April 9, 2017

/

Palm Sunday

Isaiah 50: 4-9a; Psalm 31: 9-16; Philippians 2: 5-11; Matthew 26:14 – 27:66

THE REV. JAMES M. L. GRACE

What is left to say that has not already been said?  Jesus gave everything – his life – for us.  Was it worth it?  

Author Brennan Manning tells a story of an aged monk who would meditate every morning on the banks of the Ganges River.  One morning after finishing his meditation the monk opened his eyes to see a scorpion floating helplessly in the water.  As dangerous a creature as it was, its struggle to remain afloat was strangely beautiful.  Moved by compassion, the monk reached out his long arm to try and rescue the drowning creature.

But as soon as he touched it, the scorpion stung him.  Instinctively the monk withdrew his hand, but a minute later put his hurting hand back into the water to again try to save the scorpion from drowning.  This time the scorpion stung him so badly with his poisonous tail that his hand became swollen and bloody.

While this was going on, another person walking down the road beside the river saw the monk lying on the ground grimacing with pain.  The person walking by stopped and said “What is wrong with you?  Don’t you know you could kill yourself trying to save that ungrateful scorpion?  What’s the point?”

The monk turned his head toward the person and said, “My friend, just because it is the scorpion’s nature to sting, that does not change my nature to save.” 

It is in God’s nature to save – everything, I believe.  Everything that God has created, every person, everything, I believe will be saved.  Like a scorpion we might try to sting that hand trying to save us, but while others give up on us God does not.

That is what Holy Week is all about – the limit God travels to save every one of us, no matter how many times we have stung others with our thoughts, words, or actions.  The power of Holy Week, is that there is nothing a person can do that is outside the possibility for God’s forgiveness.  Sin becomes nothing more but another opportunity for God to forgive.

This morning a news alert appeared on my phone that two Coptic Christian churches near Cairo, Egypt were bombed during their Palm Sunday services.  At least thirty six people were killed. We mourn and pray for them today.  And as we do so, we are faced with a terrifying proposition.  Is it possible for God to reach out his or her hand to the perpetrator of those crimes – the person who murdered all those people – to forgive?  Would the same God who freely went to the cross, and forgave those crucifying him, have the same capacity to forgive today, a person with an agenda of religiously motivated hatred?

  If you have heard the Gospel today, then you already know the answer.  AMEN.

 

April 2, 2017

/

5 Lent

Ezekiel 37: 1-14; Psalm 130; Romans 8: 6-11; John 11: 1-45

THE REV. JAMES. M. L. GRACE

Last Sunday I was not here, because I took the Sunday off, and I think as Carissa explained to you all I took last Sunday as a “continuing education” Sunday, of which I am given two each year.  So for continuing education last Sunday, I took my three kids to church and sat in a pew with them for a service, and boy did I learn a lot!  Sitting in a pew with your kids is work!  It’s much easier to be up here doing all this than sitting in a pew.

I also observed how hard it is to listen to a sermon – when you have kids sitting next to you asking questions “when is the service over?”  “when do we get to up to the altar and have snack time?”   I realized not very many people are actually listening to the sermon – I saw a guy looking at his phone, people having side conversations, and I too confess, I found myself looking at my watch thinking “when will the sermon be over?”  It is not lost on me that much of this might sound familiar to you.  So, just to see if anyone is really listening, I want to say “Happy Easter!”          

I realize it’s not Easter, but today, I offer my Easter sermon, two weeks early because It’s difficult, if not nearly impossible to not talk about Easter when we have a reading from John’s Gospel that talks about the raising of Lazarus from the dead.  But we also have an Easter message in the reading we hear today from Ezekiel, which talks about a valley of dry bones.  I don’t know what I will preach on Easter – maybe this sermon again!  In any case, indulge me if you will for a few minutes for us to explore the world of Ezekiel.  In a vision, God takes Ezekiel to a valley filled with dry bones, and asks Ezekiel a provocative question: “Can these bones live?  Ezekiel says “I have no idea,” and God says prophesy to them, or in other words, speak truth to them.   For a prophet like Ezekiel, speaking often painful truth is what he does best, and this comes a s no challenge to him.  When Ezekiel does this, the bones listen!  They begin to move, and they join together; bone to bone, ligament and tendon to bone, muscles and cartilage weave themselves around the bones, and flesh covers these newly assembled bodies and they breath in God’s spirit, God’s breath, and they come alive. 

What was once discarded, what was once dead, is now brought together – bones connecting to each other, forming a new person to receive God’s spirit, because they hear God’s truth spoken by Ezekiel.

During our weekly Lenten series on Wednesday evenings, we have heard our speaker, Brooke Summers-Perry speak share with us a very personal story of her undoing.  She calls it her breakdown – and she says what got her to that dark place was a combination of perfectionism and workaholism.  Brooke shared that she was not at a place where she could just “be” and receive God’s love and know that it was enough.  Rather, like so many of us, Brooke describes her own sense of distraction in over working driven by her own perfectionism to meet every one’s needs so that she could receive the praise of others.  The insatiable appetite she described for the approval and applause of everyone but God, led her to a valley of bones where she could not hear God’s truth spoken to her.

Personally, I am more familiar with life in the valley of bones that I wish I were.  I wish I were not as familiar with the arid vacancy of those bones, but it is a place I know like the back of my hand.  Thank God the story does not end there.

