Sermon: "The Zen of Glory"

"The Zen of Glory"

Preached at South Wedge Mission

Rochester, New York

Second Sunday after Pentecost

7 June 2015

Readings: 2 Corinthians 4.13-18

Mark 3.20-35

Jesus faces what seems like a never-ending slew of challenges in his ministry.  Demons, disease, and widespread destitution; dimwitted disciples, dastardly religious demagogues and corrupt political dictators; even doubt, despair, and death.  But here, near the beginning of his ministry, he faces what I imagine might have been the most difficult ordeal of all.

His family - his mother, his brothers and his sisters - have come.  Not to listen to him, or to join his movement.  Not to show their unconditional love and support.   They’ve come to take him away.  Actually, the word St. Mark uses is much harsher.  They’ve come to “restrain” him.  

There’s a certain level of force in the word “restrain” that goes beyond merely trying to gently persuade Jesus to come home.  When Mark says Jesus’ “brothers and sisters” have come, in ancient parlance this could have referred to his cousins and other relatives as well.  So in my mind I see a small gang of folks, down from that ol’ Podunk town Nazareth,  darkening the door of the house where Jesus is speaking to a sold-out standing-room-only crowd, with big cousin Bubba ready to full-nelson his little relation, toss him over his shoulder, and if necessary, drag him back to his carpenter’s bench.  

Even if you come from a broken family, we all have a sense that this is not how families are suppose to act towards each other.  I’m blessed with extremely supportive parents.  But as a parent myself, I’ve learned through experience that even when you have no clue what it is your daughter just drew for you, the right answer is always “that’s beautiful honey, thanks a lot!”  

And look, my guess is that Jesus’ family is probably acting with the best of intentions.  After all, they’ve heard the local and regional banter.  “He’s gone out of his mind!” people are saying.  Maybe Mary’s worried Jesus took the whole “Son of God” thing a little too far and needs a little more time at home before he’s ready.  Maybe she was hoping that those scribes Jesus is arguing with, the bigwigs from Jerusalem, would write her son a sterling letter of recommendation so he could start his climb towards becoming the High Priest, and now he’s ruining his best shot to get his message out.  Maybe, given his increasing popularity, they’re all just afraid Jesus is going to get himself crucified by the Romans.  

But no matter how well-meaning parents can be in trying to protect or guide their children, I can’t imagine it’s easy for Jesus.  Here he is, doing his thing.  Proclaiming the Gospel.  Driving out demons.  Healing the sick.  Packing out his church.  And at his moment of greatest triumph, instead of proud parents and siblings cheering him on…they show up with chains.

Ancient writers didn’t go into a lot of details about characters’ internal monologues.  But I imagine that if we had an X-ray machine on Jesus’ heart, the picture wouldn’t be pretty.  Even without the details, we can just hear it breaking.

Which is why its really crucial that we follow carefully what Jesus does next.  If I were in Jesus’ shoes, I would have thrown in the towel.  I don’t think my spirit could have continued on in the face of such shame and disapproval from my family.  I’d either give up, or get really angry and start tossing some f-bomb grenades or I don’t know what.  

But thankfully, I’m not Jesus in this story, and I’m guessing neither are any of us.  If we’re honest, more often than not, we’re in the position of Jesus’ family.  We are not the heroes, but the ones with reputations to protect and restraints at the ready.  We’re the ones who feel threatened and afraid, and in that state, are quick to try to take control of other people - and most often, it’s the ones closest to us that we target.

But Jesus doesn’t take the bait.  While inside his heart is shattered and everything in him is ready to break down, somehow, Jesus manages to stay present.  Somehow, Jesus manages to respond with skill and with wisdom.  Somehow, Jesus maintains his Gospel Mindfulness, and like a true spiritual Bruce Lee, takes an impossible situation, and improvises something quite extraordinary.

In my mind, I picture Jesus closing his eyes and inhaling deeply.  Even though the crowd is pressed in all around him, time suddenly slows and the noises fade away.  The pain inside doesn’t disappear - it burns like a crown of thorns - but Jesus digs deep and finds something else, a wellspring of wisdom to drawn upon.  He exhales and opens his eyes.

I see him raise his head above the sea of faces to look his family in the eye.  And then, slowly raises his hands in a wide embrace, and looks from side to side at all of those around him.  The whole place is suddenly still, listening expectantly.  “Who are my mother and my brothers and my sisters?” he whispers.  “Here they are.  Anyone who does the will of God, that one is my mother, and my brother and my sister.”  

With a simple, koan-like statement, Jesus has reframed the entire conversation.  What is so remarkable to me is that, in the face of the violence of restraint and the heartbreak of betrayal, Jesus does not strike out against his family.  Instead, Jesus expands their notion of what family is.  As if to say, “remember who I am.  Remember that all of these are precious to me.  Remember that it is not I who am a part of your family, but you who are a part of their family.”

And maybe I’m reading too much into it, but I love that our little portion of scripture this week doesn’t really resolve.  Because it leaves the story open.  It leaves us with the possibility that Jesus’ gesture of inclusion, his open arms which gently break apart the restraints brought by his family, is also an invitation to his family.  As if Jesus were saying, “put down the chains.  Come in.  We’ll make room for you too.  It’s a little crazy in here.  But it’s a really good place to be.”

~

A few weeks ago, on the Feast of Pentecost, we talked about how in scripture, the name “Satan” means Accuser, and that into the midst of a world that is divided by this Accuser’s lies and betrayals, God sends the Holy Spirit, who is called “The Advocate,” to restore relationships.  For Jesus, the Accuser comes wearing the face of his family, seeking to distract him and restrain him from his mission of restoration and reconciliation.  But Jesus breathes deeply, drawing on the energy of the Spirit living in his heart, the Spirit given at his baptism, when God says, “this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.”  And Jesus is able to speak with words of Advocacy that transforms accusation into possibility.

