Zacchaeus

The Rev'd Richard Smith, Ph.D.

PROPER 26

Twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost
See the video

The other day, I was having coffee with a friend who, many years ago, was a gang member. He got swept up into “the life” when he was a teenager, before he could fully understand what was going on. His family was very poor and needed money, but there were no jobs. So he signed up, got “jumped” into one of the gangs, sold drugs to make money for his family, defended his gang’s turf.

He got into violent combat with rival gangs. And he drove more than one of his best friends to the hospital, watching them bleed to death on the way from gunshot wounds. He called them by their nicknames as he told their stories: Gato, Chuy, Boxer, Mono, Tiny.

When I walk through the neighborhood with him nowadays, his jaws start to clench, his eyes get red, sometimes tears well up. There’s not a street corner in this neighborhood that doesn’t carry the traumatic memory of a friend who once hung out there, who was eventually killed there.

As a teenager wanting to help support his family, my friend had become trapped in a corrupt system that was bigger than him, that he neither understood nor controlled.

Welcome to today’s gospel story about Zacchaeus, the tax collector. Like my ex-gang member friend, he, too, had become caught in a violent and corrupt system. Despite the money it provided, the life of a tax collector was a trap.

Maybe his is a story about you and me, each of us our own kind of Zacchaeus. Each of us caught up in a corrupt system beyond our understanding and control.

Preachers have given Zacchaeus a bad rap. This stems from a mistranslation of the original Greek that Luke wrote his gospel in. I’ll get to that later.

First, just to recap, Zacchaeus was a Jewish man who worked as a wealthy tax collector for the Romans. They were brutally occupying Israel at the time, slaughtering innocent Jews, eventually destroying their sacred temple. Because Zacchaeus was collaborating with the Romans, his fellow Jews considered him a traitor.

How did a Roman tax collector get wealthy? By extorting and embezzling. By taking advantage of the elderly, exploiting the working poor, and taking care of his cronies.

Zacchaeus is not only a traitor to his own people, but also is assumed to be corrupt and deserving of our disdain.

And he was short. When Jesus passed through Jericho, Zacchaeus was so eager to get a look he did something utterly undignified for a man of his station. He ran ahead of the crowd, climbed into a tree, then waited for Jesus to pass by. It would be like a powerful Washington lobbyist or a Wall Street exec shimmying up a street lamppost during a presidential parade.

When Jesus reached that spot, he looked up, saw Zacchaeus, told him to come down, and invited himself to dinner. And so Zacchaeus climbed down and "welcomed Jesus gladly."

The response of the crowd was predictable. Luke says "they began to mutter, ‘Look,’ they said, ‘Jesus has gone to be the guest of a sinner.'"

But Zacchaeus stands his ground against the muttering crowd. And this is where the mistranslation happens. It’s about the tense of the Greek verbs.

Stay with me here.

In the English translation we heard this morning, the verbs are in the future tense. “Half of my possessions...I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much." In this interpretation, Zacchaeus is a sinner who repents and resolves to turn over a new leaf. From this point forward he will make restitution.
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But this is a mistranslation. As more recent scholars have noted, the Greek verbs are and should be translated as present tense. In this interpretation, Zacchaeus is standing his ground before the muttering crowd by explaining what he is already doing: "Lord, I always give half of my wealth to the poor, and whenever I discover any fraud or discrepancy I always make a fourfold restitution."

He’s been going way beyond all the legal requirements. He is, in short, a hidden saint whom people have made all sorts of false assumptions about. The crowd had demonized Zacchaeus. But Jesus now praises him as "a son of Abraham."

This story fits with many others in which Jesus mentions several unlikely heroes — the Roman soldier with faith deeper than any Israelite’s, a "good" Samaritan, the Samaritan leper who was the only person to give thanks for his healing, not to mention that other tax collector at the back of the temple who was more righteous than the holier-than-thou Pharisee.

So maybe this story is not about a sinner who shocks us by repenting, but about the crowd that has demonized him. Maybe it’s about a good man, like my ex-gang member friend, trying to find a way through a corrupt system he neither understands nor controls.

Maybe it’s a story about you and me, each of us our own kind of Zacchaeus. Because we, too, are caught up in corrupt systems beyond our understanding and control.

Most of us are citizens of this nation founded on the enslavement of black people and the genocide of Native Americans, horrific legacies all-too-apparent to this day from Ferguson to Standing Rock. A nation that has wreaked unbelievable pain on the countries of Central America and so many other places in the world, engaging in torture, forcing people to flee for their lives.

And we’re part of a larger church that has it’s own history, has condoned slavery, unleashed nothing short of cultural genocide on Native Americans through our boarding schools, forced baptisms, and other missionary efforts; a church responsible for the spiritual if not outright sexual abuse of women, queers, children.

Like Zacchaeus in today’s gospel, like my ex-gang member friend, we, too, are good people who are nevertheless caught up in deadly, corrupt systems of both church and state that we do not fully understand or control. Caught up in what some theologians describe as an original sin that both precedes and transcends us as individuals.

