Scandal, August 23, 2015, The Rev'd. Dr. Richard Smith

The sun is warm,
The wind is wild
The grass is green along the shores,
Here no bull can hide

The teacher held up his staff and waved it before his monks.
"If you call this a staff," he said, "you deny its eternal life.
If you do not call this a staff, you deny its present fact. Tell
me just what do you propose to call it?"

And here’s one you’ve heard many times:

What is the sound of one hand clapping?

These are koans from the Zen masters. A koan is a riddle without a logical answer. To the casual reader some of these riddles will seem utter nonsense.

“The purpose of the koans,” one Zen teacher writes, “is to break the mind of logic. What the master wants of the pupil is not understanding in any usual sense. He wants to "burst the bag," and drive the pupil with whole-souled precipitation into [enlightenment].”

Jesus is using a similar teaching method in today’s gospel, but instead of koans, he scandalizes his disciples. The Greek word scandalon means a stumbling block, something you trip over as you pursue your spiritual journey.

“Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them...whoever eats me will live because of me.” His words here are a scandal, a stumbling block. Many people, once they hit that stumbling block, give up the journey.

Those of us who grew up in the faith are hearing this after centuries of teaching and practice of the Eucharist, so we’ve gotten used to this imagery, but for those hearing it for the first time, you can’t blame them for doing a 180 degree pivot. The words are a stumbling block.

But as with a Zen koan, if you can hang in there, that very stumbling block will lead you to a deeper understanding and a fuller life.

Jesus does this. He scandalizes people. A lot.

He’s like Georgia O’Keeffe, the artist known for her amazing paintings of flowers. The paintings are huge and colorful and in your face. She says why she paints them this way:

When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else. Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to look at a flower. I want them to see it whether they want to or not.

And like O’Keeffe, Jesus in today’s gospel wants to make sure we, in all our rushing around, really, really come to understand a profound paradox, whether we want to or not.

This particular stumbling block points us beyond an either-or kind of consciousness common among Greek thinkers in John’s day: time versus eternity, the good versus the bad, truth versus falsehood, life versus death, male versus female, past versus future, darkness versus light, earth versus heaven.

One of these oppositions in John’s time was flesh versus spirit. Many Greek philosophers saw flesh as evil, spirit as good. The spiritual path required disciplining and denying the flesh for the sake of the spirit. We in the West are heirs of this philosophy. It helps explain today’s cultural distrust and disregard of the body and many of our taboos against sex and women.

Over against this split, John says starkly: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” The Creator spirit who existed before time entered fully into our human flesh. Now there’s no more split, and this is the paradox Jesus wants his disciples to grasp here: that flesh is charged with spirit, earth is wedded to heaven.

You can no longer say that becoming spiritual is at the expense of your body--your bones and muscles and ligaments, your pleasures and pains, your delight in good food and music and sex, your physical health, your veins and arteries, your breath and heartbeat. All these bodily things are charged with spirit because the Word has become flesh.

This opens a new spiritual appreciation. As one spiritual writer puts it,

As our senses sharpen, we pick up the buzzing of the bees and the rustling of the wind through the leaves. We become aware of the remarkable artistry in the veining of every leaf and bird feather. Inevitably, at some point, we sense the musculature beneath our own thin skin that miraculously holds us at 98.6 degrees in both snow and blistering sun. We wiggle our toes and stretch our arms and enjoy the sun or perhaps the taste of a raindrop on our tongue. This is God’s gift of sensuality awakening--becoming more sensitive and appreciative. 

This oneness of flesh and spirit has implications for how we live, because this spiritual path demands a profound love for our bodies, a concern for what we eat, the substances we put into our bodies, how we exercise, make love. It involves not subjecting ourselves to the absurd Barbie-doll and Ken-doll body images the media present to us. It involves creating living environments for ourselves and each other that are healthy and beautiful. This spiritual path is very fleshy.

And this oneness of flesh and spirit has implications for life in our larger society.

• In a gentrifying city like ours, with the bodies of so many families and seniors being evicted from their homes and ending up on the sidewalk, this oneness insists on the basic human right to decent physical shelter.
• In a culture of rape, this oneness of flesh and spirit involves women stepping forward to demand respect for their bodies, and the rest of us honoring that demand. 
• In a racist culture, when black and brown bodies are confined to ghettos and prisons and detention centers and many times beaten and killed, this oneness of flesh and spirit involves people of color demanding respect for their bodies as well, and our society honoring and protecting those bodies. 

Te-nehisi Coates, a black writer, reflects on what honoring his body has meant for him as a black man:

You preserved your life [as a black person] because your life, your body, was as good as anyone’s, because your blood was as precious as jewels… You do not give your precious body to the billy clubs of Birmingham sheriffs nor to the insidious gravity of the streets. Black is beautiful--which is to say that the black body is beautiful, that black hair must be guarded against the torture of processing and lye, that black skin must be guarded against bleach, that our noses and mouths must be protected against modern surgery. We are all our beautiful bodies and so must never be prostrate before barbarians, must never submit our original self...to defiling and plunder.

Because the word has become flesh, spirit and flesh are now one. In scandalous words--eat my flesh, drink my blood--Jesus guides us to embrace and honor that oneness.