I said earlier that we should pay attention to how Jesus responds to this heartbreaking challenge, because like Jesus, we live in the world that the Accuser has made, where his lies roar around us like a raging lion, tempting us to coercion and control.  But like Jesus, we have been given the Spirit of the Advocate.  And like Jesus, we’re going to need a stronger center, a source of Advocacy, if we want to be agents of new creation, and act with freedom in the midst of fear.

I think we can find that center, this Gospel Mindfulness, in our first reading today, from 2 Corinthians 4.  In particular, I’m thinking of that beautiful bit where St. Paul reminds us that “we do not lose heart; for even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day.  For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory.”  If we want to act with freedom in the present, we need to remember the end for which we strive.  And that end, according to St. Paul, is glory.

Now, I’m not talking about the cheap glory that the Accuser peddles to us.  And, you know the kind.  Cheap glory, the kind that Martin Luther railed against so long ago, is something human beings achieve for themselves - usually by taking it from someone else.  Cheap glory leads us to respond to a friend’s celebration of an achievement with one-up-manship (“that’s great, now let me tell you what I did…”).  Cheap glory tempts us to troll one another’s Facebook sites, hacking apart one another’s passions and offerings in the name of appearing right and intelligent and informed.  Cheap glory leads families to try to restrain their children and their kin for fear of reputation, under the pretext of protecting, and it leads societies to act paternalistically towards those we deem unworthy (“black lives matter?  Don’t all lives matter?”).

Cheap glory is the Accuser’s promise, dangled before our faces, leading us to mangle the true glory and beauty of the mother and brothers and sisters that Jesus is giving to us.

But Jesus has come to share a more costly, splendorous glory.  I think CS Lewis nailed it, commenting on this same reading from 2 Corinthians, in one of my favorite passages of all time: 

“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, 

to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to 

may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, 

you would be strongly tempted to worship, 

or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, 

if at all, only in a nightmare. 

All day long we are, in some degree helping each other 

to one or the other of these destinations. 

It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, 

it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, 

that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, 

all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. 

There are no ordinary people. 

You have never talked to a mere mortal. 

Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, 

and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. 

But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit - 

immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”

Or, put another way, in the words of St. Iraneus, “the glory of God is a human being fully alive.”  God’s glory is sharing life with God’s children.  By the Spirit of the Advocate, of encouragement, of believing in God’s destiny for each and every human being who is the unique expression of God’s creative love, we are given the blessed opportunity, as Lewis notes, of helping one another to this destination of glory.

And see, that’s the center I think Jesus goes to.  If this story were a martial arts form, I’d call it “the Zen of Glory.”  Deeper than the heartbreak of betrayal, more powerful than the fear that impels his family to bring their restraints, is the glory of God, which is a human being fully alive.  It is remaining mindful of God’s promise, and believing God’s Word to be true - that God desires God’s children to be fully alive - that we can draw on the power of the Advocate in the midst of the Accuser’s chaos.

Put into a form of practice, the Zen of Glory might look something like this:

When you find yourself 

in the midst of a difficult relational situation, 

or preparing for one, 

try praying/repeating the following mantra

as a way of grounding yourself

in a Gospel mindfulness:

"The glory of God is a human being fully alive;

The glory of God is (person X with whom I'm in conflict) fully alive;

the glory of God is (your name) fully alive"

Use it as a sign of your intention

to speak with the power of the Holy Spirit, the Advocate,

and reject all forms of violence and division

promoted by Satan, the Accuser.  

Before the sermon, we listened to the song "Glory" by John Legend and Common.  Because in so many ways, we of the white church need to re-learn this Zen of Glory from our brothers and sisters in the black church.  Like Jesus' family, we've sought to restrain their voices and their lives because of the uncomfortable picture of the glory of God that they've held before us.  But no disciple of Jesus in this century has demonstrated more powerfully what it means to be grounded in God's true glory - of human beings fully alive - in the midst of the rage and violence of the Accuser than Dr. King and his followers.  As Common raps, "one son died/his spirit is revisitin' us;" we in the white church who more often than not carry shackles of Accusation rather than that spirit of Advocacy, have much to learn from those who have lived the belief that "even Jesus got his crown in front of a crowd."  The Beloved Community is not something we invented.    

But that’s just it, in the end.  The Good News, the Promise of practicing the Zen of Glory, is that in Jesus, this Beloved Community has already begun.  It is not dependent upon our always acting rightly in difficult situations.  It is not something we have to expand ourselves.  It’s not open for discussion or debate.  It simply is the family that we all belong to in Christ.  It is the purpose and the glory for which God created in the first place.  

The Beloved Community is not a matter of opinion or vote, and it is not something the Accuser can ever take away.  It is something that we get to Advocate for, and to live into, and to receive.  It is a possibility hovering ever before us, encouraging us to take a deep breath in the midst of conflict, to open our eyes to the humanity of our fellow human beings, and to whisper into a world of cheap glory, “the glory of God is a human being fully alive.”  

This week, you are invited to take up the practice of the Zen of Glory.  May it be for you a source of drawing on the Advocate’s energy of freedom and possibility.  May it help you remain focused in the midst of the Accuser’s temptations to restrain and control and compete.  

Above all else, may it ground you in Gospel Mindfulness - that when we were yet sinners, coming at Jesus to restrain and to silence, Jesus said, “come join my family, and learn to live the will of God, which is that every human being be fully alive.”  This week, when the glory comes, let it be not just our family’s, or theirs - but ours.  All of ours.  

