Driving away our own Snakes: A Sermon on the Feast of S. Patrick of Ireland

1 Thessalonians 2:2b-12
Psalm 97:1-2,7-12
Matthew 28:16-20

+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

There is a lot of evil in the world.  We see it all around us: greed, corruption, environmental destruction, racism, sexism, homophobia, prejudice, anger, hatred, and pride.  It can sometimes be overwhelming.  What is especially be disheartening is that we hear so many sermons these days that call out these evils, that denounces them, and offer the hope of change and reconciliation.  With so many prophetic voices that exist, surely the evil around us should be brought down by the power of our words, and with the power of our sentiment.  Sadly, it seems this is not the case.  In many we preach ways to the choir, to people who know or accept that the evil is there, that is beyond them, and that deny they contribute to it in any way.  It never seems though to truly transform the world around us.

We are in the bright sadness of this Season of Lent.  Through our prayer and fasting we are called to examine ourselves and our surroundings and work to strive to become closer to God so that we may be prepared for the Paschal Feast.  We like the idea of Lent, we like the sound of Lent, but if our way of proclaiming the Gospel is any indication of how we actually behave and act as Christians, it reveals the truth of how we relate to Lent—namely, we do not like it.  We like to shy away from the personal or individual aspects of the faith for the corporate.  In our own little ways we make it possible to deny our culpability with evil, we are uncomfortable with singular professions of faith, we avoid “I believe” and replace it with “we believe” for the Creed, we like confessions that speak of “the evil done on our behalf” because perhaps in some ways it dulls the bitterness of acknowledging the “the evil we have done” or even more so “the evil I have done.”  This is not to say that we should not have a common faith, for indeed as Anglicans we have a Book of Common Prayer.  Nor that corporate and communal sin do not exist—they do.  But too often it seems that those of us who would identify as progressive Christians tend to overlook the little picture in favor of the big picture, to speak out against the great corporate sins without examining or acknowledging how we participate in those very sins we denounce.

The devil, my friends, however is in the details, and we may not like to acknowledge how we make it easier for the Devil to work in this world. Lent stares us back in the face and says to us and to our prideful boasting—so what?  Yes, we call out evil, but we ourselves are still sinners.  We still have that evil serpent that whispered lies into the ears of Adam and Eve coiling around us, and telling us lies that keep ourselves from acknowledging that fact.

We like to follow Jesus command, to spread the Gospel to all nations, but do we even believe in that very Gospel ourselves?  And if we do not believe in that Gospel, then what is the point of it?

I am a sinner, there are times believing the Gospel is near impossible, there are times that I have said racist, sexist, and homophobic things, I hide behind my white and male privilege to escape my own faults, there are times that I accidentally leave my AC on too long, I occasionally toss plastic bottles and cans in the trash can because I am too lazy to recycle, some of the stocks I own are in companies that are less than ideal.  I need Christ for myself as much as the world needs Christ to turn away from sin.

Today is the Feast of S. Patrick of Ireland.  There is far too much that can be said about this much beloved Saint—the Patron of Ireland, the Apostle to the Irish, the cultural icon of children of the Irish Diaspora in the United States and beyond, and the person whose Feast is celebrated by many as an excuse to over drink.  And yet in and amidst the biography of the old curmudgeony saint from the 400s, I am still drawn to the old stories of Patrick.  Namely, because of S. Patrick, the snakes of Ireland were driven away.  

To be sure, this is a myth of S. Patrick, there are many myths associated with him.  Ireland is an island at a high northern latitude that is far too cold, dark, and wet for most reptiles to survive.  This was a story to help explain why Ireland lacks snakes.  Though as with any myth, there are deeper truths to be had if we look beyond the historical reality.  Myths, parables, fables, and legends are all part of how we learn about ourselves, the world around us, and God.  They are powerful because they strike that part of the brain that comes to life to imagine new possibilities and realities—simply put, we all love a good story.

Patrick came to Ireland, and in the midst of his mission, drove the snakes away.  In his ministry, he preached, he called people to accept the baptism of repentance he built churches and monasteries that still dot the landscape of Ire, he rejected payment from people to be baptized or ordained, he refused to seek the protection of local chiefs and kings in his work in exchange for compromising on the Gospel, he faced imprisonment and violence, but in the end, the Gospel was heard and received in all Ireland.  The old gods of Ireland, the old devils and snakes of Ireland, were driven away.

The message that Patrick preached was not his own, nor was it a version of the Gospel that was reworked to become appealing to the people of Ireland.  It was the Gospel that Jesus Christ gave his one, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic church to proclaim, a Gospel of faith, a Gospel of God’s love for us, a Gospel of repentance of our sins, a Gospel of Resurrection into new life.  It is not always an easy message, sometimes it is downright bitter because it forces us to confront our fallen state and to turn away from those actions and ways of being and thinking that cause us to sin.  It calls us to make ourselves as individuals humble before God Almighty.  We must recognize that we cannot seek to please others with the Gospel, but as S. Paul the Apostle said, strive to please only God with our proclamation.  According to S. Gregory of Nyssa in his biography on the Life of Moses, much like the bitter water at Marah was made sweet by the wood Moses placed in it, so too does the Gospel become sweet because of Christ and the wood of the Cross, the wood that defeated the power of sin and death, and restores us to new life.  The serpent of old in the Garden is put to shame as through the power of the cross, we are restored both in image and in likeness of God.