At the end of this passage, after many have left, Jesus turns to his apostles and says, “Have I scandalized you? Will you also leave?”

This joining of flesh with spirit, with all its implications and demands, can be for us, as it was for them, a stumbling block, leaving us with a choice: to leave what seems on the surface a very strange and grotesque spiritual path, or to continue with just enough trust and a wild hunch that these scandalous words of Jesus just might lead us to life.

St. Mary the Virgin, August 15, 2015, the Rev'd. Dr. Richard Smith

I want to say a few things about Mary herself and then about her song in today’s gospel.

• She was a teenage Jewish girl from a fourth world country, a country under brutal occupation by a foreign power. 
• Despite the efforts of Western artists to portray her as white, she in fact had dark skin, dark brown eyes, and dark hair. 
• Some English translations say she was a handmaiden, which sounds nice, but the Greek word Luke uses is “doulos,” which means slave or servant. She was a servant girl in a fourth world occupied country. 
• And her name was Mary, a Hebrew name with two meanings. The first meaning is bitterness. She lived in a bleak time of struggle. Like many of her fellow Jewish women from Miriam on down, Mary knew the bitterness that her own people experienced under the slavery and oppression of foreign nations, from Egypt to Babylon to Rome. Like them she struggled to keep hope alive in her people.
• The second meaning of her name is rebellion. Not the Mary meek and mild of Hallmark Christmas cards, she is the one who rebels against anything that crushes the human spirit.

And this young woman is betrothed to marry Joseph when, in a powerful moment, she suddenly has an extreme makeover. She becomes not only pregnant and a mother, but also a powerful prophet who sings the revolutionary words of the Magnificat.

God, she says, 

...has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.

Words you might not expect, from a slave girl in an occupied land. Where did this powerful song of hers come from?

These words emerge not from the hot political winds of her day, but from a deeper place, a moment of solitude. Away from all the ruckus and the noise, in an annunciation she had heard an angel say to her: “Rejoice, highly favored one!”  She took those words in. They transformed her. 

Seeing herself as a beloved child of God with an infinite beauty and dignity, she is able to discern the ways God is moving and acting in her own individual story and that of her people. She says Yes. Out of her solitude she embraces a new calling, steps into a new, larger identity as both a mother and a powerful prophet.

It starts in solitude. Her words are grounded in a profound relationship with God, with the child in her womb, and with her own people.

In our society we are inclined to avoid this kind of hidden solitude. We want to be seen and acknowledged. We want to be useful to others and influence the course of events.

As Henri Nouwen writes: “When we enter into solitude to be with God alone, we quickly discover how dependent we are.  Without the many distractions of our daily lives, we feel anxious and tense.  When nobody speaks to us, calls on us, or needs our help, we start feeling like nobodies.  Then we begin wondering whether we are useful, valuable, and significant.  Our tendency is to leave this fearful solitude quickly and get busy again to reassure ourselves that we are "somebodies."  But that is a temptation, because what makes us somebodies is not other people's responses to us but God's eternal love for us. To claim the truth of ourselves we have to cling to our God in solitude as to the One who makes us who we are.”

In the normal comings and goings of our lives, responding to other’s reactions and evaluations and judgments of us can leave us alienated from ourselves, distorted. We can lose touch with our true selves. We can create what early teachers in the church called false selves, distortions of who we were called to be.

I’ve mentioned before the story of the guy who went to buy a suit. He’s standing in front of the mirror and says to the sales clerk, “The sleeves are too long.” The sales clerk says, “Oh, no, sir. The sleeves are fine. Look, you just need to hold your shoulders a little higher and stretch out your hands a little farther. Like that. See, the sleeves are fine.” The man says, “Yeah, but, look, one pant leg is longer than the other.” The clerk says, “No, no, sir. If you just slightly bend one leg, like this, the legs are fine.” The man says, “Yes, but look, one shoulder seems higher than the other.” “Oh, no, sir,” insists the sales clerk. “If you just hold your left shoulder like so… There, the shoulders are even now.” Reluctantly, the man decides to buy the suit and to wear it home. As he is walking out the door, trying hard to keep his suit in place, two elderly women are watching. One says, “Oh, did you see that poor man, how crippled and twisted he looks.” The other woman says, “Yes, but did you notice how nice his suit looks!” 

In our day-to-day lives, responding to all the reactions and evaluations and judgments others have of us can leave us alienated and distorted like that guy with the suit. We can lose touch with our true selves.

But if we can step away from the crowd, as Mary does in that moment of annunciation, then solitude can be a place of purification where we can find our true selves as beloved sons and daughters of God. We can connect with the source of our strength, discern the fullness God is calling us to.

In our neighborhood right now, many poor families and senior citizens are being evicted from their homes. With all the new luxury condos being built, the market value of property is going up. Landlords are seizing the opportunity to raise their rents sometimes by 50 and 100%. 

And in our neighborhood and all across the country, many young people of color continue to die from gun violence, often at the hands of the police. From Ferguson, to Charleston, from Michael Brown to Amilcar in our own neighborhood, we’ve seen some bleak moments this past year. 

