November 25, 2012
The Rev. Brian C. Taylor
The Feast of Christ the King

Today we celebrate the Feast of Christ the King. It was introduced into the liturgical calendar by Pope Pius XI in 1925, and soon adopted by Anglicans, Lutherans, and others. The reason this feast was established was to counter the rising tide of nationalism and secularism of that era.  It was a time between world wars, when nationalistic fervor was high; when communists were purging churches and killing clergy; and during the greed and other excesses of the Roaring ’20’s, taking us into the great crash of 1929.

Christ, this feast day proclaimed, is King. Not nations, ideologies, war, pleasure, or money. Christ is King.

And so even though those times are past, today we still sing hymns and heard readings that speak of thrones and dominions, judgment and subjugation, glory and power. To many of us, these images are archaic, even repellant. We’re democratic Americans. It’s a flat world. I want to be personally empowered, not subjugated. Who needs it?

Then, in the gospel reading, Jesus himself comes along - a subversive, paradoxical king. He stands before Pilate, the one who had all the power, glory, and authority of the great Roman Empire. Jesus stands before Pilate. By contrast, he was naked, poor, accused of being a rebel and a heretic - a criminal to both Rome and the Temple.

But he was powerful, with a significant following. So Pilate wants to know if Jesus is going to try to usurp his authority, as the rumors indicate. He asks “Are you, as they say, the King of the Jews?” And Jesus does a remarkable thing. He remains ambiguous. “Maybe you think I am. Maybe the people think I am. But my kingdom, such as it is, is not of this world. My power is not like yours. My power is in testifying to the truth. And the citizens of this unworldly kingdom are those who listen to the truth.” Puzzled, Pilate can only reply “And what is truth?” He thought he knew. He thought it had to do with empire and money and dominance: might is right. But now he’s not so sure.

Jesus did what he did throughout his life. He turned the tables on conventional thinking and values. The last are first, and the first are last. He made us wonder “What is truth? What is true power and authority? On what basis is judgment made?”

Jesus does not answer when Pilate asks “What is truth?” How could he possibly explain it? All he could do was stand there silently before him, testifying to the truth by his very being. All he could do was point to everything he had said and done for the past 3 years of public ministry. His life was truth.

A number of years ago on a study day I decided to skim quickly through the four gospels and jot down phrases that seemed to be characteristic of what Jesus was all about, especially what he taught about being human. It helped to use the Bible I received on my confirmation, one of those old red-letter editions, where Jesus’ words are printed in red.

Afterwards, the phrases on the page formed a kind of mosaic. Standing back from them, a very clear picture emerged: the truth. There it was - the universal truth about life, human experience, happiness, suffering, faith, and God. Later, the phrases became the chapter headings of a book that I eventually published, called Becoming Human: Core Teachings of Jesus.

Some of the phrases were:
Be humble, be real; Purify your heart; Be religious; Don’t be too religious; Help the poor; Don’t worry; Enjoy the feast; Evolve beyond violence; Associate with the wrong sort of people; You can’t earn God’s love; Forgive yourself for being human; Love everybody; Wake up; You can’t do any of this; You will be made new.

Now if you went through this exercise, and I hope you will some day, you’d probably come up with a slightly different list of phrases, but I would hope that viewed from a distance, a similar mosaic of Jesus would reveal itself. Jesus isn’t just whatever. He had a particular character, and he taught some very specific things.

This Christly character and teachings, the church has always proclaimed, is truth. It is what we are made for. And it is what we, as followers of Jesus are to look to as our authority; it is what we are to model our lives after, and it is what we are to try to bring about in the world around us.

Which brings me back to kingship. Jesus’ kingdom is not of this world. Which is why those who want to make this or any other nation a Christian nation are wrong. He didn’t come to take over the local school board or the Congress. He came to testify to the truth, and to spread this truth like a virus throughout humanity.

Jesus also said that everyone who belongs to the truth is a part of this hidden kingdom. Which is why those who want to turn everyone into a church-going Christian are wrong. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice, he said.

Jesus, and by extension, the Christian message, isn’t whatever. But anyone who is Christ-like - who is humble, who helps the poor, who tries to love everybody, who exercises forgiveness and generosity, anyone who wakes up and relies upon the free gift of God’s presence - they belong to the truth and they hear Jesus’ voice. He himself said so.

