Extravagant love

Lent 5 C April 7, 2019  Extravagant Love

I was born in 1939; my parents were both born in 1911, and began at West Chester State Teacher’s college in the fall of 1929. My father and mother both majored in secondary education. He graduated in 1932, she in 1933, into the depths of the Great Depression,. Pennsylvania had 100 school districts; 99 of them hired as teachers only graduates of their district’s own high school; one, Lower Merion, from which my mother graduated, never hired its own graduates. My father went to the Episcopal Divinity School in Philadelphia; my mother took what jobs she could get until they finally married in 1936 when my father was called as Assistant at St. Luke and the Epiphany in downtown Philadelphia (13^th St. between Spruce and Pine).  He was called to serve the people of the neighborhood and was paid $100 a month and an apartment.  

My point is that my parents learned in the Depression to be frugal people, and I was brought up to be frugal. We had what we needed, but extras were carefully considered. My father used to tell me, “Give 10% to the Lord, keep 10% for yourself as savings, live on what is left.”

With that family history, I find today’s gospel challenging. Its teaching about God’s extravagant love is hard for me. Judas said the perfume was worth 300 denarii. 300 denarii was more than a year’s income. A day’s wage for a working man was one denarius – 4 grams of silver - $2 today, but worth a lot more then.  When you file your taxes note your gross income, and figure that as the cost of Mary’s perfume, poured out over Jesus’ feet. It was an extravagant gift.     

But the spiritual truth is that God does love us extravagantly. “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. God sent his Son into the world not to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.”

It didn’t take supernatural wisdom for Jesus to know that the leaders of his people wanted to silence him, to kill him if that was necessary.  Saint John places today’s gospel story “six days before the Passover.” Jesus is aware of the hypocrisy and the increasing hostility of the religious establishment.  Despite the Commandment, “Thou shalt so no murder,” St. John (11:50) reports that the high priest Caiaphas said, after Jesus had raised Lazarus from the dead, “You do not understand that it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed.”

Our continuing temptation, as individuals and as social institutions, to set self-preservation as our first goal. We naturally do whatever we have to do to keep on living and to preserve the institutions we care for. We learn early to care for ourselves, to fight back against those who would harm us. That is prudential, and prudence is a virtue. The Prayer Book includes this rubric, “The Minister of the Congregation is directed to instruct the people, from time to time, about the duty of Christian parents to make prudent provision for the well-being of their families, and of all persons to make wills, while they are in health, arranging for the disposal of their temporal goods, not neglecting, if they are able, to leave bequests for religious and charitable uses.”  The 1979 book places this rubric on page 445 at the end of the service of Thanksgiving for a Child. Earlier books placed it at the end of the burial service. 

“The Minister of the Congregation is directed to instruct the people . . . to make prudent provision . . . .”  For example, our church board is charged with prudently spending the money we all contribute to support the ministry of this congregation. Ron, our Treasurer, tells me we are spending more than we are receiving. Prudence calls us to increase our income or decrease our expenses. We have received grants from the Synod and diocese for $8000 to help with the expenses of the Spanish language ministry we host. That will help some. But we need to be prudent.  

And while we are being prudent we also are called to serve our risen Lord. We are generous in our food basket contributions; the quilt ministry helps many; we tithe our income to the work of the synod and diocese. We gather week by week to worship Christ Jesus. Jesus offered himself on the cross for our sins and the sins of the world. Jesus is Son of God, and God received his self-offering as full and perfect expiation for the sin of the world. When on the cross Jesus cried, “Father, forgive them; they don’t know what they are doing,” God answered that prayer. God forgives all our sins, the wrongs we do knowingly, in full awareness that what we are doing is wrong, and also the wrongs we do in ignorance, the wrongs we do because our knowledge is limited by our limited knowledge, and by the limits of our circumstances. God loves us extravagantly; God forgives us extravagantly.

 

Jesus said to Martha and Mary and Lazarus, “You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.” In the physical world, the world of prudence, we do always have the poor, and we don’t have Jesus physically present with us. The resurrected body of Jesus ascended to the Father 40 days after Easter.  And we do physically always have the poor. We are called to do what we can to help the poor.  

But in the spiritual world, the world of abundance, we always have Jesus present with us: present in our hearts by faith, present in his word written as we read his Holy Scriptures, present to us in the sacrament of the altar as we receive his body and blood in bread and wine. And we are the poor, the poor in spirit, continually dependent on God’s grace, on God’s extravagant gifts showered on us by the Holy Spirit of truth and power.