But we are nevertheless part of that sin and it is part of us. So, like Zacchaeus, we do everything we can to make things different.

It’s about living in these in-between times, in a broken world still in progress, in which the reign of God has not fully arrived.

And so we at St. John’s come to this table each week, pilgrims in a broken world, seeking food for the journey and supporting each other along the way--“walking each other home,” as Ram Dass would say.

Because although this world is very broken, and although our efforts can seem so small and insignificant, still, like Zacchaeus, we, too, can stand our ground, let our light shine a bit.

In this broken world, I hope you are as proud as I am of what we have been able do as a community.

• In a time of growing inequity and displacement, unhoused people find in these walls each weekday morning a safe dry place for much needed sleep and food
• On any given Saturday, our pantry serves as many as 200 people
• In both our Nightwalks and our vigils at Mission Police Station, we call for an end to the violence wracking our neighborhood, whether it comes from the gangs or from the police. Many of our neighbors honk their horns and give us thumbs ups when they see us on the street.
• We started and continue to support Mission Graduates, helping local kids through high school and on to college.
• In Nicaragua, ravaged for so long by our own country, many of us have worked alongside local people building latrines and wash stations, and providing fresh, clean water. The next work trip is already being planned.
• More recently, we’ve begun discerning how we can help the many young people arriving at our door step after fleeing for their lives from Central America.
• The Native Aztec community for many years was told by clergy that their ancient ceremonies were devil worship and performing them would mean everlasting hellfire. But here at St. John’s, our Native brothers and sisters in the Danzantes Xitlali find a welcome space to practice their beautiful dances and celebrate their ancient stories, ancestral teachings, and rituals.
• Similarly, our Buddhist friends in Mission Dharma continue to find this space a blessing to themselves and many spiritual seekers from around the City.

Soon we’ll be taking our souls to the polls to vote the values we cherish here each Sunday.

I hope you are as proud of these things as I am. And during this Stewardship season, I hope they are part of your discernment as you consider how much St. John’s is worth to you, how much to give financially in the coming year.

Like Zacchaeus, we are broken and incomplete people in a broken and incomplete world. But also like Zacchaeus, we try to be, as Gandhi would say, the change we hope to see in the world.

Let me close with a prayer I’ve used from time to time, words attributed to Archbishop Oscar Romero.

It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view.
The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision.
We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work. Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us. 

No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection.
No pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the Church's mission.
No set of goals and objectives includes everything. 

This is what we are about.
We plant the seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities. 

We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest. 

We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.

Faith the Size of a Mustard Seed

Richard Smith

PROPER 22 (27)

Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost

Watch a video version of this sermon

Just prior to the gospel passage we just heard, Jesus has wrapped up a series of teachings:

• About the prodigal son who wanders far from home and is then welcomed back by his dad; 
• About not being able to serve God if you’re gaming the economic system to make yourself rich at the expense of others: “You cannot serve both God and Mammon.”
• About the greedy rich man who would not heed Lazarus, the poor man at his gate; 
• About never causing one of the little ones to stumble 
• About forgiving over and over and over. 

It’s a lot. The disciples are overwhelmed. They want to live this new way, but they’re not sure they have the necessary spiritual resources. Not sure if they’re up to the task.

So, in today’s passage, they look look outside themselves for help. They say to him, “Lord, increase our faith.” And he tells them they’ve already got all the faith, all the spiritual resources they need to live this new way. It only takes a mustard seed of faith. You have everything you need.

This passage parallels another exchange between Jesus and his disciples, one that some of us prayed about at last Sunday’s mini-retreat. In that story, Jesus has had compassion on the crowd because they are like sheep without a shepherd, and he has taught them many things.

As night descends, the disciples perceive a problem they don’t know how to solve. “This is a deserted place, and the hour is very late. Send the crowd away to the surrounding country and villages so they can buy themselves something to eat.”

Jesus responds sharply, “You give them something to eat.” The disciples’ immediate response is to focus on their lack. “Are we to go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread?” If the disciples are to feed people, they need more than they have. They must go and buy from others. They perceive the situation as impossible unless they bring in something from the outside.

When the disciples confront a new situation, they look at their own spiritual resources and find themselve lacking. (Shea, John. The Relentless Widow: The Spiritual Wisdom of the Gospels for Christian Preachers and Teachers. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2004.)

It’s true for us. Standing against things like racism and misogyny and homophobia and all the mighty economic and political systems of our world can seem so overwhelming. Like trying to uproot a mulberry tree with its vast and expansive roots and branches and commanding it to hurl itself into the sea.

Maybe you wonder if you have the courage and the clarity of vision and the stamina to pull it off.

But you do, Jesus tells you. You have everything you need.

Jesus sees more in us than we see in ourselves. He is continually urging us to understand ourselves differently, to reconsider what we can, in fact, do. He directs us inside and asks us to reappraise what we might bring to our situation.

