Trinity Sunday

Today we celebrate the Trinity.  Right off the bat you might not see a connection between Pygmy people and the Trinity.   Nevertheless, I want to tell you a vignette about a group of Pygmies.  It is meant to serve as a kind of angelus bell for the Trinity.  About forty years ago Jean-Pierre Hallet, a Belgian anthropologist, gave a lecture on the Pygmies, which I attended.  From that lecture I now remember only one curious fact.  When Hallet took a group of Pigmies out of the rain forest one day, and pointed to a human figure in the distance, they hooted with delight.  Tom Thumb!  No, no, Hallet assured them; this was a full size person, but distance made him seem small.  The Pygmies would not be convinced.  He proved his point, of course, by walking toward the person; but he in turn realized that for those who have never been able to see further than a few feet, reality appears warped.  We’ll come back to this in a few moments.

Pentecost 2009 Acts 2:1-11

Acts 2:1-11

If you have been looking for a good Pentecost movie lately, you might consider “The Soloist.”  Both stories – “The Soloist” and Pentecost –  speak to desperate times and point to a way through.  This Way does call for courage; yet those who step out on it will find a surprising spring in their steps, as if they already touched the goal.

Mother’s Day John 15:1-8

Orthodox churches value icons to an extent that may be hard for us to understand.  Icons take dull theology and convert it to living color.  By means of icons, Orthodox churches turn stories from the Bible into symbols of shimmering beauty.  Icons bring to the surface in us emotions we may not be able to touch otherwise, emotions that might transform our faith.  For example, most of us can call to mind an icon of the Madonna and child.  Typically, the Madonna’s head appears in the shape of a dome, often nearly filling the whole space.  In her arms she holds the tiny infant.  Some icons show the infant the size of her heart.  What do we make of such art?

Let’s turn to John’s Gospel.  John’s Gospel pays homage to Jesus’ mother in a way that none of the other Gospels do.  You remember the scene on Calvary.  John describes it this way, “…  standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.  When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, here is your son.’  Then he said to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’ And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.”  Then Jesus said, “It is finished.”  In other words, the last loose end has now been woven in.

Many scholars of the Bible read this symbolically.  Jesus, according to this reading, finishes his earthly ministry by making provision for the future, for continuity.  The mother symbolizes the church.  The beloved disciple symbolizes all of us down through the ages who have elected to follow Jesus.  The church will be to each of us as Mary was to Jesus – nurturing, protecting, training, loving, forgiving, sustaining….  The Orthodox iconographers capture this truth by making the shape of the Madonna’s head resemble the dome of a church.  At the same time they shrank the size of the infant to represent our dependence and vulnerability.

If we gaze at these icons as the Orthodox traditions intend us to do, we gaze, not at them as objects, but through them, as if they were windows into heaven, into spiritual truth.  Their beauty, simply in itself, gives rise to a power that draws us in and holds us.  Then, too, the figures in the composition arouse our feelings.  For instance, the sheltering Madonna quickens a sense of infinite tenderness; so that gazing through it, so to speak, we actually feel that quality of tenderness in God’s love, as mediated through the church.  Her knowing eyes nearly always open into depths of sorrow and love, as if to say, “I know you suffer and have caused great suffering; I suffer with you, for my love is with you always.”

Whether Jesus actually intended to speak in this symbolic way or not, it does carry truth.  The church, like an actual building, carries on generation after generation.  Through liturgy, prayers, fellowship, sacraments, hymns, art and architecture, healing, preaching, doctrines and disciplines, the communion of saints – in countless ways the church, like a mother, guides and strengthens, protects and challenges our faith.  Literally, our faith could not live without her.  So this picture of mother church comforts us, as it should; yet motherhood can have another side.

Mothers can also smother.  They can keep their children dependent by holding back their natural growth to independence.  Through fear, threats, or other strategies of control, mothers may prevent a child from striking out on its own.  Mothers, who can be so averse to risk, may resist when a child is ready to begin her or his life journey.  We have seen this in the church, too.  Rather than aiding us in opening up to life, some churches would keep us forever in the bud stage, ever obedient, ever rule bound – little clones, ever in dread of erring.  What is to prevent this?