In the name of Jesus, Amen. 

Sermon for Trinity Sunday: "What Will Your Verse Be?"

"Trinity Sunday: What Will Your Verse Be?"

~

Transcribed from Sermon Preached at South Wedge Mission

Rochester, New York

Feast of the Holy Trinity

31 May 2015

Day Texts: Isaiah 6.1-8

John 3.1-17

~

Ascension.  Pentecost.  Trinity.  These last three services have focused on this trio of feast days in the liturgical calendar, and together, they could be almost considered a trilogy of sorts.  Let’s call the whole thing: “Birth of Church.”  

In Birth of Church, Part I: Ascension, we see Jesus auditioning for the part of Thor in the next Avengers as he flies off into heaven, entrusting his disciples to remain on earth and continue the mission of proclaiming the Gospel to the nations.  

Next, Birth of Church, Part II: Pentecost finds those same disciples “catching fire” (see what I did there?) as they receive the power to carry out that mission via the gift of the wild goose of the Holy Spirt.

So we’ve got the mission.  We’ve got the power.  Everything’s set for an exciting climax.  And then, Birth of Church III: Trinity, delivers…the doctrine. 

Seriously.  Doctrine.  No epic battle of five armies.  No super team assembling.  Not even a surprise “return of Jesus” moment.  Just a doctrine.  Like many a trilogy before it, Birth of Church just seems to come up short at the end.  At least they didn’t go all Twilight and split it into two movies.  

Because let’s be honest.  Unless you’re an uber theology geek (like me), there’s really nothing less exciting than doctrine.  And what’s more, it’s not even a very good one!  It’s complicated (1+1+1 =…1 …and 3???), it’s confusing (“so you have three different gods?”) and to top it off, it’s not even explicitly in the Bible.  A promising premise about the restoration of the world ends up collapsing under the weight of its own Christopher Nolan-esque complexity and navel-gazing.   

If doctrine is the ultimate conclusion of this story, its no wonder it seems to continue flopping in the box office of modern religious opinion.       

Thing is, though, the early church didn’t develop Trinity as a doctrine.  Or rather, that’s not how doctrine worked for them.  See, doctrine wasn’t really about proof-texting or mere theological calculus.  Rather, doctrine was much more like blocking notes for stage actors; dance steps for teaching rhythm; a musical score for a conductor and orchestra.  It wasn’t meant to replace the drama of the story; it was meant to help immerse participants more deeply so as to better tell the story.      

In a sense, when we see the word “Trinity,” we should think less about figuring out a formula; instead, what if we saw a shorthand, a reminder, a guide, a particular way of telling the story of who God is and how God is for us?

Work with me here.  “Trinity” is a story.  The story.  The whole story, of the Old and New Testaments, from Creation to Cross to Conclusion.  Early Christians never really needed to make it explicit because it simply was and is the story.  In their worship and in their baptizing and in their praying and in their Eucharists, they would have invoked the “Father, Son and Holy Spirit” all the time.  They lived the story.  And so there was no need to make it explicit as a doctrine.  

As an influential person in history, its natural that lots of people told stories about Jesus.  In the early church, there were actually a number of different “Christianities” practiced in response to Jesus’ life.  You usually read about them around Christmas or Easter time, when Newsweek or Time report on them in some special “Secret Hidden History of Jesus” report.  Most of these end up being the equivalent of tall tales and folk stories.  Fascinating to study.  Rooted in history.  But ultimately, lacking in substance or truth.

It wasn’t until one particular alternative telling of Jesus’ story rose to major prominence and influence that the early church finally decided it was time to explicitly endorse and define the story of Trinity as a doctrine.  This other story was called “Gnosticism,” and while it was an ancient heresy, it’s influence continues to this day. 

To understand the Gnostics, imagine a people who basically thought that the movie The Matrix was real.  Ie, that the material world that we live in is actually a prison, created by an evil being (called “Yaladbaoth”) to imprison our divine spirits in mortal material bodies.  In fact, all things matter were considered corrupt and defiled, and the villainous creator, equated with the God of the Old Testament, instituted all sorts of do’s and don’ts in order to keep humanity enslaved in the dark.  

Enter Jesus, played by Keeanu Reeves in this movie.  Like Neo, the pure spirit being Jesus voluntarily plugs Himself into the prison of matter in order to teach an elect enlightened few the truth about reality, and to help them escape their chains into the world of pure light.  Jesus’ body was not a real body, but a clever disguise he put on in order to reach the chosen few and share his secret “Gnosis” with them.  

And you thought the Trinity thing was complicated.   

Gnosticism was a compelling story in a world full of suffering.  It taught people that bodies were only temporary, and offered the chosen enlightened few the promise and hope of an escape from the messy dirtiness of physical existence.  It was especially appealing to the wealthy and the elite, who naturally had more leisure time to discover the secret of escape, and because it labeled matter and suffering as unclean, reinforced their privileged status over the disease-ridden suffering masses around them.  

And therein we should recognize why the “more orthodox” Christians began to take issue with their Gnostic rivals.  Because if matter and suffering were considered signs of evil and corruption, and special knowledge and privilege were equated with divinity, then a large portion of the folks Jesus actually ministered to - the sick, the poor, the lame, the outcast, and the uneducated - were almost immediately excluded from this version of God’s kingdom.  Which meant that Jesus did not come in solidarity with the world and its brokenness - but only to go through the motions for the sake of the strong and the few.  

Ultimately, the Gnostic Gospel promised enlightenment, but at the price of escapism and exclusion.  And the early Church deemed this too high a price for continued tolerance.  They needed to tell a different story about a different Gospel.