Here are some words from a psychotherapist who is working with a particular client. The psychotherapist writes:

I remember one client who described himself as a “wimp.” A mid-level bank manager, he felt pushed around, bullied, and generally ineffectual. In talking about his job, his eyes became glassy, his voice turned to a monotone, and his shoulders drooped. I found myself feeling very tired in therapy. In search of some spark in his life, I shifted the focus to his earlier years and discovered that not only had he put himself through school by working two jobs, he had been on the boxing team in college, and flew airplanes on the weekend--hardly the behavior of a wimp. When he talked about flying, he fairly crackled with energy. He seemed surprised when I commented on the difference between his style at work and his style behind the controls of his airplane. The key moment in therapy came when he recognized that his problem was not a “chronically wimpy personality”, but a failure to identify and tap into his resources. He pinpointed the solution when he said, “I guess I need to fly at work, huh?” My client Illustrated an important point: People cannot cope with tools they do not believe they have. (The Psychology of Religion and Coping, 99 - 105, cited in Shea, John. The Relentless Widow: The Spiritual Wisdom of the Gospels for Christian Preachers and Teachers)

If we do not know what we have, we cannot use it to achieve what we aspire to. Jesus in this passage is trying to convince the disciples, including us, that we are not wimps, but people who can fly into exploring a new and different world.

Today we begin our stewardship season. There’s an obvious practical side to this conversation: we can’t maintain this sacred and beautiful space without money; and we need money to pay our part-time staff of a music director, a parish admin, and a vicar.

But in addition to these practical concerns, which you’ll hear more about later, this season is also an occasion for some profound and necessary spiritual work. It raises some important spiritual questions:

• Whether we envision our lives through the filter of abundance or scarcity
• Are we filled with gratitude?
• What kind of persons do you and I want to be? 
• Whom do we want to belong to?

Our stewardship emerges when we recognize what we have; it comes from our sense of abundance. Gratitude begins to well up inside.

• When you woke up this morning, chances are you slept on a comfortable bed. 
• There was breakfast to eat and perhaps a glass of juice or a good cup of coffee or tea to sip. 
• You put clean clothes on. 

For most of us, this is the way it has been nearly every day of our lives. We see evidence of the Creator’s care and provision all around us.

• We hear the birds singing in the morning. 
• The sun rises, rain falls to water the earth, and year after year so many plants provide oxygen and food for our bodies. 
• We are not only provided for but lavished with good gifts: companionship, meaningful work, music, the beauty of nature and cultures, the good sensations of movement—walking, running, swimming, dancing, the joy of sexuality, and a sense of destiny and yearning for the divine mystery. 

Life itself, every day, is a gift that ancient voices once described as the very breath of God (Genesis 2:7).  (Scandrette, Mark. Free: Spending Your Time and Money on What Matters Most. InterVarsity Press. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2013.)

We embrace the abundance of life by practicing gratitude and trust. This gratitude makes for a life that does not skimp, but throws itself generously and with gusto into this crazy and wonderful world.

Its out of that same sense of abundance and gratitude that we steward this community, both financially and otherwise.

• This community with its beautiful array of skin colors, ages, sexual orientations, and economic classes, 
• This beautiful sacred space where we and others come to pray and meditate, and where our unhoused sisters and brothers find a quiet, safe place to sleep, 
• The things we do from here: 

• Distributing bags of fresh produce each Saturday morning 

• Hosting a free community dinner twice each month

• Leading Nightwalks to end neighborhood violence and doggedly holding out the hope--despite all evidence to the contrary--that things can be different

• Vigils for Amilcar and the other victims of police violence at Mission station 

• Visits to City Hall and meetings throughout the neighborhood to stem the displacement of families and seniors and fight for more affordable housing

At the foundation of our stewardship are abundance and gratitude; these are at the heart of whatever else any of us might say these coming days.

In these stewardship days, Jesus sees in us possibilities we often fail to see in ourselves. Throughout the scriptures he struggled with all the art at his command to show us the abundance, the beauty, the faith he sees in us.

What he sees are mulberry trees, one after the other, on their way to the sea. ((Shea, John. The Relentless Widow: The Spiritual Wisdom of the Gospels for Christian Preachers and Teachers.)

Colin Kaepernick

The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost

September 4, 2016

Proper 18

The Rev'd Richard Smith, Ph.D.

Two words: Colin Kaepernick.

I’m pretty much an agnostic when it comes to football. I have no idea what kind of a quarterback he is.

You can love him or hate him, and you can wonder whether his style of protest is appropriate for a professional athlete. Just don’t dismiss the point he’s trying to make, because it’s one of the most important issues facing the country today, and his moral clarity about it is remarkable.

“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” he told the media a week ago. “To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”

Kaepernick’s decision to remain seated during the national anthem comes with a risk, a price he may have to pay. He knows this.

He says, "I think there's a lot of consequences that come along with this. There's a lot of people that don't want to have this conversation. You know they're scared they might lose their job or they might not get their endorsements, they might not be treated the same way. And those are things I'm prepared to handle."

