I shared the following testimony before the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music at the General Convention of the Episcopal Church on July 9th, 2009.
I am a visitor from the Diocese of Iowa. Iowa is that heartland state where, a few months ago, the state supreme court showed (to borrow from Ezekiel) that its heart was made not of stone, but of flesh, when it extended justice and equality in marriage to all its citizens.
I am the mother of two grown sons, one of whom happens to be straight. My youngest, N, arrived at the age of 5½ months as an international adoptee. N has held my heart since I first laid eyes on him in the Des Moines airport.
By the time N was three, it was clear that this beautiful vibrant Child of God was gay. And so I took N away from the Roman Catholic Church where I’d had him baptized because I couldn’t figure out how to raise him within a church that would treat him as some sort of lesser child of god. I wanted to keep him safe. But during my unchurched years, I learned that being a Christian isn’t about being safe—and that it is all about finding a way to live in community with each other.
And so my family found its way to the Episcopal Church. And now that my N is 22—at that age, where like any mom, I pray that he will find a man who will hold his heart. When that happens, I pray that the Episcopal Church will be there to extend the sacrament of marriage.
Evensong Sermon on 2 Kings 20.1-21 and Luke 7.11-17 (October 4, 2009)
I have a rule for myself. When I’m asked to preach, I make a point of either accepting or declining the invitation before I go to the Lectionary to look up the day’s scripture passages. That’s probably a good discipline for me. It delivers me from the temptation of trying to sidestep passages of scripture that I find to be difficult or challenging.
You see, I have little trouble with healing stories and today’s lectionary readings are all about healing. Isaiah puts a poultice made of figs on Hezekiah’s wound and Hezekiah is healed. Jesus raises the dead son of a widow outside the gates of Nain. These scriptures seem so far removed from my daily life and work. I get myself tangled up wondering how exactly those healing worked. Perhaps it’s my biomedical background—as some of you know, I was a nurse for several years and now I make my living as a health behavior researcher—but I can’t tell you how many times I had to stop myself this week from going to Google or Wikipedia to look up the medicinal properties of figs! (I held up bag of figs here and noted that the label promised antioxidants and other healthy stuff.) And that dead man outside the gates of Nain? Was he really dead? Maybe he was just deeply asleep?! When I catch myself ruminating on the potential pharmacologic properties of figs, or the characteristics of death-like trances, I realize that I’ve gotten so bogged down in the literal details that I’ve forgotten to take these scriptures seriously. For both the Old and New Testaments are filled with wondrous strange stories and sometimes it seems that our job is to simply be with these odd, peculiar scriptures.
And so, that’s what I set out to do this week. I set my biomedical literalism aside…rather like this bag of figs here. (I set the bag of figs on the altar behind me.) And I spent some time with these scriptures. I printed copies, tucked them into my calendar, and carried them around with me to meetings all week. And there was one meeting in particular, where both Hezekiah and the Widow of Nain seemed as if they wanted to be present…but, before I tell you about that meeting, let me make an observation or two about these scriptures.
Hezekiah is, of course, one of a long string of rulers who governed between the death of King David and the fall of Jerusalem in 587 BC. But Hezekiah was unique. The rulers who proceeded and those who followed him were mediocre, at best, and sometimes downright terrible. But Hezekiah was a good king. Why? Because of his singular loyalty to YHWH. Hezekiah abolished idol worship and reestablished the observance of Passover. Hezekiah’s relationship with YHWH was understood to have practical consequences his people’s health and well-being…Hezekiah alone was able to withstand the military threat from Assyria. (I think I got pretty chatty in expressing these ideas…I was trying to capture the idea that Hezekiah’s faith created an environment where his people could thrive.)
The Widow of Nain couldn’t be more different from Hezekiah. He was a powerful king. She was a woman alone, bereaved and destitute, in a culture where women were entirely dependent on their male family members for both social and economic security. Hezekiah had a long-standing relationship with YHWH. We know nothing of the Widow’s spiritual life. She is not even described as righteous. And she’d never met Jesus before. He was simply passing by. Hezekiah is direct; he prays, asking YHWH for exactly what he needs. The Widow is silent. In fact, what would she have to say? Her situation is desperate and beyond hope. It wouldn’t have occurred to such a woman to ask for anything. And yet, our Lord saw and heard her suffering, was moved with compassion and pity, and restored her son to her. Hezekiah and the Widow are as different as can be…but both stories illustrate the same God, a god whose power is always manifest in compassion and mercy.