Patrick called the people of Ireland to join Jesus Christ’s one Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church through Baptism.  Though there have been twists and turns throughout history, invasions, reformations, dispersion, oppression, and unification, the Church that Patrick called the people of Ireland to is the same Church that we are a part of NOW.  We are a part of something greater than ourselves, than this chapel, than this diocese, than this Episcopal Church, and this Anglican Communion.  The liturgy we celebrate is the image of the liturgy before the throne of God, and Patrick calls us just as he called Ireland to turn and orient ourselves to Christ—the Christ within us, the Christ behind us, the Christ before us, the Christ beside us, the Christ beneath us, the Christ above us;

But ultimately the Christ who is not us.

We are not Christ, we are not God, but through the Gospel we are capable of being restored to that original image and likeness of the Divine.

Light in the Dark--Gallarus Oratory

Therefore, it is fitting that the Feast of S. Patrick falls in this season of Lent.  We are reminded to orient ourselves and bow down before God.  It is only through the power of God that we can fully embrace the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  Through prayer, fasting, and genuine confession of sin, we turn away from the power of the Devil, from the serpent that calls us through sin to commune with him, and we come before the awesome might of God.  By shedding our own evil and our own sin, and by becoming beacons of God’s light within the world, we can dispel the night that eats away at the souls of humanity.  We too can follow the example of S. Patrick and shine God’s light in defiance of the powers of the world and the old gods the world worships.  The snakes of this world will flee before the radiance that comes from our prayers, our fasting, and our confessions.

If we strip away our own sins, we bear witness to the True and Living God.  Others will follow that light that shines through us and come to God.



My friends, I am a sinner, I ask your prayers of forgiveness as we all walk along in the bright sadness of Lent towards the light of Christ and the Paschal Feast.

Amen

We do not shape liturgy, liturgy shapes us.

One of the many tasks that I have at my seminary is to take part in planning the weekly community night liturgies that are celebrated in our chapel.  Week after week, a group of seminarians come together with members of the staff and faculty to plan a liturgy including its prayers, music, and movement.  It is a practice to help seminarians to learn how to plan and celebrate liturgies in their future parishes.  It also is a chance to expose seminarians to more liturgical and musical resources that hopefully can be of service to them in their future ministries.  On the whole, I think this is a positive experience, but there are certain dangers that come from such a thing.

Protestantism, and broadly speaking many Western and some Eastern Christian traditions in the twentieth century began processes of reevaluating and reexamining how they worship.  Certain things like accessibility, lay participation, and overall praxis were discussed and debated.  Older and ancient liturgical forms and documents were reexamined as a means to shed light on modern practice.  Some reforms that came into play were minor and tepid, and others quite extreme.  Some sought to return to a glorious past of liturgy that may or may not have actually existed, some sought to modernize and reform the liturgy so as to have it be contextualized into a post-modern society, some wanted to reflect on the documents and writings of the past and make certain reforms that can coincide with other developments over the centuries, and others merely wanted minor reforms that would not alter too much of their practices.

One of the oft-stated things is that the liturgy is the work of the people.  Though this is partially true, it is actually linguistically and theologically incorrect.  Liturgy, or leitourgia (λειτουργία), is more properly understood as work done for the people, or done on behalf of the people.  In a Christian context, the liturgy is the offering or sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving offered by the Church to God on behalf of the faithful of the Church.  Nevertheless, despite the nuancing, the popular understanding of liturgy continues to be that of “the work of the people,” and this continues to influence our relationship with liturgy as Christians.

One of the troubling things that I think is a by-product of this misunderstanding of liturgy is the formation of many liturgies by people and communities that seemingly reflect their own image rather than the image of the divine worship in Heaven.  What I mean by that is that the priorities of these liturgies seem to be off.  Instead of them placing God at the center of the liturgy, and instead of worshipping God through the Sacraments, prayers, and hymns, we instead see the centrality of certain ideas and concepts within liturgy, and the worshipping of those ideas and concepts as the central act of the liturgy.

Of course, the immediate things that come to mind with this are the clown masses, U2charists, and Macklemore mass, but there are also things that are more subtle.  Sometimes we like to have liturgies that highlight diversity, unity, hospitality and welcome, family, youth, children, and other such things.  These are good things to embody within our community, but these are things that our communities ought to strive to embody, not things we hang upon the liturgy as if the liturgy were a tree that we hang ornaments on.

One of the things that appears to be lost in our liturgical renewal over the past few years is that in our rush to try new and interesting things, we have forgotten that we do not shape liturgy, liturgy shapes us.  Within the liturgy, we engage with the all of history as time and space collapse down into the life, death, resurrection, ascension, and second coming of Jesus Christ.  We join with angels and saints before the throne of God where we offer a sacrifice of praise, and share in Christ’s Body and Blood.  In this we see our humanity, our frailty, and our salvation.  It shapes us by joining us into the Divine History, and by deifying us so that we may be restored completely into the image and likeness of God.  This happens each and every liturgy, and yet each and every liturgy is different in its own way.  This is because in the liturgy, God causes the Earth and Heaven, the temporal and eternal to coincide in the same place in time.  It is everyplace, it is no place, and it is the only utopia we will ever encounter within our lives.