And lest this seem like ancient history, if we’re honest, we’re often not too far off from the Gnostic mentality in our own day and age.  Because even if we don’t believe their mythology, we can very easily fall into a Gnostic way of practicing our faith in the world.

I think we’re especially prone to this mentality when the messiness and difficulty of life in our bodies, and the reality of other bodies, causes us suffering and struggle.  We act Gnostically when, confronted with the challenges of engaging with created reality, we instead readily choose escape from it into some exclusionary simulacrum of enlightenment or specialness.  

So, for example, when our commitments to our friendships and our family start to take us into uncomfortable territory, well, no problem!  There’s a special world called the internet, where we can disengage from the difficulty of face-to-face interactions and live a disembodied existence floating above it all while revealing in the vast feeling of connection and enlightenment that the web provides us.  

Or, maybe church is your problem!  Because when real-life community and spirituality forces us to face our own brokenness and selfishness, and challenges us to share life together with other broken people whose dysfunction doesn’t fix my own dysfunction, well, damn it, I’ll jettison all that “religion” stuff and just be spiritual.  By myself.  Alone.  Where I can make the rules.

Or is the poverty and injustice and segregation of our fair city getting you down?  No need to actually meet poor people and hear their stories!  Simply read about social justice, allow yourself to feel really indignant about racism, and make sure to pursue an enlightened progressive awareness.  Let others do the messy work, and make sure they notice you noticing them.  And voila!  Gnosticism provides you an easy way out from ever having to dirty your hands helping a homeless person, or even having to really give money. 

In so many ways, Gnosticism is our Gospel of choice when, like those ancient Christians, we are confronted by the messiness and suffering of this world, and simply can’t handle the pain it causes us and others.  Even the all-American tradition of “pulling myself up by my bootstraps” is, in its basest form, a type of Gnosticism, as it creates a sense of separation and specialness, where we rise above the common ways and rise into a higher class following our exceptionalist dreams.  It’s the air we live and breathe in a culture that’s perfected the art of peddling escapism and calling it enlightenment.    

Problem is, it’s not God’s story.  And it’s not the story of God’s world.  And it’s not 

the mission we’re called to in Christ.  

In response to this other story about God, the early Christians offered the story named by Trinity.  Because in declaring that God is “Father, Son and Holy Spirit,” the early Christians were essentially pointing to the story speaking from the Bible.  Out of the Old and New Testament.  The story that Jesus came to tell.   

It is the story of the God who created the world and all of its people, and when God did so, said, “this world is good.”  This God delighted in the world, made it because it was good and because God loved it.  And, as our Gospel lesson today reminds us, “God so loved the world that He sent His only Son…not to condemn the world, but to save it.”  The same God who made the world good is committed to God’s world, such that God would rather die Himself than see it lost.  The same God who made the world became a part of that world in Jesus, and died and rose as part of that world, so that that whole world might be restored, reconciled and renewed.

And, this same God that created the world and redeemed it continues to sustain it through the Holy Spirit.  And through the Church.  The same Spirit that breathed life into the first pile of human dust breathes life into the Body of Christ in the world, and continues to cooperate with human beings, co-creating with and through them, and making contributions to that world through the lives of God’s children.  

Trinity names the story of a God who loves the world God made, and will do anything and everything that God is able to do to make sure that the world will remain a blessing for God’s beloved children.

Trinity names the story of a God who, far from withdrawing or escaping from messiness, suffering, death and despair, enters fully into them, taking them upon Godself, and transforming them into new possibilities and new beginnings.

Trinity names the story of a God who does not raise up an elite few while leaving behind the many, but rather, continues to dwell in and renew the world God loves until every single one of God’s beloved children can know herself as God’s own, as a contribution and a gift that God is giving to the world.

While in times of suffering and of disappointment, Gnosticism may seem like a promising Gospel, it pales in comparison to the story named by Trinity.  Just think about it for a moment.  God made the world because God loves the world.  God made me because God loves me.  God made others because God loves others.  God created.  God redeems.  God sustains.  And I am a part of it.  

It reminds me of a famous scene from one of my favorite films, Dead Poets’ Society.  The free-spirited Mr. Thomas Keating, played by the late Robin Williams, is a teacher at an elite New England boarding school.  While the strict curriculum is designed to help society’s upper crust rise above the lower classes and their boorishness, Mr. Keating is determined to arouse their souls through beauty and poetry.  In the midst of one class, he asks, “why do we read and write poetry?”  His answer:

We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute.  We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race.  And the human race is filled with passion.  And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits, and necessary for to sustain life.  But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.  To quote from Whitman, ‘O me! O life!…of the questions recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless…of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?’  Answer.  That you are here - that life exists…that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse.  That the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse.  What will your verse be?”

That’s the question presented by the story named by Trinity.  What will your verse be?  Because as part of this world that exists, that exists because God wanted it to, that is good because God delights in it, and is here because God is sustaining it, you and your life matter.  You are a part of it.  Your story is a verse in God’s powerful play.  This existence, this creation, is no accident.  It is music, and poetry, and it is good, and God has given you a part in it.  You are meant to be.  And God is making a contribution through you.

And not just when things are good.  Trinity names the story of God’s creating you, God’s commitment to you, and God’s contribution of you.  Including the messy times.  The broken times.  The failing times.  The times when life seems overwhelming and we want nothing more than to hide away or escape.  God wants to take the lowest moments of your life and transfigure them into the very stuff that will enable you to love and serve others.  God wants all of you.  And God wants to give all of you.  What will your verse be?

