Sermon
Mark 4:35-41 and Job 38:1-11
St. Michael and All Angels
June 24, 2012

There is an old story about the scientists of the world taking pride in all they had accomplished and deciding that humans don’t need God any more. They appointed a scientist to go and tell God about their decision.

“God, we don’t need you to care for us or love us or interfere in our lives anymore,” the ambassador stated.

“Really?” asked God.

“Yes,” the scientist proclaimed proudly. Look at what we can do—split the atom, harness the power of mighty rivers—why we can even imitate creation with our cloning process.”

“Before we sever our relationship with one another, let’s have a human-creating contest” suggested God.

“Fine with me,” the scientist agreed. He bent down and scooped up a hefty handful of earth.

“Oh, no, no, no,” God said. “You have to get your own dirt.”

I am struck over and over at our human centric way of viewing things. If we read the creation story, we are reminded that humans weren’t even created until the sixth day – we weren’t exactly at the top of the list. Perhaps we need a larger view of things. The Job story is centered in the human condition and in the end as Job finally gets his “hearing” with God; he finds that he too takes his place in the larger cosmos.

Job is one of the most fascinating characters in the Bible. We don’t talk about him much except to caricature him as a man of patience. He makes a rare appearance in the lectionary and calls to mind all the questions we have about bad things happening to good people. It’s an interesting story. God is talking with the Satan, an appointed member of the divine council to test the faith of God’s people. The Satan is not the one we often refer to as the devil. The Satan is giving a report from a recent walkabout and God proudly says, “How about my servant Job? Impressive isn’t he? So faithful and good.” The Satan says, “With all due respect, duh! He has everything. What’s not to be faithful and good? Take away everything and then see how faithful he is.” The Satan is a prosecutor. He’s doing his job. God agrees to this test and the story begins. Job loses all his possessions and God points out that he is still faithful and good. At this point, the Satan says, “Double duh! He still has his health. It’s easy to be faithful when one is healthy.” Next Job’s health is taken away and he’s covered with terrible sores. His wife jumps to his defense saying, “Curse God and die. Let’s get this over with quickly.” Job stays firm in his faith and refuses to curse God. Then his friends step in to “help”. They sit with him and tell him he must have done something really awful because this can’t be God’s fault. I’d like to refer them to our lay pastors for some lessons on how to be with people who are suffering! Clearly they are trying to help, but they are making a bad situation much worse with their judgment.

At some point, Job tires of hearing how guilty he is and demands his day in court with God so that he can be proven innocent. If his case is heard, he will be vindicated. Obviously this is all a cosmic mistake. At this point in the story it seems that God has left the planet. The drama begins in Chapter 1 and God doesn’t show up to confront Job’s situation until Chapter 38. That’s a lot of suffering and a lot of speeches about whom to blame. Finally, God shows up for the hearing Job requested, only it doesn’t go as he expected.

God says, “So you want to have this conversation? Let’s start at the beginning…where were you when I created the earth? How is it that you know so much about the cosmos? Have you ever made the sun rise, even once? Can you send rain anytime you want?” As God continues, Job gets very quiet. Perhaps you have found yourself here at some point. You are carrying on about something when someone steps in to fill you in a bit and you realize you did not know what you were talking about. It’s very humbling to realize we really don’t have the whole picture.

Barbara Brown Taylor says that as far as she knows this “is the only answer human beings have ever gotten about why things happen the way they do. God only knows. And none of us is God.” (Home by Another Way p. 165) She goes on to use this wonderful image for what has just happened. “It was as if a flea had insisted that the lion upon which it was riding stop—stop right now—and explain why the ride was so bumpy and hot. The flea roared and roared as loud as it could, never expecting to be heard, much less answered, until one day the lion turned around and roared right back so that the flea saw itself reflected in both golden eyes at once. Never mind what the lion said. The lion turned around. The lion roared back. And that is enough for anyone to live on the rest of his life.” (Home by Another Way p. 166)

Things are different after Job’s encounter with God. His possessions are restored even more than before. He is healthy and happy again, but he will never be the same. He has seen God and lived. Seeing God helped him find his place in the larger cosmos and he lives the rest of his life as a man of faith, but a man whose faith is shaped within the big picture, who received a glimpse of the world through God’s eyes. He can never see the same way again.