The word “religion” comes from the Latin phrase “re-ligare” which means literally “to bind together.”  “Ligare” is the root of the word “ligament” which binds muscle to bone.  As a ligament connects muscle to bone, such is the purpose of religion: to connect a person to God.  If we are honest with ourselves, we might feel that our lives represent a pile of dry bones.  Maybe the dry bones in your life are a failed marriage, a personal failure, a feeling of inadequacy, a lack of purpose.  Whatever happened, you may have found yourself in a similar position as I, where you became dead inside because the word fell silent to your ears. 

Whatever those bones are for you, know this – they are not the end – they are an opportunity for God to bring them together.  The old dusty bones in your valley are brought together by God because always God speaks to them, and breathes life into them, giving you a second chance.  And if it doesn’t work that time, God will do it all over again, giving you a third chance, a fourth chance.  There is no limit to God’s capacity to bring life out of dead things, because that is what God does!

I hope you know that God loves you enough to reach into your life and speak truth to the dead and dilapidated bones to create something new and better for you.  In God, there is no death.  For God, all death is, is another opportunity for resurrection.   I believe that same spirit that spoke to the bones in Ezekiel’s vision is present at St. Andrew’s today, and similar to Ezekiel, that spirit is speaking to us.  What is it saying?

I would never presume to speak on God’s behalf, but I believe the spirit is calling us to look outside our church to our neighborhood community to reach out in collaborative efforts that improve the well being of the poor and the needy.  Perhaps it was God’s spirit that spoke to us and invited us to collaborate with Meals on Wheels to feed the hungry in our community, which we begin tomorrow.  Perhaps it is God’s spirit that spoke to us, confronting us with the need to reach out and support financially the life giving work of the Heights Interfaith Food Pantry.  There is no limit to what God is doing and what God can do, for God is alive and God’s spirit speaks to us at St. Andrew’s.

And we have an opportunity, and I consider it an obligation, to add our voice to the work God is doing here.  If you have not yet taken the parish survey, please do.  Let your voice be heard.  I conclude with one final thought, which for the people checking their watches must be music to their ears.  My final thought is this: three years ago today I stood in this pulpit for the very first time.  The three years I have been with you have been a privilege.  It is humbling for me to see the steps we have taken together, and it is nothing short of inspiring to bear witness to God speaking to us.  It is said that God’s Spirit blows where it chooses, and if that is true, I thank God that today it appears to be blowing so clearly here.  AMEN.

March 19, 2017

/

3 Lent

Exodus 17: 1-7; Psalm 95; Romans 5: 1-11; John 4: 5-42

THE REV. JAMES M. L. GRACE

In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  AMEN.

I have learned a lot about myself over the years.  I have learned, again and again, that I am far from perfect.  I have learned that I am not very good at so many things.  I have learned that the older I get, the less I feel I know.  I have also learned that platitudes, especially of the Christian variety, no longer resonate with me.  Let me give you an example: “God will not give you more than you can handle.”  I have heard well-intentioned Christians offer that platitude to people going through difficult times.  They do so because they feel those words are somewhere in the Bible, right?  It sounds like something the Bible would say – but in fact nowhere in the Bible does it ever say that God refrains from giving people more than they can bear. 

To the contrary, I believe people deal with more than they can bear constantly.  I would never think of saying “God won’t give you more than you can handle” to a child whose parents have died, or to a young woman carrying a child she does not have the means to care for.  I know many of us have felt that our burdens are greater than we can carry.   Here’s another platitude that I have long since disavowed myself from: “God has a wonderful plan for your life.”  When I see Jewish cemeteries desecrated in this country, Coptic Christians fleeing for their lives in Egypt, Muslim families forced out of their country by war and geopolitical conflict – well maybe God does have a plan, but when I see all that, I must confess that it does not seem like a plan that makes much sense to me at all. 

If I were God, my plan would look something like eradicating poverty, war, violence, injustice, and oppression.  This very issue accounts for the rise of global atheism today – as atheists rightfully ask “If God is good, if God is in control, as Christians proclaim, rightfully in my opinion, how can the world be so broken?”  For the atheist the answer is simple: there is no God, the world and our existence are an improbable occurrence, and we are responsible for the state of our world.

As a Christian, I return to the conundrum of suffering and pain all the time.  Why does God allow it?  I went to seminary hoping that I would find an answer to that question.  I didn’t.  Many authors have taken God to task on the question of God and suffering – there are books in the Bible devoted to it.  A branch of theology called “theodicy” is dedicated to exploring the question of how God can be just and good and yet allow injustice to exist upon the earth.  The only way I can answer this question is by paradox.  A paradox is simply a series of true statements that contradict each other, and I believe that paradox is more true than fact.  Here is an example: God is good, God is in control, and terrible things do happen. 

I think the reason why I am able to hold the tension of those three statements (God is good, God is in control, and terrible things can happen) is because of my personal suffering.  As much as I hate suffering, as much as I look back on the times in my life where I have suffered, and when I suffer today – I realize that suffering, pain, sorrow – they have been without a doubt my greatest teacher.  I have learned, and still have a lot more to learn about love and God through suffering.  So I say this to you today: if you feel you are in a terrible place, if you feel that God is so far out of the picture and is not even listening to you or doesn’t even care, know that often that is the sign that you are in fact nearer to God than you might imagine.  I say this because I know that to be true from my own life.