“If they take football away, my endorsements from me, I know that I stood up for what is right.”

“I know that I stood up for what is right.”

Sometimes people do these things. For example, some of us who are LGBTQ have taken great risks in coming out--risked losing our families and friends, our jobs, our apartments, even our own physical safety. Because deeper than the desire to have all these relationships and things was an even deeper desire to live authentically and honestly in the light of day--to do the right thing--and this overrode all other considerations. So out we came.

Sometimes people, including football players and queers, do these things. Something deep inside--something deeper and more important than football and family and money and personal safety--something deep inside requires it, makes it worth the risk of losing everything else.

It works this way for followers of Jesus as well.

Large crowds were following him, today’s gospel says. They were expecting him, as the messiah, to lead the violent uprising against Rome.

Jesus doesn’t seem to like big crowds following him, so he decides to do some thinning. He turns and confronts them.

He does not offer them any romantic fantasies of an easy life.

"Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, is not able to be my disciple.”

“Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me is not able be my disciple.” (Really? The only people who carried crosses in those days were criminals on their way to being executed by the state!)

“None of you is able to become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.”

Extreme words. Such words were common in those days among teachers trying to make a stark point.

For Jesus’ hearers, renouncing family meant losing everything, your place in the world, your identity, everything and everyone you hold dear.

If previously they had found identity and refuge by clinging to their family of origin or family of choice, they must forsake that identity and refuge. If they had loved life itself and let this absolute value guide their every decision and action, they must forsake even that allegiance.

Jesus is now to be their center. No room for competing loyalties.

If you follow me, Jesus is saying, you will be risking everything. Don’t be naive. Think about what this entails. Don’t sign up under the first flush of inspiration or in secret pursuit of anything other than the cross. Make your decision with the practical wisdom of a cost-conscious builder or a battle-hardened king.

In the late 1980s, a volunteer approached a leader of the Sanctuary Movement in the United States [which was shielding Central American] refugees from Central America [from unjust deportations], and she asked to join in the work of the movement. The leader said to her, "Before you say whether you really wish to join us, let me pose some questions: Are you ready to have your telephone tapped by the government? Are you prepared to have your neighbors shun you? Are you strong enough to have your children ridiculed and harassed at school? Are you ready to be arrested and tried, with full media coverage? If you are not prepared for these things, you may not be ready to join the movement. For when push comes to shove, if you fear these things, you will not be ready to do what needs to be done for the refugees." The woman decided to think it over.
(David Rhoads, Reading Mark, Engaging the Gospel [Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004] 53)

It’s all about living out of a deeper place in our hearts, a desire deeper than simply pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain, deeper than our desires for security, respectability, success, wealth.

Beneath these surface desires lies a deeper one. When you find that deeper desire in yourself, you’ll recognize it. It’s a place to stand and from which to act in the world. A deeper set of values, a deeper love. A rock you can build your life on.

When you connect with that deeper desire, pay close attention. Because very likely it is from there God will speak to you very intimately. Pay attention.

It is to this deeper place in our hearts that Jesus, with his extreme language about hating our families, carrying crosses, and renouncing all our possessions, is trying to lead us. But before he can lead us to that deeper place, he first has to dislodge us from our usual comfort zones, displace us from the ordinary and “proper” places we aspire to and cling to.

This can be hard to hear. We understandably want to be ordinary and proper people who live ordinary and proper lives. We want to be an ordinary and proper parish. There is enormous pressure to simply live life on the surface, doing what is ordinary and proper--and there’s great satisfaction in being generally accepted and respected.

Being ordinary and proper offers us the comforting illusion that things are under control and that everything extraordinary and improper can be kept outside the walls of our self-created fortress.

But the gospels continually invite us to move from where it is comfortable, from where we want to stay, from where we feel at home.

• Leave your father and mother. 
• Let the dead bury the dead. 
• Keep your hand on the plow and do not look back. 
• Sell what you own, give the money to the poor, and come follow me. 

A persistent voice relentlessly nudging us out of our comfort zones, stripping us of our security and whatever illusions we may have about ourselves, inviting us to live out of a deeper desire, a deeper truth.

This voice nudges us not only as individuals, but also as a faith community.

The Greek word for church is ekklesia--from ek meaning “out”, and kaleo meaning “call”. Ek-klesia = Called out.

Ek-klesia means we as a Christian community are called out of our ordinary and proper places to the places where people hurt and where we can experience with them our common humanity with all its joys and struggles, including our common need for healing:

Perhaps it means we’re called out to the scene of another senseless and violent death in the neighborhood, or to stand in vigil outside the police station,
To stand with another senior being evicted from their home in these days of gentrification
To assist an unhoused person just needing a quiet, safe place to get a little sleep

This call to leave our ordinary and proper place to be where the pain is follows the path of Jesus himself. As St. Paul once sang, Jesus deliberately displaced himself. “His state was divine,” Paul sang, “yet he did not cling to his equality with God but emptied himself to assume the condition of a slave, and became as we are.”

