness. Utter helplessness: it is an experience in which all is given up, in which all effort and activity of whatever sort ceases, not only in which all answers are unknown, but unattempted, and also in which all questions are inarticulated and abandoned. It is a condition in which, as it were, a person stands totally alone in the world—naked, bereft, transparent, immobile, absolutely vulnerable in each and every facet of one’s person. It is the event in which the alienation and brokenness of all relationships, including a person’s relationship with oneself, is actualized within a person’s own self. It is the existential realization of fallenness. It is the time in the wilderness. It is the crisis of that unqualified helplessness which is death.

“In the Gospel, faith is about the evident reign of the power of death in this world and the possibility of the transcendence of death in this life. It is thought vulgar to mention death so blandly. Death is not even accorded the honor due death at funerals, much less being recognized unabashedly as the apparent ruling idol of life. Yet it is obvious that death survives all powers, apart from God, in this world. By death, I refer, of course, to biological extinction and to death as the destination of life, but, at the same time, much more than that.

Death, both biblically and empirically, denominates the moral reality in this world that is greater than any other reality to which people attach significance for their existence, leaving God aside. Death not only outlasts money, virtue, fame, sex, religion or the other idols but death is the idol of the other idols. Death is the obvious meaning of existence, if God is ignored… Death is so great, so aggressive, so pervasive and so militant a power that the only fitting way to speak of death is similar to the way one speaks of God. Death is the living power and presence in this world which feigns to be God.

“This death is not the same thing as despair. The person who suffers despair worships death as an idol in place of God; such a person is not yet utterly helpless. One’s idolatry of death as the ultimate and immediate reality of existence is the means by which one seeks to justify oneself.  Despair, in this sense, is a perverted kind of hope. The person in despair may be pathetic, but she has not yet acknowledged the futility of her search for meaning—though the religious quest has brought her to the point of regarding death as god. The person in despair is still protesting, in his idolatry of death, that he is not helpless…

“To be helpless in the sense which is the inauguration of faith involves a person’s confession that one cannot even help oneself by destroying one’s own life, any more than one can help oneself through the fantasy existence of trying to justify oneself by learning much, acquiring property, grasping power, raising a family, making money, being loyal, honest, charitable, kind or otherwise virtuous, abstaining from the popular vices, or indulging in good works.

The Gospel vs. Religion

Click below for the complete text of the handout for Part 1 of our current Adult Ed series, in which we ask, “How Can We Know God?”

Part 2 of this series will be offered again this Thursday, Nov. 18 at 6 pm. Part 3 of the series will only be offered this Sunday, Nov. 21 at 9 am (due to Thanksgiving on Thurs, Nov. 25, we it will not repeat in the usual manner).

All the handouts for this series contain quotes from the William Stringfellow book, Count It All Joy and offer Stringfellow’s intensely counter-cultural view that knowledge of God is a pure gift we encounter through helplessness, suffering and temptation. Here is, for me, the money-quote of this first hand-out:

For all their variances, all forms of religion [including those under the heading, ‘Christianity] hold a common methodology; all share in the same essential approach to the religious issue. All consider religion as the human quest for God. All have confidence in the capacity of people, or, at least, some people, to breach the mystery of God. All emphasize human initiative in establishing relationship with divinity. All focus upon some conception of God as the object of devotion, the source of meaning, and the determination of moral behavior.

It is exactly at this point—not necessarily in content, but in method—that the Gospel is radically distinguished from all religions. The theme of the Gospel from the first moment of the Fall is God in search of humanity. The emphasis is upon the initiative God takes toward humanity in the world. God volunteers relationship with humanity. God gives God’s self for all humankind. What people may know of God is only that which God discloses for people to know…

My conception of you, whether true or false, in any degree, is not you. In religion, a conception of God, whether true or false, in any degree, is not God. Upon this very issue, religion is superseded by the Gospel. In this way, all religions of humanity of whatever sort in whatever circumstances are fulfilled in the Gospel. On this count, the Gospel cannot even be classified as a religion. What dignifies any religion, even the false and idolatrous, is an inherent apologetic for the existence of God, somehow or other defined; what is bold in any religion, including those vain superstitions, is the ambition to explain God; what is audacious in the Gospel is the enjoyment of God’s presence here and now, whatever the circumstances; what is radical about the Gospel is the news that religion can be now discarded, by virtue of God’s grace.