“The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.”  God grant that our lives may be filled with the fragrance of God’s grace, unearned and undeserved, extravagantly poured out on us, and that we may witness in our lives to God’s love in Jesus Christ.

The spiritual truth is that God loves us extravagantly. “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. God sent his Son into the world not to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.”  

Lent 2 C Grief

Lent 2C March 17, 2019 Grief

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.”

The last parish I served full time was Redeemer, Shelby, west of Charlotte, 1980 to 1989.  Redeemer recently called a new rector, the Rev. Caroline Kramer, from Christ Church, Ponte Vedra Beach, south of Jacksonville, Florida.

Lucy and I left Shelby with some unresolved grief. Between 1983 and 1988 we had lost all four parents to death, and that small parish grieved the untimely deaths of two young mothers – Florence Schwartz to cancer and Diana Macintosh to a tragic automobile accident on the way home from her grandmother’s funeral. Diana’s children were staying with friends in the parish and one of the hardest things I have had to do was to wake those children and tell them their mother had been killed. It was a second marriage and after the funeral the children had to go back to South Carolina to the biological father they had fled.

We all live with some kinds of grief and loss. I’m feeling some grief as Pat and Paul Hobart leave us after 20 years to go back to live in Wadsworth, Ohio, south west of Cleveland. And in today’s gospel Jesus expresses his grief over Jerusalem and its continued refusal to receive God’s love and God’s word revealed by the prophets. The first part of the gospel reading, the warning of Herod’s plot, we read only in St. Luke. Herod had murdered John the Baptist and killed many others he thought were a threat to his rule. Jesus is a man of courage; he continues his ministry of healing and justice. But he knows his ministry is not in Galilee, but to all God’s people, and he must go to Jerusalem. Jesus grieves over Jerusalem. In St. Luke’s gospel Jesus expresses his grief toward the end of his ministry in Galilee. In St. Matthew’s gospel (23: 37-39) Jesus says this in the Temple toward the end of his controversies with the leaders of the people. In St. Luke Herod plotted to kill Jesus because Jesus was a threat to his rule. In  St. Matthew the leaders of his people plot to kill Jesus because Jesus was a threat to their rule. We try to ignore Jesus, try to kill his influence in our lives, because Jesus is a threat to our self-rule. We are not autonomous rulers of our lives if Jesus is Lord.

We grieve our losses; we grieve losing friends and fellow parishioners when they move, when they die, when we can’t see them anymore. We grieve losing family members to death; we grieve the loss of their companionship, their expressed love for us, the opportunity to express our love for them. And in our reflective moments we grieve our sins, the things we have done and left undone that we have put in the way of God’s love for us and our love for God.     

We are forgiven sinners. By God’s grace in Jesus’ sacrificial death we receive God full and perfect forgiveness. We share in Jesus’ resurrection. Each day we have a new life. By God’s grace we can truly say, “Blessed is Jesus, who comes in the name of the Lord.”

Fifty years ago Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, a Swiss-born Chicago psychiatrist, wrote of her experiences with terminally ill patients as they faced death and dying. She identified five spiritual and psychological stages through which they passed. They are tools to help us deal with my own griefs.

The acronym for the five stages of grief is DABDA, DABDA: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. They form a framework, a vocabulary to help us name what we feel. They are not stops on some linear timeline of grief. We cycle around through these feelings, each of us in our own unique way.

Denial helps us survive loss. We go numb, and we wonder how we can go on, if we can go on, why we should go on. God’s grace in denial lets us absorb as slowly as we need to. As we begin to absorb  reality, we can begin to heal. We can begin to feel our feelings; we can begin to recognize our continuing relationships.

Anger is part of the healing process. We live in an unjust world, a world of sin and death. Life is not fair, not just, and we sin, and are sinned against. Anger is an expression of fear, and it is also an expression of the strength of our feeling of love.

Bargaining is central in grieving loss. We get caught in feelings of  “If only…” or “What if…?” Feelings of guilt and shame come with bargaining. We want to make promises we know we can’t keep to relieve the spiritual and psychological pain we feel. God loves us as we are. We do not have to do anything more than open our selves to accept the free gift of God’s love and acceptance.

