July 7, 2013

2 Kings 5:1-14 and Psalm 30 (or Isaiah 66:10-14 and Psalm 66:1-8); Galatians 6:(1-6), 7-16; Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

We are good at placing burdens on our clergy. One of the most severe is to expect them to be the chief, perhaps the only agents of parish growth. We await a new rector, ready to give a list of lapsed people, former parishioners who have strayed, or perhaps even the names of people we might think would fit in with the rest of us. Then we sit back and expect the new priest, who knows no one, has never lived here before, to get on with it. That’s what we pay the priest to do.

Consciously or not, our expectations transform our ideal of priests. We envision them as well-polished sales clerks, adapt at getting customers to buy. For our part, we make sure that the building looks spick-and-span, the sign welcoming, the doors open and the grass cut. It is so difficult to avoid imposing on our faith that which we have become used to in our secular lives. Few things impact us more than marketing. We are consumers all, bombarded with objects on offer at a price, most of which we neither need nor really desire. It’s important that we don’t start to think of our priest as the object designed to provide what we believe to be our “spiritual” needs.

Lessons like the one from the gospel today tend to reinforce all this. St. Luke tells of Jesus sending out over 70 disciples into the surrounding villages. They are to travel light, but are armed with special powers. When they return, it seems they had great success. So, we reason, as the disciples, or some of them, became Apostles, and as we think of apostles as clergy, who created bishops and through them priests and deacons, obviously this story is meant to inspire the clergy to do a better job for us.

People who write scholarly books about St. Luke’s gospel note that Luke alone mentions this story. Some think the number 70 refers to the non-Jewish nations, the “gentiles” evangelized by Peter and Paul and company. We read about their missionary endeavors in the Acts of the Apostles, Luke’s second volume of his history of Jesus and the first Christians. Others note that Moses called 70 people to assist him in his task of shepherding Israel as it moved through the desert. Perhaps both are true. Jesus sends his followers into “Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the furthest parts of the earth.” Jesus created a team to assist him and sent them into the world. But was that team made up of clergy alone?

We continue to insist that these people were the first clergy. In this we are both right and wrong. We are right that among those called and sent were those who would be pastors, preachers, celebrants of the sacraments, those who led emerging Christian communities. We are wrong if we think that all those called and sent filled that description, or were rather like our full-time, paid, professional clergy.

Those called and sent today, as then, are not merely the ordained, but rather they are the baptized. Yes, this gospel is about you.

The gospel tells two things about every baptized Christian here today. The first is that the task of telling the Good News to others is given to us all. We may achieve that task in many different ways, quietly or spectacularly, verbally or by our loving care for others, but the task of showing Jesus to others is one of the chief reasons why we exist. That is not an exaggeration. We have to grasp the idea that each of us has been created, was born, for a purpose, and that purpose is in the mind of God and is more important than any other purpose we may take on.

The second truth the gospel tells us is that we have been “empowered” so to do. That’s an assurance and a challenge. We tend to absolve our passivity by muttering things like, “I’m an introvert,” “It’s not in my nature,” “I get embarrassed.”

The Gospel assures us  – and Luke later stresses this at the beginning of Acts – that we are all empowered to witness in the world and that empowerment is not the same as natural talent.

Imagine that you find yourself by a sick bed. Everything in you tells you to cut and run. You are extremely uncomfortable, don’t know what to say, feeling inadequate and close to panic. Yet you stay, maybe holding a hand and just sitting there. That action comforts and cheers the sick person. You have used not your talent, but the power given to you in baptism and reinforced every time you receive Holy Communion.

Perhaps you are in line at the store; an irate customer is yelling at the sales assistant. It’s not her fault. She is close to tears. When you get to her, your notice her name, speak it to her, smile and offer her silent comfort. In so doing you use the grace given to you in baptism.

You see, our second problem, apart from consigning the task of witnessing to the clergy, is that we don’t recognize spiritual gifts because we think they must be spectacular. Yes, the 70 were given the power to cast out evil, but to do so may merely be the offering of goodness and kindness, objective love.