This is not to say there cannot be variation within liturgies.  Beyond different hymns, prayers, and Anaphoras, there are also Feast Days and Votive liturgies that help expand our understanding of that Divine History as it has interacted with holy men and women, the Saints of God, and events where God’s hand has moved in our history.  What happens though when we place human things as the centerpiece of the liturgy, we not only fashion a liturgy that exists solely in our own image, but we run the risk of worshipping ourselves rather than God.  We can try to frame it as the God who “welcomes all” or “laughs with all” but we forget that God does not just meet people where they are at, but desires to take them somewhere else, beyond the bounds and scope of human imagination of what is possible.  Human shaped liturgies do not do this because they do not demand anything from us, whereas liturgy that focuses on God demands something from us.

In the end, the liturgy, we should not hang our own agenda onto it, but let it wash over us and transform us into being that can embody the love of Christ in the world.

St...Charles Stuart? An addendum three years later

Three years ago, I wrote a blog post about the merits of calling King Charles I of England a Saint.  I recognize fully he was a lousy king.  But a lousy king can still, even in their final moments, be a faithful Christian.  To read the initial blog post, click the link below:

http://smokingthurible.blogspot.com/2012/01/stcharles-stuart.html

I have been in seminary now for nearly three years now.  My own faith and theology have been transformed as I have delved deeper and deeper into the traditions and practices of the Church.  I have learned much, I have changed , and I have grown.  In reflecting upon the state of the Episcopal Church, I find that one thing that can help us maintain our faithfulness to God, the Gospel, and to the Church that Christ called to be is to celebrate the Feast of S. Charles, King and Martyr.  I would like to expand on my initial thoughts of that earlier blog post.  

I am a proponent of what could be called the cult of S. Charles, King and Martyr.  I have come to believe that veneration of him, along with all the Saints, is an important part of Christian life.  They pray with us in our needs, in our joys, and in our distresses.  Yes, all Christians are saints by virtue of their baptism, but certain women and men throughout history are lifted up by the Church Catholic as faithful witnesses and exemplars of Christ.  

Here is another example of an unlikely saint, my own patron saint, S. Genesius.  S. Genesius did not exhibit Christian faith until he was converted to the faith a matter of days, maybe even hours, before his death by the Emperor Diocletian.  He was an actor who spent his career mocking Christianity on stage, and yet during one performance, came to believe in Christ, and openly desired baptism in the midst of the performance.  His embrace of the faith, and unwillingness to recant, while on stage with the Emperor in the audience, lead his to his death.  I believe that even if a person has sinned greatly in life, their willingness to be faithful to Christ in death outweighs the sins they committed, whether that be for S. Genesius or S. Charles.  

So many of our figures in our Kalendars like that of Holy Women, Holy Men that we are called to commemorate are problematic.  Some, like John Calvin, would be aghast at being listed as a saint in a Kalendar of a Catholic Church.  Some, like William Mayo, may have done some good in the world, but are lacking in any sense of Christian virtue that draws people towards belief in Jesus Christ.  Some, like Fredrick Douglas, were people who fought against injustice in their midst, but I sometimes wonder if we include them to assuage our own guilt about how we as the Episcopal Church contribute to structural racism and other forms of oppression both in the past and in the present.  Finally, some, like Gregorio Aglipay, deny fundamental theology of the Christian faith like the Trinity.  

Though there are many other examples as to why there may have been some poor thought in the inclusion of certain persons into the Kalendar, the most troubling aspect is the lack of a theology of sainthood present within Holy Women, Holy Men.  In essence, just because someone is a good person, did some great things while alive, or makes us feel good about ourselves, does not necessarily mean they were a saint.  The question should be whether or not this person demonstrated in their life and in their death a faithfulness to Jesus Christ, and served as a living example of Jesus Christ that leads others to him.  Furthermore, does a local community within the Church raise the person up as someone to commemorate as an example of a life of faithfulness to Jesus and to the Church.  If the memory and legacy of this person continues to bear good fruit, then we as a Church universal should join in that commemoration.  

S. Charles fulfills the standards for sainthood in so many ways.  Yes, he may have been a poor king, but he laid down his life for the Church before the powers of the world.  He could have easily chosen to give into the demands of the Puritans, and abolished the episcopacy in England.  Christianity in England would have probably become a Reformed-Protestant sect like those in Switzerland, the Netherland, or Scotland.  Instead, the choice to lay down his life serves as a faithful witness to Christ and to the Apostolic Church he called into being.  Yes, under Cromwell there was no Church of England, and officially no episcopacy, and so one could say his death was meaningless.  But the bishops survived, and they kept ordaining people, and when Charles II returned to England, amid much fanfare of the people, there were those who kept the faith and the legacy of the Apostles alive to restore the fullness of the Church of England.  He is remembered and celebrated on the Kalendar of the Church of England and in other communities within the Anglican Communion.  His martyrdom ensured that the Catholic Church in England would survive, and by extension, ensured that the Catholicism of the Anglican Communion that would emerge would be a faithful witness to Christ.  

Speaking as a member of the Episcopal Church of the United States, I do not believe that there would be an Episcopal Church of the United States were it not for the martyrdom of S. Charles, King and Martyr.  

Let us join with our Anglicans sisters and brothers in celebrating the Feast of S. Charles, King and Martyr.

Drop the Routine, Follow a Star: A Sermon for the Second Sunday after Christmas

Jeremiah 31:7-14
Psalm 84:1-8
Ephesians 1:3-6,15-19a
Matthew 2:1-12

St. Christopher's Episcopal Church
Kailua, HI

“We observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage."