Which means that God also wants all of this world.  And wants to contribute all of this world.  To those who the world believes are unenlightened because they are shackled by poverty and oppression, or by failure or by class, or by the opinion so others or the judgements of their own egos, God says, I created you; I am committed to you; I want to contribute you.  What will your verse be?  

God has created.  God is committed.  God is contributing.  Like the prophet Isaiah, God wants to touch your unclean lips with the burning coal of God’s delight and love, and wants you to speak forth your life into the world.  God doesn’t take away those unclean lips - God touches them.  And speaks God’s contribution in and through us into a world that god loves.  What will your verse be?

Trinity means that your life has a purpose.  You are intended.  You may not believe you have a purpose.  You may not want a purpose.  If you’re like me, you may not really know what that purpose is.  And that’s ok.  Because you don’t need to have it figured out for God to be contributing you into this world.  

What we are called to is simply to believe this Good News, and receive the gift of our lives with gratitude, from the God who created, who is committed, and who desires to contribute you.  In a world where the Gnosticism of enlightened escape and avoidance of reality’s brokenness is the spirituality of choice, this story is more vital than ever.  We’ve been given the mission of proclaiming God’s love for God’s world.  We’ve been given the power to do so through the contributing Spirit.  Now we are given the story that ties it all together.  

Maybe the trilogy didn’t end so badly after all.  Maybe it hasn’t ended yet at all.  The powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

What will your verse be?

Amen.  

~

Afterword: For Open Space, members of the Mission were invited to take up a practice from Upstate NY Synod of the ELCA's Synod Assembly, whose theme was "God's Story, Our Voices."  Using a simple line on a page (see below), they were invited to map their personal story.  Above the line, they were invited to depict the high points of their life.  Below, they were invited to place the low points.  At the end, all were asked to circle the entire timeline and write "God's story."  They were also invited to consider: perhaps the lowest moments, as much as the highest, are the places God is calling you to minister from - the places where, far from being evil, compassion and the possibility of healing and serving others is most likely to arise.  The places we may very well discover our truest vocations.  All of our story, from top to bottom, is part of the verse God is contributing to the story through our lives. 

Click on the image of the timeline below - and try out the practice for yourself if you feel so led!  

Sermon for Pentecost 2015: The Advocate, the Accuser, and the Puffy Face: Towards a Practical Pentecostalism

"The Advocate, the Accuser and the Puffy Face: Towards a Practical Pentecostalism"

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Transcript of Extemporaneous Sermon 

Preached at: South Wedge Mission and Trinity Episcopal Church

Rochester, New York

24 May 2015

Day Texts: Acts 2.1-21

John 15.26-27, 16.4-15

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An audio recording from Trinity Episcopal in Greece, NY can be heard here

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Synopsis: While being "Pentecostal" can feel foreign and even intimidating, according to Jesus it's actually pretty practical; it involves learning to hear and discern the voice of the Advocate in the midst of the world of the Accuser, and becoming advocates on behalf of what God is bringing to life in the gifts and possibilities of others.  

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We pastors love Pentecost.  Because the liturgical color for the feast is red.  Which means we get to wear our red stoles.  Usually, the stoles we received at our ordinations.  And if there’s anything pastors love more than preening about in their favorite vestments, its preening with an added injection of nostalgia.

I’m no different with my red stole.  And I especially love this image, the picture of the Wild Goose.  See, for the Celtic Christians, the Wild Goose was a perfect symbol for the Holy Spirit, that mysterious, often elusive third member of the Trinity.  The Wild Goose was, well, wild.  Free.  Uncontrollable.  In John 3, Jesus compares her to the wind, blowing in unpredictable, untamable directions.  The Wild Goose of the Holy Spirit refuses to be boxed in or defined.

Which is maybe why I personally also need a slightly more concrete avian concept to help me understand the oft-perplexing Holy Firebird.  Which is why I turn to that other love of my life - my chickens.  

As those of you who know me know, I love my chickens - even more than my ordination stole.  There’s Stripey - because she’s striped.  Red, because she’s red.  Shrieker, because she shrieks…and, well you get the picture.  But first among this noble brood of hens is my personal favorite: Puffy Face.  Because she has feathers all over her face.  Like a beard.  Like me.  

She also burned the top of her head this winter on the heat lamp.  Not unlike the monks of old who cut their hair in a tonsure, Friar-Tuck style, to symbolize that, like the disciples on Pentecost, they too had been specially visited by the Holy Spirit, Puffy is slightly bald on top, and mostly burned in the brain.  

And like the Holy Spirit, Puffy has one sole purpose: escaping to freedom.  Every morning I go to check the eggs.  Every morning, Puffy is casually crouched in the tulips, chowing away.  Puffy is put back in the pen.  I go inside with the eggs.  I look out the window.  Puffy is once more out and about, this time heading for the strawberries or the vegetables.  No matter how many times I staple shut the gaps in the fence or secure the loose door, no matter how short we clip her wings or how often we thwart her, Puffy finds a way.  She defies confinement.  She seeks freedom.  And often, tries to lead her sisters to liberation as well.

And while all of this talk of wild geese and chickens and tongues of fire may seem birdbrained in themselves, when it comes to the Holy Spirit, they’re often the best we have to go on.  Particularly for those of us from more “introverted” Christian traditions, the Spirit is talked about often, encountered seldom.  Certainly, she shows up when we bother to recite the creed; we invoke her over the waters of baptism and ask God to pour her out over the Eucharistic elements.  We even call upon her as a kind of stamp of approval at the culmination of churchy procedures like committee meetings and ordinations, often paying her lip service - “it seems pleasing to the Holy Spirit that measure X should be enacted.”  Because, after all, the Holy Spirit would never desire for us to go back to committee.  Not even Satan would encourage that line of torture.  