That may sound trite. Practicing consistent, objective love, particularly toward people we hardly know, or are not like us, or are people that repel us by their actions is no trite or easy thing. It’s much easier to lump them in a convenient group, label them, espouse an all-embracing cause and keep one’s distance.

Jesus, present among us this morning, continues to call us, send us, and empower us. We all have a vocation to ministry. Perhaps this coming week, in our quiet times, when we have the opportunity to reflect, or even to pray, it might be good to consider what task, seemingly beyond of strength or talents, our comfort zone, God wants us to take on and embrace, in the strength of the Holy Spirit, who has lived within us, often unrecognized, since the day we were adopted by God in Baptism.

 

— Fr. Tony Clavier is a retired priest and a missioner in the Diocese of Springfield.

June 30, 2013

2 Kings 2:1-2, 6-14; Psalm 77:1-2, 11-20; Galatians 5:1, 13-25; Luke 9:51-62

Elijah and Elisha. What an epic story. It’s pure Hollywood! Mix together “Lord of the Rings,” Harry Potter and Indiana Jones, and this would give just some of the ingredients.

There are wicked kings and queens (they featured a couple of weeks ago), wild-bearded ascetic revolutionaries (that’s Elijah), wide-eyed acolyte disciples eager to drink from the deep well of the master’s wisdom (that’s Elisha), sacred, powerful garments (that’s Elijah cloak), incredible scenery (mountains, deserts, huge rushing rivers).

And we have not even considered the special effects. And what special effects they are. George Lucas would be so proud. Whirlwinds, rivers magically parted, firestorms beyond our pyrotechnical dreams, deep, booming, cavernous, thunderous, deafening roars.  Sparks, spectacle, energy.

Fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry – oh, wait – those aren’t from Elijah’s story, they’re from Paul’s Letter to the Galatians.

And what a letter it is! Here’s that list again: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing and things like these.

Whatever those Galatians were up to, it certainly wasn’t stamp collecting. And what themes Paul raises: the dangers of replacing slavery of one kind with slavery of another – slavery to self-gratification and self-indulgence.

Let’s look at this in detail.

What a vivid description of Elijah: the whirlwinds, the fire. Rather like the disciples in that Samaritan village. They must have been thinking about Elijah as well. They ask Jesus if he wants them to summon down fire on the Samaritan village because the townsfolk didn’t receive him. What an extraordinary episode. What on earth were those disciples thinking, wishing a fiery immolation on that village?

“Foxes have their holes, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”

“Let the dead bury their own dead.”

“No one who puts a hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the Kingdom of God.”

But weren’t we talking about the Galatians? We seem to have been distracted by Elijah, or was it the Samaritan village?

And that is precisely the point. There are so many wonderful, exciting, vibrant, insightful, diverting, important things that could be said about all of our readings today. We could so easily flutter from one to the other, alighting on some little vignette that takes our fancy, and then another. And what we’d end up with would be a glorious Technicolor mess.

In this day and age, distractions abound like mushrooms in a damp, dark basement. Far from avoiding them, we appear to seek them out. The term “multitasking” doesn’t seem to have negative connotations: In fact, we tend to view the ability to do more than one thing at a time as a virtue. Texting during a meeting? Sure, why not? Checking Facebook at a dinner party? Why, yes! Doesn’t everyone? It persuades the people around us that we have full, busy, important lives. Most probably we persuade ourselves, too. We flit from one shiny thing to another, wowed by things that are sleeker, faster, bigger, higher.

And that, also, is precisely the point. There are so many distractions, diversions. But each of these conspire to take our minds off the ball. Faced with a bewildering array of choices, we can easily become unfocused, lose our single-mindedness.

All of the characters that we meet in today’s readings – apart from Jesus – are distracted by something. The disciples of Jesus are distracted by their mistrust of the Samaritans. The people that Jesus and the disciples meet on the way are distracted by their material possessions, duties and social conventions. The Galatians are distracted by all manner of ephemeral, selfish gratifications or petty jealousies. Elisha is distracted by the thought that he might not inherit Elijah’s special powers.