Today we hear a small part of a letter written by the Apostle Paul to the church in Rome –the letter is called “Romans.”  In that letter today, Paul talks about suffering directly, saying “we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God.  And not only that, we boast in our sufferings!”  Doesn’t that sound kind of weird?  We tend to be quiet about our suffering because we are ashamed or embarrassed by them.  But I don’t believe Paul understood suffering that way.  Paul says later in Romans that our suffering produces endurance, but he doesn’t stop there, but continues to say that suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, character produces hope, and our hope does not disappoint us. 

In saying that, Paul suggests something that I still fail to fully comprehend today, and that is that suffering is the place where hope is born, and the hope born in that place will never disappoint us.  Victor Frankl, an Austrian neurologist, author, and holocaust survivor, proves Paul was right.  In Frankl’s book entitled “Man’s Search for Meaning,” which tells his story of living in a concentration camp, Frankl says that almost categorically it was the people in the camps who were able to envision themselves in the future no longer imprisoned, living with their families again, who had a much higher survival rate.  At the same time, Frankl observed that when people lost hope, who only could see themselves dying in that hellish place, their chance for survival was much lower.

In saying all this, I have no answer that comes close to adequately explaining how or why God allows suffering.  What little I can say is this: from the comparably small taste of suffering I have experienced in my life hope has emerged.  It is a hope that I have stumbled upon or fallen into, a hope birthed from suffering, perhaps a hope I don’t deserve.  But it is there, and to date, it has yet to disappoint. 

I don’t think I will ever be able to fully understand the purpose of suffering, but I am learning to grasp the beautiful hope that springs forth from it.  AMEN. 

March 1, 2017

/

Ash Wednesday

Joel 2: 1-2, 12-17; Psalm 103; 2 Corinthians 5:20b- 6:10; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

THE REV. JAMES M. L. GRACE

In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  AMEN.

The British biologist and author Richard Dawkins stoked quite a bit of controversy when his book entitled The God Delusion was published.  In that book, Dawkins argued that a supernatural creator does not exist, and that religion itself is a delusion.  Some Christians found the premise slightly disturbing, however I think it’s a really interesting book, and one I think would be an interesting Lenten read.  But that’s not the book I want to talk about today.  It is another of Richard Dawkins books, entitled Unweaving the Rainbow, I wish to share with you today.  Published in 1998, the book has been warmly received by people of faith, agnostics, and atheists alike.  I would like to share the opening sentences with you now, in which Dawkins writes:

“We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively outnumbers the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here. We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?”

I have written many sermons for Ash Wednesday, but none of them, in my opinion, come close to matching the power of what Dawkins says in these few sentences.  How many of us ever viewed death as something reserved for the lucky ones?   I never had. 

Ash Wednesday is a day in which we all recognize a familiar truth about all of us: we’re all going to die someday, sometime.   Can we laugh about that?  I mean really, can we celebrate our dying as much as our living? 

Fifteen years ago I was scared of death.  The reason I was scared was because I couldn’t be certain that heaven or any kind of afterlife existed.  There was no way that I could prove it.  And if I couldn’t prove it, then I couldn’t really feel safe trusting it.  This went on for some time.  In seminary I continued to struggle believing in life after death.  I took a class on the resurrection, hoping that in the class I would discover some undeniable proof that would substantiate for me, once and for all, that death is not the end. 

I read a lot of books in that class, listened to a lot of lectures, but there was nothing in all that heady academic work that could satiate my desire to know that after death I would be ok.  That all changed for September 3, 2007, the day my mother died.  Her death was something I and my siblings knew was coming.  She was in hospice care, her body slowly shutting itself down, ravaged by an auto immune disease.

In the days leading up to her death, I was so scared of losing her.  When she died, I wept and wept.  Grief was a constant companion for months, years, and if I am honest, now almost ten years later, I grieve her loss frequently.  I lit a candle for her today. 

But something I never expected happened in all this.  It didn’t happen overnight, and neither did I realize it immediately after it happened.  But sometime after mom died, I stopped being afraid.  No longer did I feel this need to prove the existence of some kind of life after death, because it stopped being so important to me.  I realized that heaven was something I could never prove, but I found myself strangely comforted about its presence. 

That’s the paradox of her death – in losing her, something I was so scared of, she gave me something greater than I ever could have imagined – trust.  Trust, and knowing deep inside my bones that it’s all going to be okay.  So when Carissa puts a blackened ash cross on my forehead, I don’t feel sad, I don’t feel depressed – I feel grateful.  I will smile the smile I saw on the faces of our community neighbors who received ashes earlier this morning.   

I think the reason I will smile is because I finally learned to stop believing in the resurrection, and instead began to know it.  I never knew there was a difference, until I lost my mother, and that was the moment where a peculiar trust and grateful hope were born within me.   Our lives are gifts given to us by God, and the fact that we are here, as Richard Dawkins writes,  that is one of the greatest miracles in the world.  We are just dust, and one day we will return to the dust again.  What a gift that is.  What a gift that our return to dust from which we once came marks not the end of our journey, but just the beginning.  In our dying, and in our living, we are the lucky ones. AMEN.

February 26, 2017

/

Last Epiphany

Exodus 24: 12-18; Psalm 99; 2 Peter 1:16-21; Matthew 17: 1-9

THE REV. JAMES M. L. GRACE

In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  AMEN.