In the bleakness of her own times, with her own people at times being slaughtered by the Romans, Mary moved into a moment of solitude, and there she heard a call to become larger, more loving, prophetic. I wonder what we might hear today if we, in our own context, listened in solitude as she did. 

James Baldwin, the African-American writer, was an insightful critic of both Christianity and of religion in general. He rightly rebelled against the ways religion, in the face of cruelty and injustice, was often used to constrict and paralyze the human spirit, especially the spirits of African-Americans. He wrote at one point, “If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him.”

He’s right. If your own image of God crushes you with anxiety, diminishes you in the face of the world’s challenges, constricts your compassion for those suffering around you, and diminishes your joy, then you’re better off being an atheist. Better to have no God than a God who diminishes you like that. 

Because this cannot be the true God. This is not the God whom Mary encounters in her solitude and from which emerges her powerful Magnificat. This is not the God who waits to speak to our own hearts in this neighborhood and this country at this critical moment.

One of the early teachers in the church said that “the glory of God is the human person fully alive.” 

This is the God that Mary encounters, the one who calls her to be more fully alive. 

This is the God that St. Paul says gives us “not a spirit of timidity, but one of power, and love, and a good mind.” 

This is the God who speaks to us, calls to us, as he did to Mary. 

The popular American spiritual writer Marianne Williamson puts it beautifully. “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Mary emerges from her solitude with a new stride, a new and larger sense of herself, a new song, “My soul magnifies the Lord.” We should take her words at face value: that God becomes bigger, magnified, by this young woman's unique soul. Over time, the unique shape of her life will make God more God than before. This was the calling she heard and said yes to in that moment of solitude when she was able to hear the angel’s words.

I wonder what song would emerge from our own hearts if you and I-- as individuals, as a parish, in our own contexts--entered into the kind of solitude that Mary did. What would we look like?

Would we emerge larger, full of more life, more love, more joy, more compassion, more justice? 

In the new expansiveness of our own souls we discovered there, how would we in our own ways make God bigger?

Touching the Fringe of His Cloak, the Rev'd Jackie Cherry, July 19, 2015 – Proper 11, Yr B

They begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak;
and all who touched it were healed.

Imagine, the sick on their mats at the marketplace need only touch the fringe of his cloak to be healed. Where is Jesus? Has anybody seen Jesus? The whole world needs his cloak.

Most of you know that I had a miraculous healing 4 months ago. I rejected my transplanted kidney that I had had for 20 years, and for seven months I struggled to stay alive. During that period, I asked for prayers, but I didn’t pray for healing. My prayer was that I remember God is with me. Always.

My friends asked me what they should pray for. When I told our congregational Dean of Prayer, Liz Specht to pray for God’s will, she said, No, that’s not going to help me; I need to know what specifically to pray for so I can tell other people what they need to pray for. Liz was insistent, so I gave her some details: I need prayers for breath; I need prayers for the water in my body to shift away form my heart and lungs and move back into my vascular system; and I need prayers for an O+ kidney that I don’t have antibodies against. This information satisfied Liz, and learned how to text so she could transmit her prayers via social media.

I want you to know that the last prayer for an O+ kidney that I didn’t have antibodies against was theoretically impossible; immunological studies had revealed that I have antibodies against 100% of the population.

This crisis began last August with the doctors at UCSF trying aggressively to stop the rejection. I was given round the clock infusions for 3 days and then discharged. Once home, Sarah Lawton called several times. I didn’t answer the calls; I was in no condition to talk and I did not want visitors. But you know the way Sarah works relentlessly for social justice in the national church, and in the world - she’s a powerhouse, and in that vein she was resolute in changing my no visitor policy.  I buckled and allowed her to come over. Sarah found me in bed in my dim disheveled room. She sat beside me and said I want to give you my kidney. And then, as if she were standing on the podium on the floor of the House of Deputies, Sarah recited an eloquent outline of the reasons why I should accept her gift.

• I have been thinking about this for 10 years;
• My kids are independent now;
• I am very healthy;
• You are my son’s Godmother;
• You are my sister in Christ;
• In Christ we are one body and I have what you need.

Sarah punctuated her compelling list with this question:
Can you think of anybody more qualified to give you a kidney?  I couldn’t think of anybody more qualified.
Will you accept my kidney? Yes I will. And we both cried.

Do you remember when I said, I asked for prayers, but I didn’t pray for healing?
Well, I was healed the moment Sarah offered me her kidney. Don’t get me wrong,
I was still sick as a dog - every system in my body was failing. But Sarah’s offer broke open my heart to the immense love that surrounded me that I didn’t even know was there. I was overwhelmed. The only words I could muster were, I didn’t know you loved me so much.