Even Elijah had been distracted. Much earlier in his story, he had challenged the pagan prophets of Baal to a competition atop Mount Carmel to see which of their respective deities was the more powerful. In a story as equally full of impressive special effects as today’s, in which the pagan gods were crushed, the triumphant Elijah orders the massacre of all 450 of the prophets of Baal.

After all of this spilt blood, Elijah falls into a depression and hides in a cave. No doubt there were functional reasons for his dejection and his hiding, since there was probably a price on his head. But there was more to it than that.

“Enough, O Lord,” Elijah says. “Take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.” Remarkably, this is nothing less than Elijah’s conversion. He had set his God, Yahweh, in competition with the gods of Baal, but all Elijah had achieved by this was to put himself on the same level as the pagan prophets he’d claimed to despise. The contest on Mount Carmel had merely ended up being a show of strength between rival shamans. Elijah had spent his life seeking God in the earthquakes, the winds and the fire, but had eventually found him in the still, small voice.

In his book “Faith Beyond Resentment,” the Roman Catholic theologian James Alison calls Elijah’s dark night of the soul his “un-deceiving” – his realization that what set his God apart from all others was not that he was more muscular, and whose religion was “more efficacious,” but that he was, in fact, the very antithesis of all that.

Elijah’s conversion experience seems not to have filtered down to Jesus’ disciples. They – along with the rest of their contemporaries – seem to prefer Elijah in his noisy showman phase. When Jesus’ disciples suggest raining down fiery destruction on the Samaritan village, their understanding of God is just as off-target as Elijah’s had been. Time and again we are shown how the disciples just don’t seem to get it. We know that eventually they do, but it’s a long journey for them to reach the realization that God’s strength is in weakness, God’s rule is in servanthood, God’s power is in humility and God’s judgment is in forgiveness.

Before we congratulate ourselves on being smarter and more insightful than those first disciples, let’s just take a moment to consider if we ourselves – and the church in general – get it any more than they did.

In “Faith Beyond Resentment,” James Alison suggests that what Elijah’s conversion experience tells us is that our own religious identity might need turning upside-down, too. “Here we are,” he writes, “face to face with the collapse of the sacred, a real demolition of personal structures and ways of speaking about God. This collapse is the crucible in which theological development is wrought.”

More and more people are saying that the church is at a pivotal point in its life. Some even describe it as a collapse. Certainly it is a time of wholesale reassessment.

But maybe that’s not such a bad thing. Perhaps, as Christian commentators like Diana Butler Bass and Phyllis Tickle suggest, it is that we are on the brink of a new Great Awakening. Perhaps it is where we will hear afresh the still, small voice of God, and what his voice is inviting us to do, and where we will understand much better how to break free of the slavery of distractions.

 

— The Rev Nils Chittenden is missioner for Young Adult Ministry in the Diocese of North Carolina, and chaplain of the Episcopal Center at Duke University. After attending seminary at the University of Cambridge, he was ordained in the Church of England in 1995. His ministry since then has been varied, encompassing cathedrals, campuses and community organizing as well as parishes. He moved to the U.S. in 2010. He and his wife have two cats and two beehives.

June 24, 2013

Isaiah 40:1-11; Psalm 85 or 85:7-13; Acts 13:14b-26; Luke 1:57-80

People old enough to have been adults during the turbulent ’60s will remember how controversial Martin Luther King, Jr., was at the time. It was said that he and his people had no right to stir things up with all his confrontational tactics. In the South they said he didn’t understand the negro’s place, nor the way Southern society had to be structured. But in 1966 – toward the end of his career – when he led a March in Cicero, just outside of Chicago, he ran into a maelstrom of white hatred every bit as angry and violent, and he got just about nowhere. Even clergy in Northern churches were very hesitant to speak favorably of King. His “Letters from a Birmingham Jail” were meant to win them over.

In those days it would have brought on laughter and derision among most Americans to be told that King would become the greatest Christian prophet of 20th century America, and that a national holiday would be declared in his name.

Obviously, we’ve gone through a national period of reflection and re-evaluation; many minds have been changed as well as the social structure and culture of this county because of Martin Luther King.