Sharing our common human joys and struggles, and our common need for healing, Jesus is the displaced Lord in whom God’s compassion becomes flesh.

It is in listening to the deepest stirring in our own hearts, in following that displaced Lord, that we as individuals become his disciples, and we at St. John’s become a community that can truly be called Christian.

Let me close with a blessing from the Franciscans.

May God bless you with a restless discomfort
about easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships,
so you may seek truth boldly and love deep within your heart.
May God bless you with holy anger
at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people,
so you may tirelessly work for justice, freedom, and peace among all people.
May God bless you with the gift of tears
to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation, or the loss of all they cherish, so you may reach out your hand to comfort them and transform their pain into joy.
May God bless you with enough foolishness
to believe you really can make a difference in this world,
so you are able, with God’s grace, to do what others claim cannot be done.

Pouring Tea

THE FIFTEENTH SUNDAY AFER PENTECOST

August 28, 2016

Proper 17

The Rev. Dr.  Jack Eastwood

For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, 

and those who humble themselves will be exalted.

Luke 14

The gospel this morning awakens us to an attitude about life and a way of living that we don’t see much of these days. We don’t see it in our current political talk, our popular TV shows, or some of the successful self-help books.  Browse the self-help aisle at your local bookstore or Amazon.com, and you will see books entitled “Awaken the Giant Within” by Anthony Robbins, “The Hero Within” by Carol Pearson, and “Achieve Anything in Just One Year” by Jason Harvey.  They plumb the science of what one writer calls “the science of peak performance.”  Turning to popular TV, isn’t the show  “American Idol” about the thousands of people who desire fame, if only for 15 minutes?  I don’t suppose there is a lot of entertainment value in a TV show about people competing for the highest rating in the four cardinal virtues: Prudence, Justice, Temperance, and Courage. (Despite the talk about presidential temperament these days.)

What characterizes our age is the “selfie” and the lure of social media.

Rather than live according to the performance values our culture promotes, the Gospel of Luke  leads us in an opposite direction. It raises the value of living our lives according to the virtue of humility. The practice of humility is highly esteemed in the religious tradition, some writers say it is the seat of all the virtures,  and the practice of it is influenced heavily by the contexts in which it is applied. Unfortuately today in the context of our  narcissistic culture it has a bad name.  It is not difficult to understand why it can be easily misunderstood and practiced badly.  One spiritual writer described it as a “suspect virtue.”

Frederick Buechner wrote that in today’s culture, humility is “often confused with the gentlemanly self-deprecation of saying you’re not much of a bridge player when you know perfectly well you are. Conscious or otherwise, this kind of humility is a form of gamesmanship.  If you really aren’t much a bridge player,” he goes on to say, “you’re apt to be rather proud of yourself for admitting it so humbly. This kind of humility is a form of low comedy.”  To get at true humility, we must go in a different direction.

There is an old story that goes like this: There was a university professor who went searching for the meaning of life. After several years and many miles, he came to the hut of a particularly holy hermit and asked to be enlightened. The holy man invited his visitor into his humble dwelling and began to serve him tea. He filled the pilgrim’s cup to the brim, and then kept pouring so that the tea was soon dripping onto the floor. The professor watched the overflow until he could no longer restrain himself. “Stop!” he said. “It is full. No more will go in.” The holy hermit replied, “Like this cup, you are full of your own opinions, preconceptions and ideas. How can I teach you unless you first empty your cup?”

True humility is about the recognition and acceptance of the limits of our own talents and abilities.  This kind of self-acceptance involves a measure of surrender, and is the first step into the experience of humility which leads us to the commandment of loving our neighbors as ourselves.

At first glance, the reading from Luke’s gospel looks like a page taken from a first century book of etiquette. But closer study reminds us of the importance of what is called “table talk” in Luke.  Instructions and wisdom were often imparted at meals and banquets in Jesus’ time. Luke reports several stories of table fellowship and  that they  are always  integral to Jesus’ mission.  We can recall that it was at table where the meaning of the Eucharist was shared, where the betrayal of Christ began, where the promise of the Holy Spirit was announced, and when after his resurrection he appeared to the disciples and was “known in the breaking of the bread”.

Here, once again at table in this story, we see our Stranger from Nazareth  proposing new rules for the seating chart  in the kingdom.  Here he speaks of humility, which challenges anyone’s feelings about place and privilege. Over and over again in the stories from Luke we come across that counter cultural theme which resonates in many other texts of the bible. It is Luke’s major theme of overturning the tables of the social and personal order of life.
“For all who exalt themselves will be humbled,
and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

Psychiatrist Robert Coles tells a poignant story about his first encounter with Dorothy Day, who was living and working with the poor in the slums of New York City. Coles was in Harvard Medical School at the time, studying to be a psychiatrist, proud of his status, and also proud that he had volunteered to work with Dorothy Day in helping the poor. He arrived for his first meeting to discover Day sitting at a table, deep in conversation with a very disheveled street person. She didn’t notice Coles had come into the room until they had finished their conversation. Then she asked, “Do you want to speak to one of us?”