It didn’t stop there. From every direction, in ways I never expected, again and again, an outpouring of love knocked me over until it seeped fully into my bones. Kevin and Kathy, Michael Clark and even a stranger offered their kidneys. I asked for prayers,
but I didn’t pray for healing because I had already been healed.
We found out in November that I wasn’t compatible with any of my living donors.
To stay alive, dialysis was my only option. During dialysis blood is pumped out of the body and filtered through an artificial kidney, known as a hemodialyzer, to remove waste, chemicals and excess fluid. The bodies total blood volume is circulated through the machine several times during each treatment. Dialysis clinics, at least the two that I’ve seen, are isolation pits with no natural light, occupied mostly by old people who will never be candidates for transplants. Each station consists of a hard, blue vinyl reclining chair, the huge dialysis machine, and a TV. While the blood is cycling through the artificial kidney the waste is shunted into an elaborate plumbing system that’s built into the wall. All of us hooked up the machines have no chance of life without the grueling treatment. Most all of the patients arrived alone, sat alone for the 3 or 4 hour treatment and left alone.

My dialysis schedule was T, TH, F and S. If there were no complications, each session lasted 4 hours. During the 5 months I was on dialysis, I only had 2 or 3 sessions without complications. The truth is, despite all the pain that I suffered, and all the suffering I watched those around me endure, I began to look forward to my dialysis days. You see, I had a group of people, all of whom are from this congregation, who volunteered to drive me week after week, month after month. And they didn’t just drive. Every Saturday Birgit and DD stayed with me through the whole thing. Jan had Tuesdays, Liz drove to San Francisco from Mill Valley on Thursdays. Jack, Judy and Rebecca were all over the calendar whenever I needed them. Sarah got off work early to take the Bart back to the city so she could pick me up. Heather and Kathy spent their Christmas in the clinic with me. I could go on and on. With their love, my friends lit up that dark dialysis room, by their presence I was comforted. And everybody, the doctors, nurses, technicians and patients witnessed it. They told me how lucky I was to have such a huge support network; they had never seen anything like it.

But I wonder if they really knew what they were seeing. During that time, I was just trying to survive. It’s only when I looked back that I recognized not just the fringe, but the entire cloak.

They begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak;
and all who touched it were healed.

+++
I want to change my tack here and give you a few statistics.

• As of April 22 of this year there are 101,662 people awaiting kidney transplants.
• On average, over 3,000 new patients are added to the kidney waiting list each month.
• 12 people die each day while waiting for a kidney
• Every 14 minutes someone is added to the kidney transplant list.
• In 2014, 4,270 patients died while waiting for a kidney transplant.
• And another 3,617 people became too sick to receive a kidney transplant.

With so many serious medical complications, I wasn’t cleared for surgery until mid-March. It was only a week after I was listed on the National Kidney Registry when I got the call from UCSF with the news they had found a compatible kidney. The transplant surgery was on March 21st.

At the end of June I received this letter:

Dear recipient,
Writing a letter like this is difficult to say the least. I’m not sure what to say or how to address you. I’ll just begin.
Several months ago you received the most honorable gift a person can give; life. You received life from my husband Russ. With his death, the past few months have been trying. One thing that has helped me through this transition without him is knowing he gave renewed hopes and dreams to you and your family.
My husband worked in Alaska managing projects like the building of power plants and large commercial retailers. He spent his free time outdoors and with his family. We had a fulfilling life together fishing, traveling, snowmobiling, hiking and raising our daughter. We were always planning our next adventure. As an all-Alaska kind of guy he loved the mountains. Russ made good choices and challenged others to do the same. He had an eternal optimism, contagious smile, and infectious spirit unmatched by anyone. He made his friends and family better people, and he made us smile even when we thought we couldn’t; Russ continues to make me smile. He loved his little girl Ridgely without question. She was seven months old when he was killed in an avalanche while snowmobiling in the mountains he so loved. He was 33.
With his death I grieve the loss of the one I loved most deeply, the one I was closest to, and the man who protected me and made me whole. I shared the ultimate partnership and friendship with Russ. I built my life, my home and my future with him. He was my soul.

While our daughter may never remember her daddy, she will surely know him through the stories and memories of friends and family. Through the eyes of our daughter he lives on. He lives on through you.
My wish for you is to honor my husband and “climb your mountain.”
Sincerely, 
Kolbey

Here is what I know - by the love of my friends, all living cloaks, I was healed. I don’t think this to be the miracle. It was compassion, and generous love put into action in the manner of Jesus and his disciples. This was not divine intervention - it was good people practicing the gospel of Jesus.

The death of a 33-year old man wasn’t the lack of a miracle.  It was a tragic accident
that left a 7-month old baby girl without her father and a grieving wife without her husband.

The miracle as I see it is that Russ may have had the only kidney in the world that would save my life, and he had chosen to be an organ donor. He didn’t die because I needed a kidney. He just died. And here I stand, wrapped in the cloak of Jesus with prayers of gratitude for our remarkable medical technology and the ordinary people who choose to be donors.

Drops in the bucket, July 5, 2015, the Rev'd Robert Cromey

What is a prophet? Not profit.

A prophet is a person is regarded as an inspired teacher or proclaimer of the will of God.

Today, prophetic voices are those who follow the radical teachings of Jesus. They do not predict the end of the world. They are teachers who teach humanity. Much of the political and business world teaches and worships money. That is the word profit not prophet.

Jesus comes into his hometown. He is a famous teacher and healer.
His neighbor immediately questions him. How come he talks like this? How did he get so smart? Is he a wise guy? His dad is only a carpenter! They also say, “He is only the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon.”