This change of heart and culture toward King is a useful example regarding the man whose birth we observe today: John the Baptist, someone who appeared strangely out of the wilderness wearing something woven out of camel’s hair, living on a diet mostly of bugs and wild honey.

And John the Baptist must have had a big voice and a powerful message about the Kingdom, because we are told that Jerusalem and all Judea emptied out and came to hear him: large crowds getting themselves baptized with a baptism of repentance. And he wasn’t afraid to speak out, calling soldiers and tax collectors not to abuse their offices, calling the more pious people – scribes and Pharisees – a “brood of vipers,” for a false religiosity, and noisily embarrassing King Herod for marrying Herodias, the divorced wife of Herod’s half brother. John the Baptist was put in prison for that, and Herodias saw to it that John lost his head.

Jesus’ public ministry doesn’t really begin until after John’s martyrdom. And when the crowds begin to follow Jesus for his teaching and healing powers, before long Herod gets wind of it, and feels thunderstruck that maybe this guy is John brought back from the dead, a prophet that not even the king can suppress.

Reading between the lines, one can form the strong suspicion that what we have in John the Baptist is a very powerful and commanding figure, one who – like Martin Luther King – requires some time and reflection to sort out his true significance.

Indeed, he may have seemed – for a time – a rival to Jesus’ own ministry. John had followers who persisted with his ministry. We are told in the Book of Acts that Paul ran into a group of people out on a mission in Asia Minor who had been baptized into repentance, but had no knowledge of baptism by the Holy Spirit. Among them was a figure of considerable esteem who knew the Bible and could speak very persuasively of his faith. Once baptized in the Holy Spirit in Jesus’ name, he was a powerful advocate and apostle for Christ.

Thus we see a kind of merging or reeling in of what might have become a different offshoot of Judaism, a religion founded on John the Baptist. This reeling in occurs, for example, when some disciples of John, loosely wondering after John’s martyrdom, come up to Jesus and ask, “Are you the One, or should be wait for another?”

But before seeing how Jesus answers this point-blank question “Are you the one?” suppose we pause and reflect on the example of how it was that we managed eventually to appreciate the full stature and significance of Martin Luther King. It took some time, some reflection on his speeches, his writings, his nonviolent strategies, the real changes that came cascading forth in our society, and the hope for things yet to come, because of him.

Yes, Jesus was baptized by John, and John witnessed to Jesus’ stature as not being worthy even to tie Jesus’ shoes. But it appears that John’s magnetic force was so powerful his followers couldn’t see beyond him to his real significance.

Jesus answers the question “Are you the one?” in an operational way:

“Go tell John what you see and hear: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up and the poor have the good news preached to them.”

He then goes on to speak of that rough-hewn man in the wilderness they all went out to see: a prophet and more than a prophet, a forerunner. And Jesus quotes from Malachi using the very last sentence of our Old Testament: “Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, who shall prepare thy way before thee.”

It is the prophetic expectation of Elijah come back to prepare the way for the Messiah.

But the final appreciation for the significance of John the Baptist comes from the portrait given us by the Gospel of Luke. Here we find John comes from a priestly family. The angel Gabriel appears to the father, Zechariah, saying that Zechariah’s wife, Elizabeth, though advanced beyond child-bearing years, will have a son whose destiny is to play the role of the forerunner Elijah. Zechariah, being doubtful about this, is struck speechless until the child is circumcised. Then he speaks the words of the hymn we know as the Benedictus Dominus Deus, very likely a hymn of the primitive church to express their veneration of John. The hymn closely follows the Magnificat of Mary, expressing the promise that the covenant of God with his people is carried forward by John with the promise of salvation of the lowly and protection from enemies, offering forgiveness of sins, light from darkness and the guidance of holiness of righteousness.

Furthermore, we are told in Luke that Mary and Elizabeth were kinswomen, related, and rejoiced in companionship over their pregnancies.

In this way, by couching it in his birth, the gospel of Luke brings to full fruition the stature and significance of John the Baptist.