As followers of Jesus, as the Church, our mission is to testify to the truth. Our mission is to live as Jesus lived, to do what he taught. Our mission is to join with others who may not be of this fold but who nevertheless belong to the truth, and to trust that by the hidden working of the Spirit among all of us, the truth will spread like a virus.

God knows we need this truth. This is a world where different groups are trying to bomb each other into terrified submission. This is a a world where corporations and the obscenely rich use simplistic, manipulative advertising to sway the gullible, so that their selfish interests will prevail. In some ways, things haven’t changed much since the 1920’s, when this feast day was inaugurated. God knows we still need the kingdom of truth to spread like a virus throughout the world.

But you and I need the truth as much as the world does. It’s easy to live by a falsehood, serving values that will, in the end, do us no good. This, again, brings me back to kingship. As Dylan sang many years ago, You’re gonna have to serve somebody. It may be self-interest; it may be fear or ambition, superficial diversion, or trying to get along without conflict; but You’re gonna have to serve somebody. Why not serve Jesus?

If you’re like me, parts of you do, and parts of you don’t. We’re humble at times, prideful at others; compassionate at times, indifferent at others. But the walk of faith takes us further and further into the kingdom that Jesus testified to, into the territory that contains ever more faith and generosity and purity of heart. The walk of faith also takes us into areas we’d rather not examine, habits we’d rather not change, until we surrender them one by one. More and more of our whole self comes under Christ’s gracious rule. We are less divided internally, more unified, as one. And we find that we are not held down by his authority; we are set free.

And so we pray, paraphrasing the Collect of the Day which is appointed for this feast day:

Eternal God of truth, mercifully grant that the peoples of the earth, grant that I, that we, who are divided and enslaved in so many ways, may be freed and brought together within that hidden kingdom that our Lord Jesus lived in and taught about. Grant that this kingdom may spread among us and within us like a virus, so that we may be unified in your truth, and that your will may be done on earth, in us, as it is in heaven. Amen. 

Sermon – St. Michael and All Angels
Mark 13:1-8
November 18, 2012

I moved to Oregon in 1993 and went to see an insurance agent who asked if I wanted earthquake insurance. Coming from Georgia, I could not conceive of that and said, “no thank you.” At least I hope that is what I said rather than what I really thought, which was, “Are you kidding? That’s ridiculous!” I didn’t think about it again for a whole week until I was sitting on the second floor of my home when I felt the house shake. And then it shook again. Earthquake.

It is hard for us to imagine the destruction of places we love. In August of 2011, an earthquake in Virginia lasting 5-10 seconds did significant damage to the National Cathedral. We hear Jesus say, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.” He was referring to the temple in Jerusalem that took about 80 years to build. Roman armies later destroyed the temple in 70 a.d. I hear those words and I see the image of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. Eleven years later, we are painfully reminded of the shock and horror of that devastating day. It reinforced the belief that we should be afraid. Life is uncertain. People are not to be trusted.

We heard those messages throughout the election. If the other candidate is elected, it will be the end of all that is good and secure. Be very afraid and vote.

Why is it that we try and motivate people by playing on their fears? If you don’t buy the extended warranty, your car will collapse in a heap of steel. If you don’t eat this brand of cereal, you will have a terrible day. If you don’t do it my way, you will find yourself all alone. Sidewalk preachers scream that the world will end if we don’t repent.

That is NOT what Jesus said. Jesus DID warn his followers to be wise, but he did not tell them that life is to be feared. Instead, he left them with the words, “This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.” He wasn’t focused on the destruction as much as he was what would come after it. The prophet Isaiah put it this way, “[God] is doing a new thing, now it springs forth. Do you not perceive it?” (43:19) This new thing God is doing is already in our midst.

I hear an invitation to be present to what is…to notice God here and now…rather than to fear the horror that lurks in the shadows. A life based on fear seems to say that we cannot trust in God’s goodness, but must do all we can to save ourselves. If we can just know when Christ will come again, we can be ready. It reminds me of Y2K. We’ve got a date, now we can stock up on supplies. Or as the comic said, “Jesus is coming… look busy.” But that kind of fear isn’t faith. Faith is living as if Jesus is among us now, all the time. It is tuning into the presence of God in the most ordinary of moments. It is paying attention. It is being present right now, rather fearing what hasn’t yet happened.