Jesus says, “Prophets are not without honor, except in their home town, and among their own kin and in their own house.” He is discouraged.

The writer gives us throwaway line. “Yet he leaves after healing a few sick people and cured them. He went on with his work anyway.” He heals the sick while getting out of town.

This weekend celebrates the Declaration of Independence. Brave English citizens living in the American colonies chose to become independent of their mother country England. The signers of the Declaration of Independence could have been hanged as traitors to their country. The signed the declaration. They were prophets of a new country and a new world. And they were without honor in their own country – England.

Bishop Pike in the 60s was a strong voice for civil rights for African Americans and free speech opposing censorship of book and movies. He was brought up on charges of heresy in the House of Bishops of our church. He was without honor in his own country.

Paul Moore, great Bishop of New York, chose to hide his gayness so he could preach love and acceptance for gays and Lesbians. LGBT had not been defined in his day. He was a prophet without honor in his own country.

Brea Newsome made a wonderful direct action in pulling down the Confederate flag at the South Carolina capital.

What’s also interesting about this to me is the outsized role single activists can sometimes have in moving conversations forward, setting off new movements, and exposing the power structure that oppresses people. Most of us are simply not going to climb that flagpole. But we probably should. ...

Lonely acts can sometimes prompt vast movements. But lonely acts will often -- usually -- sink without a ripple. What's hard is to predict which actions will make enduring waves. What Newsome did certainly amplified a cresting tide already in motion. She's won an honored place in the long river of resistance -- but she is certainly not alone.” She is a prophet without honor in her hometown.

In the Nuba Mountains of Sudan Dr. Tom Catena, a Catholic missionary from Amsterdam, N.Y., is the only doctor at the 435 bed Mother of Mercy hospital in the far south of Sudan. He is the only doctor for a population of more than a half million people. The area is under constant bombardment and shells from the Sudanese government. It is up to Dr. Tom to pry out shrapnel from women’s flesh and amputate limbs of children as he delivers babies and removes appendixes.

There is no telephone, electricity, or running water. Obviously no X-Ray machine. Dr. Tom has worked in the Nuba Mountains 24/7 for eight years. Muslims and Christians praise Dr. Tom’s work “People are praying he never dies.”

He is paid $350 a month, no retirement and no health insurance. He is driven by his Catholic faith. “I have been given benefits from the day I was born, a loving family, a great education. I see my work as an obligation, as a Christian and a human being, to help.

A Muslim Chief says Dr. Tom is Jesus Christ. Jesus healed the sick, made the blind see and helped the lame walk – and that is what Dr. Tom does every day.

When we try to do good things we often feel like they are a just a drop in the bucket and don’t do much good. When we write to the President, our senators and representatives it seems like just a drop in a bucket.
However, empty bucket gets filled to overflowing.

Each of us is a drop in the bucket of helping the hungry – Julian Pantry

Drop in the bucket – Fr. Richard leads a Mission Walk against police brutality.

Drop in the bucket – Some hold a sign calling on a Vigil for Justice and peace.

Drop in the bucket - The Julian Pantry is our program for feeding the hungry.

They are all drops in the bucket but after a while the bucket gets full. Look at all the drops in a bucket too bring about the right for LGBT people to have the right to marry.

Crossing over; about the murders in Charleston. June 21, 2015. The Rev'd Dr. Richard Smith

There are no words to capture the pain and anger and horror of what happened in Charleston this week. No words. I’ve read and listened to many words -- from the President’s to Jon Stewart’s to the New York Times’ to several pastors’. Their words, no matter how eloquent, all fall short of what happened, and I know mine will, too.

It would not be so hard if this were simply a matter of someone’s mental instability. But this is not mental illness. This is profound and ugly racial hatred.

It would not be so hard if this were simply an isolated case, a particular bad apple. But it’s not. This is part of a larger sinful fabric in which we are, each of us in one way or another, implicated. 

One Navajo scholar has lamented just how profoundly broken we are, how deeply this ugly sin of racism runs in our American DNA. He writes,  

Today I lament, I mourn over the life of each and every person that was violently taken in Charleston South Carolina. 

I lament that a 5 year old child was robbed of her innocence and forced to "play" dead in order to survive. 

I lament that today, the confederate flag is still flying in the Capitol of South Carolina. 

I lament the roots of dehumanization that exist within the founding documents of the United States of America; in our Declaration of Independence, our Constitution and our Supreme Court case precedents. 

[He’s referring to that document we’ll so proudly read across the country in a few days on the Fourth of July. Just a few lines after it so nobly proclaims that “All men are created equal,” it refers to Native Americans, the very people we slaughtered as we stole their lands and livelihoods, as “Indian savages”.]

He continues,

I lament that our nation continues to celebrate its racist foundations with holidays like Columbus Day, sports mascots like the Washington Redskins and the putting of faces like Andrew Jackson on our currency. 

I lament the deaths of Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and countless others. 

[We could add Amilcar and Alex who were killed by the police near our church.] 

I lament the words of our political candidates who promise to lead America back to its former "greatness", ignorant of the fact that much of America's "greatness" was built on the exploitation and dehumanization of its people of color. 

