Tuesday, May 30, 2017

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.

Sunday, May 7, 2017

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.