I wish I could tell you that I’ve got this one figured out and I’m ready for the next lesson. I just came back from the final week of my yearlong Soulcraft program in Utah. It was a powerful experience to connect with creation in such intentional ways. The lessons I learned were many, but one of the most significant was being present. It’s much easier when we are camping in nature and we don’t have weeds to be pulled, bills to be paid, laundry to be done, and all the other things that fill our minds. It was such a relief for me to be away from my lists. I love my lists. I feel so mighty when I can throw a list away because I have done everything on it. I have lists in my work portfolio, lists on my phone, and lists in my head. They all ask me to put them first. They instill fear of what will happen if I don’t pick up the clothes from the cleaners or send that email.

I came home from this powerful final week and started on my list. At first, I felt great as I checked everything off and then I began to feel empty. Where was the wilderness? Where were the lessons of the massive rainbow that filled the sky on that rainy, blustery day? Where was the sound of the owl in the early morning? Where was the rhythm of the river that ran through the campground? God was so clearly in each of those. But it was a bit harder to find God in my lists.

My lists function like a security blanket for me. Somehow they lure me into believing that I am really living because I’m being productive. They show me that I can rely on myself. But that security isn’t real. Each day, as I lean back into my deepest longings and offer my prayers, I am turning to God to hold all that I am. The invitation today is to trust in God who is greater than all the things that give us security: our bank accounts, our stuff, our relationships, our heath, the list goes on and on. Security is found in God alone and only in God can we make room for the birth of something beautiful and new among us.
The gospel lesson holds the tension of endings and beginnings together. We see this paradox wherever we go: in the larger world, in the church, and in our own lives. Life is ending and beginning. Just this week, we welcomed a new baby into the St. Michael’s community and said goodbye to a wonderful saint. We are experiencing birth pangs as this vibrant congregation grows and reaches out to the community. Birth is beautiful and painful.

Who is My Neighbor? continues as volunteers have weekly conversations with food pantry recipients to share their life struggles. They are developing relationships with those we are serving and learning more about the particular issues that they face each day. We have a team doing research to discover what resources are available. We don’t know where all of this will lead, but we believe the answer is found in deepening relationships with the people we serve. We are listening for the voice of God in the people we feed each week.

Hebrews calls us to “provoke one another to love and good deeds, to meet together, and encourage one another all the more as we see the Day approaching.” (10:25 paraphrase) In the most difficult moments of our lives, when all has come crashing down, in the loss of those we love, we are called to deepen our investment in our community. It may seem counterintuitive. It is so tempting to hibernate until the storm passes. But, we are all in this together. I have been touched by the stories of those from the food pantry who are showing up and opening their hearts so we can glimpse their pain and struggle. The volunteers are sharing their hearts and stories as well. Those relationships of compassion go both ways. God is there. Something is being born from that pain.

Apocalyptic texts are often misunderstood and plunge us into that place of fear that the sky is falling. But “an Apocalypse is an unveiling, a revealing, a vision that grants its recipients a glimpse beyond what is going on to what is really going on.” (Preaching Through the Christian Year, p. 472) Can we look beneath the surface to see that God is indeed doing something new? Can we listen beyond the pain we see around us to hear the hope of God giving birth? Can we trust that God is beyond our vision weaving a tapestry of healing from the broken threads we witness daily?

God is in the most painful moments of our lives. God is in our suffering. God is doing something new. Our task is to be present and we will witness God’s creation of life in all things. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin said, "All around us, to the right and left, in front and behind, above and below, we have only to go a little beyond the frontier of sensible appearances in order to see the divine welling up and showing through." (The Divine Milieu)

The texts today sound threatening and it is tempting to lock ourselves in our houses in response to such ominous words. I believe that we are being called out into the world to witness to God’s presence, to notice signs of God everywhere, and to be part of what God is doing. It means stepping toward fear rather than away from it. God meets us there and shows us the new thing being born.