Many years ago at a different church when I was a brand new priest I was visiting with a woman who was going to have surgery. We were in the hospital pre-op room, she was wearing her purple “Bear Paws” gowns that all hospitals seem to put you in before surgery, and she was laying in her bed.  It was early in the morning and we were having a good conversation in the midst of doctors and nurses coming in and checking her vital signs and administering medication.  Seeing that it was drawing near to the time for her to go into the operating room, I asked if I could pray with her, and she said yes.  Just before beginning our prayer together, a nurse pulls open the curtain and in a very polite but professional voice says: “I’m sorry but I need to ask when your last bowel movement was?” 

I remember thinking to myself “that’s a strange question to ask a priest.”  And then the woman I was visiting smiled and pointed to me and said “Do I have to answer in front of him?”  But before I could excuse myself and let this woman offer her answer with some degree of dignity and privacy, she blurted out “Yes – last night, 10 PM.”  And I thought to myself “Cool!  Me too!”

I share this story because it was revealing, it was a moment of complete transparency, or vulnerability.  For a moment, the woman was not a patient awaiting surgery, I was not a priest, the nurse was not a nurse.  We were all just human beings, talking about the very basic things people do, being open and honest with one another.   

Every week I participate in a conference call with several other priests I went to seminary with.  Sometimes our conversations are about boring things – church “shop talk”  “How was your Sunday, how was that Vestry meeting?”   And sometimes our conversations are really meaningful.  I have learned that the thing that distinguishes between a more mundane conversation, or a more meaningful one is vulnerability.  Every time, if one of us shares a real challenge, –a personal failure, a difficult argument with a spouse, trouble in the family, trouble at church -  then it gets real.  The conversation is not mundane, because inevitably, we all chime in, saying “I made that mistake too!” and we share similar experiences of our own failures and our own inadequacies.  And we are no longer priests, but just people, sharing who we really are, with all our humanity. 

These moments, whether in a hospital room, or a phone call, are about revelation.  In these moments, we are who we really are.  In the Gospel story today, we encounter Jesus upon the mountain top with three of his closest disciples, and Jesus reveals to them who he really is.  In a mystical way that words fail to capture, the divine nature of Jesus is revealed to James, Peter, and John and they see Jesus for a moment for who he really is. The Bible says that Christ’s face shone like the sun, and that his clothes were blinding white. 

It is a moment of radical transparency – where Jesus’ humanity becomes transparent, and the disciples, for a moment, see the divine being within.  Like the experience in the hospital room, like the moment in a conversation when someone courageously shares what is currently afflicting them – these are all holy moments.  They all point toward a deep reality of our lives – that we are not human beings having a spiritual experience, rather we are spiritual beings having a human experience.”

Each transparent moment reveals to us who we really are.  This parish had a similar moment of transparency last weekend when many of you helped articulate a vision of what we believe God is calling this church to do and to be.  Your work last weekend helped to make transparent the desire this church has to grow further in its outreach, to begin meeting in small groups together, and to grow in our ministry to jr. and sr. high youth. 

The work we did two Saturdays ago was “top of the mountain” stuff – to realize and see where we need to go.  Now we know.  In the months to come, our work continues, as we, like the disciples, find our way down from the mountain.  You will be hearing much more about this in the months to come, but know that we are taking this journey together, as one parish.  The journey we take together is one in which we explore and learn together the ways St. Andrew’s can share the light of Christ to this neighborhood and this city.

The Rev. Curtis Almquist writes that “we have been given the light of Christ not to hoard, not to squander, but to receive, to allow to penetrate the deepest crevices of our own darkness and shadows and then reflect this light.”  When we reflect the light of Christ individually, and as a parish, we, like Jesus, become transfigured, because weproclaim to the world who we really are.  We, like Jesus shine with the countenance of Christ.  We teem with that light, as we mirror it with all of God’s generosity to the whole of creation. 

In Jesus, God has become vulnerable to us.  God has become transparent, for all to see.  How is God calling St. Andrew’s to do the same?  AMEN.

February 12, 2017

/

6 Epiphany

Sirach 15: 15-20; Psalm 119:1-8; 1 Corinthians 3: 1-9, Matthew 5:21-37

THE REV. JAMES M. L. GRACE

In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  AMEN.

I want to draw a comparison between two events that occurred last week: the Super Bowl, and the annual gathering of the Episcopal Diocese of Texas, called Diocesan Council.  The first, the Super Bowl, is a national event –arguably one of the largest televised events in the country, if not the world.  Like any other NFL the Super Bowl consists of four quarters, each of which are fifteen minutes in length.  So if you exclude Lady Gaga rappelling from the ceiling of NRG Stadium, there are sixty minutes of game play time.  People who watch football know that the length of the game is actually much longer. 

If you factor in all the timeouts, coaches challenges, and commercial breaks, the Super Bowl is really closer to a three and a half hour event.  But here’s what’s interesting.  A friend of mine who is a television reporter for a local news station here in Houston reminded me Sunday night while we were watching the Super Bowl (and thinking Atlanta was going to win) that in any NFL game, there is really only, on average, about twelve minutes of actual gameplay – where players are running, passing, scoring touchdown.  The rest of time is absorbed with huddles and time between plays.    Twelve minutes for a game that lasts about three and half hours. 

What does this have to do with Diocesan Council?  For those unfamiliar, Diocesan Council is an annual gathering of the Episcopal Diocese of Texas mandated by our church policies and procedures.  So we gather, and there are receptions, exhibits, lots of people talking, there’s a worship service.  And there is also a business meeting that goes on and on. 