I wonder if that’s what faith looks like. We do everything we can to see the world through God’s eyes. We remove the blinders that we wear to protect us from discomfort and fear and we walk through the world with open hearts. What does the world look like when we are not at the center? What does God see?

It is easy to romanticize this sweet life of faith.  But we don’t have to live long to lose the romance. One day, the disciples find themselves on a boat with the one they trusted and the biggest storm imaginable blows in while he takes a nap. They thought Jesus would protect them from danger, but clearly he is oblivious to their plight. In their desperation, they wake him so that he can save them from certain death.

I read these two stories today and think about much of my energy is directed toward me and what I want and need. It’s just so easy to live our lives as if we were at the center of things. Granted Job and the disciples on the turbulent waters are extreme examples, but in both cases their perspective shifts from what God should be doing for them, to seeing the vastness of God. Jo Bailey Wells says that we have a habit of “replacing the confession that our chief end is to glorify God with the assumption that God’s chief end is to be concerned with mortals.” (Feasting on the Word Year B, Volume 3, p. 148)

It is interesting that the gospel lesson ends with the question “Who is this?” It is as if the scales have fallen from their eyes and they are seeing Jesus for the first time. Yes, they committed to following him before, but now they are glimpsing who he is. I’m not sure what brought you here this morning, but it seems only fair to warn you that the word nave comes from the Latin meaning ship. We sit in this nave, this church sanctuary, this ship, and remember the disciples in the storm. Perhaps like the disciples, you came to church clear about your commitment to following the one who may lead us into turbulent waters and then appear to sleep through our misery. Perhaps you came because a particular thirst drew you here, but are suddenly aware that you don’t have a life jacket and now you wonder if you shouldn’t have stayed home where all appears to be safe. Perhaps you have no idea why you are here, but you are suddenly looking for the exits and trying to figure out how to get out before God troubles the water. If you are afraid right now, you are in good company. The number one greeting in the Bible is “Do not be afraid.” Clearly others have walked in our shoes.

When I spend my days thinking it’s all about me, I am reminded over and over again that God’s world is so much bigger and my task as a person of faith is to move behind the wide angle lens for a larger view. In recent weeks we have had the opportunity to view a spectacular eclipse and the transit of Venus. Both times, I put on the funny glasses and saw something magnificent. Doesn’t God ask us to do that over and over? Can we take the time to stop what we are doing no matter how important it seems and glimpse the world through God’s eyes?

I was struck at our first Who is My Neighbor? gathering at the depth of need in our zip code alone. It’s rather staggering. I’m not sure where these conversations will take us, but I know that we are seeking to be faithful to the world outside our walls. That means being willing to set our own agenda aside and tune into what God sees every day.

We think that life will go a certain way, but one day we wake to a cancer diagnosis, to the death of someone we love, or find our world rocked by a terrible accident. In the aftermath of events that leave us spinning, one thing remains. God is with us. God is greater than we can fathom. We are in this boat together. We cannot predict what will happen as we set out onto the water, but we know that God will not abandon us. We have story after story to remind us – Abraham and Sarah left the world they knew and traveled with God to a new homeland. Moses and his followers walked with God through the wilderness with enough manna for each day. Esther discovered God’s faithfulness as she stuck her neck out for her people. God comes to Job in his suffering and shows him a world larger than he ever dreamed. The disciples were blown away as Jesus calmed the storm that seemed likely to kill them. They were stunned by the one they thought they knew and asked, “Who is this that we follow?”

Look around this nave, this ship, at the others traveling with us. Notice that we are not traveling alone. Now close your eyes and try and imagine what is beyond our ship. Can you see what God sees? Can you see God in the vastness of the cosmos we inhabit? Perhaps it’s time that we all put on our funny glasses and see what God is calling us to see.

June 17, 2012
The Rev. Brian C. Taylor
Seeds growing to fruition

I hate to admit it, but until this spring, it had been  37 years since I’d put in a vegetable garden. Back in Vermont, where I lived back then, all you had to do was throw the seed in the ground and wait. The soil was fertile, and it actually rained. The real work was in hacking back the jungle that surged out of the ground.