Robert Coles was astounded by Dorothy Day’s humility. She had identified so completely with one of our poorest as to remove all distinction, social privilege or class,  between them. Coles said it changed his life. He said he learned more in that moment than in his four years at Harvard.

We may strive for many things in our lives, and our strivings have their own importance and place, but in the end, nothing counts more than the simplest yet most difficult to accomplish task, that of  allowing ourselves to be open to one another and to God.   This counter cultural movement is the kind of humility that we see in the cross. It is the courageous acceptance of who we are in front of God, in front of our self-emptying God.  It is the fruit of God’s grace within our lives.  AMEN

The Magnificat and the rigged universe

Feast of St. Mary the Virgin

August 21, 2016

Richard Smith

You may or may not know this, but there’s a conspiracy afoot. People don’t talk about it much, but despite all your best efforts, Something or Someone is conspiring 24/7 behind your back to make you happy.

We Christians have a name for this conspiracy. We call it grace. A relentless kindness built-in to the universe. Our spiritual teachers tell us it’s everywhere. Often it’s hidden, struggling to break loose. At times it’s working quietly behind the scenes. Other times, it’s in your face, you can’t miss it.

Martin Luther King was on to this when he said his familiar words about the moral arc of the universe being long, but always bending toward justice.

The universe is rigged toward love and justice and joy. Something is afoot, a divine conspiracy of grace.

The recognition of this divine conspiracy once welled up in Mary’s heart, and in today’s gospel it flows into a powerful song about a new world that is both future and, strangely, already here. Mary sings

• Of how God has already shown mercy from generation to generation
• Has already scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts, brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly
• Has already filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. 

Strangely, wonderfully, Mary sings of a God who not only will do these things, but who has already done them. She sings as if God, in some strange sense of time, had somehow already accomplished the redemption and restoration of the world.

God’s strange sense of time. In it, this present moment and the past and the future form one eternal now. It can sound esoteric and New Age-y, but if you’ve ever been hopelessly locked in a lover’s embrace, or rocked by Bach’s Mass in B Minor, or overcome with goosebumps looking up at a clear night sky, then you know that time is more than a matter of seconds and minutes, days, weeks, and years. Sometimes, as we like to say, time stands still.

The eternal now that gathers past, present, and future is yet another and deeper experience of time. Some anthropologists call it “everytime”.

The theologians say it happens when we circle this table for Eucharist. Because here, we’re not just dutifully remembering some past event, the Last Supper, as we would remember, say, the hoisting of the flag on Iwo Jima or Washington crossing the Delaware.

Rather, in God’s strange time, that intimate moment Jesus shared with his disciples on the night before he died is happening right now as we gather here; it envelopes us, catches us up.

Those early disciples at the last supper have nothing on us. This is our moment as much as it was Peter’s, James’, John’s. Jesus is as present to us in this moment as he was to them. We and they are all caught up in God’s strange sense of time, this eternal now.

And it’s not just about past and present. It’s also about the future. Circling this table, entering that eternal now, means leaving behind for a moment the world as it is and embracing a new future that, strangely, is already here.

In today’s world, we’ve become painfully aware of the tremendous lack of equity. Ten percent of the population own 76% of the wealth. Among the growing number of poor people, 70% are women and children. People of color are incarcerated, sometimes brutalized and killed by police at alarmingly higher rates than whites. An increasing number of people in towns like ours are becoming displaced and homeless--a high percentage of them LGBT youth who have been kicked out of their families.

That is the world as it is. But here, as we circle this table, we step out of that world to enter God’s time, a sacred space, a future we could not otherwise imagine if we take our cues simply from what we experience out there.

In here the rules are different. In here it doesn’t matter if you’re black or white or brown; rich, poor, middle class; documented or not, Republican or Democrat; old or young, gay, straight, or trans. In here everyone is welcomed and honored.

If you let it, immersing yourself in this new world week after week will change how you are out there. It will cause you to notice people and things you might otherwise overlook, share more of what you have, work for justice. It will break your heart and bring you much joy.

In this sanctuary, here in God’s strange time, we step out of the world as it is to glimpse a new world that God is bringing about, one that is kinder, more welcoming, more just. In this Eucharist we find the nourishment to align ourselves with that great divine conspiracy already underway, though it is often hidden and struggling to break loose in the larger world.

A poem by Jan Richardson speaks of this dynamic of entering this sanctuary and into God’s strange time and then returning to the world out there. I’ll close with this.