(Click below for text of the complete handout.)

Sermon 11/7: The Face of the Enemy

[Here's the sermon from All Saints (two Sundays ago)]

Jesus says: “Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who abuse you.”

Love your enemies.

Now we might try to soften that command by somehow rationalizing that under the right circumstances a deserved put-down, or a good swift smack, or even a well-targeted smart-bomb can be, you know, expressions of love. Right?

But in today’s reading, Jesus gets even more explicit: “If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat, do not withhold even your shirt.”

Not much wiggle room there. In this passage from the Gospel of Luke, Jesus explicitly commands us not to fight back when someone wrongs us, not to resist when someone maliciously takes from us.

“Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you.” It means just what it seems to. It requires little interpretation. But it’s so much to ask! How can we possibly live up to that?

It seems fitting to me that we’re saddled with this piece of scripture on the same day that we are going to baptize the newest member of our congregation, and on the same day that we will all renew our baptismal promises.

At-One-ment

Last Tuesday during our Lunch Hour Book Study on Ian McEwan’s novel Atonement, Peyton McElroy challenged us to think about what it means to get right with God, the universe, ourselves and those we’ve wronged when we’ve done something bad. It was a challenging and provocative presentation. And for those who weren’t there, I thought I’d pass along the Spinoza quote and the questions Peyton offered in her handout.

“Repentence is not a virtue, that is, it does not arise from reason. Rather, he who repents what he did is twice miserable.” -Baruch Spinoza

How is the project of atonement (which we might also describe as redemption or reconciliation) a project that involves addressing our past in order to repair it? How is this different from the project of writing a good story?

Is ultimate reconciliation with one’s past possible when it requires a contrite heart (or a forgiving one, depending on the problem to be overcome)? Can we human beings be truly contrite when are unable to tell our own personal stories unsullied by personal desires and by the limitations of own perspectives?

If ultimate reconciliation requires endorsement of our lives, how are we able to accept the blemishes in them or accept the disappointments, discover the beautiful in the ugly, appreciate the potential in what seems fixed, find rest from what inspires anger or grief or regret in us now?

Here We Go Again!

Sorry for the dearth of posts the last couple of weeks. Between prepping for All Saints Sunday and then the Youth Lead Sunday, I’ve been pulled away from the blog. But I’ve got a couple of hours this afternoon and I’ve got a bunch of material saved up and ready to go.

So look out!

New Adult Ed Series Begins – How Can We Know God?

This Sunday, Nov. 7, at 9 am (and again next Thursday, Nov. 11 at 6 pm) we begin a three-week Adult Ed series in which we will explore how we gain knowledge of God. As such, we will dig into the text of a slim book by the Episcopalian ethicist and theologian, William Stringfellow, entitled Count It All Joy. Here are some of the excerpts from that book that we will read this week, in which Stringfellow asserts that all knowledge of God is an authentic gift from God and in no way a reward, something we’ve earned based on anything we may do or have done, as individuals or as a group:

“The knowledge of God in which the truth of all existence inheres is an authentic gift and not something earned through diligence or piety, or rewarded for sacrifices of any description, or dependent upon any human initiative, or contingent upon the beliefs of people. It is a gift, and as with any genuine gift it originates wholly in the disposition of the donor and is accomplished entirely by the voluntary action of the donor…

“In American society, integrity in giving is rare. Giving has come to designate all sorts of transactions that bear little resemblance to gifts. People ‘give’ out of a sense of obligation; they describe exchanges of chattels as ‘gifts’; they contribute to charities to purchase a sense of satisfaction; they ‘give’ presents to one another in almost automatic reaction to commercial stimuli; they observe days and seasons with ritual ‘giving.’ Such vulgarities are no gifts.

“The real gift is always voluntary, spontaneous, free of expectancy either of equivalent return or gain of any kind, and representative of the giver. Actually the only thing that can be given by a person to another is oneself.

Oct. 31 Sermon

To hear Dean Morris’ Oct. 31 sermon, please click the button below:

Refusing To Talk About It, contd

Judy Stark just sent me this response to my earlier post about Bishop Spong stating that he refuses to debate the question of whether gay people should be fully included in the Christian church:

I suppose one would feel no need to continue talking to one’s opponents if one felt there were no credibility to their case.

For example, we no longer feel the need to put a Holocaust denier on the panel when we talk about what happened to the Jews in World War II. We feel no need to represent the views of white supremacists or slavery advocates when we talk about race relations in this country. Those positions have no intellectual or moral credibility.

