Saying Yes and meaning it

Sunday, October 1, 2017

Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 19, Year A

Matthew 21:23-32

The Rev’d Richard Smith, Ph.D

The two sons in this gospel story are sent to the vineyard: one says yes, but never sets foot in the vineyard; the other says no, but later changes his mind and goes. The moral is not hard to grasp, and the cliches come tumbling out: Talk is cheap. Actions speak louder than words. Practice what you preach. As Jesus says in another place, “Not everyone who says to me ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but those who do the will of my Father.” And St. James puts it starkly: “Faith without works is dead.” (James 2:14-26).

In the end, it’s not about what you say, but what you do.

Somehow we’ve gotten all messed up. We’ve come to think believing in Jesus is a matter of getting the words right, of making some disembodied, intellectual Yes to a checklist of doctrines and finely honed theological statements. Somewhere along the line, the litmus test for being a Christian became a matter of correctly rattling off all the obscure theological words. We got it backward.

Marcus Borg says this distortion of what it means to believe came out of the Protestant Reformation.

Protestants distinguished themselves from Catholics by what they believed compared to what Catholics believed. Then Protestantism divided into many churches, each distinguishing themselves from others by the doctrines they subscribed to.

Add to that popular Christianity’s emphasis on the afterlife, and being Christian came to mean assenting to the right doctrines now for the sake of heaven later.

But it was all so different in the early church, which had no clear consensus about doctrines, and in which a variety of opinions held sway. They did not call themselves “People with the absolutely correct theological doctrine you better believe or you’ll burn in hell forever,”–they did not call themselves that. Rather, they called themselves simply “the people of the Way”–that is, the Way of Jesus. For them, it was less about correct doctrinal statements and more about following Jesus–sharing food with the hungry, sheltering the homeless, welcoming the immigrant and the stranger, visiting the sick and the incarcerated, working for peace. Being people of the Way.

Then, a few hundred years after Jesus, the bishops and Emperor Constantine wrote what we now call the Nicene Creed. It’s in your service bulletin; we’ll recite again in a few minutes. Like so many works from other times and places–like our scriptures and our hymns, like the music of Thomas Tallis or Bach, or the plays of Shakespeare–the Nicene Creed was written by people with experiences and challenges and ways of thinking very different from ours. For that reason, like the works of Shakespeare or Bach, it can take a little work to understand it.

And yet, even in this statement, however obscure and baffling to us, we can see the earlier understanding of what it meant to believe: It’s not about an intellectual conviction, but rather a way of life.

The creed begins with the Latin word credo, most commonly translated into English as “I believe.” But at the root of the Latin word “credo” lie two smaller words: cor, meaning “heart”, and do meaning “I give.” At its root, the word credo means “I give my heart.” In other words, saying the creed does not mean, “I believe the following theological affirmations to be literally true,” but rather:

• “I give my heart to one God” – and who’s that? The creator of heaven and earth, of all that is.
• And “I give my heart to Jesus – and who’s that? God’s beloved child, who was born into this world, became fully human, suffered, died, was buried, and rose again.
• And “I give my heart to the Holy Spirit” — and who’s that? The Lord and giver of Life who has spoken through our prophets and our ancestors.
• And so on…

Belief is not just a matter of subscribing to some list of doctrinal statements. Rather, it’s about giving away your heart in a passionate, and compassionate, way of life. It’s about saying Yes and meaning it.

And later in the creed, we say “I give my heart to the church–that all-too-human community that many of us have struggled with over the years to be sure, but one that nevertheless tries, in its best moments and however imperfectly, to follow the Way of Jesus.

Here at St. John’s we are part of this larger community, and for us, our being church comes with a few specifics:

• Radical hospitality to a motley crew of people, including those needing a safe, dry, quiet place to sleep;
• Protection and accompaniment of refugees from the poverty and violence now laying siege to their struggling Central American countries
• Strong arms and legs and backs and a little cash to help rural Nicaraguans build latrines and water stations
• A prophetic outcry against the increasingly shrill voices of white supremacy and anti-immigrant hatred
• A plea for an end to the violence both nationally and here in the Mission, whether
• that violence comes from random individuals, gangs, or police
• A special pride at seeing so many young people in this struggling neighborhood finish high school and head off to college because of the work of Mission Graduates

It’s not just about some disembodied, left-wing, progressive agenda for saving the world. It’s about following Jesus.

And it’s not some disembodied, abstract, lofty ideal. It’s more real than that, more practical; it’s about your credit card and bank balances and checkbooks and squeezing what you can from your already meager resources. Over the next few weeks, you’ll hear a few reflections about our financial stewardship of this community.

This stewardship is about living into what we say we believe, and about our deepest values as followers of Jesus. It’s about being people of the Way who are willing to sacrifice to do the works of love.

It’s about giving your heart away, saying Yes and meaning it.

Mercy

Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 19, Year A

September 17, 2017

The Rev'd Richard Smith, Ph.D

A couple of weeks ago, I gathered with many neighbors up on 26th and Van Ness to remember 23-year-old Abel Esquivel. He had been shot and killed on that spot a few days before.

I had seen Abel over at CARECEN, one of our local non-profits. He had left gang life many years before, and was mentoring other young people who were also trying to leave the gangs.

Late one night, Abel was home with his mom. She hadn’t eaten, and the fridge was empty, so he headed up the street to buy her a burrito. On his way home, a car pulled up and fired several rounds into his body. He lay on the ground for several minutes, then managed to get up, pick up the burrito, and take it home to his mom. She immediately rushed him to the hospital where he died a short time later.

The evening I stood in remembrance at 26th and Van Ness, I watched the Danzantes perform their beautiful ancient indigenous dances, every step a prayer. And I watched Abel’s mom quietly sobbing. I couldn’t help but wonder how I might feel if I ever lost my son this way.

They asked me to say a few words. I was not prepared. I said, “Well, I know the cliche is that time heals all wounds, but I’m not so sure about that. Some wounds never heal. Losing a child like Abel may be one of them.” Then I tried to muster whatever words of comfort and hope I could--knowing, of course, that I would inevitably sound like one of Job’s well-intentioned but vapid friends. Anything I might say in that moment would inevitably be hollow, completely inadequate to the pain Abel’s mom and family were feeling in that moment.

Some wounds go so deep they’re beyond the reach of whatever feeble but well-intentioned words we can muster. In the end, something else is needed.

And sometimes, such wounds are also beyond the reach of any given judicial system--the laws and procedures by which a given community tries to resolve disputes and restore just and healthy relationships.

Years ago, another young man was savagely murdered. His family went through hell: enormous grief and pain and tears and rage. They rightly demanded justice. After many years, a jury found the murderer guilty and sentenced him to death. The family was relieved. At last they would see justice for the murder of their son and brother, bring closure to this unspeakable ordeal, find some healing.

The day of the execution arrived, and the family waited in the viewing room. Eventually, the drapes to the execution chamber opened. They could see their son’s killer strapped to the gurney, his arms attached to IVs, and a monitor recording his every heartbeat.

When offered a chance to make a statement, the condemned man said nothing. The warden gave the go ahead, and the executioners began injecting the three lethal drugs into the man’s body, one after the other. Seven minutes later, the condemned man’s body lay dead on the gurney. The drapes closed; it was time for the family to leave.

The family’s parish priest had been with them, and he walked them back to their car. As he said goodbye to the young man’s mom, he gave her a hug, and opened the car door for her. The mom looked at him, and said to him in tears, “I don’t understand, but even after all this--even after all this--I still don’t feel closure, I still have all this pain.”

Sometimes healing is beyond the reach of the various laws and procedures a given community might establish to ensure healthy and just relationships. Sometimes we need more than a judicial system can provide.

Which brings us to today’s gospel. It follows last Sunday’s gospel about what to do when someone in the church commits a very real injustice against you. That gospel laid out the rudiments of a judicial system for the Christian community for resolving disputes and restoring broken relationships.

In that gospel, Jesus said if someone in the church seriously sins against you, don’t just let it go by without comment, brushing everything under the rug as though nothing has happened. That would be what one of our great theologians calls “cheap grace”.