November 11, 2012
Motivations for Giving
The Rev. Brian C. Taylor

It’s funny, but every year about this time when parishes are wrapping up their pledging season, readings like the ones we just heard appear in our lectionary. What a coincidence!

The story is known as The Widow’s Mite. Jesus was teaching in the temple in Jerusalem, and watching as people made their contributions to the treasury. Wealthy people made a show of giving large sums of money, which, Jesus noted, was actually a pittance, in comparison to their resources. A poor widow, by contrast, gave everything she had. Jesus pointed to her and said that of the two, she was the generous one, for generosity is defined by the proportion of our income that we give away, not the amount.

But the story does more than underscore the biblical teaching of proportional giving. It goes deeper, as Jesus always does. He moves us from the external action - giving money - to the internal condition of the heart. Jesus looks within and asks the penetrating question Why do people give? And we end up asking ourselves the same question: What is my real motivation for giving - for giving money, time, effort; for giving of myself?

To get at this question, Jesus speaks of the scribes, who wear fancy robes and strut around proudly in Jerusalem’s marketplace, who get the best seats at banquet halls and synagogues, and who make sure everyone knows how much money they give. They are motivated to give for the sake of appearances.

But meanwhile, Jesus says, things are rotten inside. For the scribes were part of the Temple system that taxed the poor into indebtedness, and then when they couldn’t pay, took away their ancestral land and home. Jesus said “They devour widows’ houses.”

The closest modern parallel to these guys would be the insurance company executives and investment bankers who handed out junk mortgages leading up to the 2008 recession. When families were put out on the streets, they continued to wear expensive suits and strut around proudly in Manhattan’s marketplace, and to sit in the best seats at charity balls.

Some of them are pious pillars of their community, philanthropists, and Jesus says they are the worst kind. For they make a show of giving away a proportionally small amount of their fortune that they get from exploiting others, and then swell with pride as their name is placed on the wing of a hospital. “Beware of them,” Jesus says, for “they devour widows’ houses..They will have the greater condemnation.”

So in this story, Jesus addresses the motivation of giving for the sake of appearances. But there is another self-serving motivation for giving that may hit a little closer to home for all of us: transactional giving.

Transactional giving takes many forms, but they’re all rooted in the belief that If I give this, then I will get that. Some put their faith in the prosperity gospel, where the transaction goes like this: If make an investment of sacrificial giving, then I will get a 10-fold return on my investment. Others think that their charity will purchase absolution for the guilt they feel for being privileged in a poor world. Or maybe it’s just duty: if I do what God requires, if I do the right thing, then I will gain God’s favor, and I will see myself as a good person. And for some in parish life, the transaction is payment for services consumed: If I pay my pledge, I will get Sunday worship, programs for children, a group to belong to.

So if we don’t give for the sake of appearances, and we don’t give transactionally, why give?

I’d like to suggest that we give as a way of strengthening the human community. We give money, time, and effort - we give of ourselves - because it creates better connections between people, because it makes the human family healthier, happier. And that benefits everyone, including us.

Recently I spent a week at a meditation center north of San Francisco doing a contemplative prayer retreat. In meditation or contemplative prayer, we abandon words, sit in the presence of God, and allow ourselves to just be. What emerges from this prayerful being - and every religious tradition tells us this - is the experience of oneness not only with God, but with all people, with all creation. It’s a natural outcome.

As some 50 of us sat in silence together, as we settled down and stopped all our feverish doing and talking, we shared the same space, even the same breath. It was intimate, and very real. There we were: many people, but one sacred life. Many spirits, but one Spirit uniting us all. Many members, but one body.

In this environment, kindness is natural, because we know that we’re all in this together. There’s a heightened sensitivity to one another; we’re like family or friends, even though we might never speak. We’re attuned, even as we stand silently in line for a meal, as we pass one another on a walkway.

And this sense of unity goes beyond people, into the environment. Walking outside smelling the eucalyptus and the redwoods, feeling the damp fog, taking in the salt air of the nearby ocean, I was slowed down enough to know, in that moment, that there is no separation between “me” and “the world.” I wasn’t taking a walk “out in nature.” I am a part of nature; it is a part of me.

