Irish Alzheimer's

Second Sunday of Advent 2015, Year C

The Rev'd Dr Richard Smith

You may have heard me mention that peculiar form of Alzheimer's that afflicts Irish people. (I’m half Irish, so I can attest to this.) It’s called  Irish Alzheimer's, and it’s when you can’t remember who anyone is except your enemies.

Over the years I’ve come to suspect it’s not just we Irish who have this particular affliction. It actually seems to afflict other ethnic groups as well.

And I think it’s what John the Baptist is trying to heal in today’s gospel. He’s trying to get us Irish, and other folks with this affliction, ready for our extreme makeovers.

We get seduced into identifying with sin, all the wrongs inflicted on us -- the humiliations, the hateful glances, and the mocking words. We identify ourselves as the victims of others’ wrongdoing, and this can take its toll on us.

I remember talking to a woman married for thirty years whose husband had hurt her deeply many years before. Over the years, that hurt had festered, turned into a profound resentment and bitterness that you could see in the way the lines had formed on her face. That bitterness had taken its toll, stolen her joy and her zest for life.

We can also end up identifying ourselves with the wrongs we ourselves have done -- the hitting, lying cheating, betraying we have done, the selfish choices we’ve made. “I’m the one who wasted all those years on booze and drugs.” “I’m the one who said those hurtful, angry words to the one I love the most.” “I’m the coward who remained silent when a co-worker made that racist or homophobic remark.” Identifying ourselves with our own sinfulness in this way -- this, too, can steal our joy, our passion and zest for life.

Soon we’re telling our life story in terms of our own worst moments, the blows received and blows given. We take on a victimhood from the wrongs of others; we wallow in guilt over our own mistakes. We identify, in other words, with the sin.

There’s a truth in all of this. We really have been mistreated by others, been victims of their wrongdoing. And we really have sinned against others, making them the victims of our own wrongdoing. These are simple facts. We can’t deny this.

The problem is that we come to identify ourselves and each other by these, our worst moments, defining ourselves by all the wrongs done to us and by us.

When we so closely identify ourselves with all the negative, we’ve unconsciously erected a such an effective barricade that God can’t get near us, can’t touch us. We can’t hear God speak to us the words he wants to speak, the words he spoke to Jesus: "You are my beloved child. In you I am well pleased."

Before we can let that love sink in, we have a few barricades to remove. We have to stop with the Irish Alzheimer's, stop identifying ourselves with our worst moments of either victimhood or guilt.

Which is where John the Baptist comes in.

John sees himself as a construction worker. He is building a highway for the arrival of the Lord. Whatever is an obstacle will be eliminated. If the road is winding, it will be straightened. If it is rough, it will be smoothed. If a mountain is in the way, it will be flattened. Whatever is needed to ease the Lord’s arrival will be done. (Shea, John. The Spiritual Wisdom of the Gospels for Christian Preachers and Teachers. Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2004. 6.)

John is doing the preparation work, healing us of our Irish Alzheimer’s to make it possible for us to receive a still greater revelation, an extreme makeover. It is the revelation, the extreme makeover Jesus received the day of his baptism in the Jordan when he found he was unconditionally loved.

When a reporter asked Pope Francis who he was at his deepest core, the Pope leaned back in his chair, thought for a moment, then said, “I am a sinner who is deeply loved and forgiven by God.” The pope gets this right.

True, we’re sinners. Can’t deny it. But we’re not just sinners, we are redeemed sinners, we are children of God, deeply loved and forgiven by a God who is simply crazy about us.

That forgiveness, that redemption trumps everything else you want to say about us. That forgiveness enables us to own the evil inflicted on us and by us, and yet not be defined by it. We are sinners deeply loved and forgiven by God.

There’s a cliche within Christianity: “Jesus saves.” The question, of course, is “From what?” And we answer, “Well, from sin. Jesus saves us from sin.”

Sin is whatever separates us from God, erects a barricade, puts God at a distance from us. And when we say that Jesus saves us from sin, we’re saying that in Jesus, God overcomes that distance, draws close to us, just as we are, with all our wounds and whatever evil we may carry in our own hearts, embraces us just as we are, accompanies us on our journey. This is unconditional love; it’s what we savor in these Advent days, God overcoming the distance.

This unconditional love is transformative. It’s what brings us back to life. It makes for an extreme makeover.

One spiritual writer puts it this way:

I was a neurotic for years. I was anxious and depressed and selfish. Everyone kept telling me to change. I resented them, and I agreed with them, and I wanted to change, but simply couldn’t, no matter how hard I tried. What hurt the most was that, like the others, my best friend kept insisting that I change. So I felt powerless and trapped. Then, one day, he said to me, “Don’t change, I love you just as you are.” These words were music to my ears: Don’t change. Don’t change. Don’t change...I love you as you are.” I relaxed. I came alive. And suddenly I changed.! Now I know that I couldn’t really change until I found someone who would love me whether I changed or not.(De Mello, Anthony. "Don't Change." In The Song of the Bird, 67-68. Garden City, N.Y.: Image Books, 1984.)

This is how God loves us, this God who, by taking on our own human flesh, overcomes the distance, draws near, embraces us just as we are. This is what we celebrate in these days of Advent: God overcoming the distance, “saving us from sin”, leading us into an extreme makeover.