I lament that today the dominant culture in America is in shock because in the city of Charleston South Carolina one individual committed a single evil and heinous act of violence, while minority communities throughout the country are bracing themselves because the horrors of the past 500 years are continuing into their lifetime. 

I lament with every person and community, throughout the history of this nation, who, due to the color of their skin, had to endure marginalization, silence, discrimination, beatings, lynching, cultural genocide, boarding schools, internment camps, [immigration detention centers,] mass incarceration, broken treaties, stolen lands, murder, slavery and [the doctrine of] discovery.

Lamentations by a Native American at the profundity of the evil unleashed in Charleston.

Today’s gospel is about a crossing over. Jesus and the disciples are crossing a lake. A storm arises, and the disciples get paralyzed with fear. Jesus, in that terrifying moment, gives them a teaching.

And maybe that teaching can speak to us this morning, give us a sense of how to stand, how to speak and act in this time of our own crossing over.

For we as Americans are crossing over. The racial, cultural, and economic makeup of our country is changing dramatically. This crossing over arouses fear and exposes some of our worst features: profound racism and white privilege, the incarceration of innocent men, women -- and in the case of immigrants, entire families -- all the police shootings, the displacement of so many poor families and seniors from their homes, and, most recently the murders in Charleston.

It is a time of profound upheaval and change, and in this crossing over, we, like the disciples, now find ourselves in a violent storm. 

Many scholars say that Mark intended this gospel story to be a metaphor for his own community’s struggle at the hands of the Roman Empire: Rome is literally slaughtering them, destroying their culture, forcing them to worship Caesar, stealing their modest wages in heavy taxes to the Emperor and leaving them and their families impoverished. In that context, the hope of throwing off Roman oppression was stirring, the hope of crossing over to a new world more rich in possibilities for life. Could a storm be far off?

They were crossing over, and along the way a storm arose. And Jesus, as the story goes, falls sleeps. And the fury of the waves becomes too much, and so the disciples wake him, they shout at him “Don’t you care that we are being destroyed?”

Then, after he has calmed the winds and the waves, but before they reach the other shore, Jesus offers these trembling disciples some challenging words. 

In Greek these words are often translated, “Why are you afraid? Where is your faith?” But I think they are better translated, “Why are you so timid?” It’s a subtle difference. The Greek word here is the same one Paul uses, for example, when he writes to Timothy, “God did not give us a spirit of timidity. He gave us a spirit of power, and of love, and of a good mind.”

So in the very midst of the storm Jesus is challenging the disciples “Why are you so timid? Where is your faith?” This is no time for cowering, for being shy, for being cynically resigned as though this is just the normal way of things. This perilous, terrifying moment requires all the more boldness and all the more love. 

Just when all hell is breaking loose and they are losing everything, when they have nothing left to hang onto and God seems to be asleep and they feel so helpless and fear is in their throats, Jesus is challenging them not to be timid, but to live out of their faith. 

Their faith that, despite all evidence to the contrary, God will not leave them to face this violent storm alone. And that same God empowers them, urges them now, in the face of this violent storm and all this bloodshed and oppression, to stand boldly and to speak and live their truth. 

A couple of days ago in Charleston, several family members of the slain spoke to Dylann Roof, the man who killed their loved ones. After a number of them had spoken, the granddaughter of one of the victims said  “Although my grandfather and the other victims died at the hands of hate ... everyone's plea for your soul is proof that they lived in love.” And then she added with boldness and determination, “Hate won't win." 

This is how it works sometimes for followers of Jesus: In the midst of the storm, with all the hate and trauma and grief, with tears running down your cheeks, and your knees shaking, you live, speak, act not with timidity but with boldness, out of your faith.

“God did not give us a spirit of timidity. He gave us a spirit of power, and of love, and of a good mind.”

Could the teaching of Jesus in today’s gospel guide us in our current crossing over? What might it mean for you personally to live, speak, and act boldly at this hour?

Let me close with the words of South Africa’s Alan Boesak: “When we go before Him, God will ask, "Where are your wounds?" And we will say, "I have no wounds." And God will ask, "But why? Was there nothing worth fighting for?”

Seeds, June 14, 2015, the Rev'd Dr Richard Smith

Two very different parables about seeds in today’s gospel. Each parable reveals a very different facet of this disruptive and uncontrollable thing we call the kingdom of God.

The first parable urges us to trust a natural growth process that happens when a seed is planted.

There is the story of the man who sowed seed in his field, and every day dug up the soil to see how the seed was doing. He wanted to catch each moment in the interaction between seed and soil and intervene in their natural lovemaking. He did not trust the seed and soil to grow without his ongoing tweaking. Needless to say, nothing ever grew.

The parable of Jesus in today’s gospel offers a different strategy. Once contact is made between seed and soil, between the word of God and the human heart, a process of development begins. This process is more mysterious than we know and we should not interfere with it, not try to tweak it. It’s a matter of paying attention to that process, of trusting it, cooperating with it. Paying attention.

Pay attention to where God at work in the world around you.
Where is love breaking out, justice being pursued, freedom being won, human dignity being insisted on and restored?

Pay attention to where God at work in your own heart.