 

— The Rev. Armand Larive is a retired priest in the Episcopal Diocese of Spokane and the author of “After Sunday: A Theology of Work” (Bloomsburt Academic, 2004).

June 9, 2013

1 Kings 17:8-16 (17-24); Psalm 146; Galatians 1:11-24; Luke 7:11-17

A widow is walking a dusty road. The sun is in the sky, making shadows on the mud-brick walls and simple dusty streets of Nain. The town sits on the edge of a wide and beautiful valley, but the widow doesn’t notice, because today her life has ended. She has lost her last connection to society, she is about to become a non-person.

She walks behind her dead son. He is wrapped in cloth bands and carried on a simple litter. He died that very day and had to be buried before sundown. The shock is almost too much to bear. She remembers walking this path before, following another man wrapped in cloth bands and on a litter. She remembers following her dead husband to his burial. The pain was great then, but then she could lean on her son, then she only grieved the loss of her husband. Now she can reasonably fear losing her very self as well.

The crowd who follows her knows her well; Nain is not a large town. No doubt they are compassionate. No doubt they are sad. Perhaps some were friends with her son. Perhaps some are other widows or friends. They may be very concerned for her, but a large part of the concern is for her loss of social identity, her loss of connection and power in her small part of the world.

To be a widow at the time of Christ was to have no power, no social standing. It was a world of, and for, and run by men. Women could only be represented legally by men. Women could only be defended socially by men. If her property were attacked – by thieves or greedy landowners – a woman would have little defense on her own, only her male kin could help her. The law did give her some protections. The scriptures they read were clear that widows were to receive special care and attention and were not to be exploited. But religious laws were no guarantee of a woman’s safety in a man’s world. The widow at Nain is in real social danger – she no longer has a husband, she no longer has a son. If she had moved from her kin, she is now socially alone. Each step she takes is heavy – heavy with grief, heavy with fear; each is a step into an unknown future.

Our gospel passage today can seem like a passage about a dead man coming to life. That is certainly the most dramatic part of the story. In the middle of a funeral procession a dead man sits up – no doubt shocking the dickens out of the entire procession – and begins to speak. The crowd is filled with fear, which seems pretty reasonable, anyone would experience more than a small amount of shock and awe at the sight of a dead man sitting up on his funeral bier and talking. It is hard to ignore the resurrection at the center of this tale. It is a vision of the glory of God. It is a vision of God’s triumph over death.

But the glory of God is bigger than just this resurrection. As hard as it might seem to imagine, the glory of God that was revealed that day at Nain was more than bringing a dead man to life. The widow is also brought back from death to life. The story begins with the widow. Jesus has compassion on the widow, tells her not to weep. After the man comes back to life, he gives him back to his mother. By doing so, he brings her back to life. Jesus heals more than a dead man, he heals a woman broken by a society that could not see her as fully human without a man.

The crowd may have been more afraid of this than anything else. The social order had been altered. A woman who didn’t count suddenly counted again. This may have been as awesome, as fearsome, as the resurrection itself.

The crowd would immediately have known what happened. They knew they were in the presence of a prophet because they had read their scripture. They knew God cared for widows, God insisted on the care of widows. They knew that God sent prophets like Elijah to heal widows, they remembered the widow at Zarepath who was near death and who was brought back to life by God’s gift of a jar of meal and a jug of oil that never ran out. Caring for the ones that society wants to leave behind is what God does. Having no edges, no boundaries to the scope of care, is God. God’s very being has no limits to love.

We still live in a world of social divisions. Our society, our now-global society, is full of divisions. Indeed, it feels like we have found many more ways to divide ourselves than could have been imagined by the people of Nain. We can be divided by religion, by ethnicity, by nation, by age, by the kind of music we like, by wealth and poverty. Sadly, we can still be divided by gender.

But amid all this division, God gives us life. God is the source of all being. And God doesn’t just give us biological life, God gives us a full life, a life where our divisions are healed. That is the action that Jesus undertook at Nain – he restored biological life so that a full life could be had by all. That is what Jesus showed the people of Nain, that life means more than simply existing, it means living fully within the web of life. It means being loved by all and loving all.