Well, it’s different here, but I’m still amazed at how life comes out of dry seeds, water, and dirt. Tomatoes, chiles, and cucumbers are already forming, and I’ve been using herbs for weeks. Coming up out of the earth is green, flavorful, nutritious and life-giving life. If that isn’t proof of God, I don’t know what is.

Jesus knew that. He often used agricultural metaphors, as he does today. It sounds like Vermont: scattering seed, we sleep and rise night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows, we know not how, and then lo and behold, the earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. The kingdom of God is like that, Jesus says. Working within, grace is like a small, underground seed that takes on a life of its own, eventually growing to fruition.

We were talking about this last week when I was meeting with other CREDO faculty to create a new wellness conference for recently ordained clergy. We thought about how we would probably never see their ministries come to fruition. But we could imagine it. We hoped that our wellness conference would be like a seed for them, eventually bearing fruit in hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people’s lives over a number of decades.  

Perhaps your faith journey has been something like this. A seed might have been planted in you in your childhood church, or through the wisdom of a grandmother, or because of some powerful but fleeting moment that opened your heart. What was the seed of faith for you? Whatever it was, it began to take root and develop an inner life of its own. As it grew, perhaps you learned to question a purely material life, or the corrosive nature of worry and resentment. Maybe it pushed you to prayer, study, or even a different kind of work. It has surely borne fruit.

Have you ever wondered what your life would have been like had you never allowed the seed of faith to be planted in you, and had you never nurtured its growth? What would be your state of mind? How would you relate to others, to nature, to suffering and the certainty of death? By contrast, what has been the fruit of this seed that has grown in you? Can you see the effects of grace, over time?

The way in which this growth takes place is, as I’ve often said, a kind of alchemy between our effort and the work of the Spirit. In my garden, I prepared the soil, I planted seeds and watered them. Nothing would have happened had I not. But God caused the seeds to sprout, to push up through the earth, to form vegetables. And neither the growth, nor the specific fruit it produces, is under my control. My chiles may end up hot or mild.

Just so, we have to pray, to focus our minds, to change our habits if we ever want the fruit of God’s life. Nothing will happen if we don’t do some soul-farming. But we cannot produce the fruits on our own. As Jesus said, we sleep and rise night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows, we know not how. Neither do we know the specific outcome of this growth. God may lead us here or there; we can’t predict.

Recently I’ve been reflecting on the same process in our parish. Over nearly 30 years, I’ve seen seeds of faith grow to fruition. Way back, for many years, we put a great deal of emphasis on prayer and personal spirituality. We started contemplative prayer groups, held retreats and quiet days, and encouraged members to take on a rule of life to order their spiritual practices.

This time of intense focus on spirituality was a seed that we were planting. I’ve always said that those who pray - whether at home or in our contemplative group - are the heart of the parish. They are what keeps us all grounded in the Spirit. Every time one of you centers yourself in God and seeks spiritual growth, more seeds are planted. It’s like a field that is constantly being renewed with new seeds, all the time, and we all benefit.

But the Spirit has a life of its own, and didn’t stop there. If it did, we would have been nothing more than a random collection of prayerful individuals. The seeds of individual spirituality grew into something new and unexpected - an emphasis on community. 6 years ago, we sought and found an associate priest who would help us develop programs, celebrate with parties, and strengthen relationships between members.

But the Spirit hasn’t stopped there. If it did, we would eventually be nothing more than a happy little club of like-minded people. I believe that the seeds of spirituality, having sprouted up as a more connected community, are now growing to full maturity. First the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. What will that full grain be?

Your Vestry and clergy, and many of you now, are seeing it as the intention to mature in our mission to the world around us. Not content with individual prayer alone, not content with a community that is more internally connected, we are going to the next stage. We are moving out beyond our walls. Now many of you have done this sort of thing among us for years. But aside from our Food Pantry, outreach has not been an overall parish initiative; it has been done by individuals and small groups. We now have the beginning of a parish-wide movement outwards, where all of us can get involved.