May I speak to you in the name of the true and living God, +Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Well, this has been a lovely Holiday season hasn’t it?  Christmas has come and gone, New Years has come and gone.  Decorations, if they haven’t been taken down already, have begun to be taken down.  In-fact, the displays for Valentine’s Day are being put up.  Have you thought about what you might be giving your significant other for Valentine’s Day yet?  A friend of mine in the UK posted on Facebook that his local Tesco, a large supermarket chain in the UK, has already put out Easter candy for people to buy, even though Easter falls on the far off date of April 5th this year.  People are back at work, and schools will be in session soon.  This is something I am too familiar with as I leave on Thursday to return to my own seminary.

Happy Easter?!?!?

Our lives have moved on.  We have things to do, places to go, people to see, jobs to do, bills to pay, and we move forward looking forward with our work looking forward to the next three-day weekend.  To be sure though, with so much activity over the holiday season, I am sure we are all happy to allow for the calmness of the day-to-day routine to return.

God has become incarnate in the world by the birth of Jesus Christ.  Jesus is the hope of all the ages, that which prophets, priests, sages, and philosophers pointed to as coming in centuries past.  Mary accepted her role to bear the Christ-child, Joseph took Mary into his home, Jesus is born in Bethlehem, and now life has moved on for them.  Even with a newborn child, the life and routine of the family can be established easily—usually around the cycle of a crying baby.

One day, or perhaps one evening, a few years after the birth of Christ, three random blokes show up at the home of Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem.  They are dressed in a strange manner; they look somewhat out of place among people in Eastern Mediterranean communities.  After introducing themselves and telling the befuddled family that they followed a star to their home (perhaps they spoke enough Greek or Aramaic to converse with Mary and Joseph), they come before their child, worship him, and then give Mary and Joseph gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh for the child.  I will presume they spent the night either in their home or in Bethlehem, and then head out the next day.

We dress this story up in very cute imagery and scenes that make it far more precious than it really is.  Imagine, in the midst of your routine, a bunch of strangers show up at your home, tell you they have been following a star, bust in, bow down before your child, and then toss very expensive gifts at you.

Of course, what is most interesting is not so much that the routine of Mary and Joseph was disturbed by the arrival of these strangers, but what would compel these strangers to drop everything in their lives, in their routine, and travel to Bethlehem following a star?  I think there are many mysteries to be uncovered here.

Did the wise men ever get lost along the way?

 Who were these wise men, these magi, these kings as we call them?  What does it mean that they come from the East?  What was it they are looking for?  How many were there?  These are questions that people have tossed around, scholars have developed some theories as to their origin, and there has been multiple depictions of them in art such as in song, poetry, painting, and sculpture.  We imagine there being three wise men, one for each gift.  Tradition even gives them names: Balthazar, Gaspar, and Melchior.  There are many stories that circulate around these figures, stories that have attempted to fill in the gaps of their lives.  Sure, when you look at the biblical text itself, there is no reason to assume there were just three wise men, no indication of their names, and no real sense of their origin.  

I think it might be helpful to frame these figures, these three wise men, through one of those particular depictions of them.  There is a novel called Lamb, written by Christopher Moore.  We are introduced to the wise men when a teenage Jesus and a childhood friend of his travel into Asia to learn why it was that the three wise men or magi came to Bethlehem, and perhaps to also learn Jesus’ destiny as the Messiah.  They encounter Balthazar in the mountains of Afghanistan, and he is a wise sage knowledgeable in Confucianism and Daoism, and a practitioner of the arcane science of alchemy.  They encounter Gaspar in a Buddhist monastery in China, a man who was considered by his followers and the local villagers to be a Bodhisattva, an enlightened being.  Finally, they encounter Melchior in India, a Vedic-yogi who practiced asceticism to reach Moksha, the escape from the cycle of life, death, and rebirth.

Each of them, despite being so knowledgeable in their practices and being surrounded by everything they could want or need, material wealth, social wealth, or spiritual wealth, desired and sought something more.  It was that desire that caused them to drop everything and follow a star to seek what it was they perceived missing in their lives.

To be sure, this is a fictitious account, but I think it could be a helpful framing tool to understanding the magi and their motives.  They are clearly people who were wealthy, and had the means to travel far to Bethlehem.  In the ancient days, one required substantial wealth to afford animals and servants to carry the goods necessary to survive through the diverse terrain of Asia.  What drove them may have been that desire for something more, some greater knowledge, wisdom, understanding, or something else.  This is a natural part of the human condition, that drive for more is built into us through evolution.  It has been what has helped our species to survive, to gather during times of plenty to survive in times of famine.  But this condition can easily morph into greed or gluttony.  We desire more and more, despite having enough, and we seek to consume more and more, even when we ought to be full.

Perhaps the wise men had everything they could possibly need.  Maybe they were indeed respected figures, even enlightened.  Yet that same human desire for more drove them westward.  However, what they discovered was not some great font of wisdom, not some book with all the answers to their lives.  What they discovered was a child, the Christ, the only one who could fulfill all their desire and hunger.  Even though Jesus was still just a baby, probably no more than two years old, they saw something far greater than that child.  They witnessed God incarnate, present among us mortals, and all that Jesus would accomplish.

There is a thirteenth century hymn written by S. Thomas Aquinas that can help shape in our minds what it is that what may have gone through the minds of the magi:

Humbly I adore thee, Verity unseen,
who thy glory hidest ‘neath these shadows mean;
lo, to thee surrendered, my whole heart is bowed,
tranced as it beholds thee, shrined within the cloud.

Taste and touch and vision to discern thee fail;
faith, that comes by hearing, pierces through the veil.
I believe whate’er the Son of God hath told;
what the Truth hath spoken, that for truth I hold.