This isn’t just a fuzzy emotional or spiritual intuition. It is a scientific and social fact. People and objects seem like separate things, but we’re all made up of the same whirling subatomic particles. We’re all made of energy, just arranged in different forms. And where “I” end and “you” or a “tree” begin, physically, emotionally, is an overlapping area. We blur, and we affect one another.

Environmentally, interdependence has become painfully obvious. Introduce enough carbons into the atmosphere and you change the weather; Hurricane Sandy arises and harms millions of people. But positively speaking, we also know that an ecosystem is actually a boundless, interdependent organism, each part of it maintaining the life of other parts. Earth, water, insects, animals, plants, atmosphere - all one breathing and self-sustaining system.

This is also true of social and economic systems. A father dies and suddenly the whole family, like an out-of-balance hanging mobile, needs to find a new equilibrium. A new group of immigrants, with all their cultural habits and traditions, changes the city into which they enter. The greed of unregulated capitalists renders millions of people unemployed worldwide.

So seeing our unity with one another and our environment is not just wishful thinking, or the spiritual imagination at work. Creation is a vast, fragile, and beautiful web of being, one life form. Some call this life form Gaia, after the ancient Greek goddess who is a kind of Mother Earth. I think of creation as God’s body, all of it animated by the Creator’s Spirit.

You may be wondering right about now why I’ve gone off on this cosmic tangent of contemplative unity. But it’s not a tangent. It is an understanding of reality that makes it possible to give of our time, our money, our best efforts in a healthy way - not for appearances or as a transaction -  but because by giving, we strengthen the web of being, of which we are a part.  

So today, as we offer our pledges that will sustain this community through the coming year, we affirm our place in the web of being, here in this corner of creation. Your money provides worship for seekers and pays the salaries of those who counsel the troubled. Your time puts food on the tables of elderly widows who live on meager fixed incomes. Your generosity provides a safe sacred place for those who have been condemned in other churches.

Everything we do, for better or worse, has an impact on the whole. So it isn’t too grand to say that by giving, we participate in God’s own work of redeeming creation. Who wouldn’t be motivated by that?

Today we celebrate the feast of “All Saints,” and how wonderful that we can look up here and see the many saints that are represented from our families and friends who have gone before us.  It reminds me of the scripture in Hebrews which begins:  “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses…..”

Who among us has not loved to sing, “When All the Saints Go Marching In  …..O Lord, I Want to Be in that Number.  WOW!  That’s quite a parade to join.  Some of the ways that we have recognized saints are these:
    
     They have extended to others the mercy that they have received from God.   

    And when God’s reign was under attack, they found the courage to stand     steadfast -- regardless of the cost that this might exact.

Many of you know how much I have admired Etty Hillesum, A Dutch Jew, who wrote about the need to unbind those who were headed for the death chambers, at the hands of the Nazis!  Here is what Etty wrote in her journal as she was preparing for her own deportation:
    …One thing is becoming increasingly clear to me:    that we must help You, God,     in order to help ourselves -  all of us…..what really matters these days is that we     safeguard that little piece of You God, in ourselves, and to defend Your dwelling     place inside us to the last……

It may have seemed that God was not intervening directly, but Etty and so many others will tell story after story of how they were able to partner with God in both prayer and simply encouraging and supporting one another.  As a result they were able to see the many God-moments that required only a human response to complete the miracles that God was already doing within those camps and beyond.  Hitler’s thousand-year Reich was brought down in only twelve years!

We are a part of the communion of saints, not because of some inherent quality or because of what we have done, but because we have chosen to become a part of God’s community.  Our baptism becomes a mark of sainthood.

St. Paul uses the term “saint” over and over in his letters to refer to the Church on earth.  We are called saints because of God’s continuing incarnate presence among us.  What gives God’s people the label of saint, is not what we do, or what we have earned -- but because of God’s presence within and among us.

This Sunday’s readings for All Saints Sunday focuses less on the “saints” and more on what all saints are promised and encouraged to be in our partnership with God’s work here on earth.

Our gospel lesson this morning, the story of the raising of Lazarus, is one of the most heartrending stories in the Bible. It describes with passion the loss that one feels in the face of death, and it shows the depths of compassion that people do feel for loved ones who are coping with loss.  
 