This is the reign of God. It is a reign of well being, a reign of justice, a reign of abundance, a reign of joyous harmony. It is a reign we recognize when we are fully in God’s presence, and when God’s presence encompasses all of creation. God’s presence has no social boundaries. The crowd at Nain rejoiced because God had looked favorably upon them with a sign of God’s reign.

This is the action of our God. Restoring to the social community, bringing people we push out of society back into love because we need each other.

This is also our action. We too are called to be healers. The mission of the church, our Book of Common Prayer says, “ is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.”

We do this by refusing to draw boundaries, by refusing to exclude people from the fullness of life that God promises. We do it when we welcome all people into our churches. We do it when we work to ensure that all are fed, and clothed, and housed, and cared for when sick. We do it when we work to transform unjust social structures. We do it when we fix any system or practice that treats anyone as undeserving of a full life.

We still make people of all races and genders powerless. We still try to make human souls into non-people. Our mission is to be people who draw no distinctions. Our mission is to be a people who recognize the dignity of every human being.

After Jesus left Nain, the people went back to their homes and chores, but things didn’t go back to normal. And thanks be to God for that! Normal doesn’t always mean right. Normal can be unjust. The people of Nain weren’t normal anymore. The people were transformed. They had moved beyond what they thought were limitations. They had seen a new world.

Let us open our eyes to this new world and glorify God. Let us be a people without boundaries.

 

— The Rev. Matt Seddon is vicar of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in West Valley City, Utah – the most diverse city in Utah. He has a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Chicago, and a M.Div. from Church Divinity School of the Pacific, with special training and experience in multicultural ministry, particularly Latino Ministry. He is married with one teenaged daughter, reads too much, and is fond of punk rock from the 1980s.

June 2, 2013

1 Kings 18:20-21,30-39; Psalm 96; Galatians 1:1-12; Luke 7:1-10

The Bible stories appointed for today have a considerable resonance. That is actually something quite unusual in these days of the Revised Common Lectionary, as the lessons are no longer chosen to relate to each other. The resonance, therefore, is more coincidence than a result of any intentionality.

First, we have the prophet Elijah speaking to the Israelites, a story told to us in the First Book of Kings. There is a kind of contest between Gods at work here, between the one true Lord God and Ba’al. “If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him.”

Among the ancient Israelites, the cult of Ba’al was the greatest and most enduring threat to the worship of Yahweh alone. And Ba’al was not so much one competing god; it’s a term that can refer to a number of gods, and even to human officials: gods who were patrons of cities, a god of the rain, and even Ba’al Zebub, the “lord of the flies” who will be identified as the “prince of demons” in the New Testament.

Elijah is calling the people back to the worship of the one true God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And it is not a popular move. The people seem to like worshiping both Yahweh and Ba’al; you might call it covering all bets, or playing it safe, or anticipating any contingency.

And Elijah calls on God, who sends down a lightening bolt to consume an offering presented. The Israelites see this and they are converted, falling on their faces and proclaiming, “The LORD indeed is God; the LORD indeed is God.”

Then, in his letter to the Galatians, the Apostle Paul is astonished that the people are so quickly deserting the true gospel for a different one.

And he writes that if he were trying to please people, he would not be a servant of Christ.

Again, there is some kind of completing god here. Scholars are not quite sure what that other gospel was exactly, but we surmise that it was different enough to cause the apostle alarm. “If anyone proclaims to you a gospel contrary to what you received, let that one be accursed,” Paul says. Not ignored, not forgotten, not even left behind – but accursed.

Like the prophet Elijah, Paul is calling the people back to the one true God.

And in the story of the centurion and his slave from the Gospel of Luke, we have another set of gods at play. As a member of the Roman army, the centurion would have worshiped Jupiter, Apollo and Diana – among many others.

Now the centurion was well liked among the people in Capernaum. “He loves our people, and it is he who built our synagogue for us,” they tell Jesus.

The gospel writer tells us next to nothing about the centurion, not even his name. We do not hear that he converted to Judaism, or afterward followed Jesus. We are told simply that he loves God’s people. And notice carefully: Jesus and the centurion never encounter one another face-to-face. First, some elders come to Jesus, and later the centurion sends some friends to carry his message.