There is nothing more that they could do then to bow down in adoration before Christ.

That is what the power of Christ can do.  When we turn to him, when we orient our lives towards him, he keeps filling and filling and filling our wants, needs, and desires.  It is there that there can be contentment for who we are and what we have.  No amount of internal striving towards enlightenment or self-actualization can ever fulfill that human need for more, since that human instinct keeps growing despite our best efforts.  And yet the grace, mercy, and love of Jesus Christ towards us, towards God’s creation, fills those needs until it overflows like a pool in a storm, or a river overflowing its banks.  So, you better have a big appetite.

We will go about our day-to-day routines.  Perhaps we are content with our lives.  Perhaps we see others who in their day-to-day routine desire more in life.  Perhaps they have a desire to see that which is unseen  I would encourage you then to share with them the grace, mercy, and love of Jesus Christ with them.  Invite them to the Sunday Holy Eucharist service, invite them to share in this community.  Who knows, in time, they too might bow down in adoration before the Christ that is truly present in his Body and Blood upon the altar, and maybe they too may seek the waters of baptism.  We too can be that star that leads others to the Christ.

There are few guarantees of what might occur.  We are never promised a clear and concise answer to all our problems.  We may never become rich.  We may never become poor.  We may never be in the most ideal of circumstances.  However, bowing down in adoration before Christ, receiving the waters of baptism, eating his Body and Blood—all these things lead to a life filled with more wealth than even those of the top billionaires on Earth.  So go, be the star that leads others to Christ.  Share it with others, go tell it on the mountain to the crowds of people on Oahu.

O come, let us adore him.

Amen.

Being Theotokoi: A Sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Advent

2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16
Magnificat
Romans 16: 25-27
Luke 1: 26-38

St. Christopher's Episcopal Church
Kailua, HI

Fourth Sunday of Advent

"Let it be with me according to your word."

May I speak to you in the Name of the True and Living God, + Father, Son, and Holy Spirit

There is a paradoxical reality to God’s might and majesty.  The names of God—The Almighty, The Lord, the Most High, The Lord of Host, Who Was, Is, and Is to Come, The Everlasting, The Ancient of Days, The Alpha and the Omega, all convey great power and cosmic reality.  This is the God who created the cosmos, cast the stars into their course, formed galaxies, nebulae, dark matter, objects of mass that create gravity, quasars, novae, black holes, and the all the deep, dark mysteries of this 14 billion year-young universe.

Have we paid attention though to the messages of the past few weeks, in the season of Advent, and even before?   God’s true might and power is not to be found in the stars, moon, and sun.  God’s true might and power is not to be found in the armies of angels and archangels that surround the Throne.

We await the coming of Christ.  With Christmas around the corner, we might think that the waiting is for Christmas, for the first coming of Christ.  But Jesus has already come; we know how that story was acted out.  There is no great surprise or mystery that Jesus might not actually show up this Thursday, unless the doll goes missing for the pageant.  Instead, in Advent, we await the second coming of Christ.  And yet the story of the first coming of Christ helps us understand his second coming.  This is a two-fold expectation.  The first is the coming of Christ and the end of the age, but then also the coming of Christ within us.  The great signs and wonders of the cosmos mean little if that still-silent voice is not present within us, if our hearts are so closed that we cannot say yes to God.  This is what lies at the heart of today’s Gospel, and why all generations call Mary blessed, because she said yes to God.

The yes Mary gave in response to God was an integral piece for God’s plan for redemption in this world.  In the beginning, God created the Heavens, the Earth, and all life therein from the tiniest of bacteria, to the largest of oceanic creatures.  Over the span of billions of years, from each and every division of each and every cell, new life kept coming forth until one day, until a certain species of hominids began walking on the earth.  And God said that it was good.  Somewhere along the line, sin and death entered into the world, when it is made itself manifest in the world, it came and comes often in the form of Pride.  The pride of greatness, the pride majesty, the pride of might, and the pride that we can be Gods ourselves apart from God, that we can pull ourselves up from our own bootstraps and forge ahead with our own destiny.  This is the very primal sin of our species, whether you believe the stories of Adam and Eve in the Garden to be myth or fact, there is a truth that pride continues as the primal sin of our species.

God never abandoned us though.  Time, and again, God came to us.  God never gave up on us, perhaps out of a sense of love, or stubbornness, or both.  We kept messing up, we always do.  That same pride, that same thought that we can do it ourselves, and alone, without consequence led to catastrophe.  As Christians we believe that God reached out to Abraham, to Isaac, to Jacob, to Joseph, to Judges, to Kings, to Prophets, to Priests, to Poets, to Sages, and to Philosophers, to call humanity back to that original, good, relationship.  All the pieces were in place, and all that was left was for the hope that each pointed to in their life, the coming of the Messiah.

The Archangel Gabriel comes to Mary for this next piece in the plan.  There is a certain 15th century hymn that tells the story like this that I’d like to share with you:

Cool, new, hip Annunciation?

He kneeled down before her face;
He said: "Hail, Mary, full of grace!"

When the maid heart tell of this,
She was sore abashed, ywis,
And weemed that she had done a miss.

Then said the angel: "Dread not thou,
Be conceived with great virtue
Whose name shall be called Jesu."

Then said the maid: Verily,
I am your servant truly,
Ecce ancilla Domini.

Nova! Nova!
Ave fit ex Eva! Nova!