Bishop Spong may have arrived at the point where he feels that opponents to full inclusion of LGBT persons in the church have no moral credibility. Others aren’t there yet. This is a hard issue for some and everyone is not in the same place.

The problem as I see it is that we are neither talking nor listening. We are yelling past each other; God’s on my side; anyone who disagrees is a moral degenerate or an oppressor. We name-call and demonize.

Meanwhile, outside the church this is less and less of an issue. People know gay people; they have gay friends and family members; gay people are prominent in virtually every field of business/the arts/whatever. We laugh with Ellen DeGeneres or Neil Patrick Harris. We respect Barney Frank for his legislative acumen. We cheer for gay sports figures. We admire the police chief in Tampa, a partnered lesbian. Day by day it becomes more and more of a non-issue. Except in the church.

What do the rest of you all think?

Music To Heal The World By

I first came across this video recording of “Stand By Me” a few years ago when it was first becoming an internet sensation. Now, thanks to Michael Adams, I’ve learned that that viral vid was just the beginning for an organization called Playing For Change, which has grown and developed over the past four years to become an influential world-wide operation using music to help promote peace and love and general sense of common cause among all people. Click the link to see and listen to all that they have been up to throughout the world. There’s lots of great new stuff to check out on their site, but for me, their original video (which has now been viewed over 25 million times) still stands up awfully well:

The ‘Counter-Revelation’ of the Wisdom Books

The great literary critic, Robert Alter has just put out his newest set of English translations of the Hebrew Scriptures. He had already published translations of the Pentateuch (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy and Numbers), as well as translations of Samuel I and II and the Psalms. But now he has published his take on the Wisdom Books: Job, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes (though he calls it by its ambiguous Hebrew name, Qohelet).

I am a huge fan of Alter’s interpretive work regarding the story-telling styles used in the Bible, and I’m also a big fan of his earlier translations of scripture–so this is big news to me. Job and Qohelet, in particular, are two of the most fascinating and most provocative books of scripture, in my opinion, containing thoughts and ideas and themes rarely if ever expressed anywhere else in the Christian or Jewish canons. And Alter, in his work as a translator, has always managed to render the texts in a very blunt and modern style without straying from the true meaning of the original Hebrew.

As The New Republic‘s Adam Kirsch puts it (in a review of Alter’s new translation),

[The Wisdom Books] are the Biblical books that speak most directly to the modern, skeptical, secular reader. If the Torah is revelation—an ostensibly factual account of God’s actions and commandments—the Wisdom Books are a kind of counter-revelation: an emphatically human expression of the impossibility of knowing God or believing in His justice… What makes the Wisdom Books stand out so starkly from the rest of the Bible is that, in asking such primal questions, they implicitly or explicitly reject the answers that the Hebrew Bible usually gives… It is enough to make you wonder how the Wisdom Books came to be a part of the Biblical canon in the first place. It would seem that, as Alter writes, “there must have been Hebrew readers…who were not willing to let go of Qohelet,” who cherished its literary power and human insight in spite, or maybe even because, of its “subversive skepticism.”

And regarding Alter’s new translations of these texts, Kirsch writes:

Alter’s versions are not destined to replace the King James Version; they are meant to strip away its familiarity, to help us see the Biblical text more closely and accurately… [Alter's translations help us to see that] the poets who wrote these books, and the editors and scribes who assembled and preserved them, are never more alive than when we can see them as suffering and questioning human beings.

A few months ago, I focused a sermon on the Book of Qohelet (what we more commonly call Ecclesiastes), especially its angst-ridden questioning of whether life has any meaning, and gave particular attention to the issue of how best to translate the text. Click here for that complete sermon.

Biological Morality

Over at the New York Times, primatologist Frans De Waal has written a fascinating essay delving into the question of where morality comes from, but I think he doesn’t quite understand the opinions of religious believers about the origins of morality–at least not believers like me. De Waal argues very convincingly that there is much evidence in his research and that of other biologists showing that many animals–most particularly those that live in community like humans–exhibit a sense of morality, which is to say, a sense of right and wrong separate from what will simply enable them to get their most basic needs immediately met. This scientific data, he says, is “a scandal” among religious people and I don’t really see why that must be so.