As Lazarus comes forth from the tomb, can’t you just hear all the people and friends who were gathered there to mourn?   Lazarus, Lazarus, tell us, what  was it like?

Lazarus passed through death and was returned to life-- but I think we’d agree that Jesus was pointing to a far more important reality than what Lazarus may or may not have experienced “on the other side.”  Lazarus’ experience points to the main theme in the Gospel of John:  ETERNAL LIFE DOESN’T BEGIN ON THE FAR SIDE OF THE GRAVE…..IT BEGINS……..ON THIS SIDE!  

This is what our gospel message says to us today:  the kingdom of God is here and now and most certainly “eternal life does begin on this side of the grave.”

What grabbed me most this week, as I read and reread again this story of Lazarus - were the words:  “UNBIND HIM AND LET HIM GO”!
First, Jesus commands Lazarus “TO COME OUT.”  Next he commands the community “TO UNBIND HIM AND LET HIM GO.”

Jesus performs what is perhaps his most significant miracle—so much so that not only are many in the crowd moved to faith but his opponents are moved to conspire toward his death.
What I see as equally important is that Jesus instructs and expects the crowds to     participate in and actually “TO COMPLETE THE MIRACLE.”  

BOTH MATTER!  It is Jesus who has the power to heal, to feed, to restore, to     bring to life, to redeem.  But Jesus seeks to involve US in these actions and,     indeed, perhaps expects us to complete them.

Think about what other miraculous things God intends to do in our communities.--

We have to think seriously about not only the things that bind us as a community and the work to which we are called to partner with Christ,--- but also about those things that bind us individually from moving ahead in our own journey….
So what do we need unbound? -- either as individuals or as a community?

Is it to unbind ourselves by forgiving ourselves for not being who we want to be? This is a big one for many!

Is it to unbind our prejudices and let go -- perhaps accepting a new view of others?

Is it to unbind our hearts where love stops short?  This is one that I have to wrestle with often because there are some for which I’m only willing to love – just so much
Is it to unbind our resources and share with those who have far less? What about the victims of the recent storms?

Brian Taylor in his book “BECOMING HUMAN”  says this:  “We must learn somehow to forgive ourselves for being human” ….he goes on to say that we have to get over basing our self worth on any accomplishments we have achieved or not achieved but instead on God’s delight in us AS WE ARE TODAY!!!! Wow!  God’s delight in us AS WE ARE TODAY!  

Henri Nouwen reminds us that “the greatest enemy and trap that keeps us bound is self-rejection, doubting who we really are!

Remember the time in David’s life as is told in I Samuel when he had made some bad decisions, ended up fighting on the side of King Saul’s enemy.  Then all of a sudden David found himself in the situation where even those he had trusted were now against him and there were those who were about to stone him….. David was pretty much at the bottom and……..

What did David do?  The story goes that David went out and “encouraged” himself in the Lord, or as the modern translation states:  “He went out and strengthened himself in the Lord.”  What a fantastic way to deal with situations and ourselves when everything around us feels hopeless…. even when we feel we are to blame.   We just turn around and do what David did…… “ENCOURAGE OR STRENGTHEN OURSELVES IN GOD.”  

Then we are able to reach out and unbind another:
The story is told of a Dutch soldier who was captured and made prisoner of war.  Isolated, lonely, afraid, and feeling that he had nothing to live for, he received an unexpected letter, crumpled and dirty because it had traveled so long and far to     reach him.  It was just a piece of paper, but on it were these simple words:  “We     all are waiting for you at home.  Do not worry.  We will see you back at home.”  This simple letter, these simple words changed his life.  He now had a reason to live.  The external circumstances of his life, his imprisonment and his isolation, did not change….but     SOMEBODY WAS WAITING FOR HIM.  HE STILL HAD A HOME….. AND HOPE WAS REBORN IN HIM.

When we accept who we are at God’s Table.  We are to remember that we don’t have to earn God’s approval or love.  It is freely given – we just have to RECEIVE IT.”

Today, as we celebrate the Eucharist, in the presence of all the saints who have gone before us, and the saints with whom we share this communion table, let’s be mindful it is a day to accept ourselves -- as we receive God’s Grace, God’s Mercy, God’s Unconditional Love, AT THE TABLE…… IN THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS.”

Amen