A Blessing Called SanctuaryYou hardly knew
how hungry you were
to be gathered in,
to receive the welcome
that invited you to enter
entirely—
nothing of you
found foreign or strange,
nothing of your life
that you were asked
to leave behind
or to carry in silence
or in shame.
Tentative steps
became settling in,
leaning into the blessing
that enfolded you,
taking your place
in the circle
that stunned you
with its unimagined grace.
You began to breathe again,
to move without fear,
to speak with abandon
the words you carried
in your bones,
that echoed in your being.
You learned to sing.
But the deal with this blessing
is that it will not leave you alone,
will not let you linger
in safety,
in stasis.
The time will come
when this blessing
will ask you to leave,
not because it has tired of you
but because it desires for you
to become the sanctuary
that you have found—
to speak your word
into the world,
to tell what you have heard
with your own ears,
seen with your own eyes,
known in your own heart:
that you are beloved,
precious child of God,
beautiful to behold,
and you are welcome
and more than welcome
here.
—Jan Richardson

Alton, Philando, and the good Samaritan

The Rev'd Richard Smith, Ph.D.

The man had been badly beaten and bruised. The priest saw him lying there in pain, but then moved away, crossed to the other side of the street and went on his way.
Then the Levite saw him, and moved away, crossed to the other side of the street.
But the Samaritan saw him, and he did not move to the other side of the street. Instead, he was moved with compassion.

The Greek word Luke uses here for being moved with compassion is splangnizomai. The splangna are the entrails of the body, the guts. When the Samaritan was moved with compassion, he felt something deep inside his own guts. This was not some abstract issue, the kind of thing you kick around inside your head, or spar back and forth with friends over beer in a stimulating discussion. For the Samaritan, this was a profound, transformative moment.

The Samaritan saw the beaten man and was deeply moved, felt it in his guts. In our own cultural imagery, we might say his heart was broken. He would never be the same again.

This is really where the story begins, with a man who does not move away from the one in pain, who has a heart willing to be broken by what he sees. Who is transformed.

The rest of the story is a series of verbs: Out of his own broken heart, he goes to the beaten man, bandages his wounds, pours oil and wine on them, hoists him on his own animal, brings him to an inn, and takes care of him. The next day he takes out two silver coins, gives them to the innkeeper, and says to the innkeeper, “take care of him…”

The Samaritan saw the beaten man, and rather than moving away, he let his heart be broken by what he saw, and out of that broken heart, he began to act.

Could this be a model for us after a horrific week like this?

After the trauma and tears of Orlando, after seeing the horrific videos of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, after the news reports of the five officers killed in Dallas, we have to choose:

• We can, like the priest and the levite, turn away from those in pain as has happened too often in our country’s past, and cross to the other side of the street, and continue with life as usual.
• Or we can, like the Samaritan, allow our hearts to be broken, and out of our own broken hearts, begin to act, bringing about the justice that can eventually lead to healing.

A few weeks ago, we held a press conference here at St. John's for Luis Gongora Pat, the unhoused man recently shot and killed by police up on 20th and Shotwell. In that press conference, his family was announcing their filing of a civil suit against the City.

The TV and radio stations were hauling in their equipment, and I was setting up chairs. An attorney approached me. She said that during the press conference, they needed to show some troubling photos of Luis’s bullet-ridden body. One photo was especially graphic.

You see, after police had fired several bullets at Luis, he was seriously injured and fell face down on the ground. But then the officers simply lowered their guns and continued shooting at him. The final shot, the one that finally killed him, entered through the top of his skull while he was face-down on the ground. The attorney wanted to know if it would be OK to show in church a graphic photo of his shattered skull.

I said it would be no problem. Because, a central image for us Christians is of a man’s broken body hanging from a cross--a graphic and violent image if ever there was one. So, showing such images of Luis would not be a problem here.

This is the central mystery in which we live, the truth at the very center of the universe: that God is with us in all our unspeakable nightmares. That God saw us with all our violence and pain, the bullet-riddled corpses on our sidewalks, our hatreds and fear and rage, our helplessness and tears--and did not move away, did not go to the other side of the street. Rather, like the Samaritan, he let his own heart be broken, and drew even nearer to us, took on our flesh in Jesus, entered into all our pain, embraced it, become a victim of it himself.

In that way he transformed all that pain and trauma and helplessness into life. Out of all that pain and death, God brought life. “By his wounds we are healed,” our scriptures tell us.

Can this be the model for us in this time? Can we do as the Samaritan did, follow this divine rhythm? Can we let our hearts be broken, stay with the pain, the tears, the lamentation? Can we let our own broken hearts be the seedbed out of which new life can spring?

Hard thing to do. We’d rather push all of that pain aside, find some easy workaround. All that ugly hateful racism that is the original sin of our country. It would be so much easier to cross to the other side of the street, pretend we never saw those videos, pretend we never heard Philando’s little girl crying to her mom after she saw her dad killed, “It’s OK, Mommy. I’m here with you.”

If only we could get that little girl’s screams out of our heads.

Can we let our hearts be broken, and not run from this horrible, horrible nightmare?

In our country, we have never really stayed with this pain. We’ve certainly had previous moments of it, such as Bloody Sunday during the Civil Rights movement and the explosive days after the Rodney King beating in LA. But sadly, instead of staying with the pain of racism and standing with those bearing the brunt of it, our country took what seemed at the time like an easy way out: law-and-order crackdowns, a bogus war on drugs, mass incarceration of people of color. As though the problem was people of color and not our own racist systems.