No, when an injustice has been done to you or someone else, you must speak up. First, speak to the person directly. If, after that, the other person continues the abusive behavior, then bring one or two other members of the church to listen in and provide their perspectives. If that doesn’t achieve reconciliation, then bring the issue before the larger church. If, after exhausting each of these three steps, the other person continues their bad behavior, then put some distance between you and them--”Let them be as the Gentiles and the tax collectors to you,” to use Jesus' words--set them outside your usual circle of friends and acquaintances.

But then what? Is that it? What happens if, after all the well-intentioned words and all the community’s judicial processes, the abusive behavior continues? What then? That’s where today’s gospel comes in.

As Peter sees it, the question then becomes: “How many times must I forgive? Seven times?” He’s keeping score. He wants to know when the retaliation can finally begin, at what number can he finally strike back?

Peter seems to think seven might be the right outside number, which is pretty generous. Most people stop forgiving and start getting even at two.

But Jesus uses another number: seventy times seven. In other words, your willingness to forgive must be limitless. Jesus is getting at what must underlie all the judicial procedures and processes:

• That through all the words and necessary judicial processes, you never give up your willingness to forgive
• That you bring everything you have to the process of reconciliation
• That you never give up on the possibility that your sister or brother can redeem themselves. Each of us is more than our own worst moments. We can never give up on the possibility of redemption and reconciliation.

But Jesus goes even further. This commitment to forgiveness and redemption and reconciliation, as he sees it, is rooted in the very rhythm of life. He tells a simple story of a servant who was forgiven a staggering debt, one that no one could repay in a million years, but who then refused to forgive another servant for a much lesser amount. Don’t be like that servant, Jesus says. Because you, like him, are swimming in a sea of mercy. And this mercy that frees you from your past mistakes and allows you a new future--this same mercy is meant to flow through you to others. This is one of the rhythms of life: “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.”

This is how it works for Jesus. After all the well-intentioned but inadequate words and all the necessary but inadequate judicial processes have taken us as far as they can, mercy gets the last word.

Songwriter Mary Gauthier puts it this way:

Yeah, we all could use a little mercy now
I know we don’t deserve it
But we need it anyhow
We hang in the balance
Dangle ‘tween hell and hallowed ground
Every single one of us could use some mercy now
Every single one of us could use some mercy now

Whistleblowing

Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 17, Year A

September 3, 2017

The Rev'd Richard Smith, Ph.D.

Maybe it’s just inevitable, a simple fact of life: You stand up, you get knocked down.

Take whistleblowers for example.

• A black woman police officer calls out her labor union for it’s racist culture. The union loudly insists they are not racist, before showing her the door. 
• A woman reports an accounting abuse in a large corporation, her manager praises her for her courage, then downsizes her for no apparent reason. 
• A priest reports another priest for sexual abuse. The bishop says he’ll take care of the matter, then takes care of the priest who blew the whistle, assigning him to a remote parish where his voice will no longer be heard.
• Many counter-protestors confronted armed white supremacists in Carlottesville a couple of weeks ago. As a result, several of the counter-protestors were injured, one was killed.
• Last weekend, I had to deal with this myself after several of those same white supremacists had planned a rally here in San Francisco. Several leaders from the Mission and I had decided we needed to directly confront them and the hate they were promoting. Although we were committed to nonviolence, we were pretty sure from the videos that the other side was not. We knew we could be physically in harm’s way.

Because that’s how the world works. If you stand up, you can expect to get knocked down.

Jesus was a fierce whistleblower. He pointed out the hypocrisy of the religious leadership. Whited sepulchers he called them. “You lay heavy burdens on people’s shoulders and will not move a finger to lift them.” Jesus saw clearly the organizational abuse, and he blew the whistle.

And his prediction in today’s gospel that he himself would soon suffer and die as a result of his whistleblowing was not exactly a stroke of genius. It was obvious. Those in power try to eliminate those who question them. Anyone who questions the status quo will be treated harshly by those sitting on top of the status quo.

This was hard for Peter to understand. Poor guy. In last week’s gospel, he was the rock on which Jesus would build his church. This week, he’s a stumbling block. What happened?

Peter doesn’t get it. For him, a messiah is the one who is victorious and inflicts suffering and death on all the bad guys. But a messiah who puts himself in harms way, eventually being tortured and executed? For Peter, this is no messiah at all. He doesn’t get it.

So why do people decide to confront evil, putting themselves at risk in the process? Different people have different explanations like, “I just decided enough was enough!” Or “I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t do something.” Or “I saw what was once a great country, and it still means something to me.”

Underneath each of these explanations lies a sense that something deeper is at stake, a life deeper than everyday life. Sometimes we call this deeper life our soul. If we ignore it or silence it, it will die.

It’s a profound spiritual irony that Jesus is getting at here: “Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life?”

In Robert Bolt’s play, A Man for All Seasons, Thomas More sees a man who has perjured himself and is now wearing a chain of office, he has just been promoted to attorney general of Wales. That high-ranking, prestigious job is his reward both for keeping quiet and for lying. Thomas More says to him, “Richard, it does not profit a man to lose his soul for the whole world, but for Wales?”

Sometimes moments arise when a deeper life, our own souls, are at stake. This deeper life is more important than anything--even than our everyday concerns, our careers, our reputations, even our own physical safety.

When such moments come around, some might like to think speaking out is an option--”Go ahead and speak out, if that’s your thing.” If that’s your thing. But the gospel is not so blasé. In fact, it’s very clear: Not speaking out when you see injustice and evil can cost you your soul.

So the gospel encourages us to shoulder the cross freely--because the cross is the price you will pay, it’s what predictably will happen to you when you pursue justice in an unjust world.

Dr. King got this. The cross, the willingness to relinquish your life in order to find it, lies behind his words when he confronted his own enemies at the height of the civil rights struggle:

We will match your capacity to inflict suffering with our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. We will not hate you, but we cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws. Do to us what you will and we will still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children; send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities and drag us out on some wayside road, beating us and leaving us half dead, and we will still love you. But we will soon wear you down by our capacity to suffer. And in winning our freedom we will so appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you in the process.

In fact, Dr. King put it even more baldly: “If a man or woman has not discovered something to die for, they’re not fit to live.”

Not speaking out when you see injustice and evil can cost you your soul.

Letting go of the surface of things for the sake of something deeper. Losing your life in order to find it. A type of death that leads to resurrection.

It’s this mystery, this great irony, of a kind of death that leads to life that we enter once again at this table where we share bread, Christ’s body, broken, and given. And it’s this great irony we must each try to live out after we leave here this morning.

Mary's Song after Charlottesville

The Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 16

August 20, 2017

The Rev'd Richard Smith, Ph.D.

Let’s first look at the context in which Luke wrote the powerful story about Mary in today’s gospel.

The song Mary sings is part of a conversation she's having with her cousin Elizabeth. The two women lived in a country dominated by Rome under a brutal dictatorship. Just a few years before Jesus’ birth, about four miles from where he was raised, some twenty-thousand Roman troops stamped out a Jewish rebellion, burned the town of Sepphoris to the ground, and sent its inhabitants into slavery. When Jesus was growing up, Mary probably told him stories about this: “The day the Romans came”.

Years later, just before Luke wrote this gospel story of Mary, the Jewish population rebelled against the Romans. The Romans retaliated, attacking Jerusalem, burning much of it to the ground, slaughtering people left and right. Those who survived were brought under Roman rule by force, as virtual prisoners in their own city.

For Mary and for Elizabeth, the challenges they faced would have been similar to women in troubled regions today, particularly in Syria and Central America. Today there are pregnant women making dangerous crossings on rafts over the Mediterranean Sea, through the Sonoran desert along the US/Mexico border, across the Rio Grande, trying to escape tyranny and violence in their home countries and sometimes finding no room at the inn in the places where they arrive! These women, like Mary and Elizabeth, have every reason to be afraid, to fear the future.

So that’s some of the context in which Luke tells this story of Mary.

Now let’s take a look at Mary herself.

• She was a teenage Jewish girl from a fourth-world 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. Mary was a slave girl in a fourth-world occupied country.
• And her name, Mary, is Hebrew and has two meanings. The first meaning is bitterness. Mary 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 dark-­skinned slave girl in an occupied land becomes the powerful prophet, singing 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.