But in general, if you’re like me, you often wonder why we bother at all to play at the whole “Holy Spirit” thing.  Certainly, other churches seem to have the market cornered as far as being Pentecostal and Charismatic goes.  They speak in tongues.  They display a fiery level of exuberance and passion that makes us Lutherans and Episcopalians blush and edge our chairs away uncomfortably.  It’s not that I doubt for a second the reality of their experience - it’s just, I’d prefer them to experience the Spirit a little further away from me and my quiet, solitary contemplation of my prayer book.

And yet, if I’m honest, my real discomfort might also stem from a bit of jealously.  Those churches seem to have a spark of life I often find lacking in my own faith practice.  And, what’s more, it’s just plain confusing.  After all, in my baptism, I was told that God anointed me with the gift of the Holy Spirit.  Every week, during the blessing of the Eucharist, we ask God to “pour out your Spirit upon us; make us holy.”  And yet, it’s kind of a let down to leave Sunday evening and head into the regular week of life and work and feel so…not-spiritual.  Uninspired.  Unempowered.

Generally, if you ask someone if they’re racist, they’ll always say “no,” when almost always, the truth is, “yes.”  In the same way, if you ask someone if they’re “spiritual,” the general reply will be “yes,” when the reality is, “I’m not really sure.”

If you’re like me, perhaps you wish you could get a little bit of that Wild Goose power in you.  After all, who doesn’t want a little extra power and exuberance in their everyday lives and practice?  I don’t need to speak in tongues.  But I’d like to know that the Holy Spirit is a practical promise for my life and not merely an imaginary number to balance the doctrinal equation of Trinity.  

Luckily, in today’s Gospel lesson from St. John, Jesus Himself offers what I think is a really helpful starting point for embracing a more practical Pentecostalism in our lives.  

As part of His farewell prayer to His disciples, Jesus promises not to leave the disciples abandoned upon his departure.  Even though He’s going away (see: Feast of the Ascension - last Sunday), reinforcements are on the way.  Help will arrive in the form of the Holy Spirit, who Jesus here refers to as “the Advocate.”  And the Advocate will help, He continues, by leading them into all truth; by proving the world wrong “about sin and righteousness and judgement.”  

Notice here that Jesus doesn’t mention speaking in tongues or anything externally supernatural.  Instead, the words Jesus uses here sound much more to me like the language of discernment.  As if to say, “there’s a certain way that the world thinks about these really important things - sin, righteousness, judgment - and it’s not the whole truth.  The Spirit will help you see rightly.  I’m sending you the Spirit so you can learn to see grace and mercy and love rightly in the midst of a world of lies and half-truths.”  

And why exactly do we need such a vision, these “Gospel goggles?”  Jesus drops another hint when he makes the powerful pronouncement: “about judgement, because the ruler of this world has been condemned.”  The ruler of this world, in scripture, is none other than Satan.  And in ancient Hebrew, the word Satan actually means “the Accuser.”  

So track with me here: Jesus has just drawn up a mini metaphor of the state of reality.  It’s like a courtroom, and we are the defendants.  One the one side stands the Prosecuting Attorney, the Accuser, the one who makes the rules of this world.  On the other side, fighting for our freedom, is the Advocate, the Holy Spirit.

Something about living a practical Pentecostalism means grasping this dichotomy between the Accuser and the Advocate.  

And it’s a matter of life and death that we do.  Because if we’re honest with ourselves, we know what the world according to the Accuser looks like.  It’s the world we live in when we leave church and head back to the workplace.  The world where we operate on principles of fear and scarcity.  Where things are valued according to success and failure.  Where we have to compete with one another for approval, coerce one another for control, and persecute one another for power.

The world that the Accuser shapes in his twisted image is one in which there is no freedom, only the chains of calculation and measurement.  It’s a world where some human beings are deemed more valuable because of their paycheck or their assets, while others are condemned to poverty and prison because of their race or their neighborhood or their orientation.  

In the Accuser’s world, we don’t get a second-chance at marriage because that first divorce means we lost our chance at happiness.  In the Accuser’s world, you are worthy of notice depending on how many Facebook friends and likes you have received, and anonymity and rejection are hells reserved for the unpopular the unbeautiful.  In the Accuser’s world, you are judged righteous because of your accomplishments, and you are a sinner if you fail to play the game of blame, shame, slander and guilt that you’ve been rigged into since the day you started breathing.

We’ve all felt the lash of an Accuser’s scorn.  And, if we’re honest, we’ve also benefitted from serving as the Accuser’s informants and co-conspirators.  In the Accuser’s world, grace and freedom and love are beautiful ideals to aspire to on a Sunday afternoon - but are left behind as mere sentiment and weakness when we enter into the real world. 

The Accuser’s world is not the world God intended.  It is the world Christ came to destroy so that the world God loves can be reborn.  And that is the promise when Jesus declares that the “ruler of this world has been condemned.”  The Accuser is a liar.  The Cross of Christ says that the Accuser is a liar.  The Advocate is given to us so that we can remember who we are and whose we are.

No truth has made a bigger difference in my own spiritual life than the discovery that the Advocate is not the Accuser.  A little over two years ago, I was brought to the point of having to make some major changes in my life before my decisions destroyed me.  The very next day after finally surrendering, I heard this same Gospel lesson preached.  I heard the Holy Spirit called “the Advocate.”  And I suddenly realized: that voice of accusation I’d hear my whole life - it wasn’t God’s.  The voice of shame, that told me I was finished because of my failures; that I would never be good enough for grace; that I was defined by my doubts and my destructive choices - this voice was not God’s, and was never God’s.  It was the Accuser’s.  And it was a lie.