We need to remember that little-noted ending to the scene on Calvary.  The Gospel adds: “And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.”  So the Madonna would be caring for the disciple as Mary had cared for Jesus; and the disciple would be caring for Mary as Jesus had cared for his mother… but note this: under the disciple’s roof ! The disciple is not to be dependent, not to be infantilized.  There is to be a relationship of mutual caring, yes; but on the disciple’s terms.  This is meant to prevent mother church from forsaking her true self.

Most of us can call to mind instances of abuse, where mother church ceases to be authoritative and instead becomes authoritarian.  It can happen in any generation.  She all but looses sight of our needful claims on her; but presses her claims on us to the full – financial demands, for instance, or political ones.  It’s as if the Gospel foresaw this possibility and cautioned us against becoming the victim of our own mother church.  And so it added these all-important and empowering words, “And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.”

On what basis would the Gospel do this – put the trump card, so to speak, in the disciple’s hands – in our hands?  Where is the wisdom in that?  Think of today’s image of the vine and the branches.  Jesus speaks of us as branches, that is, as individuals, not as a collective.  We do unite with one another, but not like a gelatinous mass of frogs’ eggs, but through a stem, distinctive to each of us, that links us to the flow of Christ’s life.  Call it the flow of the Holy Spirit.  This is not all, though; this is only passive.  Then comes the active process, the pruning.  It’s as if God’s hands run over the vine, day in day out, shaping it for health and vitality.  The whole vine becomes healthy and vital, but only through the shaping of the individual branches.

In actual practice this means that collectives, including mother church, depend on their members in order to learn, to develop a conscience, to evolve a mission.  Mother church will thrive and create new growth only to the extent that we do; and we can only thrive and create new growth to the extent that we stay connected to the Spirit of Christ.  That is why it was so important for the Gospel to specify that the disciple took the mother to his house, and not the reverse.  You can feel the mutual dependence here: the disciple caring for the mother and the mother caring for the disciple.  Only one thing keeps the system from becoming static or stagnant.  The Holy Spirit.  New energy enters the system through the disciples, creative energy seeking ever new forms of life.

To bring all this down to earth, let us ask a practical question.  How are God’s hands running over me this morning?  What shaping is taking place in me?  What pruning?  How are God’s hands running over you?  What pruning, what shaping are you experiencing?  We are connected to the same vine, yet each of us shapes up differently, uniquely.  Ultimately, taken all together, our forms will add to the form and character of mother church.

Specifically, today, the Holy Spirit asks us to make a decision about the Carpenter’s Kids – children left orphaned by the AIDS epidemic in the Diocese of Central Tanganyika.  Each of us, as today’s Gospel puts it, is connected to the vine.  As individuals, how shall we respond?  Renew our commitments?  Add a bit for socks and soap?  Adopt an orphan if we have not done so before?  Add one more child?  Those decisions, made one by one, in the aggregate will add to the form and character of mother church here at St. Gregory’s.

In my experience we enjoy a healthy, happy mother church we can look to with pride, and trust with our confidence.  She stands here in Woodstock, not only outwardly beautiful, but possessed of even greater inward beauty.  She cares for us in those many ways that Jesus intended, and why?  Because we care for her.  And by caring for her we enable her to be gracious and compassionate, even to children she has never seen.  If icons were a part of our spirituality, serving as windows into heaven, a picture of St. Gregory’s would make a beautiful alternative to the traditional Madonna.

Easter John 20:1-18

Nature has her secrets, but we  humans have prying minds.  Last spring I visited friends who live on the mountain above the village.  Standing on their deck, I looked up to where the wall of the house met the eve, about ten feet above our heads.  Eastern Phoebes had built a nest right in that angle.  In fact, the lip of the nest so nearly touched the eve that I wondered how those wind-borne architects squeezed into their nest.  What goes on inside?  Those used to be nature’s secrets, but no more.  Our friend had installed a pea-sized surveillance camera in the nest.  From the vantage point of their kitchen, we watched life in the nest unfold on the screen of their laptop: gaping baby beaks, quivering quills, and a beady-eyed parent, offering a fly.