These are dangerous words. In the days of the British Empire, William Temple, the Archbishop of Canterbury, actually told the missionaries to India never to read the words of the Magnificat to the many poor people of that country because it could incite them to riot in the streets.

But Mary not only speaks powerful words, she also puts her body on the line. Not only does she put one foot in front of the other, making her way to Elizabeth’s house, but she puts her entire body to the task of carrying and birthing a child, nursing and cuddling and bathing him, raising him to become a young man--a project many of you know something about.

It wasn’t just a matter of words. She put her body on the line as well. Because this is how love works.

Last weekend in Charlottesville, white supremacists, emboldened by the president’s rhetoric, unleashed a torrent of hatred resulting in the death of a young woman. Yesterday they showed up in Boston, and when tens of thousands of people marched against them, the president initially referred to those marching against the supremacists as “anti-police agitators”, words he later decided to walk back.

Next weekend could see similar hatred showing up in our own town. This past Friday, a synagogue in Alameda was vandalized. Yesterday morning, a friend went to breakfast with her family on Bernal Heights where she saw two men wearing “Make America Great Again” baseball caps and carrying tasers strapped to their belts. In ways big and small, the hatred and bigotry are becoming increasingly, painfully obvious.

But let’s be clear: The violence and hate of these white supremacist groups will not stop us as followers of Jesus:

• from praising and thanking God for the beautiful diversity of our people, 
• from looking out for the more vulnerable members of our communities
• from honoring the beautiful faith traditions of our Muslim and Jewish and indigenous sisters and brothers.
• from welcoming hardworking immigrants with their rich and beautiful cultures to this Sanctuary City of St. Francis and our state of California, and keeping them safe here

Faced with brutal oppression and violence in her own time, Mary both spoke out and put her body on the line. Today, given the brutal oppression of people of color, Jews, Muslims, and immigrants, we too must speak--to our friends, coworkers, and neighbors, to our senators and congress-people, to anyone who will listen--naming the hate, calling one another back to justice and basic human decency.

And like Mary, we, too, must put our bodies on the line--picking up the phone to call our representatives, showing up for a prayer vigil, marching in one of the many protests now being planned throughout the city, responding when deportation forces raid one of our terrified immigrant families. This is an all-hands-on-deck moment.

There are many ways we can respond. Good people can follow very different strategies, and there are many options. But for followers of Jesus in these perilous times, doing nothing is simply not one of them.

Standing on Troubled Waters

THE TENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

August 13, 2017

The Rev. Dr. Jack Eastwood

Let us pray.
Lord of living waters you saved us from the flood of violence and despair: reach out to us when
faith is weak, when we are going under and make us unafraid to walk with you: through Jesus
Christ, in whom we are raised. AMEN.

Appointed for today, this collect by Steven Shakespeare from Prayers for an Inclusive Church summarizes the three lessons this morning. God’s prophet Elijah is hiding in fear for his life at the hand of Jezebel and her cronies. Paul counsels the church in Rome to be strengthened by the gift of faith and the generosity of God to those who call on him whether Jew or Gentile, slave or free, to live in wholesome love rather than through works of the law, and in the gospel reading Jesus reaches out his hand to support Peter and the disciples who are sinking into fear. Like the prophet, the disciples discover peace in God in calming serenity of spirit.

Huston Smith wrote a book at the turn of the century about religion in response to the
crisis in faith caused by among other factors, the rise and effect of science on our human
understanding. The title of the book is revealing. “Why Religion Matters: the Fate of the Human
Spirit in an Age of Disbelief.” He characterizes the condition that effects the world as “loss –
the loss of religious certainties and of transcendence with its larger horizons. When,” he explains, “human beings started considering themselves the bearers of the highest meaning in
the world and the measure of everything, meaning began to ebb and the stature of humanity to
diminish. The world lost its human dimensions, and we began to lose control of it. “ That is, of
religious certainties.

Try applying the Jesus words “Love your enemies and those that persecute you” to
some of our crises of terrorism today, both on the global as well as domestic fronts.

As Huston describes, built into the human makeup is a longing for a “more” that the
world of everyday experience cannot provide. There is a longing in the human soul, a reaching
for something beyond, simply put, a reaching for God.

And so in our story today, Peter, terrified by a storm on the lake and more probably by
the appearance of a ghost walking towards them. They cry out in fear, they hear a voice but are
not certain of it. Peter reaches for Christ. First he must test if he is going to trust. “If it is you,
Lord, command me to you on the water.” “If it is you, show your stuff as did when you fed
5,000 people earlier today!” In our times of suffering and weakness, we often cry out for God,
for the strength beyond us to give us confidence.

This very cry is in our Eucharist today, we pray, “Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ
will come again.”
.
Somehow, Peter responds. He takes those first steps. I can imagine his friends in the
boat well-familiar with his impetuosity, shouting at him, “Are you crazy? What on earth are you
doing? You are going to drown, we know you can’t swim!”. But this is an important moment. I
wonder if we are too often used to splashing around in safe shallow water and resist
opportunities to deepen our faith, to let ourselves be challenged. That is Peter’s moment. It is
the opportunity to choose to love our enemies and those who hurt us, There is the old song
where we sing “Jesus call us o’er the tumult of life’s wild restless sea , , ,saying “follow me,”
Better said, it is like Jesus calling us into the tumult.

The day after the horror of September 11, there was a couple being interviewed on the news.
They were standing on the street, before the wreckage of ground zero obviously in grief. Their
beloved daughter had perished in the tragedy of that day. Through tears, they shared their grief
with the reporter. The reporter, stammering, said to them, “Well, I know that you will be able
to go to your place of worship this weekend and there maybe you’ll find some consolation in
your faith…” And the grieving mother replied, “No, we won’t be going to our place of worship
this weekend ‘cause we’re Christians, and we know what Jesus commands about forgiveness,
and frankly, we’re just not yet ready for that. It’ll be some time before we’ll want to be with
Jesus.”

Here is a couple who have no trouble identifying what Jesus looks like and what it
means to follow him. It takes time to be free to forgive. Hatred can enslave us to not heed
the call until we are free to respond.

Nelson Mandela heard a voice calling him during those long lonely years he spent in
prison. It was God’s voice of wisdom saying to him, over and over. It said, he writes in his
autobiography, that “I am not truly free if I am taking away someone else’s freedom, just as
surely as I am not free when my freedom is taken from me. The oppressor and the oppressed
alike are robbed of their humanity.” The hatred and bigotry of white nationalists we are seeing
now in Charlottesville must be denounced. Can the injured forgive? As Christians, we know
the call to root out any bitterness and hatred in our own hearts. We know what it means to be
called into that tumult. Non-violence is the call of Jesus. it is not an easy call whenever we see
people threaten each other, neighbor against neighbor, citizen against citizen. That is how
demanding the call of Jesus can be.

“Take my hand, precious Lord” is the first phrase of one of the well-beloved Christian
hymns. Composed by Thomas Dorsey, this reading from the Gospel of Matthew may well have
been his early inspiration. As an African American composer, his skill was in writing hymns that
not only captured the hopes, fears, and aspirations of the poor and disenfranchised African
American people, but to all people. Many of our hymns have a story behind them. The writing
of this hymn was born of a personal tragedy. Like Peter striving to stand on trouble waters,
Thomas Dorsey had his own experience of the pain of loss and anger. In 1932 Dorsey had driven
from Chicago to St Louis to organize a gospel choir. When he arrived, a telegram awaited him.
The telegram said that his wife had suddenly become extremely ill and that he should return
home at once. Dorsey’s wife was in the last stages of pregnancy, and when he finally returned home he found that his wife had died. The baby had been born without difficulty but
unfortunately died within two days. He retired to his “music” room and remained there for
three days. Dorsey said that when he came to himself after three days he went to the piano
and composed this song: Precious Lord, take my hand, lead me on, let me stand, I am tired, I am
weak, I am worn; through the storm, though the night, lead me on to the light, take my hand,
precious Lord, lead me on.”