And so where did I find Hezekiah and the Widow of Nain amidst my daily life this week? On Wednesday, one of my colleagues at the VA called an “emergency meeting.” He’d been summoned to Washington to meet with President Obama and his aides to make a presentation on health care reform. In a completely understandable case of nerves, he gathered a roomful of physicians and other health researchers to talk about health care reform. What did we think? What should he read before he left for Washington? What should he say when he got there?
In the conversation that followed, two things were palpably present and two things seemed to be missing. First, we talked a lot about money. The money to be lost or made in reforming health care practice. Like me, the people around the table depend, at least in part, on federal research dollars for our salaries and, so, health care reform is a topic of considerable self-interest. Second, it was a conversation that was permeated with a deep sense of pessimism. Everyone around the table was unanimous that the health care delivery system in this country is broken and in desperate need of reform, but no one had any real hope that Washington will be able to generate real change. It was…to borrow a phrase that Old Testament theologian, Walter Bruggemann, likes to use in describing our contemporary culture…it was as if all sense of gospel possibility had been erased.
And it struck me during the meeting, that two important characters were missing from our dialogue about health care reform…Hezekiah and the Widow of Nain. Why Hezekiah? Well, amidst all the talk of money, we seemed to lose sight of the reality that now, as in Hezekiah’s time, the policies and practices of politicians have real-world consequences for the health and well-being of ordinary people. And the Widow of Nain? Amidst all the talk of money, we also lost sight of the fact that now, as in Jesus’ time, there is no shortage of widows at the side of the road…people who’s economic situation fails to provide for their most basic needs for health and welfare.
And so, alas, I did not find the solution for health care reform hidden amidst the scriptures in the book of Kings or Luke’s Gospel…but my meditations on Hezekiah and the Widow of Nain reminded me that what is needed is not so much a change in policy, but a change in heart. Any real alternative asks us to embrace our God, whose power is always manifest in compassion and mercy. May we do likewise.
Amen.
Evensong Sermon on Revelation 21.1-4, 21.22-22.5 (November 1, 2009)
As I told you when I preached at last month’s Choral Evensong, I never look at the assigned scriptures until after I’ve accepted an invitation to preach. This time, when I turned to the Revelation to John in the back of my Bible and found the 21st chapter, the text literally leapt from the page in song. As many of the choristers here may remember, we sang this text two years ago in Edgar Bainton’s sublime anthem entitled, And I Saw a New Heaven. I discovered last week that I didn’t need to read this text, because I sit there and listen to Ben’s plaintive tenor singing in my mind’s ear“…and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.” And I could hear Bob’s deep bass voice climbing up the scale “…and I heard a great voice out of heaven saying…” and the, entire choir joined in, swelling with fierce joy proclaim “...behold! the tabernacle of God is with men…”
The experience of rehearsing that anthem within this choir’s worship community was an important step in my spiritual journey. It helped me heal my long-damaged relationship with the book of Revelation. You see, for me…for many people…and perhaps even for some of you here in this room…Revelation is a difficult book.
I spent years trying to side-step Revelation. Why? Because in 1974, when I was 14, I encountered a low-budget film that played in high school auditoriums and church camps across the Midwest. It was called A Thief in the Night. Drawn loosely from verses in 1 Thessalonians, Revelation, and other scripture passages, the film introduced me to something called the “Rapture.” It scared me to death and for years thereafter my relationship with the book of Revelation—and perhaps even with God—was uneasy at best.
Rapture Theology traces its origins to a vision experienced in 1830 by a Scottish teenager, named Margaret McDonald. John Nelson Darby, an evangelical preacher, aggressively marketed this young girl’s vision and passages from the Revelation to John figured prominently among the Bible verses he used to support his views. According to Rapture theology, this world is irredeemably evil and God is largely removed from this earth. Christ is expected to return for just an instant to catch up—or rapture—believers out of this earth before unleashing unparalleled waves of violence and destruction.
Rapture theology is condemned as a distortion of the Christian faith by every major Church from the Eastern Orthodox tradition to the Missouri Synod Lutherans. Yet it is alive and thriving in contemporary culture, in no small part because of the bestselling series of novels and DVDs called “Left Behind.” The graphically violent Left Behind stories present the Iraq war and catastrophic tsunamis as “compelling signs of the end times.” Its characters are glorified for adopting a new code of “dispensational ethics” as the countdown to the Rapture draws near…there’s no problem with driving the biggest, gas guzzling SUVs you can find, because this world is about to be destroyed anyway. There’s no need to demonstrate concern for the safety or well-being of others because, after all, anyone who is worthwhile—including you, of course—will be raptured off the earth soon anyway.