Depression.  When our bargaining doesn’t work , we may feel empty and depressed. Depression is a normal and appropriate response to loss. Sometimes depression feels like anger turn in on ourselves. Depression seems to absorb all our energy.

Acceptance.   But winter passes and eventually the sun comes out. We don’t cease to grieve, but we learn to live with the new reality. We can begin to feel bits and pieces of new life, new energy, new enjoyment, new relationships, a new understanding of God’s unconditional and everlasting love.  It takes time to come to acceptance. Frequently we cycle through grief again, and again. But in God’s good time we can come spiritually and emotionally to the good place to which Jesus calls us. We do come through Lent and Holy Week to Easter, to the place of saying, “He is risen!” We begin again to see Jesus at work in our lives and we begin to be able to say, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.”  DABDA: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance, DABDA.

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.”

Lent 1 C Bread Alone?

Lent 1C March 10, 2019 Bread Alone?

I’m tempted to preach from today’s Old Testament reading about immigration, about the wandering Aramean who “went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous” and about the command to celebrate with “the aliens who reside among you . . . all the bounty that the Lord your God has given to you and to your house.” But I’ll resist the temptation. For one, the subject is too difficult for a short sermon, and second, we have today Jesus’ word to the power of evil, “'One does not live by bread alone.” 

That’s Deuteronomy 8:3. “This entire commandment that I command you today you must diligently observe, so that you may live and increase, and go in and occupy the land that the Lord promised on oath to your ancestors. Remember the long way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, in order to humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commandments. He humbled you by letting you hunger, then by feeding you with manna, with which neither you nor your ancestors were acquainted, in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. The clothes on your back did not wear out and your feet did not swell these forty years. Know then in your heart that as a parent disciplines a child so the Lord your God disciplines you.”  

“One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” Genesis begins, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters. And God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God said, “Let there be a firmament.” And God said, “Let the dry land appear.” And God said, “Let there be lights in the firmament” And God said, “Let the waters bring forth living creatures, and birds fly above the earth.” And God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; male and female. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. 

“One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” The Gospel according to St. John begins, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.”  “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” 

God spoke us into being. For many of us, and in the best of circumstances, we are here because one parent asked and the other said, “yes,” and it was so. For others the circumstances may not have been the best, but we are here because God spoke us into being. We are made in the image of God, male and female, and God gives his ability to give and receive love, God’s love, shared with and among us. 

And when we fall into sin, when we fall short of God’s perfect will for us, and know it, and repent, by God’s word, Jesus offers us forgiveness, redemption, and new life. On the cross, the word of Jesus, “Father, forgive them; they don’t know what they are doing.”  And then on Easter evening, Jesus in the upper room where the doors were shut for fear, Jesus’ word to the gathered disciples, “Receive the Holy Spirit, whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven!”    

“One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” In today’s gospel Jesus’ response to every temptation put before him by the lying power of evil is from the word of God as written in the Book of Deuteronomy. “You shall not live by bread alone.” (8:3) “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.” (6:13, 10:20) “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.” (6:16)  

Deuteronomy is the 5^th book of the Bible. The name comes from the Greek for second law, deutero nomos. Deuteronomy repeats the 10 Commandments and other parts of the Law from Exodus. It is the last teaching of Moses, spoken just before the people moved into the promised land of Israel. Since the early 19^th century scholars have seen in it a law code for an agricultural rather than a nomad people, and we see it as the book found in the Temple in the time of King Josiah’s reformation about 620 years before Christ. Deuteronomy 6:4 is the core statement of ethical monotheism: Shema Israel Adonai elohenu Adonai echad. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God the Lord is One. We know this as the first part of Jesus’ Summary of the Law. It is the first thing observant Jews say each morning and the last thing said at night, and it is said at the hour of death. As the gas poured down in the showers of Auschwitz, they sang the Shema.

Jesus resisted the temptations of the lying power of evil by speaking God’s word from the core of God’s revelation. So let us today and this Lent, pay attention to Jesus’ words, to his words to the power of evil, to his word to us sinners and to the sin-filled world where we live and move and our earthly being.  “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.”