What do the biological roots of morality have to do with the question of whether morality could exist, as De Waal puts it, “without God”? De Waal points to religious leaders such as Al Sharpton who once said, “If there is no order to the universe, and therefore some being, some force that ordered it, then who determines what is right or wrong? There is nothing immoral if there’s nothing in charge.” And then De Waal opines:

I am wary of anyone whose belief system is the only thing standing between them and repulsive behavior. Why not assume that our humanity, including the self-control needed for livable societies, is built into us? Does anyone truly believe that our ancestors lacked social norms before they had religion? Did they never assist others in need, or complain about an unfair deal? Humans must have worried about the functioning of their communities well before the current religions arose, which is only a few thousand years ago. Not that religion is irrelevant, but it is an add-on rather than the wellspring of morality.

I agree wholeheartedly with De Waal’s contention that morality is built into our biology and that we would possess the capacity to be moral with or without religion. But that is a very different thing than saying that we would possess a capacity for morality with our without God. It is an article of my faith that God created us (and some animals, it seems) to have a capacity for morality, for an altruistic sense of good and evil and right and wrong. And we do not need to confess some sort of religious faith or practice any religious rituals to know and love the good and recognize and loath the bad–God saw to that in creation. Of course religion is not “the wellspring of morality.” God is.

‘Is Forgiveness For Suckas?’

Bloggers Brett and Kate McKay make a compelling case for the strength that can be expressed through forgiveness:

The great satisfaction we derive from stories of revenge is quite understandable. Revenge played a healthy role for much of our evolutionary history. Within tribes, revenge insured that misdeeds were punished and deterred would be wrong-doers from committing egregious acts in the first place. Eye for an eye. It was a rudimentary but effective way to mete out justice…

I think we often resist the idea of forgiveness both because it seems contrary to the idea of justice and because it seems like an action born of weakness. After all, many people equate forgiveness with letting someone off the hook for their crime and allowing them to get away with wrongdoing. Doesn’t the lack of just punishment encourage the person to commit the same act again and put us in the position of condoning their crime? And if so, is forgiveness for suckas? For whipped push-overs?

Refusing To Talk About It

Bishop John Shelby Spong, the retired former Diocesan Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey, has never been known for watering down his sentiments. In the past, he’s published books with the titles, Why Christianity Must Change or Die as well as Rescuing the Bible From Fundamentalism.

And now Bishop Spong has published an essay in which he registers his unambiguous support for the full inclusion of gay men and women in the life of the Christian church by stating, “I will no longer debate the issue of homosexuality in the church with anyone. I will no longer engage the biblical ignorance that emanates from so many right-wing Christians about how the Bible condemns homosexuality, as if that point of view still has any credibility.”

While I agree with his desire to fully include gay people in the church, and while I sympathize with (and even share some of) his frustration and anger over why so many Christians believe gay people should be looked down upon as sinful and lesser than those of us sexually attracted to the opposite sex, I cannot go along with his refusal to discuss the issue with those with whom he disagrees. I find that really problematic.

Personally, it is part of my reading of the Gospels that Jesus participates in conversations with anyone and everyone, no matter how much they do not “get it.” Indeed, Jesus made a point of entering Jerusalem where he knew he would inevitably confront the religious and political authorities who disagreed with him and his message most of all. And he knew that that confrontation, that interaction with those who disagreed with him most would lead to his death. But he whole-heartedly entered into it anyway.

So I cannot go along with Bishop Spong’s stated decision not to engage with someone who disagrees with him on this or any issue.

Updates: Lunch Book Studies Now Once a Month, plus Youth Groups (with an ‘s’)

Sorry for the lack of posts recently. Life has gotten awfully busy here at The Cathedral. But I wanted to write in now to make sure everyone’s up-to-date on all that is afoot.

First off, we’ve just started up a Junior Youth Group–composed of those roughly between 9 and 12 years of age–to complement our Senior Youth Group (of those 13 and up). At times, the Junior and Senior Youth Groups will team up for fun and to do service work–such as this coming Saturday, Oct. 30, 7-10 am, when they’ll help serve breakfast to the homeless in partnership with Celebrate Outreach at Trinity Lutheran Church here in downtown St. Petersburg. At other times, the Juniors will meet on their own and the Seniors will meet on their own for fun and fellowship with other kids their age and stage. You can read more about all we’ve got planned for our two youth groups  on the newly edited “Youth Groups” page. (We’re really looking forward to the Youth Lead service on Sunday, Nov. 14, by the way.)