So in the dead of night, or maybe just before dawn, should you hear something, perhaps
a voice coming through your own thoughts as you lie in restlessness, calling you step out into
uncharted, untested, perhaps turbulent waters, asking you to rise up and move through it,
defying the waves that seem to hold you back, there is a good chance that voice belongs to
someone who is your Lord and Savior. And what may he call you to do? In the spirit of today’s
lessons and examples, he calls us to follow the words of our former President Barack Obama,
recently quoting Nelson Mandela:

No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his
background or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love. For love comes more naturally to the human heart than its
opposite.

That pesky mustard seed

The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 12, Year A

July 30, 2017

The Rev'd Richard Smith. Ph.D.

Heaven is totally overrated. It seems boring. Clouds, listening to people play the harp. It should be somewhere you can’t wait to go, like a luxury hotel. Maybe blue skies and soft music were enough to keep people in line in the 17th century, but Heaven has to step it up a bit. They’re basically getting by because they only have to be better than Hell. 

These are the words of LA Times columnist Joel Stein, and he’s right. I don't know where this boring idea of a gauzy, cloud-filled, harpy afterlife came from, but it certainly wasn’t from Jesus or our Jewish spiritual ancestors. Their concern was with this world--a new world in the making, even now, right here on this earth. They called it the reign of God, and they longed for it and spoke of it in beautiful poetry, like these words from Isaiah:

On this mountain the Lord will prepare
    a feast of rich food for all peoples,
a banquet of aged wine—
    the best of meats and the finest of wines.
7 On this mountain he will destroy
    the shroud that enfolds all peoples,
the sheet that covers all nations;
8     he will swallow up death forever.
The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears
    from all faces;
he will remove his people’s disgrace
    from all the earth.

The reign of God.

In the parables in todays’ gospel, Jesus adds even more images, each revealing a slightly different facet of this reign of God. He gives you several to choose from: a mustard seed, a treasure you stumble across in a field, a great pearl you find after a long search, yeast that permeates the dough. Each is a little different, but there are a few themes that run through all of them. I'll mention just one.

The reign of God is disruptive., tainting the reality we’ve grown to accept, challenging the views we’ve lived by, and subverting assumptions that have guided much of our lives in the world.

• Take the mustard seed. Most of us grew up reading this parable somewhat simplistically – “big things often have small beginnings”. That’s the platitude. But the truth is that mustard was a pesky weed--uncontrollable, invasive, undesirable, like crabgrass or dandelions. Mustard was disruptive of whatever you were trying to grow in your garden or your field. 
• And yeast--it, too, was disruptive. As some commentators note, in the biblical world, yeast was a sign of impurity. Kneading it into flour irreparably tainted the bread.
• Buying a field because you happen to know it’s worth far more than the seller is aware may be a shrewd business strategy, but it could also be considered dubious, if not a little sketchy.
• And the idea that you, a purveyor of fine pearls, would sell everything, including all the other amazing pearls you’ve acquired over the years, to buy just one special pearl, makes no sense. It would raise eyebrows, make your business colleagues wonder what you’re up to. 

Which is to say the reign of God disrupts the world as we've come to know it, challenges the views we’ve lived by, and again and again subverts the political regimes and cultural assumptions that have guided much of our lives in the world.

This is the disruptive message of Jesus, whose family thought he was crazy, the political leaders deemed subversive, the religious leaders deemed a blasphemer and a heretic.

Depending on where you’re standing, Jesus’ disruptive message can be good news or bad. For those who are content, disrupting your life by planting mustard or selling everything to possess a single pearl, no matter how valuable, would be crazy. To them, these disruptions will be bad news.

But to those who are not content – with the status quo, with the lack of resources they need to survive (healthcare, education, a decent wage) or with the values, stereotypes, or prejudices of the dominant culture – to these, Jesus’ gospel, disruptive and upsetting as it is, nevertheless rings true and real, something worth buying at any cost. For these, disruption is a good thing. It is the foundation of resistance to a regime that is oppressive and a culture that is so often racist, homophobic, and misogynistic. It explains why, back in the day, many slave masters would not allow such a subversive message to be preached to their slaves lest it foment rebellion.

Maybe this is why the gospel resonates most deeply among those for whom life is most fragile. As David Lose writes, "When you can set yourself up with the comforts of the world, and fortify the illusion that you are master of the universe, why would you need the gospel? As Paul says, the gospel appears foolish in the eyes of the world and so has little value to the self-contented, the self-made man or woman of the age, and the powerful." (http://www.davidlose.net/2017/07/pentecost-8-a-parabolic-promises/)

But to those whose spirits are crushed – whether by illness or disappointment or poverty or discrimination or the inequities of the economic system – Jesus’ promises are good news -- in fact, they are the best news we’ve heard and worth sacrificing everything for.

To those who recognize there is something more out there than the world can offer, who can feel the deep ache in their hearts for true joy, then that reign of God will surpass our wildest dreams. It will disrupt, invade, take over, and transform our lives--even here, even now.

The Sower

Sixth Sunday after Pentecost, Year A, Proper 10

The Rev'd Richard Smith, Ph.D.

When the disciples ask Jesus to explain the story in today’s gospel, he begins by giving that story a title. He calls it “the parable of the sower”, which I take to mean this story is not so much about the seed that is sown nor about the soil it’s sown in. Rather, it’s more about the one who does the sowing. This is a parable about a sower.

What can we say about this sower except that he is reckless and extravagant--scattering seeds everywhere, regardless of whether they land

• among rocks where they are unlikely to take root, 
• or along the footpath where the birds will likely eat them, 
• or among thorns where they can get choked. 

None of this seems to matter to this unlikely sower who seems so careless and inefficient.

Which is exactly how Jesus went about sowing his message--carelessly, recklessly, inefficiently, extravagantly--giving himself, his message, his works of healing to those least likely to yield a harvest. This was the irony in his ministry--that he had come not for the righteous, whom you’d reasonably expect to yield a rich harvest, but for the lost sheep: the whores and scarecrows and misfits of his day.

But, ironically, this inefficient strategy seemed to work. As he explained to the religious leaders, “the tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the kingdom of heaven ahead of you.” Those you’d least expect understood him more than did the righteous. Clearly, there was a method to this reckless sower’s madness.

This has implications. For example, if you’re ever looking for God in your own life, don’t forget to look in the places you’d least expect to find him--perhaps in moments of darkness, disappointment, pain, and yes, sinfulness--the rocky, thorny soil of your own heart.

One day, the great spiritual writer, Thomas Merton, was reading through the pages of his own journal. He prayed: “I am content that these pages show me to be what I am--noisy, full of the racket of my imperfections and passions, and the wide open wounds left by my sins. Full of my own emptiness. Yet, ruined as my house is, You live there!”

This was his confidence, that even in the darkness and noise and racket of his own heart, the seeds of God’s presence were there. His life may have been rocky and full of thorns, but Merton knew God was there.

Sometimes it can take awhile for that seed that God has planted to become visible.

This is a dark time for our country. The drums of war are beating more loudly now, more immigrant families are being torn apart, the wealthy are getting increasingly wealthy while more and more people are left homeless, and the earth is not as safe now.

If we are to believe today’s gospel, then we know that even in these rocky, thorny times the reckless sower has planted seeds. It may take time for those seeds to become apparent, for the presence and the work of God to be clearly seen.

Yet even in the darkness of the world and the darkness and racket of our own hearts, the reckless sower has already planted seeds. Although still unseen, those seeds are already growing. Do you see them yet?

Keep your eyes open for glimpses of grace; it is the hour of the unexpected.

Mission Accomplished?

May 28, 2017

The Rev'd Richard Smith, Ph.D.

By the way our patron John the Evangelist tells today’s gospel story, you’d think it was “mission accomplished”.

It’s the night before Jesus dies, and he’s summarizing his whole life and its meaning. Jesus is praying, and he says to his Father, “I glorified you on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do. So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory I had in your presence before the world existed.”

You’d think Jesus had lived his life from one glory to another, and if that’s what St. John is trying to say here, then I'd like to know what he was smoking when he wrote this story.

Because by most accounts, Jesus’ life was not what you’d call a glorious success. The religious elite did not accept his message. One of his disciples betrayed him, another denied him, the rest fled. He was executed with criminals, mocked by both soldiers and priests, abandoned and alone, his body writhing in pain. This is the social truth of Jesus’ life, and it’s not a pretty picture, certainly not one of glorious accomplishment.