I don’t have any data to support this claim, but it certainly felt like there were about eleven, maybe twelve minutes out of the whole three day affair that would quantify as “work.”  Out of the two events which I have just described, I prefer the Super Bowl.  At least it’s over sooner. 

It’s interesting to me that we expand the time of our annual gatherings or events, be they  football games or regional meetings, from the amount necessary.  I wonder why we do this.  One answer I keep coming back to is that as human beings, we have this need, hardwired into our DNA, to belong.  We have a need, all of us, to feel connected to each other.  Perhaps this need for connection is so strong that we are willing to put up with the superfluous for the sake of belonging.

This is certainly true of the church, and I would be remiss if I did not also honestly acknowledge how much extra time surrounds what we do here.  But is that a bad thing?  I would argue that it isn’t, because our time here, whether in worship, or in the Parish Hall at Coffee Time, or at the Heights Interfaith Food Pantry feeding the hungry, or the Spiritual Book Club discussing an author’s work – all of that time spent helps to build community.  That’s why we had a Parish Retreat last weekend at Camp Allen – only two of the hours in the retreat were dedicated to any kind of program – the rest was casual to spend time together and to get to know one another better.  Because without community, what are we?

In his letter to the church in Corinth, the Apostle Paul writes about his frustration regarding a church community that is falling apart.  The church in Corinth people didn’t know one another, they were jealous of each other, and they fought with each other, and most upsetting to Paul was that when people at this church were baptized, they didn’t claim allegiance to Christ but rather to the person who baptized them.  This church was a giant mess.  So Paul reminds them, it doesn’t matter who baptized you, it is God who gives you growth.  The final remark we hear from Paul today on the conflict and division in the Corinthian church is this: “We are God’s servants, working together, you are God’s field, God’s building.”

In other words, Paul is saying that in the grand scheme of things, what divides pales in comparison to what unites you.  All are God’s children.  All are God’s field and God’s building.  Each person is a member of God’s community Christians call heaven. 

This church is 116 years old.  There have been times when it has been divided and contentious like the church in Corinth.  There have been times when it has been unified.  There have been times in history of this church where members have gathered to ask the question “What is God calling us to do?”  We find ourselves at one of those moments now, thanks to the work of a group of parishioners and Vestry members, we have called a consultant to help us answer, together, that question – what is God calling St. Andrew’s to do. 

Next Saturday, February 18, all of you are invited to attend a Visioning Event beginning at 8:30 AM.  This is your opportunity to offer your voice, input, or opinion on the first step of creating a long range plan for our parish community that will focus our ministry together over the coming years.  What is your hope for the church five years from now?  Expanded outreach?  A vitalized youth group?  New restrooms?  New services to reach those in our community who don’t have a spiritual home?  Whatever your dreams are for this church, it is time to share them.

I have asked each member of our Vestry to invite three parishioners to this Visioning Event on Saturday.  You might also here from me.  We are reaching out to you because your voice matters.  We are reaching out to you because all of us are God’s servants, as Paul says, working together.  And this church, it is God’s field, it is God’s building.

I promise that our time on Saturday will be well spent, and there will be much more than eleven or twelve minutes of quantifiable work.  We will be busy because the question of what God is calling us to do is the question we must ask of our church and of our selves.  AMEN.

January 29, 2017

/

4 Epiphany

Micah 6: 1-8; Psalm 15; 1 Corinthians 1:18-31, Mark 5:1-12

THE REV. JAMES M. L. GRACE

In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  AMEN.

Earlier this week, White House Counselor to the President, Kellyanne Conway, was interviewed on Meet The Press, an interview which took place two days following President Trump’s inauguration.   Ms. Conway was commenting on a series of false statements that White House press secretary Sean Spicer had made inflating the size of the crowd at President Trump’s inauguration. Ms. Conway told NBC’s Chuck Todd, “You’re saying it’s a falsehood, and Sean Spicer, our press secretary, gave alternative facts to that.” Mr. Todd responded, “Look, alternative facts are not facts. They’re falsehoods.”

I don’t know about you, but my facebook feed was full of responses to this interview ranging from the satirical, in which a friend posted a picture of a large plate of French fries and the caption “I’m enjoying my alternative salad,” to the more serious in which others invoked a political and social culture once invoked by author George Orwell in his classic novel, 1984. 

However you feel about alternative facts, the simple reality is that they are really nothing new.  In fact I believe alternative facts are at least as old as the Bible itself, and we know this because the Bible is full of alternative facts.  Take the creation story – most well educated people believe that the universe has unfolded over a period of billions of years, however the Bible teaches alternative facts – the universe was created in seven days.  Who is right – science or the Bible?

There are many other examples of the Bible contradicting itself, offering alternative versions to familiar stories, and today we hear one of these alternative tellings of a familiar story.  Today it is the Sermon on the Mount, from Matthew’s Gospel – Jesus’s unparalled teaching of what it means to live a Christ-like life.    

The problem with the Sermon on the Mount is that there are different, and in some ways, conflicting versions.  The version of the Sermon on the Mount we hear in Matthew’s Gospel is easily the preferred version of this teaching in America, as it lets rich people like many of us pretend that Jesus never said anything woeful about us while also pretending that we’re the intended recipients of the blessings he proclaimed for the poor. 

There is another version of the Sermon on the Mount, from the Gospel of Luke, that is not nearly as forgiving. 