The message the centurion sends is a familiar one: Tell Jesus, “I am not worthy to have you come under my room; but only speak the word, and let my servant be healed.”

For Jesus, this is enough to grant his request. The servant is healed.

The reason Jesus grants the request is clear: The centurion has described himself as “a man set under authority.” And the authority under which he sets himself in that of Jesus, not one of his own pagan gods.

So we have three very different contexts, three different writers, three different sets of characters – and one common theme: God who is true versus gods that are not.

Now, people’s involvement with and worship of false gods is as old as the hills. What has changed is the false gods we worship. Nowadays, our worship is not so much of the idols of Ba’al or the many gods of ancient Rome.  But make no mistake: There is more than one contrary gospel out there.

The false gospel of prosperity, for instance. This is very common in today’s world. It’s a belief that when we gain economic wealth, it is because God is rewarding us for our good behavior. And according to the proponents of this misguided theology, the behavior that God is most likely to reward just happens to be financial giving in support of some religious leader!

And the false gospel that the Apostle Paul was likely railing against: Gnosticism. Among the many tenets of this belief is a sense that salvation comes through our righteous works. Paul repeatedly preached against this deception, affirming that salvation is by grace, a divine gift. Our good works form a necessary part of Christian life, and they are pleasing to God – but they come as a response to the gifts of grace, not a means to earn them.

And then, for Christians, the most contrary gospel of all: the belief that the message is more about the messenger than the message. This is a tricky one, because we Christians do worship and adore Jesus Christ as an essential person of the Triune God. Yet, as our Presiding Bishop has said, Jesus asked us to follow him, not to worship him.

Now, Jesus is certainly our primary example for Christian living. But when he preached, he did not trumpet his own virtues. He never tells his disciples to “preach Jesus;” instead he instructs them to “cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons.”

What Jesus preached was that the kingdom of God has drawn very near. It is imminent.

This kingdom of God was – and is – a very important construct for Jesus, as it should be for us.

The kingdom of God: the time and place where everyone in all the world becomes willingly subject to the one true God. The time and place when we will see the consummation of God’s justice, love and mercy. The time and place in which everyone will be valued, respected and cared for adequately.

It is a vision still unfulfilled, but still intensely compelling:

A world without hunger, without oppression, without sickness, without violence.

A world of peace, liberty and, yes, prosperity.

And a world in which these are not the standards enjoyed by a few, but the ethical basis of human rights for everyone.

The god of Ba’al has proved to be false, the teaching of the Gnostics has proved to be heresy and the gospel of prosperity has proved to be contrary to the true gospel of Jesus Christ.

All these – and more – distract us from the core message of our savior Jesus: The kingdom of heaven has come very near you.

This is our hope. This is our salvation. This is our destiny.

So let us continue to bring this reality ever nearer. For the duty of all Christians is to follow Christ; to come together week by week for corporate worship; and to work, pray, and give for the spread of the kingdom of God.

 

—The Rev. Dr. J. Barrington Bates is the author of sixteen essays published in scholarly journals, including “On the Search for the Authentic Liturgy of the Apostles: The Diversity of the Early Church as Normative for Anglicans,” in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Anglican Studies. He lives and writes in Jersey City, N.J.

May 26, 2013

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31; Psalm 8 or Canticle 2 or 13; Romans 5:1-5; John 16:12-15

It’s the modern mantra. People chant it all the time: “I’m spiritual, but not religious. I’m spiritual, but not religious.”

“Religion” has become a dirty word. Maybe it’s the nun who rapped your knuckles with a ruler when you were 8 years old. Maybe it is arcane morality, rules that do not suit the 21st century. More likely, it is because of crusades and war and some really ugly things done in the name of religion. Religion has become its own worst enemy.

So we can understand why religion has become a dirty word. Yet the so-called “spiritual but not religious” have thrown the baby out with the bathwater.

After all, it was religious people who built thousands of hospitals around this country. It’s hard to think any hospital built by the spiritual but not religious.