Be it unto me according to thy word!
News!  News!  Hail the new Eve!

The sheer magnificence of God’s might and majesty is revealed most in this story of the Annunciation.  The fifth century Patriarch of Constantinople, Saint Proclos describes the Annunciation as:

“Who has ever seen, who has ever heard, that the Limitless God would dwell within a womb? He Whom the Heavens cannot circumscribe is not limited by the womb of a Virgin!”

The infinite becomes surrounded by our own limited human nature, and in this the salvation of the world, and ourselves, comes forth.  The great cosmic dimensions of God’s plan are meaningless in comparison to Mary’s yes though, because that yes came from the very human nature that we have.  Our human nature grants us the freedom to sin, but it also grants us the freedom to be humble before God.  That same human nature that causes so much sin became the human nature to bring forth salvation into this world.  From Mary, Jesus takes on that very same human nature when he became incarnate as fully human and fully divine.

Mary became the mother of God, or, as the Eastern Orthodox Christians call her, the Theotokos—the God-Bearer.  She became the new Eve that gave birth to the new Adam, Jesus Christ.  The rest then, is history.

Ah, but we are not let off the hook so easily, no.  In our creeds, we believe that Christ will come again to judge the living and the dead.  We have plenty of images that depict the second coming of Christ in a cosmic sense.  But as we’ve noticed, the cosmic sense carries little meaning without the personal sense, and it is in Mary’s yes, in Mary’s acceptance for salvation to be done according to God’s will, that we get a vision of Christ’s second coming in a personal sense.

Through our baptism and confirmation, we celebrate the indwelling of God within us; and in the Eucharist we celebrate a remembrance of that indwelling of God.  In fact, each and every Eucharist is a celebration of Christ’s second coming into our midst in the bread and wine that becomes the Body and Blood of Jesus upon the altar.  But we also need to live lives that make God manifest within us daily, so we to hear from Jesus, John the Baptist, and Mary as to what that means; to stay awake and listen, to cry out for justice in the world, and to say yes to God.  When we do that, we prepare the way of the Lord for God to be present within us.

Most of all though, Mary becomes the example for how we ought to orient our lives towards God, and God’s plan for us all, to bring Christ into this world.  She becomes the Theotokos, and shows us how to become Theotokoi, the plural of Theotokos.  We are, each and every one of us, called to be a Theotokos in the world

Of course, here we run into an interesting problem.  Though I am twenty-five years old, I have yet to have an angel show up and tell me “here, do this for God.”  Maybe some of you might have been lucky to have such a visitor in your life, but for those of us that have not had seen as much as a tiny seraphim, we might not be completely sure how we can serve God, how we can be Theotokoi in the world.

I may be young, but one thing I find helpful while waiting for that angelic message of inspiration is to perhaps do the things I ought to do: show kindness to others, be appreciative of to those who help me out, to be forgiving when others make mistakes, to know when to say something to someone who mourns, to know when to be quiet when words fail, being patient with others, and maybe do something generous to someone random once in a while with no expectation for a reward.  Maybe nothing will happen, the heavens may not open, no angel may appear.  You could do this from the first day of your life until the day you die.

Even Mother Teresa went through life with no vision of the divine, no angelic visitor, and during her ministry in Calcutta, she often experienced depression in the midst of her work.  And yet perhaps the beauty that was made because of her actions might speak to something beautiful within her.  All of the great and awe-inspiring magnificence of the cosmos pale in comparison to the God made manifest within through our faith and works .

Even if we never see an angel, we can still be like Mary, and be Theotokoi by making God manifest in the world.  In that, the original hope of creation is to be found because the relationship between God and us, and between each other is restored.  And God saw that it was good.

When we say yes to God, our Kyrie Eleisons become Gloria in Excelsis.

Even if there is no Angel, we must say yes to God so our Kyrie Eleisons become Gloria in Excelsis.

When we love our neighbor as ourselves, when we love our enemies as ourselves, when follow the commandments of God, we say yes to God, and so we cannot help but have our Kyrie Eleisons become Gloria in Excelsis Deo.

Amen.

Racism, Judgment, and the Coming of the Lord: A Sermon for the Second Sunday of Advent

Isaiah 40:1-11
Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13
2 Peter 3:8-15a
Mark 1:1-8

All Saints’ Episcopal Church
San Francisco, CA

Second Sunday of Advent

+In the name of God

I previously wrote a sermon for this Sunday, however, recent events of this past week have made me realize that I needed to crumple it up and throw it away, because there is something that needs to be discussed.  Even if no one wants to say anything, the voice of too much blood would cry from the ground.

Why are we here?  What is it that we are doing here, in this place, in this time?  I have been coming to All Saints’ for eight months now, and most of you have been here for longer.  For many of this, this is part of the status quo that makes up life.  Sometimes there are disruptions, some major, some minor.  But life goes on, and we enter into a certain complacency of routine and form.

Something has happened though to shake me from my status quo, and I hope I am not the only one to be shaken as well.  We have been hit with a series of events that trouble me deeply to my core.  The police officer that shot Michael Brown was not indicted for that murder.  The police officer that strangled Eric Garner in to death was not indicted for that murder.  Recently, a twelve-year old boy named Tamir Rice was shot by a police officer that believed the child was wielding a gun, when it was actually a toy.

In all of these instances, the police officer was white, and the victim was African-American.  These have been the latest in a string of countless deaths and misapplication of force of African-Americans and other ethnic minorities by white police officer.