Secondly, having just wrapped up our three week dive into Anne Lamott’s Traveling Mercies, we’ve decided to only have one Lunch Hour Book Study per month per book. These Lunch Hour Book Study sessions will generally take place on the first Tuesday of the month at noon, with a different book each month–the exception being this coming Lunch Hour Book Study, which will take place on the second Tuesday, Nov. 9 (so as not to conflict with the Nov. 2 election). You can view the updated schedule over on the newly edited “Lunch-Hour Book Study” page which you can navigate to by clicking through our “Adult Formation” page.

Sermon 10/24: “God Have Mercy On Me, A Sinner”

In today’s Gospel from Luke Jesus invites us to overhear the prayers of two different children of God while they share the sacred space of their temple. Much as we share this space every week. Much as we share this space right now.

“God! I thank you that I am not like other people!” says the first, “thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector… I thank you that I am not like other people!”

“God!” says the tax collector, “be merciful to me, a sinner!”

“Be merciful to me, a sinner!”

And then Jesus points out that God will exalt the tax collector, one who humbled himself. While the other, who exalted himself, God will humble. The exalted will be humbled. And the humble exalted.

Three years ago, when we were living back in California and I was still a seminarian, I did an internship with Stanford University’s Episcopal chaplaincy program. And on one sunny Saturday, I went up to San Francisco with a bunch of Stanford undergraduates where we joined some other college students from around the San Francisco Bay area for a day-long spiritual retreat. The idea of this retreat was for us to spend 5 hours, from 10 in the morning till 3 in the afternoon on the streets of the Tenderloin neighborhood—which is, by reputation and in fact, the toughest neighborhood in the city–known for drug use, drug sales, prostitution, homelessness and crushing poverty.

We were simply to spend the day on our own on the streets, with only a simple map of the area. The retreat’s organizers—Unitarians—who have been coordinating these things for almost twenty years, said that those concerned for personal safety might choose to pair up with another retreatant. But the experience was mostly meant to be a solitary one. The organizers also encouraged us to interact with the neighborhood however we saw fit—we were not there to “play” homeless or to “play” poor. We could strike up conversations with the people we encountered if we so desired. We could walk and walk and walk the streets. We could sit on the curb. We could take a load off in the one, small park.

We should feel free, they said, to spend our time in the Tenderloin as we saw fit. However, they did encourage us strongly to get lunch at one of the two soup kitchens that serve the neighborhood. By doing that, by breaking bread with those who could not afford to supply themselves with a hot meal, they said, we might truly get a sense of what life can be like there.

Better Than “Hereafter”

I am disappointed to report that Clint Eastwood’s new movie, Hereafter–about the mystery of death and how the living left behind maintain a sense of connection with loved ones who have died–is getting roundly trashed by critics. My favorite critic, Jeffrey Wells–who is also a favorite blogger–just wrote a post trying to explain why he doesn’t like “Hereafter” and then he offered a list of those films about the mystery of death that he does like.

1. Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ. 2. Stephen Frears’ The Hit. 3. Brian Desmond Hurst’s A Christmas Carol. 4. Warren Beatty and Buck Henry’s Heaven Can Wait. 5. Henry King’s Carousel (based on Ferenc Molnar’sLilliom). 6. Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice. 6. Michael Powell’s A Matter Of Life And Death, a.k.a. Stairway To Heaven. 7. Albert Brooks’ Defending Your Life.

And he gives an honorable mention to a certain episode of “The Twilight Zone” while also noting the worst entries in this category:

I’m also giving a pat on the back to that old Twilight Zone episode called “Nothing in the Dark,” in which Robert Redford played a kind of angel of death in the guise of a wounded policeman.

For me the four worst films about death — the shallowest and most phony-manipulative and least reassuring — are Ghost, Flatliners, What Dreams May Come and Death Becomes Her. These are movies that pull down their pants and play cheap little games for the enjoyment of those in the audience who are scared of death and need to fantasize or joke about it in order to allay their fears.

Wells’ talk-backers added some other notables: Wim Wenders Wings of Desire, Peter Weir’s Fearless, Adrian Lyne’s Jacob’s Ladder, Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man, Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia, and Tim Robbins’  Dead Man Walking. And I would add, just off the top of my head, Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line and Alejandro González Iñárritu’s 21 Grams.

Any others?