It was religious people, not the irreligious, who started the national hospice movement, and who started Habitat for Humanity, which has built hundreds of thousands of homes for the working poor.

Religion frees people from drug abuse and spousal abuse. Religion infuses meaning into the despondent and hope into the bereft.

So even though we might be able to understand why people are abandoning religion, that’s not saying abandoning religion is a good thing. And there is no need to denigrate religion, be it Christianity, Islam, Judaism or Buddhism.

Not to sound cruel, but honestly, anybody can go watch the sun set over the ocean and feel God.

So what?

The real question is, does your amorphous spirituality have legs when your husband walks out the door, or when you find out your kid has cancer?

Spirituality is important – and frankly, we should applaud anyone who finds a way to deepen her spirituality. But spirituality is only half the equation.

Religion provides spirituality definition. It gives it form, an outline, legs to walk on.

If spirituality is heaven, then religion is earth. It is where you live your spirituality. It is how you practice your spirituality, and as we tell our kids, practice makes perfect. Reading scripture, praying together, singing songs, kneeling, crossing yourself, sharing faith.

What practice is there in watching sunsets?

That is why we might consider introducing a new mantra: “I’m spiritual and religious.”

In fact, the ideal bumper sticker might say something like, “I’m spiritual and religious; follow me to church!”

The earth is full of God’s glory. Meaning, a spirituality is wrongly bifurcated when separated from the physical. You need both together.

Which is what Jesus means when he says: You must be born again, of both water and the spirit, you must be born of earth and heaven.

In many ways, this is what Jesus seems to mean by promising the Spirit, in this morning’s reading from John, the Spirit who will actually help you become more grounded on earth.

You remember the old quip “Some people are so heavenly minded they’re no earthly good”?

The reverse is also true: Some people are so earthly minded they’re no heavenly good. What good is clay and dirt without soul? What good are you if you don’t connect with something greater than yourself?

Heaven and earth; “I’m spiritual and religious.”

You must be born again, of both water and spirit. When the Spirit comes, he will guide you into all truth.

Remember the hoopla when Facebook went public and people were purchasing Facebook stock not so much as an investment, but because of hype? The stock initially sold for $40 a share, then dropped like a lead balloon to under $20 a share.

But think about these kids, Mark Zuckerburg and his cohorts: They won the lottery. Instant millionaires, billionaires. One article I read told about the fun they’re having spending their gold.

One Porsche dealer sold out, and the fine dining industry in Palo Alto was hopping. Houses at Lake Tahoe were being snapped up at 25 percent to 35 percent over the asking price.

Gold was cheap that year in Palo Alto, but as you have heard, all that glitters is not gold.

You can buy all the houses and cars and retirement you want, but to paraphrase Jesus, life is far more than houses. Life is more than nice cars and fine dining.

Possessing all of earth, when you have no spirit, is vanity.

What good are you if you are all earth and no heaven? Or all heaven and no earth?

Although the modern mantra “I’m spiritual but not religious” panders to a shallow disdain of religion, sometimes we need others to remind us that all we see is not all there is.

We need each other, in this practice of religion and in this practice of life.

This is Trinity Sunday. The Trinity is not some arcane static description of God. You can’t draw a picture of God. God is not a triangle, nor an egg, nor a three-leaf clover.

Rather, the mystery we call “trinity” is dynamic. It is an eddy, a current, swirling about your body and your soul, and then about the body and the soul of the person next to you, and then back to you.

Pure and absolute Love. The trinity is action, an action verb, and that action is love.

God says, Receive Love: Peace I give to you. Be Love: Live within that peace. Give Love: Be that peace in the world.

So you see, you are spiritual because you have encountered God, but you are also religious because you have encountered God in other people.

We are spiritual and religious when we have learned to give ourselves away.

So let our mantra be “I’m spiritual and religious. Follow me to church.”

 

— The Rev. Rob Gieselmann is the interim rector at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, Belvedere, Calif. Before entering the ministry, Rob practiced law for ten years, he is the author of The Episcopal Call to Love (Apocryphile Press, 2008), and is the father of two wonderful children.