With these recent tragedies, along with the murder of Treyvon Martin and the not-guilty verdict of the white shooter, I have become saddened to the point of numbness.  A mentor of mine has said in light of these events:

“Racism is America's great sin. All its faults flow from this.”

It is becoming hard to feel anything because there is so much evil that has emerged from this great sin of ours.  Our society has never repented for it, never asked forgiveness for it, and has never received absolution for it.  We’ve become okay with it; I have become okay with it, because our lives keep moving on.  And yet, Eric Garner’s last words of “I can’t breathe” continue to haunt me.

Today is the Second Sunday of Advent.  Isaiah and the Gospel of Mark tell us to prepare the way of the Lord, to make his paths straight.  But embedded in the Second Letter of Peter is a warning.  When God comes to us, when the day of the Lord is at hand, we will find that it

“will come like a thief in the night, and then the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and everything that is done on it will be disclosed.”

Everything, everything that we are, everything that we have done will be disclosed.  No secret will be hidden anymore, and every lie will be revealed.  Every edifice that we have constructed to shield ourselves will become nothing.  In Advent, we await with joyful hope and expectation the coming of the Lord.  Some even name the second candle on an Advent wreath the candle of “preparation,” or “hope,” heeding the call of Isaiah and John the Baptist to prepare the way of the Lord.

We await the coming of the day of the Lord, but as the prophet Amos said, it is a day that is to be feared.  God is a God of love, but also a God of justice, and we worship, as Isaiah tells us, a

God that forms light and creates darkness,
A God that makes weal and creates woe;

God will judge these tragedies when the day of the Lord comes.

In recent years, the Episcopal Church, and other Christian traditions as well, have seemingly forgotten that Advent, like Lent, is a penitential season.  Society has rushed to extend the Christmas season to start earlier and earlier.  There is a call for good cheer and celebration.  It seems that, perhaps in an attempt to mirror society, or because we have become uncomfortable in talking about sin and judgment in a personal sense, we have forgotten the very command of the prophets for our Advent of forsaking our sins, as the collect says.

Image taken from SFgate.com

The evils in our society, the events of Furgeson, or Staten Island, and of Cleveland may seem far off in our own place and context, but here in California, in the Bay Area, in cities like San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, and throughout the Bay, racism and prejudice are alive and well.  Tragedies like the shooting of Michael Brown or Trayvon Martin occur here in our neck of the woods as well.  Just because we live in a progressive city in a progressive state, it does not mean that we are free from racism in our communities, nor does it absolve us of the sins elsewhere.  In one-way, or another, we are connected to these events, and guilty of these evils as well.

What lies in the depths of our hearts?  What secrets do we carry that we hide?  How do we pretend or delude ourselves into thinking we are not culpable.

The events of tragedies like this, or any tragedy whatsoever, do not exist in a vacuum.  I affirm that all human beings are good at their core, that each and every one of us bears the image of the true and living God.  God calls the creation of humans to be very good.  And yet, we are a people who sin.  Human tragedy is often the result of sin, but rarely is it a one-off event.  A casually racist remark here or there that goes unchallenged, the application of a stereotype on someone while their back is turned to us, and the apathetic response to prejudice and racism in our very midst all bring this human sin into form.

Sure, we seek to cover it up.  We say little things like “everyone is a little bit racist” or that it is okay if it is little things, just not big things like employment, housing, or education.  Here’s the thing though, its those little thoughts and things that when they go unchallenged, help to build the very systemic racism that allows thee tragedies to happen.  A casual comment can lead to an overt comment, and an overt comment can begin to affect our actions, even to the point where we feel justified in committing that which is terrible.  Because we all sin, we are all capable of such evil as what has been committed elsewhere.

I know that I have committed the sin of racism multiple times in my life.  I have said unkind things about my brothers and sisters; I have applied a racial stereotype to people who are ethnically different than me multiple times in my life.  My own privilege as a white person has shielded me for a long time from recognizing my own sins, and told me that it was okay for me to do these things.  I can no longer believe this after reflecting on the Scriptures or Traditions of the Church.  I hope though to repent of those sins.  The question I pose then is this, have you recognized your own sins?

We await the coming of Christ, where all things will be set right, and the righteous and unrighteous will be judged.  Our sins, both known and unknown will be revealed and judged.  We do not know when this will come, the writer of the Epistle cryptically tells us

“That with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day.”

But in this waiting, we must trust that the mercy of the Lord is everlasting, but we must also work towards “leading lives of holiness and godliness.”

How though, how can we do this?

The worst thing we can do is to be paralyzed by fear or guilt into doing nothing.  We must also recognize that we can never fully understand the experiences and contexts of those who suffer under racism and oppression in the US.  Finally, we cannot presume that racism, whether personal or systemic, can end with a broad show of power or force by a legislature, court, or be electing an African American president.

Empathy is what is needed.

It is the little things that we do that can hold this evil and darkness at bay.  Correcting ourselves when we make a mistake, showing kindness and compassion to one another, treating others as human beings, and recognizing, for those of us who are white, have been given a great deal of privilege within our lives, and so we need to work to subvert that privilege through kindness, compassion, and empathy to people society has determined to be inhuman because of their ethnicity.

Even a small candle can light up a room of shadows.

As a Christian I believe that our ultimate hope and model for right living is Jesus Christ.  In his incarnation, he showed empathy for the human condition by being born to a poor, dark-skinned, eastern Mediterranean woman out of wedlock in a cave.  In his life he empathized with the poor, the sick, and the foreigner by being present with them and affirming their goodness through celebrating their faith, performing signs and wonders in their midst, and affirming them as models of faith.  He then empathized with the human condition by suffering and dying on the cross, carrying with him our sins and failures.