It might have been different had he died pain-free, in the fullness of years, with trophies lining the fireplace mantle, applauded by his contemporaries, with family and friends all gathered around, and leaving an abundant inheritance. That would be an accomplished life. But that is hardly the story of Jesus.

So this passage opens the question of how to measure a life. Deep down, what does a successful life look like?

My guess is John in this gospel is pushing us to measure our lives not in the social and economic terms we generally use, but in spiritual terms. Measuring life in such spiritual terms requires some radical rethinking about life and what counts as success.

Because life is not about the length of days or the magnitude of accomplishments or money. There’s the story of Alexander the Great who, after conquering all the known world, sat atop his horse and wept, because there was nothig left to conquer. At our deepest level, we are spiritual creatures, and our hearts can’t be fully satisfied by the number of our accomplishments or toys or kudos.

Our mission in this life is to release divine love into the world. This is the criterion by which we measure a successful life: by how we love.

Perhaps you saw the Facebook photo of 23-year-old Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche, a recent graduate of Reed College. The photo shows a smiling young man with flowing red hair, mortar board on his head, and wearing his graduation gown, just setting out on his adult life. Next to the photo, his mother posted these words: “My dear baby boy passed on yesterday while protecting two young Muslim girls from a racist man on the train in Portland. He was a hero and will remain a hero on the other side of the veil. Shining bright star I love you forever.”

Taliesin, along with two other men, had come to the defense of two teenage girls--one black, the other Muslim wearing a hijab. The assailant pulled out a knife and stabbed the three defenders, killing Taliesin and one other man.

Taliesin’s considerable potential for contributing to the world was only partially realized. How can we say of such a life, “It is finished, it is complete”?
 
I know almost nothing about Taliesin, the young man in Portland, but from a spiritual perspective, his death was an hour of revelation, a moment when God’s love was released into the world. That young man’s life, like that of Jesus, was so short, with so many dreams left undone. And yet, on the deepest level his life was a complete success, because, like Jesus, Taliesin loved. He accomplished what he was sent here for. He loved.

Each of us is a beloved child close to the heart of God. This is our deepest identity, who we are at the core, beloved children of God. The adventure of life is to live out this identity.

This identity may shine out once or many times. Whenever we live out this identity, whenever we release this love in the world, whether at the hour of death like Taliesin or at any hour, it is a divine revelation; we have in that moment accomplished the work we were sent here to do.

As strange as the words of Jesus’ prayer may sound at first, they are words our hearts eagerly await. They reflect something more than the usual measures of success our culture offers.

The prayer of Jesus in today’s gospel shows a hidden spiritual reality difficult to see amid the rat race and noise of our social lives: that each of us, every person, is a mission of love meant to stir love in others. When this happens, God is glorified, the mission is accomplished, life is complete.

Can we believe this?

An Appeal to Womanhood

A sermon by the Rev. Jacqueline Cherry


The Episcopal Church of St. John the Evangelist, San Francisco

May 14, 2017 – Mother’s Day, Easter 5, Yr. A

I don’t like Donald Trump, I don’t like Kellyanne Conway, and I don’t like Mother’s Day.
For so many reasons, I don’t like Mother’s Day. And every year, Richard puts me on the rota to preach on Mother’s Day. Last night, I was looking over my previous Mother’s Day sermons, and I have to say they were pretty good. I suggested that all of us, male and female, have the capacity to mother in a sermon I called The Motherhood of all Believers. I’ve talked about The Mommy Hierarchy, the pervasive tendency by both individuals and systems to value biological parents above adoptive or foster parents – this is especially problematic for lesbian couples. I’ve woven in Dame Julian of Norwich who wrote such things as – Just as God is truly our Father, so also is God truly our Mother. And I always wrapped it up with Jesus. But, I’ve never been completely honest … I don’t like Mother’s Day, and I know I’m the only one.

My mom wanted desperately to have children, but she couldn’t. It wasn’t until after my dad died in 2012 that I learned it was he who was sterile, not my mom. An engineer specializing in underwater acoustics, my dad was on the Enewetak Atoll in the 1950’s – a chain of coral reefs and beautiful lagoons between Hawaii and Australia, the site our government chose to test nuclear weapons -- when he was exposed to untold amounts of radiation. I learned this by reading a letter I found in his safe box from the United States government offering medical help and compensation to veterans and civilians who participated in atomic research. I also found a commemorative Zippo lighter with an enamel seal of the US Defense Nuclear Agency on one side and an engraved map of the Marshall Islands on the other. Radiation from these experiments ravaged the ocean, the islands, the islanders, and my dad’s body; the government issued cigarette lighters.

In the Cold War era, nuclear testing was top-secret, therefore servicemen and women couldn’t get outside medical help because they were forbidden to tell doctors of their radiation exposure. I honestly don’t think my dad knew he was sterile. Researchers had just begun to study the effects of radiation exposure, and unlike today, sperm analysis wasn’t routinely done. For her entire life my mom bore the burden, and the guilt, of not being able to bear children.

Mother’s Day reminded me I was adopted. I wasn’t longing after my birth mother. Rather, I sensed my mom’s despair, and there was no card I could make, or gift I could buy that would alleviate the loss that had occupied the center of her being since the day she learned she would never have kids. Even with the usual presents and kind gestures, every year Mother’s Day was fraught. And every year the florists and candy makers, phone companies and cosmetic counters figured out new ways to exploit the idea of honoring mothers.

This morning, in one quick paragraph, we heard about the stoning of Stephen, the first Christian martyr and, according to the Acts of the Apostles, the first deacon of the early church. A martyr is someone who suffers persecution and death for advocating, renouncing, or refusing to renounce or advocate a belief that is required by an external party.  Stephen was skilled at speaking his truth, and even more skilled at irritating the authorities. Relentlessly he proclaimed that Jesus was the messiah; so relentlessly he was stoned to death.

I’ve had an eye-opening experience on the social media site OK Cupid. It’s essentially a dating site where you answer hundreds of questions on lifestyle, politics, ethics, and so on. For example: It’s Friday night, would you rather stay home and play scrabble, chill at a dive bar, or have dinner at a fancy restaurant? And, Would you consider having sex in a church? The mysterious OK Cupid algorithm crunches the answers then calculates compatibility. I scored a 99% match with an attractive woman. After a few fun emails, I mentioned something about church. She replied, You’re a Christian! Sorry, that’s a deal breaker!  Then she attempted to reassure me with Pascal's Wager that posits most rational people will bet that God exists because they stand to receive infinite gains – heaven, and avoid infinite loss – hell. However, she explained, his probability theory didn’t apply to her. (I have to admit I was impressed when she cited Blaise Pascal –
the genius mathematician/physicist turned theologian/philosopher.)

After two more highly compatible women cited my Christianity as the “deal breaker”, I developed Jac’s Wager:

Educated, progressive lesbians who believe they are open-minded will not want to appear
narrow-minded especially when interacting with someone they find attractive.

So right off the bat, in the first email, I say something like, “I’m okay having coffee with an atheist, are you okay having coffee with a Christian?” I am happy to report that I have a coffee date on May 24th.

I realize now that I must give credit where credit is due – I was a Christian when I met Beth in 2004, nevertheless, she was willing to go out with me.

Jesus said,

Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.

Well, the disciples do in fact have every reason to be troubled. And for the record, so do we. Jesus is saying good bye, without telling them where he is going. Thomas is not satisfied, he needs more information, perhaps a map or GPS, to show him the way. Jesus doesn’t have anything that practical to offer, he responds, I am the way, and the truth, and the life. In my opinion, this attempt to give his disciples more information was a failure. This passage is routinely misinterpreted, or perhaps intentionally used, to argue that Christianity is the only one true path to God. What we should be focusing on instead, is what Jesus tells his disciples next -- if you don’t believe in me because of my words, believe in me because of my works.  That I can get behind. The truth is, it doesn’t matter what we believe, what matters are the things we do.

• It matters that you feed the hungry, it doesn’t matter that you’re Jewish;
• I care that you fight against our country’s heinous immigration and deportation laws, I don’t care that you’re an atheist;
• I respect you for standing in silent vigil in front of the police station to protest the abuse and killing of black and brown people by the SFPD whether or not you sit next to me in church.

In this vein, I could continue on and on.