Of course, there is a very important point on which I agree with the proponents of Rapture Theology. Christ will return. But as Christians we believe not only that Christ will return at the end of history, but that his presence continues to be found among us, often in the most unexpected of places. God created this earth, called it good, and, even when his presence is difficult to discern, he is right here, suffering among and beside and within us.
As Barbara Rossing observes Revelation’s message “is not of despair or of war, but of transformation and justice…[and as we heard a few moments ago, its 21st chapter] “proclaims a ‘new heaven and a new earth,’ but that does not mean that God gives us a replacement for this current earth when we damage it beyond recovery…Christians are not dealt a “get-out-of-tribulation-free” card to play in the face of the world’s suffering and trials…Jesus never asked God to “Beam me up” from the earth, nor can we. It is a temptation we must resist—as Jesus did…God saves us not by snatching us out of the world, but by coming into the world to be with us.”
There! There is where we catch a glimpse of the New Jerusalem…that renewed city where there is no need for a temple for God dwells with his people and all is holy.
Amen.
Evensong Sermon on Romans 8.1-8 (March 7, 2010)
+In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In this evening’s reading from the Letter to the Romans, the Apostle Paul contrasts setting the mind on flesh with setting the mind on Spirit.
Sometimes it seems as if Paul is obsessed with flesh. He writes about the one flesh of the married couple, the temptations of the female flesh, whether the flesh sacrificed to idols should be consumed and let’s not forget all the controversies that raged in the early Christian communities over the flesh of circumcision.
I’ve been pretty obsessed with flesh myself lately…flesh and bones and blood, that is.
You see, I just returned from Philadelphia last night, where I spent the last 10-days with my oldest sibling, R. As you’ve probably heard on the news, the east coast has gotten battered this winter by one nor’easter after another. Between storms, M—R’s partner of 38-years, M got it into in her head that those great piles of snow and ice up there on the roof had to go. Never mind that the snow was doing no harm up there. Never mind that if you Google “ice jam,” the very first thing every website says…usually in bold red letters…is NOT to venture out on the roof yourself. Never mind that the city is filled with skilled workmen who will come and help you deal with ice jams if they do occur. Never mind that R and M argued about the wisdom of this harebrained scheme or that, when I heard what was up, I fired off an emphatic instant message from Iowa: “Tell M to get down off that roof right now before she breaks her neck!!!” Nope…in a truly magnificent display of “I can do this!” self-sufficiency, M climbed right out the attic window onto the roof, wielding a snow shovel in one hand. That snow shovel is still up there on the roof. M quickly found herself on the ground, vertebrae and right arm shattered and paramedics en route.
And so for M, and her sisters, and R and me, the past two weeks have revolved around the urgent demands of M’s flesh. Anxious hours of waiting at the hospital, contradictory information from a veritable army of health care providers, pain meds, staples, sutures and dressing changes, a clamshell body brace, the inevitable nightmare of insurance coverage and staggering medical costs…and, thank God, M’s tentative first steps as she began the long process of teaching her broken body how to walk again. Paul was right…the flesh is indeed a demanding taskmaster.
I spent a lot of time with this passage from Romans while I was in Philadelphia, pondering and praying over it. As the days past, it seemed to me that this passage is about more than Paul’s obsession with flesh itself. In the heart of his message, Paul speaks not just about flesh, but about setting our minds:
He writes: “To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.”
In contemporary Western culture, we talk about body and soul (or spirit) as if they’re distinct components of the self that can be separated and teased apart. But that’s not how the self was conceptualized in the Ancient Near East, in the world of Jesus and Paul and the early Christians.
When Paul speaks of setting the mind on the flesh, he’s referring to a way of being…a path of human action and existence. Someone who sets the mind on the flesh is focused on the self. Self-centered. Self-reliant. Self-sufficient. All those values we hold so dear in our American lives. Paul reminds us that we have a choice…and the choices we make matter…not only for ourselves, but for the each other, the environment around us, and our very lives in God. We are free to set our minds on the flesh and, like M, our self-sufficiency might just leave us marooned—or worse—on an icy roof.
Think about that for a moment…what icy roof of self-sufficiency are you stuck on?
Paul callus us not to self-sufficiency, but to a radical “Spirit sufficiency”…literally to set our minds on living in a moment-by-moment openness to God the Father through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Amen.