Which meant that I had never actually really heard or listened to God’s actual voice.  Tears of relief and amazement rushed over me as a I realized that God’s Spirit is an Advocate - that God wanted the best for me, wanted the encourage and inspire me to let go of the chains in my life, not to condemn me, but to set me free.  That God loved me and had always loved me and was always in my corner, fighting for me and speaking words of kindness and forgiveness on my behalf.  

The voice of truth and the truth of the Spirit is one of Advocacy, not Accusation.  

And we live, not in the Accuser’s world, but the world of the Advocate.  Just as, at the creation of the world, God took the dust and the darkness and formed it into a world, and breathed the Holy Spirit into that dust and gave it life, so, in the Advocate’s world, God is taking our dead ends and our failures and our brokenness and our shame and gathered them into this body, this community, this new creation, this church, and breathing the Spirit of Life into them.  

In the Advocate’s world, shame does not exist, only second-chances and fresh improvisations.  There is no condemnation, but possibility, and potential, and a new world about to dawn.  In the Advocate’s world, we can live, not as if tonight might be our last night on earth, but as if tomorrow might be the first day of the rest of our lives.  In the Advocate’s world, each of you, you and you, and me, has a gift and a contribution to make, and God’s Spirit is swirling about like the wind, waiting to inspire you and breathe the glory of your beauty into the midst of the darkness of the Accuser’s lies and declare a more splendorous truth.

The Holy Spirit is our Advocate, and this means that, truly, God is FOR US, on our side, and desires to see the world flourish and become wild and free, as God first made it to be.  If you’ve ever had an advocate in your life - a coach, a teacher, a friend, or someone else - then you know what it feels like to suddenly come alive when someone believes in you.  Well, even if you’ve never heard such a voice before, consider yourself informed this day: God believes in you.  God has a plan for you.  God has a gift to give the world for you.  And God will advocate for you and through you, in order to bless the world with the goodness with which God created you.

Because, see, in the Advocate’s world, there is no competition or scarcity, only communion and abundance.  Which means we are freed from having to play the game of life as if grace for you means scraps for me.  God’s body, the Church, is called to be a community that Advocates.  Believing God’s promise of abundance to be true, we no longer fear using our words, our actions and our lives to advocate for and encourage others.  We are free to live in the real world - God’s world - no matter what the Accuser’s lies may say.

And believe me, while it’s a far cry from speaking in tongues, when we speak with the grammar of gift and grace, it’s going to sound like we’re drunk at nine in the morning like those first disciples.  It’s a language of poetry and possibility that makes no sense to the cold computational calculus of the Accuser’s logic.  In a world where some believe that black voices forfeit their right to be heard because of their rage, the Church advocates: listen to them, because therein, you might just hear the voice of God calling us to repentance.  

In a world that predicts prison bed counts based on the failed test scores of third graders and consigns struggling children to lives of crime and poverty, it will sound like a rushing wind to suggest that perhaps our corporations would do well to invest in these same lives, because maybe, just maybe, their resilience, creativity and experience of oppression might be more valuable to a company and a world than another good boy in a suit and tie.

The Gospel of the Advocate will sound strange to a world addicted to the syrupy sound of the Accuser’s lies.  And yet, it is precisely this Gospel, and this Spirit of Advocacy, that is the Church’s calling.  It’s our mission, and it’s for each one of us.  

And you don’t need to prophecy before the masses to embrace your anointing for Practical Pentecostalism.  This week, maybe it starts with something simple.  Take this practice suggested by my good friend Rev. Keith Anderson, the Lutheran church’s social media guru.  What if, say, for every one facebook post or tweet about ourselves, we used our bandwidth to then offer ten posts highlighting the gifts and contributions of others?  What if the Church stopped worrying about winning the Accuser’s measurement game - and simply lived the freedom of getting to live a life of encouraging and discovering and midwifing the beauty being born in our fellow children of God all around us?

Practical Pentecostalism is, in that sense, deceptively simple.  And not a little bit challenging.  It means, like Puffy Face the chicken, never accepting the chains and the locked gates of the coop as the final word.  It means constantly inviting ourselves to self-awareness: am I acting out of trust in the Accuser’s promises right now, or out of a conviction of the Gospel of the Advocate?  Are my words and actions and my life helping to lock doors and box in God’s children - or to break locks, magnify possibility, and unleash the potential freedom in the world and the people that God loves?

This week, courageously try playing the Advocate game.  Ask God: who has been an advocate in my life?  How did that person advocate for me, and how did that make me feel?  Where am I calling to advocate on someone else’s behalf this week?  And then, ask for the grace and the faith and the wild inspiration of the Holy Spirit to help love their life into being.  

Like Puffy face, we are called to let no chains constrain us.  We are children of God.  We are made free by the Cross which has condemned the condemnation of the Accuser, and opened the doors to a world in which grace and peace are the way things really are.  This is Practical Pentecostalism.  Go out, in whatever language necessary, and proclaim it to the world.  Live it into the world.  Live.  In Jesus Name.    Amen.  

The Tao of Lent

"The Tao of Lent"

Rowan Williams: "The baptized person is not only in the middle of human suffering and muddle, but in the middle of the love and delight of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.  That surely is one of the most extraordinary mysteries of being Christian.  We are in the middle of two things that seem quite contradictory: in the middle of the heart of God, the ecstatic joy of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit; and in the middle of a world of threat, suffering, sin and pain.  And because Jesus has taken his stand right in the middle of those two realities, that is where we take ours.  As he says, 'Where I am, there will my servant be also (John 12.26).'"