Today we are witnessing an insecure, uninformed, mentally precarious president with the power to destroy humanity, and the natural world.  Of course I’m speaking of Trump, but this is also true of North Korea’s young president who doesn’t seem to know the difference between a bottle rocket and a warhead missile. Which brings us back to the nuclear weapons my dad helped refine in the Marshall Islands, the weapons that left the islands uninhabitable, and caused his sterility.

We have every reason for our hearts to be troubled. And this my friends, this propensity for war, this insecure posturing with military might, the unnecessary bloodshed, and the death of our children, these are the reasons we have Mother’s Day. Stephen, the first martyr and deacon of the church, set a bold example of standing firm in his belief that Jesus was the messiah – he spoke (his) truth to power. However, instead of relentlessly proclaiming our beliefs, I want to inspire you to boldly live out the values of your beliefs, following the example of Julia Ward Howe. You could say that Howe is the mother of Mother’s Day. In 1870, with power and grace, she gave life to her Christian values when she wrote, and please bear with me as I read her

APPEAL TO WOMANHOOD THROUGHOUT THE WORLD
Again, in the sight of the Christian world, have the skill and power of two great nations exhausted themselves in mutual murder. Again have the sacred questions of international justice been committed to the fatal mediation of military weapons. In this day of progress, in this century of light, the ambition of rulers has been allowed to barter the dear interests of domestic life for the bloody exchanges of the battle field. 

Thus men have done. Thus men will do. But women need no longer be made a party to proceedings which fill the globe with grief and horror. Despite the assumptions of physical force, the mother has a sacred and commanding word to say to the sons who owe their life to her suffering. That word should now be heard, and answered to as never before. 

Arise, then, Christian women of this day! Arise, all women who have hearts whether your baptism be that of water or of tears! Say firmly: We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country, to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says: Disarm, disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice. 

Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence vindicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of council. 

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them then solemnly take council with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, man as the brother of man, each bearing after his own kind the sacred impress, not of Cæsar, but of God. 

In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women, without limit of nationality, may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient, and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.
(Amen.)

JULIA WARD HOWE

Boston, September, 1870.

Appeal to womanhood throughout the world, ... Julia Ward Howe. Boston, September, 1870. https://www.loc.gov/resource/rbpe.07400300/?st=text

The Tomb and the Womb

A sermon by the Rev. Jacqueline Cherry


The Episcopal Church of St. John the Evangelist, San Francisco

April 15, 2017 – The Great Vigil of Easter

Look down, O God, from your heavenly throne, and illumine this night with your celestial brightness; that by night as by day your people may glorify your whole Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Anyone who has worked with me on this service, tonight and on vigils past, knows that I am relentless beyond annoyance about the lighting. Well, this year, I’ve had the great pleasure of working with Daniel, Endersnight’s director, who either has the patience of at saint, or is equally neurotic. Either way, I have found a partner in precision of which you are all beneficiaries.

The Easter Vigil is the liturgical consummation of our Christian calendar. For a preacher, that’s especially challenging because words ring hollow against the aesthetics of this awesome ritual. And tonight the music has lifted the beauty of this liturgy to an even higher plane. And I stand here before you, humbled.

Look, follow these columns up to the clerestory, and out into the heavens; the very architecture of this church serves to transport us to a higher place. And that’s what we desire, isn’t it? No, tonight my job is to ground you; this is the night we come face-to- face with God, on earth. Tonight, like a preacher without words, the way to God is humility. So, don’t look up; look down, look deep. Feel what it is to be human.

Human - humus -- the Latin word for soil.

“And God formed man from the dust of the ground.” Our very being is of the earth, and so it is with Jesus.

We began this service with the Exsultet, rejoicing that darkness has been vanquished, and praying to God that the light of Christ may shine continually to drive away all darkness. Yes; yes, the light of Christ is glorious. But often we forget that there is holiness in the darkness, too. Jesus was born in a dark cave. We say stable, but that stable was in fact a cave. And from a cave, Jesus rose from the dead.

Before the great earthquake, 

Before the stone was rolled away at the tomb,

In this holy moment between Good Friday and Easter Sunday,

Right now, a divine alchemy is taking place.

And I can’t help but believe that what is happening tonight in the tomb, is like the Holy gestation that occurred in Mary’s womb, some 33 years earlier.

In the dark God mingles with Mary and humanity is infused with divinity. On this Holy Saturday, in the dark tomb, a sacred process of gestation and germination is occurring. Like the suspension of time between Daniel giving the choir a direction, and the choir responding to that direction with music, there is a moment when all of the elements necessary for creation, for resurrection, are there, but the creation has not yet been manifest.

That’s where we are tonight. And that’s where I want us to stay. Because the resurrection didn’t happen on a beautiful Sunday morning, flush with white lilies, fanfare, and bonnets. It happened in a cave. There was no light and it was silent. I imagine it was dank with a very earthy smell. There were no witnesses to see it.

Wendell Berry wrote:

To know the dark, go dark.
Go without sight, and find that the dark, too,
blooms and sings.

My friends, new life begins in the dark. Seedlings take root in dark soil. In fact, almost all vegetable growth takes place in the dark.

Tonight I ask you to open up and embrace this holy darkness. I ask you to remember that God is present even when we don’t feel the presence. I ask you to remember that God is present even when everything around us feels horrific.

When it seems that nothing could ever lift us from the darkness, all of us, including our fragile earth, are transforming now, just as Jesus is being transformed.

After listening to the long record of God’s saving deeds throughout history, I don’t think there’s much more for a preacher to say. Tonight while God and Jesus are still in the tomb making the mystery, I want us to stay in the mystery. I want us to hear with open ears the anthem that William

Byrd wrote, that Daniel will direct, and the choir will make manifest. Byrd’s words push us beyond the Pascal Mystery, the words assure us that we too shall be restored to new life. Let these words seep deep into your heart:

Christ rising again from the dead now dieth not.
Death from henceforth hath no power upon him.
Christ is risen again, the first fruits of them that sleep.

For as in Adam all men do die,
so by Christ shall all men be restored to life.

Amen.

Religion: Is It Good or Bad?

May 7, 2017

Fourth Sunday of Easter, Year A

The Rev'd Richard Smith, Ph.D.

There are two sides to every story.

Today’s gospel comes just after Jesus heals a blind man on the Sabbath. Healing that blind man gets Jesus in trouble with the religious leaders. There are two sides to this story. 

The official story from the religious leaders is that the man would not have been born blind in the first place if he or his parents were not sinners. And, furthermore, Jesus is a sinner, too, for violating Jewish law that clearly forbade one from healing on the Sabbath. That’s one side of the story, the official version.

But the man Jesus cured tells a different story: “Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.”

Two sides to the story. How do you sort this one out? Whose testimony should you accept here? Can you trust the official story from the religious leaders, the shepherds? Or should you run with the man who was cured? 

This is what Jesus is wrestling with in today’s gospel where he refers to himself as the gate to the sheepfold. He doesn’t refer to himself here as a shepherd--he uses that image for himself later in the gospel. But today, in this passage,he refers to himself as the gate to the sheepfold. 

It’s the gate to a large protected corral. Through that gate, each evening, all the shepherds from the region would lead their flocks, bringing all the sheep together where they’ll be safe through the night. Then in the morning, each shepherd would gather his own flock, by calling each sheep by name, then lead them out to the nearby pastures to graze.

“I am the gate to the sheepfold”, Jesus says. The gate symbolizes Jesus own path of compassion and justice, of care for the poor and the outcast, his hope and joy and sheer delight in the world. 

A shepherd who enters the sheepfold through this gate shares in Jesus’ own work of bringing life in abundance to his sheep. 

Any leader, religious or otherwise, who does not approach the sheep through this gate is no shepherd, but one who brings destruction and death. You should not trust such a leader.

It’s a matter of recognizing the difference between good religion and bad religion, between good religious leadership and bad.

Archbishop Tutu was once asked whether he thought religion was good or bad. He said the word “religion” itself is neutral. It’s like “politics” or “art”.

Politics can sometimes be good, leading to greater equality and freedom and peace. At other times it can be bad--enslaving people, dividing them against each other, plunging them into poverty. 