Epiphany 1C Holy Spirit and fire

Today’s gospel offers us three things to think about: John’s baptism, Jesus’ baptism, and out baptism in Jesus, a baptism “with the Holy Spirit and fire.”  First John’s baptism:  Every Jewish community has a ceremonial bath,  a mikvah, a pool just big enough for an adult to crouch and immerse the body. Going to the mikvah is a sign of commitment to obey the Law of God.  Orthodox women go to the mikvah after the blood shed in the menstrual period;   Orthodox men go after shedding blood and after a wet dream. Gentiles converting to Judaism go to the mikva as a sign of their commitment to obey the Law of God . John’s baptism was a sign of recommitment to obey the Law of God rightly understood as ethical and moral as well as ceremonial and liturgical law.  The people baptized by John were symbolically saying, “we have disobeyed God’s law; we have made ourselves like Gentiles; we repent and we come to God again as though we were Gentile converts.” 

Jesus’ baptism is also a sign of his commitment to obey the Law of God.  Jesus’ baptism begins his public ministry, his life of public teaching and witness to God. The gospel says that after his baptism he was praying. We can imagine him in communion with the Father, seeking and receiving direction for his public ministry. St. Luke tells us of the Father’s affirmation, “the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased."

We who are in Christ hear the same word, “You are my Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” In this sin-filled world we don’t often feel God’s pleasure. We all know how far we have fallen short of God’s perfect will for our lives. We are all repentant and forgiven sinners, made right with God by the saving death of Jesus on the cross, made new in his resurrection. By faith we receive what Jesus offers us, new life in him, new opportunities to love and serve, new opportunities to hear again, “You are my Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

John said, “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” Jesus has indeed “ baptized us with the Holy Spirit and fire.” In our baptism we have been made new people. Our sins have been washed away, and when we sin again, when we repent that effect of baptism is renewed. All our sins are again forgiven, both the sins we remember and repent of, and also the sins we have forgotten and the sins we are unaware of, all our sins are forgiven by Jesus’ death and resurrection. And in addition to our reconciliation with God, in addition to our justification, we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit of truth and power. In St. John’s Gospel we are told that “you shall know the truth” and the truth will set us free.  In Romans 8:11 St. Paul tells us that by the power of the Holy Spirit, we receive new life in the resurrection of Jesus. “But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.”

How do we understand “baptism in fire?”  Fire is conversion of matter into energy. By fire the wax (or in our case the oil) of candles is converted by flame into gas – water vapor and carbon dioxide. The conversion produces both heat and light.  Evidence of controlled fire is dated about the same time as the earliest evidence of human beings. Making fire requires tools; fire allows for cooking, and control of fire requires social organization, someone to gather the wood and someone else to tend the fire and “keep the home fires burning.”  It requires a home place to keep the fire. No more wandering around gathering berries or hunting small animals to eat raw. With fire people can gather together to cook and eat stew, and make pots to cook it in and spoons to eat it with. Fire is transformative in human society.

The truth, the power, the fire of the Spirit brings us together today.  Fire has been associated with worship from the earliest times.  At least 50 countries maintain eternal flames as memorials – from Arlington at President Kennedy’s grave to Ground Zero the World Trade Center, at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, in Jerusalem at Yad Va Shem to remember the Holocaust – and so on. In ancient Rome the Vestal Virgins maintained a flame for 1000 years. Leviticus 6:13 commands an eternal fire at the altar of offering.  In some churches a candle burns before the tabernacle as a sign of the presence of the reserved sacrament, of the bread and wine which are the continued expression of Christ’s continued presence in, with, and under the elements of Holy Communion.  The baptism of fire burns within each of us. The light of Christ burns in our hearts to enlighten us to salvation, to show forth Christ’s glory until he comes again.

                 
Fire is the conversion of solid wood and wax and oil into a new form, into oxygen and carbon dioxide and into energy.  Christ converts us into his eternal presence in the world.  We are day by day being used up. Day by day we convert food into energy and waste. May the fire of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth and power, the Spirit of the Living Christ, daily convert us into his faithful servants, empowered to do God’s will in the world Jesus has redeemed.   Lord, we thank you for our baptism, for the baptism of water that washes away all sin, and for the converting baptism of the Holy Spirit and fire. Amen.  

November 11m 2018 100 Years

Proper 27B November 11, 2018

Today is the 100^th anniversary of the Armistice that ended World War One. Today I want to talk about that event and about the gospel. WWI was called “the war to end all wars,” by President Woodrow Wilson. Wilson was born December 1856 in Stauton, VA, to a Presbyterian minister in a slaveholding family. Woodrow Wilson went to Davidson, Princeton, University of VA law, and Johns Hopkins. In 1910 while President of Princeton he was elected Governor of New Jersey. In 1912 Republicans split between Taft and Teddy Roosevelt and Wilson was elected President. He was re-elected in 1916 on a slogan, “he kept us out of war.” But German submarines sank neutral American ships in late 1916, and in early April, 1917 Wilson asked Congress to join Britain and France in the war. American troops fought in France from June, 1917.  