I will give you an example.  In our reading from Matthew today, Jesus says “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”  In the version from Gospel of Luke (6:20), Jesus says it differently: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.”  Did you get the difference?  In Matthew, Jesus says blessed are the poor in spirit, and in Luke, Jesus says, blessed are the poor.  Who are the poor in spirit?  The usual answer is that the poor in spirit are people who have more than enough money and material goods, but are lacking… spirit.  Who are the poor?  They are all around us, even in this gentrifying neighborhood - they are the young family Nancy Simpson and I met outside the church last week with two young children, no car, little food. 

So, we have two versions of one teaching Jesus gave, and they mean two very different things.  Which version is the truth and which one is the alternative fact?  It doesn’t matter – we need both.  Luke’s version reminds us of our moral obligation to feed and clothe the poor, period.  Matthew’s version, the version we hear today, reminds us that we are blessed, no matter what condition we are in.  If today you are feeling angry, scared, hopeful, anxious, joyful or whatever condition you find yourself in – you are blessed.  I have found no better response to Jesus’s teaching of blessing than in country singer/songwriter Lucinda Williams in a song she wrote in 2011, simply called “Blessed.” She sings:

"We were blessed by the minister, who practiced what he preached, we were blessed by the poor man, who said heaven is within reach, we were blessed by the neglected child, who knew how to forgive, we were blessed by the battered woman who didn’t seek revenge.  We were blessed by the mother who gave up her child, we were blessed by the soldier, who gave up his life, we were blessed by the teacher who didn’t have a degree, we were blessed by the prisoner who knew how to be free.  We were blessed by the homeless man who showed us the way home, we were blessed by the hungry man who filled us with love, by the little innocent baby who taught us the truth.  We were blessed by the forlorn, forsaken and abused.  We were blessed." 

Our work as people who are blessed people is to go out into the world and to be a become the the blessing the world needs.  That’s what we’re doing on February 18 with our Visioning event – we are coming together as one community, where everyone, and I mean everyone gets to pray and discern how God is calling St. Andrew’s to reach out into the neighborhood and our city, to be a blessing.  I hope you join us.  We need your voice.  We need your blessing.  And for that need, there is no alternative fact.  AMEN. 

December 24, 2016

/

Christmas Eve

Isaiah 9: 2-7; Psalm 96; 1 Thessalonians 5: 16-24; John 1: 6-8, 19-28

THE REV. JAMES M. L. GRACE

In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  AMEN.

I welcome all of you here to St. Andrew’s this Christmas Eve.  However you got here, wherever you are on your spiritual journey, you are welcome here as a friend.

Tonight we are all gathered here because it is Christmas Eve – we are here to celebrate the birth of Jesus into a world that centuries ago was not ready to receive him.  Even before his birth, his very pregnant mother Mary,likely a teenager about fifteen or sixteen, and her husband Joseph, were not welcomed into any hotel or home in Bethlehem.

No one was going out of their way to open up their homes when they saw this young couple in need of a place to stay.  The hotels were all full, the only place they ended up was a corral for animals. 

From his birth, Jesus was largely misunderstood and often not welcomed.  This doesn’t really change much as Jesus grows into a man.  No longer a small infant sleeping in heavenly peace, as an adult, Jesus spoke truth to power and authority, courageously proclaimed the hypocrisy of the priests in the temple, healed and fed people, and befriended tax collectors and others who were equally outcast. 

At the end of his life, Jesus was murdered by the people he came to save, one final reminder that he was not welcomed by all.  But tonight were not supposed to think about all that.  Were supposed to think of a sleeping infant wrapped in swaddling clothes, angels proclaiming the message of Christ’s birth to the shepherds.  That’s what we want Christmas to be about, not all the messy stuff that happens afterward.  Tonight we want to focus on welcoming the Christ child, we want to keep him in the manger where he is safe.  But we can’t. 

See, this is what happens.  We will all go home, our hearts full, our eyes a little heavy, and we will go to sleep restful and content.  Tomorrow we will wake, spend time with our families or friends, maybe open some presents, and eventually we will move on in our lives, largely forgetting what it means to welcome Jesus who was born.

We will forget Jesus was born until something happens to us that makes us very uncomfortable.  It’s different for all of us, but for me the moment is when I am in the car driving and I pull up at a red light, and there is a person standing on the corner, and they are out of money and like Mary and Joseph, they don’t have a home.  What do you do? 

For me, when I see that person on the corner, I can’t help but to see Jesus in the guise of a homeless person as unwelcome and as much of an eyesore as Jesus was to many.  So, when I am at the street corner and there is a homeless person there, I do my best to roll down my window and I talk to them, to respect their dignity as a human being, made in the image of God.  Sometimes I give them money.  Will they spend it on booze or drugs?  Maybe.    Am I enabling them?  Maybe.  Is it right to do?  I don’t know.  But here is why I do that, and it is because that person on the street corner is no different from the unwelcomed infant child born in the manger in the city of Bethlehem. 

I reach out to them because for me, Christmas is a moral obligation.  We are obligated morally to reach out to the underserved and to the hungry, period.  Because that is what Jesus centered his whole life around – he didn’t reflect back the world’s lack of concern or hospitality that he got and that he endured.  Instead, he modeled, and taught all of us how to model – lives that seek to welcome others.  And the purpose of Christmas, if there is any purpose at all – is to welcome Jesus into our lives and into our hearts, not for one night out of the year, but every day of the year. 