Art can sometimes be good, opening unexplored regions of your heart to beauty in the world and in people. At other times it can fuel violence, racial hatred, misogyny, homophobia.

As with politics and art, religion can be good or bad. It can serve either life or death, human flourishing or human and planetary destruction.

The trick is to recognize the difference between good religion and bad. It’s a matter for discernment.

The word religion comes from two Latin words: re meaning again, and ligare, meaning to connect. We get our English word ligament from that Latin word, ligare. So, religare means to reconnect. This is what religion is meant to do. 

The idea is that over the course of the week--going to work, feeding the dog, shopping for groceries, dealing with all the ups and downs of our relationships and of life, we can lose touch with something vital. We can lose our zest for life, our passion and purpose. We can lose touch with our own hearts’ deepest desires, lose our connection with other people and the larger universe. 

We look to good religion to reconnect us, help make us whole again. This is the purpose of our religious practices--our feasts and fasts, our seasons and holidays, the rituals and the prayers and the music and songs--all meant to reconnect us with ourselves, each other, the world. This is what good religion offers us--whether Jewsih, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu. 

This good religion is lived in the lives of Archbishop Tutu, Dorothy Day, the Dalai Lama, Dr. Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Theresa, the Sufi mystic Rumi, Pope Francis, Rabbi Abraham Heschel, Oscar Romero and the many priests and nuns that were killed serving the poor in El Salvador. There are many shining examples of good religion.

Then there is bad religion--religion that disconnects us, alienates us from ourselves and others. It includes preachers who condemn women and gay people for following the promptings of our own hearts and our bodies. Such preachers alienate us from ourselves; they preach bad religion. And bad religion includes religious leaders who condone or remain silent in the face of human cruelty, poverty, violence, war. It includes “Christian” prosperity gospel politicians who tell you, as some recently have implied, if you lead a good life, you will not need health insurance because you will never get sick or have an accident. If you’re good, they tell you, you will always prosper. 

Bad religion leads not to life in abundance, but rather is embedded in today’s violence against gay men in Chechnya; the exploitation of women; the enslavement of people of color; many Crusades and “holy” wars down the centuries; many people forced into in poverty; and many, many suicides. 

Good religion, bad religion. One that serves life, one that destroys and crushes. Important to recognize the difference. 

Oscar Romero described what being church and providing religious leadership looked like in his own context, and his words give us a clue about what they might look like--and not look like--in our own US reality today. Romero wrote:

It is very easy to be servants of the word without disturbing the world, a very spiritualized word, a word without any commitment to history, a word that can sound in any part of the world because it belongs to no part of the world. A word like that creates no problems, starts no conflicts.
What starts conflicts and persecutions, what marks the genuine church, is the word that, burning like the word of the prophets, proclaims and accuses; proclaims to the people God’s wonders to be believed and venerated, and accuses of sin those who oppose God’s reign, so that they may tear that sin out of their hearts, out of their societies, out of their laws – out of the structures that oppress, that imprison, that violate the rights of God and of humanity. This is the hard service of the word.
A church that doesn’t provoke any crises, a gospel that doesn’t unsettle, a word of God that doesn’t get under anyone’s skin, a word of God that doesn’t touch the real sin of the society in which it is being proclaimed, what gospel is that? Some want to keep a gospel so disembodied that it doesn’t get involved at all in the world it must save.
Christ is now in history. Christ is in the womb of the people. Christ is now bringing about the new heavens and the new earth.

This gospel passage speaks to official religious leaders, but also to each one of us. Because each of us is a shepherd in our own way--as parents, teachers, artists, activists, or as friend or in one of the many other roles we may play. Each of us called to enter--and invite others--through the gate of compassion and hope, the gate that leads to life in abundance. The gate we Christians call Jesus.

One minister, Victoria Safford, reflects on what this feels like to stand at that gate leading and inviting others in. I’ll close with her words.

Our mission is to plant ourselves at the gates of Hope — not the prudent gates of Optimism, which are somewhat narrower; nor the stalwart, boring gates of Common Sense; nor the strident gates of Self-Righteousness, which creak on shrill and angry hinges (people cannot hear us there; they cannot pass through); nor the cheerful, flimsy garden gate of “Everything is gonna be all right.” But a different, sometimes lonely place, the place of truth-telling, about your own soul first of all and its condition, the place of resistance and defiance, the piece of ground from which you see the world both as it is and as it could be, as it will be; the place from which you glimpse not only struggle, but joy in the struggle. And we stand there, beckoning and calling, telling people what we are seeing, asking people what they see.

Back to Galilee: Easter 2017

Easter 2017

Year A

Richard Smith

Did you like the special effects in today's gospel story? The two women arrive at the tomb looking for Jesus when, like a lightening bolt, an angel appears. The earth shudders beneath their feet. Single-handedly, the powerful angel rolls back the huge stone, then sits on top of it like it was his throne. 

The men standing guard at the tomb take one look at him and pass out.

And then, the angel turns his gaze on the two women and says "Don't be afraid".

Say what? 

“Do not be afraid!???” Isn’t that a bit counterintuitive? Everything about this messenger is meant to overwhelm, and we humans are programmed to fear what overwhelms us.

But in this case, things are different. Because what overwhelms is a love stronger than death. This thunderbolt messenger, far from being a threat, is at their service. 

“Do not be afraid”, the angel tells them, and then sends them off in a new direction, away from the tomb, this place of death--”He is not here”--sends them to Galilee. "There you will find him." From the tomb to Galilee.

What began in tears and defeat in the place of death now ends with a broken tomb, a garden teeming with life, and Jesus, with a smile on his lips and a sparkle in his eye, sending his disciples back to Galilee.

Galilee is where the story of Jesus began. It is where he first called the disciples, where he touched lepers, dined with whores and tax collectors, railed against the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, shared bread with hungry crowds, spoke truth to power.

Galilee, that backwater town: Jesus knew well its dusty roads and fragrant fields.

And after all that has just happened to him in Jerusalem--after his trial and condemnation, the abandonment by his friends, his torture and crucifixion, his death and burial--now after all of that, in this moment of resurrection, what does he do? The Risen One goes back to Galilee. He’s starting the story all over again. 

Back to the beginning, but now with a new clarity about where it all leads. Despite what happened on Good Friday when all hell broke loose, the path of Jesus--of caring for the poor and the outcast…--has now been vindicated by God. Despite all appearances to the contrary, the path of violence and retaliation, of indifference to the poverty and racism and homophobia--these things will not have the last word. Today, the path of Jesus, that path of compassion, of service to the least of his sisters and brothers, today this path of Jesus gets revealed as the path to life. It is the triumph of love and laughter and life over all forms of death and oppression.

And if you want life, the angel tells the women, you will find it by joining Jesus there in Galilee--where he continues feeding hungry people, overcoming violence with love; welcoming outcasts, and wiping away tears. 

Do you want to draw close to God? Go to Galilee. "There you will find him."

What about our own Galilee? For we have our own, we know it well. It’s a world: 

• Where the bodies of young people of color and the mentally ill are too often incarcerated or riddled with police bullets
• Where homeless people huddle against the rain under freeway onramps and in tents alongside luxury condos, alongside our church
• Where immigrants and Muslims are vilified, and doors are slammed in the faces of terror-stricken, Syrian children and their impoverished families
• Where children of undocumented parents go to bed afraid of losing their parents to Trump’s deportation force
• Where people in this community have grieved the loss of Judy Eastwood, and other good friends and family members over this past year
• Where some of us struggle with our own health and all that comes with our own aging, broken hips, arthritis, the loss of control over our own lives
• And where, as our city changes so quickly around us, we wonder if we, like so many others, could lose our homes. 

Galilee. We know it very well.

If we would draw close to the Risen One, this is where we will find him, right here in our own Galilee--in this little parish, in this neighborhood with all its terrible beauty. It’s here that we’re invited to work alongside that Risen One, and in doing so, find life. 

We do this 

• in our handing out fresh veggies and bread in our food pantry each Saturday, 
• In providing a warm, dry place for homeless people to sleep each weekday morning
• in our Nightwalks to end the violence in our neighborhood,
• In our vigils at the Federal Building to end the wars, 
• In our offer of Sanctuary to young people fleeing the violence in Central America
• and in our efforts to stop the unjust deportations that tear apart immigrant families…

These are some of the things we do as a community, but there are so many other things, great and small, that we do as individuals among our friends and acquaintances, in our families and with our kids. 