The British naval blockade led to severe food shortages in the German cities, and though the 1917 Russian revolutions took Russia out of the war Germany began to lose. In mid-August 1917 Pope Benedict XV offered a peace proposal, basically to return to the positions held before the war, but the proposal was rejected by Wilson and by the French. In early November 1918 the German and Austrian imperial political systems collapsed. The November 11 Armistice was a German surrender.

The terms of the Armistice and of the 1919 Versailles treaty were harsh and punitive. The blockade and famine continued for 10 months. Germany was assessed heavy reparations to France and Belgium. One consequence of the armistice and treaty was German anger. That anger and the great depression led to the rise of the Nazi party and Hitler.  After the Second World War US aid under the Marshall Plan 1948-52 helped European recovery and led eventually to a common market.

We can draw a few lessons from WW I. One lesson is that war is unpredictable, and the more people are involved in the war the harder it is to end the war.  For much of the 19^th century modern European powers had won colonial wars against poorly armed locals. In Europe the 1815 Council of Vienna balance of power was upset by the unsuccessful revolts of 1848, by the inconclusive Crimean War of 1853-56 of France and Britain against Russia, by the 1863 border conflict between Denmark and Prussia, by the 7 weeks Austro-Prussian war of 1866 and the 7 months Franco-Prussian war of 1870.  The American Civil War showed the bloody effects of a 4 year war that mobilized a whole people, but the European powers concluded that with modern technology wars could be won in a short time. They were wrong.

World War One came to involve whole nations, and it was nasty, brutish, and long. Even on the morning of November 11, with the armistice set for 11 a.m. conflict continued. Henry Gunther, of 3811 Eastern Avenue, Baltimore, was the last American to die. Henry was 23 years old, a Roman Catholic, a bank clerk. Drafted in September 1917 he advanced to supply sergeant, then was busted to private when a censor read his letter home complaining about miserable conditions at the front. The Baltimore Sun newspaper reported that “Gunther brooded a great deal over his recent reduction in rank, and became obsessed with a determination to make good before his officers and fellow soldiers.”  Just before 11 a.m. on November 11 Gunther’s unit came on two German machine guns at a road block.  Against the orders of his sergeant Gunther charged with his bayonet. The German soldiers, already aware of the Armistice that would take effect in one minute, tried to wave Gunther away. He kept going and fired "a shot or two".  When he got too close to the machine guns, he was shot in a short burst of automatic fire and killed instantly.  The army restored his rank and awarded him the Distinguished Service Cross. A Veterans of Foreign Wars post in east Baltimore was named for him. It has ceased to exist.

George Edwin Ellison, a Leeds a coal miner, father of a 5 year old son, was the last British Army soldier killed – at 9:30 a.m.  George Lawrence Price, of Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan was the last Canadian Army soldier killed – at 10:58. Augustin Trebuchon had served in the French Army from the beginning of the war. He was killed at 10:45 a.m. The name of the last German soldier to die is not known.   

It is hard to call back the dogs of war.  And as war, so with anger.  It is easy to yield to the temptation to anger, and very hard to let that emotion go. In the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, 48 years before, the French had lost Alsace-Lorraine. Marshall Foch refused the German request for an immediate cease fire. So 11,000 men died on the morning of November 11.

A second lesson from this day 100 years ago is that Jesus calls to forgive, to make peace quickly with our adversaries. He taught us to pray, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”  The modern version translates as “sin.” “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.”

 I spoke of the harshness of the Armistice and the Treaty. Jesus tells us in St. Matthew 5:43-45, and also in St. Luke 6, “I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,  so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.”

About 18 million people died in World War I, 6 million Allied military, 4 million German and Austrian military, 8 million civilians , about 6 million of them from famine and disease including the 1918 flu epidemic. All WWI veterans are dead. The last, at 110, was Frank Buckles of Los Angeles, on February 27, 2011. The memory of all these who died lives on.

 “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord, for they rest from their labors, and their deeds follow them. (Revelation 14:13)