Last week I was loading some food from a food pantry into the back seat of a car, the driver of which was a client at the food pantry.  While unloading the food, I quickly glanced into the back seat and I saw several small children, two of them were watching videos on two different cell phones.  My initial reaction was “what are these people doing getting free food at a food pantry if they can afford cell phones for their kids to look at?  Isn’t there someone who deserves it more?”  And I quickly realized where that thought was coming from: judgment.  I was judging them, and I realized my error: it’s not my job to say who is and who isn’t welcomed.  No one goes to a food pantry because they want to.  They go because they need it.  And in that moment, I realized again, how easy it is to forget Christmas: Jesus born into a hostile and unwelcoming world became the most loving, welcoming person the world has ever known. 

Mercy and welcome without judgment.  That is what Christmas is about.  When your moment comes to welcome Jesus tomorrow or the next day - and it will – how will you respond?  Will you judge?  Or will you be merciful?  I hope for all of us, that we will do the later.  The world has enough judgment.  What the world needs, what we need, is mercy.  AMEN.

December 18, 2016

/

The Fourth Sunday of Advent

Isaiah 7: 10-16; Psalm 80: 1-7, 16-18; Romans 1: 1-7; Matthew 1: 18-25

THE REV. JAMES M. L. GRACE

In the Name of God: Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer.  AMEN.

I want to talk about politics this morning (ushers if you don’t mind locking all the doors and not letting anyone out until after the sermon, please?).  Whether you are a republican, democrat, independent, or other – it doesn’t matter – in my short life I don’t recall a presidential election cycle that seemed so negative.  But if we were to press the rewind button and go back in time, we would see that throughout human history there have been untold numbers of rulers, kings, or presidents that were wildly unpopular, ineffective, or otherwise challenged. 

And that is certainly true of the Bible.  Today we hear a story about one such unpopular king.  His name was Ahaz, and we hear about him in the reading from Isaiah.   Ahaz was, during the time of Isaiah, the king of Judah, a small part of what is now Israel that included the cities like  Bethlehem and Jerusalem, and some surrounding areas.  Not only was Ahaz wildly unpopular, he was also cruel. He worshipped other gods, he built shrines and temples to honor gods of other countries, he murdered his own children, he took down the bronze altar in the Jerusalem temple.  Ahaz did everything, according to the Bible, a king was not supposed to do.  To put it in secular terms, Ahaz was a real a – (you know the rest of the word).

You could blame his mistakes on age – he was only twenty when he became king.  What makes Ahaz different from other less than desirable rulers of Judah is that typically in Bible God punishes bad kings like Ahaz for their heathen ways.  But not Ahaz.

I want to tell you a story about Ahaz, that sets up our reading today, and it helps us all understand what Isaiah is talking about today.  When Ahaz became king of Judah, a foreign kingdom called Assyria to the East of Judah was growing in power and in size.  Assyria trumped (no pun intended) everything Judah had.  Assyria had fancier buildings, they had more land, a much bigger army.  Judah was nothing compared to Assyria – but they had one thing Assyria did not have – access to the Mediterranean Coast.  So Assyria starts to encroach upon Judah, while Ahaz is the king. 

As Assyria starts moving east, several small states in what is now modern day Syria and northern Israel start to band together, because they don’t want to be swallowed up by the Assyrians.  Two kings from these small states approach Ahaz and ask to form an alliance against Assyria.  They figure that if enough small states like Judah band together, they might stand a chance against an empire the size of Assyria.  What would you do if you were Ahaz?  Whould you have said yes to their offer?

Ahaz declines their offer, perhaps naively thinking Assyria wasn’t as much of a threat.  These small states whom Ahaz refused to join with, then decide to move against Ahaz and Judah, and Ahaz is scared out of his mind.  He knows there is no way Judah would be victorious in a conflict against other unified states.  So Ahaz, that wretched, good for nothing king of Judah, gets on his knees, and asks God (the God he did not worship, by the way) for help.  Help comes in the form of the prophet Isaiah, who says to Ahaz, “The Lord will give you a sign.  Look the young woman is with child and shall bear a son.”  Ahaz says, “It’s a pregnant woman, big deal.” And Isaiah says, “the name of the child shall be Immanuel, and by the time this child develops a conscience, the states coming to attack you will no longer be a threat.”

Isaiah was right.  Assyria quickly moved, and conquered the states to the north.  But all was not well for Ahaz, who basically handed Judah into Assyrian hands.  But even then, when everything seemed to be lost, Isaiah found a miracle – a woman bearing a child. 

I thought about this story this week as I watched a video of a three year old Syrian girl whose face was covered in blood and dirt following an explosion in her country.  The girl’s lower lip hung low, conveying shock and in inability to articulate the horrors she had witnessed at such a young age.  Adults tried to comfort her, but there she sat, quietly in shock. 

That girl, and millions of similar age across the globe, are our future.  She, with her disheveled hair and bloodied forehead, is our Immanuel.  So powerful was the prophet’s vision of this child to Ahaz, that it was later picked up in the Gospel of Matthew, who incorporates a verse from this strange story of God’s mercy toward Ahaz to describe the mercy of Jesus.  And it is completely appropriate for Matthew to do so, because as we hear in Isaiah and Matthew, the name of this child is “Immanuel.”  “Immanuel” means “God is with us.”