Here, in our Galilee, the risen Christ invites us to join him more and more closely in his great work. 

In a moment, we will approach the font to renew our baptismal vows. Like the women in today’s gospel, we vow to join the work of Jesus right here in our own Galilee. This is how we draw close to him, by becoming his heart and hands and feet right here.

The poet Jan Richardson writes from the standpoint of the angel at the tomb speaking to the women that morning.

Easter Blessing

If you are looking

for a blessing,

do not linger

here.

Here

is only

emptiness,

a hollow,

a husk

where a blessing

used to be.

This blessing

was not content

in its confinement.

It could not abide

its isolation,

the unrelenting silence,

the pressing stench

of death.

So if it is

a blessing

that you seek,

open your own

mouth.

Fill your lungs

with the air

that this new

morning brings

and then

release it

with a cry.

Hear how the blessing

breaks forth

in your own voice

how your own lips

form every word

you never dreamed

to say.

See how the blessing

circles back again

wanting you to

repeat it

but louder

how it draws you

pulls you

sends you

to proclaim

its only word:

risen

risen

risen.

Raising Lazarus

Fifth Sunday of Lent, Year A

by the Rev'd Richard Smith, Ph.D.

It’s the Fifth Sunday of Lent, and the Easter Vigil, the most sacred night of the church year, is not far off. It's time to get ready to stir once again the baptismal waters. It's time to practice resurrection.

To help us do this, we’re given this story about Lazarus of Bethany. It’s a warm-up exercise for practicing resurrection.

Lazarus of Bethany. The name “Lazarus” means “God helps,” and the name “Bethany” means “house of the afflicted.” So this is a story about how God helps those in the house of the afflicted, which could be just about any of us at any given moment--when we lose a job, or our good health, or the person we love the most.

If we can pay attention to what happens in this story, and find our place in it, we might get a glimpse of how resurrection works, not only for Lazarus, but for us as well.

In this story, a man falls sick, then dies, then lies in a tomb. Those who love him wonder how this can be happening. They weep. They lose hope.

And Jesus arrives at Lazarus' tomb--but on the fourth day, the day beyond all hope.  Through many stories in Scripture, the pattern repeats itself: first come three days of crisis and struggle, and then comes the third day, when God acts victoriously. It is on the third day that God acts.

But now, in the Lazarus story, it’s too late for that. It is now the fourth day. Jesus arrives on the hopeless day.

He bears the wrath of Martha, “If you had been here, my brother would not have died!” Do you hear a silent sub-text from Martha here, “Where the hell were you?”

Up to this point in the story, death, tears, and sadness are in control. But when Jesus appears that begins to change.

What happens next is a collaboration, a dance if you will, between Jesus and Lazarus and the community.

Jesus, through his own tears of grief at the loss of his friend, bellows out three commands: one to Lazarus himself, and two to his community.

The first command is to the community. “Take away the stone.”

Sometimes the stone that entombs a person is so huge, so seemingly unmovable, that the individual can’t budge it by themselves. If they are ever to escape their tomb, they need a community of people working shoulder-to-shoulder to roll away the stone.

Moms and dads losing their kids to gang and police violence, refugees fleeing the violence and poverty of Central America, little kids losing their parents to deportation, elders like Iris Canada living in isolation and fear of eviction, addicts wanting to become clean, victims of collateral damage in war.

People become trapped in tombs like these. They can’t escape these tombs by themselves. It takes a community to roll back the stones.

Communities have done this, have rolled back huge stones. Like the village in southern France, an entire town that, at great risk, sheltered 5,000 Jews during the Holocaust. Or the wonderfully diverse community that surrounded Dr. King at Selma, or Cesar Chavez in his pilgrimage from Delano to Sacramento. Communities of people working shoulder-to-shoulder to remove the heavy stones from the tombs of their brothers and sisters.

“Take away the stone,” Jesus says to the community gathered at Lazarus’ tomb.

Then Jesus gives a second command, and this one is to Lazarus. “Lazarus, come out!”

Now it is Lazarus who must act.

Jesus calls him by name, calls to his friend in all his uniqueness, knowing what makes him laugh, what makes him cry, his favorite recipes, and songs, and hiding places. Loving all these things about him, he calls his friend by name--to come out of the death and darkness that surrounds him; out of the despair, the lack of joy, the loss of purpose.

Lazarus must make a choice here. He must pry himself loose from the darkness of the tomb, his old ways of thinking, his old ruts, and imagine new possibilities, gently turning a new way, toward life.

It’s true, as philosophers say, that one of the fears that can cripple us is our fear of death. But there is another fear that can cripple us even more: the fear of life--life with all its risks and rewards, its pleasures and pains, its loves and losses. It’s this fear of life that Lazarus must now come to terms with as he hears Jesus cry out to him, “Lazarus, come out of that tomb!”

Lazarus must choose to live.

Slowly, courageously, Lazarus takes his first steps out of the tomb. But as he moves into the sunlight, he still wears his burial clothes. His hands and nose and eyes and mouth and ears are bound. His feet are bound, too, so he can’t walk easily.

So Jesus utters one final command. As with the first command, this one is to the community: “Unbind him, and let him go.”

It’s as though the community is needed to complete the action of resurrection. Jesus has called Lazarus forth to new life--“Lazarus, come out!"--and Lazarus has responded to that call. But now that Lazarus is back among them, it is up to the community to unbind him so that he can once again take his rightful place. He can't do this by himself.

Yazmin Liliana Elias Obregon (detainee number A: 076-373-569). Yazmin is a single mother of three U.S. citizen children all born in the US. She's is now detained at West County Detention Center in Richmond which houses undocumented immigrants apprehended by ICE..

Yazmin came to the U.S. at the age of 4 and lived in Santa Rosa. When she was 14 years old, Yazmin entered an abusive relationship with a man who would become the father of her children. He abused her for nearly 10 years, beat her, sexually abused her, and forced her to use drugs so she would abort her pregnancies. This ex-partner, now in Mexico, has continued to threaten Yazmin. If she is deported to Mexico, Yazmin fears for her life.

As a long-time survivor of severe physical violence, Yazmin coped by self-medicating her trauma with alcohol. She later completed a 3-month inpatient program to treat her alcohol and trauma. She entered rehab for the sake of her kids; she wants to be a stronger mother to provide for them.

Yazmin had completed rehab and was continuing an outpatient 6-month program when ICE detained her. The reason they gave was an old DUI conviction that she has long since resolved

Prior to being detained, Yazmin had paid her debt to society and was well on the way to a new life for herself and her kids. The dry bones of her life were slowly knitting themselves together.

She was working two jobs to support her kids. They, too, have been through a lot. They suffer from PTSD, ADHD, and depression. They were making great strides after the treatment they received, but now that their mother has been taken from them, they are regressing.

As her youngest son, Elijah says: “Since my mom got detained, I have been feeling sad and it’s hard for me to focus on school. I really need for my mom to come back. Adults think I need medicine, counselors, social workers, but all I need right now is my mom.”

The question is whether our society will unbind her, give her a second, well-deserved, chance. Over 25 organizations have rallied to her side now, but under the current administration, the appeals have gone nowhere.

If the community is not there for Yazmin, does not unbind her from past mistakes and from all the ways the world has conspired against her, then her chances of returning to her kids and starting a new life are slim.

The question as she struggles to put her life back together--as she struggles out of the tomb--is whether we, like the community around her, will help unbind her.

We'll know tomorrow afternoon. Her hearing before the immigration judge is tomorrow afternoon.

So where are you in this story of Lazarus?

Maybe you identify with Jesus in this story. Maybe you know someone or some group of people who are slowly emerging from their tombs. What do you now want to say to them? Is there anything you want to do to help unbind them?

Or maybe you identify with Lazarus. Maybe you find yourself in a tomb at this time in your life. What is it like to hear Jesus call you by your name, call you out of that tomb, invite you back to life? What would it require for you to respond to that call? Are there any resistances you would you need to overcome?

In short, how do you, in these final days of Lent, intend to practice resurrection?