The result? Since the 1980s, California has built 22 prisons but just one University of California campus. It’s not hard to do the math here. Some historians call it the largest prison construction project in the history of the human race. And our country is the most incarcerated in the world today. Even the most conservative public leaders are beginning to recognize: We can’t solve the nightmare of racism simply by throwing people of color in jail.

Can it be different this time?

If we as citizens were to stay with the heartbreak and pain and not avoid it, could it be different?

I can’t say specifically what kinds of solutions might emerge, but I’m quite sure that if we move away from this pain and go on our way like the priest and the levite, we’ll never find a solution. If we try to find an easy way around it--if we say, well, I’m not personally a racist myself, so it’s really not my problem--we’ll never end this nightmare.

The only viable path is that of the Samaritan: to stay with the pain and the tears and the heartbreak, move closer to those bearing the brunt of it, stand with them, listen to their stories--which are likely to be very different from those of us who are white, especially when it comes to their experiences with the police.

And then, like the Samaritan, perhaps with tears still in our eyes, we can begin to act.

And it seems so overwhelming. This god-damned racism is so deep in our DNA as Americans, how do we change it?

I spent part of my youth in Eastern Washington where it snows a lot in the winter. And I remember sometimes in the middle of the night waking up to the sound of huge tree limbs crashing to the ground under the weight of all the snow.

How did that gently falling snow become so powerful that it could topple such mighty tree limbs? Well, it was one small snowflake followed by another and another and another through the long dark night until so much snow had accumulated that finally one last snowflake fell. And it was enough to bring the huge limb crashing to the ground.

I wonder if the dismantling of our racist systems will be like that, one snowflake at a time. A letter to a congressperson here, a vigil for Amilcar there, a Nightwalk, a phone call, a conversation with a coworker, a meeting with a public official. One snowflake after another.

So i have no magic solution to our inherent racism, but I’m quite sure that out of our broken hearts, and only from there, will the dawn begin to break and solutions begin to emerge. All of us, black and white and brown, in tears, and working together.

Here’s a poem about a man carrying his son across a busy street in the rain. It’s called “Shoulders” by Naomi Shihab Nye, and I’ll close with this.

A man crosses the street in rain,
stepping gently, looking two times north and south,
because his son is asleep on his shoulder. 

No car must splash him.
No car drive too near to his shadow. 

This man carries the world’s most sensitive cargo
but he’s not marked.
Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE,
HANDLE WITH CARE. 

His ear fills up with breathing.
He hears the hum of a boy’s dream
deep inside him. 

We’re not going to be able
to live in this world
if we’re not willing to do what he’s doing
with one another. 

The road will only be wide.
The rain will never stop falling.

How Can a Serious Christian be an American?

A sermon by The Rev. Robert Warren Cromey

Church of St. John the Evangelist

San Francisco

July 3, 2016

Jesus says these words to his disciples and therefore to us. “Love your neighbors and your enemies.” This is radical Christianity. It is not how most people treat each other. Jesus words are standards by which we hold our values. He also says elsewhere to feed the hungry, heal the sick and stand against injustice.

The present American values are: Get rich, Buy stuff, Worship Celebrities. Put band-aids on social problems like homelessness, affordable housing, immigrants and health care.
Spend billions on defense.

Declaration of Independence was proclaimed in 1776. We celebrate it on July, 4. It separated the colonies from England. It freed us from unjust taxation, proclaimed free enterprise. However, the declaration exempted slaves, women and Native Americans.

John Adams, a prominent New England farmer and lawyer went to Philadelphia in 1776. Abigail, his wife said do something for the women. They did not.

How can a serious Christian be and American?

We rejoice and give thanks that we are an independent nation, no longer dominated by England or any other country.

We rejoice that we have a solid constitution and strong Bill of Rights.

We are thankful that most of us have the right to vote. Yet many states try to prevent people from voting.

We Christians are glad that the state may not interfere with the practice of our religion.

We give thanks for our freedom to speak and assemble. As a preacher I do not have to worry that the government can censor my remarks.

A serious Christian is a mature person, a thoughtful person and one who lives with ambiguity.

I can love my country and criticize the Congress for failing to protect the citizenry from random gun violence.

I can love my country and hate its war mongering in the Middle East.

I can love my country and hate the treatment of immigrant people.

I can love my country and decry that our capitalist system cause so many to be hungry, homeless and live in poverty.

I can love my country as a patriotic American and protest police killing young men and women of color. I can protest police murders and at the same time as giving thanks for the bravery of police officers who risk their lives to help other. That is what I mean by ambiguity.

A serious Christian is open to love our country and be its severest critics.

Jesus calls us to love our enemies as well as our neighbors. The U.S. government chooses to wage war instead of waging peace.

Jesus says love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. Radical Christians can help mobilize and deepen and humanize American values.