Many of you attended Thursday night’s conversation with Senator Dede Feldman and others while I was still in Florida. I look forward to hearing about it. It was the first of a series of conversations we’re calling Who is My Neighbor? A month from now we’ll be bringing in social workers, parishioners who know our Food Pantry neighbors, people who work with the homeless, and clergy of other congregations whose commitment to service has been mature for a long time.

We will be listening, discerning, waiting for the Spirit to move among us, cooperating with the nudges we sense. As we move with the Spirit, as this alchemy begins to work, we will be led together into greater service. And this will be a sign of further maturity in the faith.

Sometimes when I am with a gathering of parishioners or new members, I ask what it is about St. MIchael’s that they value. Why are you here? All I used to hear was “This is a deeply spiritual place, and my faith is strengthened.” After awhile, I began to hear “This is a wonderful congregation, and I love being a part of it.” These things are undeniably at the very center of our parish. They always will be.

A few years from now, when we gather a group of parishioners or new members, I believe they will say “I am here because of the spirituality, because of the community, yes, but just as importantly, because of the mission that we carry out in the North Valley to the underprivileged. I am here because the whole congregation clearly cares about the world outside its walls.” And when our members consistently say this, we will know that mission and service are just as much at the center of our identity as spirituality and community.

All of this is by the grace of God. We prepare the soil, we water, and we weed; but it is the Spirit who causes both the growth and the specific outcome. We bring in speakers and facilitate conversations; but it is the Spirit that will motivate you to experiment with new forms of mission. But most importantly, it is the Spirit who will produce strong and healthy fruit in the lives of our neighbors whom we serve, fruit we may never, and need never, see.

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June 3, 2012
Trinity Sunday
The Rev. Brian C. Taylor

Every so often one of you comes to me and wants to know how you can live with your religious uncertainties or lack of belief. You like being here, but you just don’t know what to do with the fact that we speak and sing about things that don’t make sense to you: the Virgin birth, the Only Son of God, redemption, heaven, and, of course, God as a Trinity of persons in one being, which we celebrate today.

In responding to you, I often say that it might help you to stop thinking so much. That’s because everything we hear in the Bible, all our theology, the creeds, the hymns - it doesn’t explain anything. It expresses.

Scripture and theology and liturgy are more like poetry than logic. They are stories, metaphor, not instruction manuals for the metaphysical. They’re more like abstract art than a photograph. And the purpose of religious expression, like all poetry, story, and art, is not to put things into neat little packages of understanding, but to lead us into experience.

We can see this distinction at work in the wonderful gospel we just heard. Nicodemus is a teacher, and apparently driven to understand the things of God. So he comes to Jesus, an up-and-coming rabbi, perhaps to do what rabbis often do together, which is to debate the subtleties of the Torah.

But Jesus sees it coming, and before Nicodemus can get into it, he plunges them both into the world of metaphor. Jesus says, in effect, “Get out of your head. Allow yourself to be born anew. Let God blow through you like the wind.” Nicodemus is puzzled, and can only sputter “But how can this be?” Jesus doesn’t unpack it for him. He merely responds “Are you a teacher of Israel, a supposedly religious man, and you don’t experience this? Why, even these fishermen, these children, these women do.”

Let God blow through you? Be born anew? Religion expresses and it leads one into experience; it doesn’t explain. Leave the latter to science. So what do our readings express today, and what experiences do they lead us into, especially as we celebrate God as Holy Trinity?

Anniversaries often cause us to think back to the scene of the crime, and so this last week I’ve been remembering my ordination to the priesthood, which was 30 years ago. One of the strongest memories of that day is of my wife Susanna standing high above us in the cathedral lectern, reading the passage from Isaiah which we heard this morning.

Grace Cathedral was filled with incense that day, as was the temple in Jerusalem, in Isaiah’s vision.  Seraphim hovered about the throne of God. The prophet described the temple being shaken to its foundations, and as I heard it, I couldn’t resist looking up at the columns and roof, 200 feet above, sitting on the fault line in San Francisco, imagining it all coming down in the Big One. Holy, Holy, Holy Lord, God of power and might; heaven and earth are full of your glory! Woe is me, for you are all-seeing, all powerful, and am a small man of unclean lips, and you send me to a people of unclean lips. That’s you, apparently.