(from Being Christian: Baptism, Bible, Eucharist, Prayer - p7)

Transfiguring Lent: Resources for Preparing in the Snow

Transfiguring Lent: Resources for Preparing in the Snow

Feast of the Transfiguration

15 February 2015

Gospel: Mark 9.2-9

This weekend, Rochester was visited by Winter Storm Neptune, causing many to cancel services.  This post includes a homily and two original songs based in the Feast of the Transfiguration, and with an orientation towards preparing for Lent.  If you or folks from your community missed church today,  I humbly offer these as a possible way to connect with God today.  

Unsure if South Wedge Mission would share their fate, my friend Matt Townsend of the Episcopal Diocese of Rochester and I went out to nearby Highland Park to record a short homily about snow, beauty, disruption, and the ways that Transfiguration makes Lent into a time to "inhale, and be rejuvenated by the grace of God as we seek more life."  

Also, please enjoy samples of SWM's two latest worship songs.  Inspired by Hindu kirtan music and by the Taize community, I take a simple word or phrase from scripture, tradition, or literature, and then we sing it repeatedly.  The goal is not content-focused, but communion-oriented - we hope that by sinking deeply into the repetitions and the words, the music creates a space for us to enjoy our intention of being in community with God and with one another.

The first piece, "St. Iraneus Song," is based on the church father's famous quotation that "the glory of God is a human being fully alive."  The full text: 

The Glory of God

is God's children

fully alive

and full of life

We will sing of the beauty

and the duty of delight

We will dance in the light 

The second, "Eagles' Wings," was written for last week's text from Isaiah 40.21-31, but also speaks about the process of Lent - one, as the 12-step groups note, is about "progress, not perfection." Full text:

Arise Beloved Child
and run and not grow faint
Shine like the rising sun
and fly on eagles' wings



Grace, peace and more life unto you!

"Fred Phelps IS Your Cousin, By the Way:" Thoughts in Response to the President's National Prayer Breakfast Remarks

I acknowledge, own, lament, and despise the violence inherent in my Christian family's history. Within the half-century, Christians have lynched Black bodies and then taken pictures they shared as postcards, driven GLBTQ youth to suicide, to be tortured and murdered with hate speech from the pulpit, and generally, been prime examples of everything wrong with mis-used religion. I am a part of this family, and this tradition. There is no escaping that. Fred Phelps and the Grand Wizard of the KKK and MLK Jr are all part of my family. We're all part of the best and worst that humanity has offered.  To deny this is to already miss the point of the cross.  

Which is why the (mostly) liberal celebration of President Obama's brief comments at the National Prayer Breakfast calling Christians to remember their own history of violence has been hard for me to stomach. Not the President's comments - they seemed appropriately fitting, and came AFTER a round condemnation of the current violence perpetrated by ISIS. No issues there.  

Here's where I'm feeling torn:

1) When we condemn Christian violence, is it to imply a distance between we "enlightened modern liberal" Christians and either the barbarians of the past or the conservative rubes of the present? Ie are we somehow, tongue-in-cheek, implying that "of course WE know better?" Which is, I think, to miss the point of the presidents' address. Those who have suffered and are suffering don't need us to chide, moralize, or simply crown ourselves with a different brand of triumphalism. They need us to stop seeking crowns int he first place. 

2) ISIS is committing mass torture and murder against not only Christians, but also fellow Muslims, Zoroastrians, and seculars who refuse to submit to forced conversion (sometimes pre-emptive of that). I think the President's timing was great in waiting until after he had condemned said violence before turning introspective. At the same, time, brutal mass murder is being perpetrated, with media and political impunity. I often feel that there's a kind of "she deserved to get raped" mentality from people who think that Christianity's failures in the past mean that we somehow have to ignore the violence done against children, women, and men in the present. Not saying that this is people's intent. But the inescapable level of indifference and even apathy in the media, in government, and in the churches about what is going on is horrible - and it feels like people are using Obama's speech as justification to continue this. I repeat - Christian, Muslim, Zoroastrian, and secular CHILDREN are being raped, tortured, crucified, sold into slavery, abused, and murdered. And a simple google-search will show you the extent of the world's ability to give-a-shit. 

3) President Obama is one of those Christians who has and IS continuing to commit mass violence - using drones, the military, torture, etc - in the name of religion - the ideology of the religion of America. He is not a prophet - he's like any of us - a sinner-saint who gets it right sometimes, fails miserable in others, and most of the time, I think, is just trying to do his best to do some good amidst all of the impossible decisions he has to make. I'm less concerned with the President specifically here - and more concerned at how quickly Christians are jumping on his words as if somehow he's revealing something we don't all already know - and willingly participate in on a daily basis thorough our consumer choices, our taxes rendered, and our allegiance pledged.  There is no Christian hand unstained by the blood of innocents.  We are ALL still part of the problem - not just those conservatives/liberals/anyone-different-than-us. It's why, ostensibly, we need Christ in the first place.

I think we as Christians need to repent each and every single day of the violence of our family. But it is OUR family's violence - we don't get to pick and choose who our relatives are. And that should humble us, as well as keep us from self-righteousness, or from the kind of self-flagellating guilt that keeps us from acknowledging that many of our children - and the children of other faiths or lack-thereof- still need us to work together for their sake.

Imagine if we used all of the Facebook posts, all of the vitriol and outrage, all of the inspiration and all of the hope inspired by the President's speech, as an actual call to conversion, rather than condemnation; as a call to action rather than avoidance; as a call to active non-violence and love, rather than name-calling and lecturing.  I'm not sure religious people would not still be shitty to others.  I do think it's what Jesus would have wanted in His Name.