• Where do you find beauty?
• When does your heart melt?
• When do you get goosebumps?
• When does your heart begin to race from a new sense of purpose? 
• When do you feel outrage at injustice, and find hope in an otherwise dark moment? 

All of these are signs of God’s presence, and it’s a matter of being actively attentive to them both within and around us, trusting them.

And then, when the harvest arrives, cooperating with that process, going into the field with our sickles to bring in the crop.

But most of the time, it’s a matter of waiting patiently, with trust.

Sometimes finding our deepest joy and purpose in life is less a matter of some dramatic action, some heroic decision made in haste, perhaps out of fear of never finding it, than it is of simply going about the rhythms of our days, “sleep and rise night and day”, trusting that God is at work in our lives, leading us step-by-step to a fuller and richer life; the seed is slowly germinating and growing into the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head, then the abundant harvest, then the bread.

Our task most of the time is simply to pay attention to what is God is doing, often very subtly, hidden and underground, both within and around us.

The writer Nikos Kazantzakis tells us that once when he was a boy he noticed a cocoon stuck to a tree; a butterfly was about to emerge. He waited a while, but it was taking too long, so he decided to warm the cocoon with his breath. The butterfly finally emerged but its wings were still stuck together and it died soon afterwards.

Kazantzakis says, “I just couldn’t wait for the sun to complete the necessary process of patient maturation. That small corpse is until this very day one of the heaviest burdens on my conscience. But that’s what made me understand what a true mortal sin is: trying to force the great laws of the universe. We have to have patience, wait for the right time and then follow confidently the rhythm that God has chosen for our lives.”

The second parable about the mustard seed reveals a very different facet of this uncontrollable kingdom: This kingdom is very disruptive.

I’ve always liked this story of the mustard seed, found comfort in it. The mustard seed is so small, but grows into a huge shrub. Like my faith, so small and fragile, that can, with God’s grace, do great things. I still find a much-needed comfort in this understanding of this story--an encouraging, hopeful word.

But did you know there’s another side to the mustard seed? The shrub it grows into is a nuisance that will, if you let it, destroy your whole carefully planned garden. This is not like the beautiful, powerful Cedars of Lebanon we sing about in the psalms. This is a bitter-smelling shrub, about 3-4 feet tall, that shoots out uncontrollably in all directions. It can overrun your whole garden.

And that, Jesus says, is what the kingdom of God is like. Watch out!

Every Sunday around this table we pray, “Your kingdom come.” But be careful what you pray for! You have been warned! Like a mustard seed disrupts your awesome garden, the kingdom of God will disrupt your life.

It’s like falling in love, or deciding to raise a kid. Perhaps a carefully planned career path gets tossed aside. You spend your time and money differently. You discover new joys and delights, and you sacrifice some things you thought you could never live without. The kingdom is disruptive like that, like love.

That kingdom drove Martin Luther King to Selma, Rosa Parks to the front of the bus, many of the Freedom Fighters to have their legs broken, Cesar Chavez to Delano. It is, I suspect, what draws many of us to this part of the city, to worship here--in a tragic and beautiful neighborhood like this, a crazy community like ours--when, if we had more sense, we’d be reading the New York Times in some trendy coffee shop, or doing brunch.

And into your carefully planned garden, the mustard shrub attracts birds--birds that are unwelcome because they will eat whatever other seeds or fruit you may be trying so hard to grow.

As the word of Jesus takes root in your heart, you’ll begin to notice people starting to cross your path seeking shelter from their storms. Don’t say you were not warned. They will find you.

They might come, like many come here to St. John’s, after a night on the streets asking for coffee and a few bucks for a Big Mac, or on a Saturday morning for a bag of groceries.
Sometimes they might be like the family we met-- Ricardo and Amelie and Nicole--who needed our help to keep their family from being torn apart, from Ricardo being unjustly deported to Guatemala where his life would be in danger.
Or they might be like the young ex-gangbanger who was trying to start a new life, who needed a few odd jobs to earn some money, and later some help to bury his girlfriend after she was tragically shot and killed.
Or, in another way, it might be one of the struggling non-profits in the neighborhood who can’t afford today’s high rents for meeting space and who asks to use our church.

The kingdom will completely disrupt our carefully planned worlds. And just as the birds of the air find shelter in the branches of the mustard tree, so people will seek us out for shelter.

So the kingdom is beyond our control. And it is, like a mustard shrub, disruptive, a nuisance.

And yet...and here’s where it gets a little weird...it’s also our hearts’ deepest desire, something we rightly pray for week after week: Your kingdom come. Go figure.

Pentecost; May 24, 2015; The Rev'd Richard Smith, Ph.D.