This passage, whether read at an ordination or today in our hearing, expresses what it is like to encounter the first person of the Trinity - the Eternal Father, the Great Mother, the Creator, or as the Muslims put it so extravagantly, the Boundless, the Majestic, the Unattainable, the One. And this passage, by contrast, also expresses our relative smallness. All we can do, as Isaiah did, is stand in awe and worship.

Do you ever encounter God like this? Do you experience your life like this sometimes? All it takes is a mountain climb, or a peek through a telescope. Many of us recently put on protective eyewear and watched the moon move into perfect alignment with the sun. In this rare celestial event, we couldn’t help but feel the graceful dance of the heavens, and by contrast, our tiny, fleeting position.

The impulse of all religions to evoke and worship the Boundless, Unattainable One is an effort to lead us into this kind of experience. Why? Because we desperately need to remember the grandeur of it all, so that whatever drama is going on in our life might be put in perspective. We are not just our current feelings and our circumstances. We are a part of something vast, beautiful, and integrated. This awareness can lift us up and set us free. What does it take for you to remember this? And how might you seek it out?

Our readings today express something else about God the Holy Trinity, and about our experience as well - the Son, the Christ, the human and divine in one, and our adoption as holy children of God.

Nicodemus, a person who struggles with his faith, comes to Jesus, a flesh-and-blood person of Nazareth. In the night, these two speak earnestly, urgently. Nicodemus has heard of the miraculous healing, the compassionate mercy Jesus has shown to real people of Galilee, poor people, sick, lost, and suffering. Who are you?, he wants to know. It is an intimate, heart-to-heart moment between two men.

Christianity is a human religion. It is not primarily philosophical or abstract. It is about how we relate to one another, the difficulty of forgiving, the freedom of generosity. We are incarnational; God is found in the untidy, emotional, political realities of this world. Strangely, all of this is not only human and material. It is also filled with the divine. Everywhere. At all times.

And so we Christians peer into friends, enemies, and strangers, straining to see Christ in them. We look at our food and see the Creator’s handiwork. We feel the energy of the divine coursing through our blood, through the synapses of our brain. We wonder how God may be at work in our current struggles. Surely we are flawed, limited, and very human, but we are not only this. We are also a part of God’s vast body, an incarnation.

This, I think, is what Paul was expressing in our second reading today. When we reach for God, he says, it is the Spirit within us bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God. And if we are children, then there is no fear; instead, there is goodness and trust.

This, too, is helpful to remember, to reach towards the God who is already here, within and among us. Can you trust this presence in you, this larger sense of self? It is already a part of who you are, divinity mingled with your humanity.

Finally, our readings today express something about  the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit. Jesus speaks of being born of the Spirit in that strange nighttime conversation. Nicodemus is astonished, perplexed, so Jesus uses a simile.

It is like the wind, he says. The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. Did you ever try to see the wind? You can’t, of course. You can feel it on your skin. You can see its effects in the trees. You can taste the grit that it carries through the desert air. But you can’t see the wind itself. And Jesus says, you don’t know where it came from or where it will go next.

We live in a culture that emphasizes personal agency. If we are intentional, set our goals, plan our steps, and discipline our actions, we’ll do great things. Sometimes this is very effective. But there is also another way, the way that religion offers to us, the way of the Spirit.

As you open yourself to God’s Spirit - through baptism, Eucharist, prayer, meditation, or by surrendering your imagined omnipotence - that Spirit manifests a life of its own. It works within you, unseen, in coordination with your efforts, producing a divine/human alchemy that will take you into new territory. And what a relief that is, to know that we do not have to make ourselves new, all on our own.

And so today, on this Feast of the Holy Trinity, we celebrate the God of power and might whose glory fills the universe; the God who takes on human form in Jesus, in you, in this mortal plane; and the God who blows through us like the wind, helping us in our struggle to be born anew.

I have no explanations for you, no neat little three-in-one package. All I have is a handful of metaphor, poetry, and story that express something about the richness of life in God. Hopefully they will help you to move into the experience they promise, and encourage you to trust in it more fully.