Genesis 22:1-18 Good Friday

For today’s reading go to http://Bible. Oremus.org

What shall we make of the story of the command to sacrifice Isaac?  Perhaps no other story in the Bible arouses such horror in us, or such pathos.  We try not to ask what kind of God would set up such a test, because we do not want to hear the answer.  We try not to put ourselves in Isaac’s place, because we so need to trust our father, and yet, seen through Isaac’s eyes, doesn’t he turn out to lie to us and to betray us monstrously?  We try not to put ourselves in Abraham’s place, because he is setting out to put an end to everything in life that he holds dear – his son and his progeny.  What is this story of horrors doing in the Bible?

Luke 2:8-20 Christmas 2008

For Today’s reading go to http://bible.oremus.org

Tonight I simply want to tell you three stories.  The first is a well-known story about a baby born about 2,000 years ago.  No doubt God chooses carefully where every baby will be born, so this baby’s birth puzzles us.  This baby was destined to bring God’s love into the world in a marvelous new way.  In fact, this baby was so close to God’s heart, that people later said of him: to see him is to see the human face of God.  So why would God arrange for this special baby to be born in a cattle shed?  Let’s try to get behind the image of our little creche scenes – so clean, so sweet-smelling and sanitary – and face the truth.  Jesus was born to humble parents in a squalid setting.  The sudden bellowing of a cow could well have blasted Jesus’ little new-born ears.  Whisps of straw surely poked his tender skin.  And his very first breath would have filled his tiny nose with the pungent smell of fresh manure.  Some start for the one who would be called the Son of God!

Matthew 5:1-12, All Saints Sunday

For today’s reading go to: http://bible.oremus.org

Since the fourth century the church has celebrated All Saints Day. What makes that Day so important? Who are we celebrating? We are celebrating the lives of people like you and me. All of us are saints-in-the-making. All of us shine forth with the light of Christ to some degree. In the great saints the light of Christ shines forth to a great degree. So we celebrate this day, because the great Saints remind us that we hold within us astonishing possibilities. They inspire us.

John 20:1-18 Easter Sunday 2008

Today’s reading: http://bible.oremus.org

Nature has her secrets, but we humans have questioning minds. Last spring I visited friends who live on the mountain above our village. Standing on their deck, I looked up to where the wall of the house met the eve, about ten feet above our heads. Eastern Phoebes had built a nest right in that angle. In fact, the lip of the nest so nearly touched the eve that I wondered how those wind-borne architects squeezed into their nest. What goes on inside? That used to be nature’s secret, but no more. Our friend had installed a pea-sized surveillance camera in the nest. From the vantage point of their kitchen, we watched life in the nest unfold on the screen of their laptop: gaping baby beaks, quivering quills, and a beady-eyed parent offering a fly.

John 1:29-47 Celebrating MLK Day

Today’s reading: http//bible.oremus.org

Martin Luther King, Jr. was raised to greatness; he wasn’t born there. If we put ourselves into his shoes back in December of 1955, we are not standing on a mountain top. True, within the black community Martin stood as a child of privilege; but privilege is external, like a suit of clothes. Greatness flowers from what lies within. In 1955 no one knew what lay within Martin. He simply stuck his neck out and agreed to head the bus boycott. He had no idea where it would lead, either for himself or for the nation. Death or disgrace seemed the most likely outcome for this unknown preacher.

Epiphany: Isaiah 60:1-6; Matthew 2:1-12

Today’s readings: http://bible.oremus.org

Sometimes you can hear a passage of scripture and it leaves you cold. “That is just not where I’m at,” you say. Maybe the opening of Isaiah hit you that way just now. “Arise, shine, for your light has come.” “Arise? Shine? Not likely!” That may have been your hearts’ reply. After all, your vicar has been away for months on sick leave, and you have had a succession of supply priests; and at present no definite end is in sight. “Your light has come!” Under these circumstances, a normal response might well be: “Oh, really? What light?” And yet, against all reason, this profoundly hopeful prophesy of light may not only apply to this parish, but apply especially to you. Why especially? Because this radiant prophesy was spoken to Israel, a small and vulnerable people by this world’s standards; and yet small and vulnerable seems almost to be a prerequisite for God’s greatest blessings.