Here’ a story by theologian Diana Butler Bass:

As the end of Lent 2011 neared, I went to my local bank to deposit some checks. Three tellers were working that morning, all women. One woman wore a pale ivory hijab as a head covering; the second woman's forehead bore the dark red mark known as a bindi; the third woman had a small crucifix hanging around her neck.
I walked up and laughed. "You all look like the United Nations of banking!"
They exchanged glances and smiled.
"You are so right," said the Hindu woman. "You should meet our customers! But we cover a lot of languages between the three of us."
It was a quiet morning. They wanted to talk. I said something about being a vegetarian for Lent. The Hindu woman wanted to give me some family recipes; the Muslim woman wanted to know more about Christian fasting practices.
I shared how we had dedicated Lent that year to eating simply and exploring vegetarian foods from different parts of the world. "When we eat Indian food," I explained, "we try to talk about the church in India or pray for people in India. The same for African and Asian and Latin American countries."
"What a wonderful idea!" the Muslim woman said. "We need to love our traditions and be faithful to our God; but we teach the beauty and goodness of the other religions too."
Her Hindu colleague chimed in, "That is the only way to peace ­­ to be ourselves and to create understanding between all people."
... I glanced at my watch. I needed to get to an appointment. I thanked them for their insights.
"I would wish you a Happy Easter," I said hoping they would hear the sincerity in my voice, "but, instead, I wish you both peace."
I started to walk away when the Muslim teller said to me, "Peace of Jesus the Prophet. And a very happy Easter to you."
And the Hindu woman called out, "Happy Easter!"
When I reached my car, I realized that I was crying. I had only rarely felt the power of the resurrected Jesus so completely in my soul.

What she describes, what brought tears to her eyes, was a Pentecost moment. It was the experience of the early disciples in the first reading when people of different languages and ethnicities and parts of the world connected. A Pentecost moment. It’s what we sometimes find here at St. John’s where Berkeley professors and physicians become friends with­­ -- and stand around this table with­­ -- people for whom simple day­-to-­day survival is often a struggle.

Gathering what has been dispersed. Connecting what is normally fractured.

This is the work of the Spirit. It is what Jesus, a Jew, called Tikkun Olam. The ancient Jewish story is that at the dawn of Creation, when light was created, something happened to shatter that light. It exploded into small shards that scattered throughout the world. And the task of every Jew, a task that Jesus took upon himself as a Jew, was to gather the divine spark found in every human being, from every corner of the world, back into one great light, gathering back into one what had been shattered. Tikkun Olam. Repairing the world. It is the work of the Spirit at Pentecost.

What gets in the way of this gathering, this great healing work? Jesus speaks about this in today’s gospel passage. Drawing from his own Jewish mythology, he has a word for it: Satan.

I know the word Satan can conjure images of the church lady from Saturday Night Live and red devilish figures, but in biblical mythology, Satan is the prosecuting attorney in a huge courtroom, “the accuser of our brothers and sisters” as he would later be called, and, still later, “the enemy of our human nature” whose goal is to crush and destroy the human spirit. Jesus says he is “the ruler of this world”.

The work of Satan is to divide us into “us” and “them”. He does this by “a scapegoating process where the majority can see itself as righteous by accusing a minority or one person of sin and then carrying out a judgment against them.”[1]  It was by this scapegoating that Jesus himself was killed.
Satan is the father of lies who judges, condemns, kills not only Jesus but also all those with whom Jesus identifies: the poor, the vulnerable, and the outcast.

If you are a person of color, or a woman, or LGBT, or someone who is aging, or someone with little or no money, chances are you’ve been on the receiving end of the work of this figure of Satan. We’re aware of it today:

● In Palestine, Syria, Myanmar
● In our own country and neighborhood, where police kill unarmed civilians with impunity, without ever even going to trial, all under the guise of keeping the peace, serving and protecting.
● In our neighborhood and all across our country, where immigrants desperately trying to care for their families, are torn from those same families and sent to detention centers, deported to countries where they often face torture and death.

In our own day, this is the work of what our ancestors would call Satan. And in a few moments, when Oziah is baptized, each of us will be asked point­-blank: “Do you renounce Satan...?” This is what we’re being asked to renounce.

All so that we can enter this great feast of Pentecost, make room for the Spirit, the Advocate, the Defender of the Accused who takes our side, pleads ferociously on our behalf, overturns the condemnation of Satan. No more separation into righteous and unrighteous, pure and impure. Today, the ruler of this world is overthrown. The shards of light are being gathered now; what has been shattered is now reconnecting. This is the work of the Spirit, not only in the larger world but in each of our own hearts where we can sometimes become divided, lose touch with who we are, who God has called us to be. This is the work of the Spirit, reconnecting what has been shattered.

One last thing... I know the usual symbol for this Spirit is a dove, but I prefer the one from Celtic Christianity: the wild goose that represents purity, strength, grace, and a deep and ferocious nurturing of her young. She is caring and protective, but also strong and beyond human control, hard to catch. She is not a tamed creature. Unlike the cooing of the dove, she is loud, noisy, and unrestrained.

This is the Spirit: strong, defiant, a bit disturbing, harsh, and exciting. She takes up our cause, she fights for us. She overturns the condemnation once laid on Jesus and on so many of our brothers and sisters, and perhaps us as well. This Spirit, the Advocate, frees us from the lies and chains of Satan, so we and our brothers and sisters can live and breathe and move -- and do it together.

It is this Spirit we welcome into our midst once again as we celebrate Pentecost. It is this Spirit in which we hope to drench ourselves as we stir once again the waters of baptism -- both for Oziah’s sake and for our own.