The resurrection of Jesus is then the first fruit of our hope for a world where suffering and oppression have come to an end.  Whereas sin of all kind, including racism leads to death; love and reconciliation leads to resurrection.  Our Christian hope is that hope love enduring all things because that love comes from Christ.

It might seem like that justice and that hope is far off, but remember that

“The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.”

The Lord will come, justice will come, and all will be revealed.  That is our hope for Advent.  We prepare the way of the Lord by casting off sin, by casting off racism, and moving towards reconciliation and love by forsaking our sins.

+In the name of God

Why we need to observe the Feast of the Ascension on Thursday

This coming Thursday, May 29, 2014, is the Feast of the Ascension of Jesus Christ.

And, in order to go to Mass on this day, the nearest Episcopal Church that will be observing it is across the bay in San Francisco.

There seems to be an unfortunate trend that occurs with movable Feasts, or Feast Days that just so happen to fall during the week.  I cannot discern if it is ignorance or apathy, but it troubles me that so few parishes even take note of major Feasts, particularly major Feasts of our Lord.  Like with the Feast of the Epiphany, the Feast of the Ascension will either be transferred to Sunday, or forgotten all together.  I understand, and even somewhat sympathize with communities that do this: people are too busy to go to Mass during the week, we want to include the whole of the community to celebrate the Feast, and maybe it is okay to fudge with the rubrics of the Prayer Book in these sort of instances. 

There are two things that concern me about this.  First, we seem to be developing a particular laxness about the Christian life.   Second, parishes are missing opportunities to build a stronger community.

One of the things that troubles me within the Episcopal Church is the growing sense of diluting the Christian and/or Anglican-Episcopal identity.  We see this all too frequently—communities and diocese flaunt canons of the church regarding baptism and communion; we see iteration after iteration of provisional and supplemental material being released for liturgical use that lacks any cohesive theological center; celebrants of the Mass will change language of prayers at a whim (in the name of inclusivity) that either borders on, or is explicitly heretical (for example, using Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier for blessings); and then there is the occasional rumbling that the language of the Baptismal Covenant is too inaccessible, and it should be simplified. 

We are a community that is driven by a story, a story that is ancient and yet always new, a story that though we may hear a million times over, it is always new the first time we hear it.  The story of God’s interaction with the world; the life, death, and resurrection of Christ; and the descent of the Holy Spirit is the story of the relationship between the Trinity and humanity.  It is the story of God that we have been invited to share into.  Just as the Resurrection is the promise that we too will rise from the dead as Christ did, so too the Ascension tells us that we will ascend and join with Christ who is with the Father and the Holy Spirit.  What Christ assumed, we too have assumed.  The feast marks the beginning of a waiting period of nine days for the arrival of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost.  We are invited then to be faithful, like the Apostles, in awaiting the arrival of the Spirit.

By transferring, or ignoring this feast, we fall into a trap that what it means to be a Christian is something to only be found on Sundays.  Our call is to a constant life of devotion to God.  We are given an opportunity to celebrate the Mysteries of God.  This should not be a burden though, but a celebration, a Feast to celebrate the completion of Christ’s earthly ministry.  We are called to be a part of something different, something better, and sometimes it is a call to sacrifice in order to celebrate.  Sometimes it is hard to get away from work, or family life.  Sometimes it can be discouraging for a parish to have a special service if only a few people show up.  But that is not the point however, we should not be afraid, or wary, or burdened, to have this amazing opportunity to celebrate.  Here is the dirty little secret, we do not only have to go to church on Sundays, in fact our work days might be better if we took an hour or so out of it for something like this, or a weekday Mass in general.

This leads to a second concern I have.  Lately, in the Episcopal Church, there is a desire to build stronger communities.  In particular, in communities that are in decline, there is a desire to build a community that is welcoming to new people.

This is an opportunity to accomplish this, it is staring us in the face, and we do not seem to notice. 

A great way to for a parish to build community is to have a weekday service that is followed by a potluck, barbecue, a trip to the pub, or something like that.  It not only reminds us that Mass is not the sole thing we can do to celebrate the Ascension of the Lord, let alone any feast (mind you, it is one of the most important things we can do), but it allows us an opportunity to meet others in the parish and welcome new people in what might hopefully be a loving and fun environment.  Especially as we approach summer months, and when kids are out of school, this can be a great way to have family activities in the middle of the week.  Again, it gets us out of the trap of thinking that being a Christian only happens on Sundays. 

As I said before, I recognize the challenges that preclude some parishes and people from taking part of this.  I lament that the way modern society seems to sap any free hours that someone has for labor while providing less pay and less opportunity for rest.  To me though, there is no reason why parishes should stop having celebrations on weekday Feasts like this, in-fact it is all the more reason to have celebrations like this.  The church needs to offer and be an alternative to the secular society, and we can do that by celebrating our Feasts mid-week. 

In a society that demands the privatization of faith, we need to celebrate faith.

In a society that extracts more labor for fewer wages, we need to challenge this by resting from our labors.

In a society that dilutes the reasons for our joy, we need to identify more strongly the reason for our joy.

In a society that alienates us from one another, we need to welcome the stranger into our midst. 

In a society that promotes death and decay, we need to proclaim resurrection and ascension. 

May you all have a Blessed Ascension Day.