The name of that child, Immanuel, was promised by God to a corrupt king of Judah, just as it is promised to all of us.  And if we are honest and admit our own brokenness, we aren’t much different from Ahaz.  Yet Immanuel proclaims, courageously, that God is for all of us and with all of us, whether we are a corrupt ruler, or a child victimized and physically injured as a result of political conflict and war.  I don’t understand it, I don’t know how God could be for all of us, but somehow I believe it is true, and God must, too – for that is what the name Immanuel “God with us” means.  If God is indeed with us, then this Christmas, will we be with, and for, each other?  AMEN.

December 11, 2016

/

The Third Sunday of Advent

Isaiah 35: 1-10; Psalm 146: 4-9; James 5: 7-10; Matthew 11: 2-11

THE REV. JAMES M. L. GRACE

In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  AMEN.

John the Baptist is in prison.  He was arrested for speaking out against the marriage of Herod to a woman named Herodias.  What was so scandalous about this marriage?  Herodias was formerly married to one of Herod’s brothers, so Herod was marrying his sister-in-law, which John the Baptist declared publicly was immoral.  Was it any of John the Baptist’s business to speak out about this marriage in the first place?  Maybe, maybe not – I just imagine that if John were alive today, in the midst of all our celebrity divorces and affairs that he would have by now thrown in the towel about speaking out on such things.  Nevertheless, the consequence of John the Baptist’s proclamation was his imprisonment.

And now in prison, John the Baptist hears rumors trickling in about all these amazing things happening outside his prison cell.  The deaf hear, the blind see, the hungry are fed, and John begins to wonder is this is the work of the young Jewish rabbi Jesus, whom he baptized in the Jordan River years before he now found himself in a prison cell.  So he sends someone out to inquire, do some research, and figure out what exactly is going on.  One of John’s disciples goes and asks Jesus the question “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”  Jesus says to John’s disciple, “Go and tell John what you hear and see:  the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.” 

Well that sounds pretty good!  People are getting healed; Jesus is doing a lot of great work.  That is a reason to rejoice!  That’s why we have this pink candle on our Advent wreath, it is part of an ancient tradition that today, the third Sunday of Advent is a day characterized by joy.  That’s what all the pink is for – levity – to rejoice and be glad.  That all is fine – except while everyone was busy rejoicing at all the good work Jesus was doing, John the Baptist was locked in a dirty prison cell for having the courage to speak out against the corrupt abuse of power, and the price he ended up paying for it was his life! Jesus may have healed many, he freed many people, but John the Baptist wasn’t one.  Or was he? 

Two weeks ago I was at Memorial Hospital to visit a young woman named Amanda.   Amanda was in the hospital because she was pregnant with a boy.  While still weeks away from delivery, Amanda was hospitalized because of intense abdominal pain, which rightfully concerned her.  So she did the right thing, and ended up being looked over by the doctors.  The doctors discovered the cause of her pain – which was that the placenta had separated from the wall of the uterus.  Apparently there is no explanation for why this occurs, but it does. 

The baby boy had maybe fifteen minutes to live once the placenta separated, and the doctors were unable to resuscitate the infant child.  And so Amanda found herself at the hospital to deliver a child she would never know, a child who would never gaze at his mother’s face. I knew all this as I was walking to her room down a hospital hallway when a man – a father-to-be, saw me, and I was wearing priest clothes, and he said – “are you here today to bless a baby?”  And I paused and looked at him, and was silent for a moment, and said, “Yes, I am here to bless a child.”  He smiled and walked away, and I walked into the room and saw Amanda, who less than twenty-four hours ago delivered her still-born son, August Ash, into the world.  Four pounds, fourteen ounces.  Seventeen inches. 

I don’t know how to describe the experience of being in that room other than to say it was holy, it was sad, it was beautiful, and it was honest.   We prayed together, and we were silent.  We blessed August, together.  And I am humbled that on December 20, we will have a memorial service for this beautiful child of God at St. Andrew’s.  At the same time I was struck by the conflict that in the season of Advent, we expectantly await for the birth of the Christ child, and in the hospital room, the reality of a mother waiting for her child to be born, only hers would be a child she would never see grow.

Is Advent about the faithful Baptizer alone in a prison cell, hearing of all the good happening outside prison walls?  What does Advent have to say to the mother of an innocent child that never breathed or opened his eyes? 

We don’t like to talk about that in church because it’s uncomfortable.  We are a culture that denies death and avoids pain and suffering as much as we can.  We stick pink candles on Advent Wreaths to remind us to “rejoice” because if we can fake doing that – then maybe we can get through another holiday season. 

Everyone wants a peaceful manger, with a starry night sky, and three kings approaching on camels.  But not many are interested in thinking about John the Baptist in prison, or about a stillborn child during Advent.  But that’s reality.  And Advent is not about shirking reality, it is about befriending the reality of our lives.  It stares us straight in the face and challenges us to answer the question of where is God for the lonely prisoner and for the mother burying her newborn son?  What color candle do they get? 

I will stand here and say, perhaps audaciously, perhaps foolishly, perhaps for no good reason at all, but I will say it because I know it is true, and it is this: God is the prisoner.  God is the child born without life.  That’s the miracle of Advent: God appears in the most unexpected places, and when God shows up, everything changes.  That is why in the midst of life and death, we rejoice, because God is a part of it all, a part of you and me.  God is the prisoner and God is stillborn, and in being both, redeems them, in God’s time.  AMEN.