In the last few years, I’ve come to know a few ex-gang members. They had grown up in the gangs. They had been deeply traumatized by violence and abuse from an early age, and they went on to inflict violence and abuse on others through the gangs. I’ve asked them what made them decide to leave the gangs. “It’s a big step, often a dangerous one. What made you decide to leave?” They often tell me, “It all started when Ray Balberan asked me if I wanted to go out for pizza.”

Ray is an amazing Latino elder here in the Mission. Years ago, late on Friday nights, he went out to these young men and invited them out for pizza. Over pizza and conversation, he’d notice how talented they were, how smart and good they were. He’d point that out to them. No one had ever told them that before.

A few nights later, Ray would invite them to a movie. No one had ever paid this kind of attention to them before. Next thing, they’re all going on a camping trip, their first time out of the neighborhood.

Slowly, after all the relentless love they got from Ray, they started to change, to see themselves differently, to envision how their own lives could be different. Eventually they made the heroic decision to leave the gangs and start a whole new life.

This is how grace works. God is like Ray Balberan. God comes close to us -- isn’t put off by our own woundedness and our own sinfulness -- and loves us just as we are. This is transformative. It’s what saves us, brings us back to life.

And in this transformation, we can begin to hear what Jesus heard on the day of his baptism, “You are my beloved child. In you I am well pleased.” Even despite our own wounds and our own worst moments, we are beloved children of God, deeply loved, forgiven, cherished, redeemed.

This love trumps everything else about us. But before we can let it sink into our bones, we need to stop with the Irish Alzheimer's already! Stop identifying with our own worst moments. If we do this in these Advent days, the path is cleared.

Raise your heads!

First Sunday of Advent, Year C, 2015

The Rev'd Richard Smith, Ph.D.

It’s Star Wars, and Lord of the Rings, and Harry Potter, and the Chronicles of Narnia, that kind of fantastical imagery that Luke is using in today’s gospel.

When all hell breaks loose, he says -- when there are “signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves” -- when all this happens, the Son of Man will appear on clouds of glory.

Years after the destruction of the Jewish Temple by the Romans, Luke is writing in retrospect for a community still devastated by what had happened.

That Temple had been the center of the Jewish universe. It was not only where Jews came into contact with God, the place to offer sacrifice and celebrate the great festivals and rituals that had made them Jews. It was also the center of their life and culture as a people. The destruction of the Temple was the end of their world.

The Roman historian Josephus describes what the Romans did to the Jews:

Men and women, old and young, insurgents and priests, those who fought and those who begged for mercy, were cut down in indiscriminate carnage. The number of the slain exceeded that of the slayers. The Roman legionaries had to climb over heaps of dead to carry on the work of extermination.

 That was the horror that Luke’s people were still reeling from as they heard the words of today’s gospel.

Our modern world has known similar horrors: The Nazi and Armenian holocausts; the dropping of the atom bombs; 9/11; the melting glaciers, deadly hurricanes, interminable droughts, dying species; the unbelievable devastation now taking place in Syria. The list goes on.
And this week the world celebrates World AIDS Day. That pandemic was, for many of us, the end of our world.

There have been so many advances in treating this disease. Although Africa and those in poverty still bear the brunt of the pandemic, in the developed world people with HIV can now expect a normal life span, and there are new medicines like Truvada to prevent contracting HIV. We have a long way to go, but still we’ve come so far, with so much to celebrate on AIDS Day this year.

And yet, like Luke’s community in the wake of the Temple’s destruction, we are still reeling from the shock of what we went through in those dark days: the loss of so many loved ones; 20-somethings, emaciated, walking with canes; all the purple lesions, night sweats and diarrhea; the confusion and panic and stigma; the sheer helplessness we felt in the midst of it all.

We who lived through the height of that crisis will never be the same because of what we went through. We still carry the scars from those horrible, horrible days.

So we hear today’s gospel much like Luke’s community once did, like veterans of a horrific war, survivors of a horrendous devastation, still trembling, still trying to get our bearings in the world.

How do we stand now in the wake of all this? We can’t un-know what we learned and experienced back then, can’t un-see what we saw. How are we to be now, in the wake of it all?

In the very midst of hell breaking loose, with many understandably fainting from fear and foreboding, Jesus says to those who saw the destruction of the Temple, “Stand up, raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near."

The last word in this story is not death or tears or sadness, but redemption. This is a word of hope.

All that suffering will be redeemed, all the scars from the past healed and transformed into things of beauty and compassion. All the pain and confusion will have been worth it, been redeemed, because they will have led us, finally, not to tears and death, but to greater life and love and laughter. The last word here, unbelievable as it may seem, is redemption.

These words of hope resonate with something deep inside each of us, because, after everything life may throw at you, you are, deep down, a creature of hope. We humanoids can’t help ourselves. Even in the most devastating moments, we stubbornly hope, even against hope.

 Tony Kushner, in his epic play AIDS in America, has the main character, a man with AIDS, address these words to an angel:

I've lived through such terrible times and there are people who live through much worse. But you see them living anyway. When they're more spirit than body, more sores than skin, when they're burned and in agony, when flies lay eggs in the corners of the eyes of their children - they live. Death usually has to take life away. I don't know if that's just the animal. I don't know if it's not braver to die, but I recognize the habit; the addiction to being alive. So we live past hope. If I can find hope anywhere, that's it, that's the best I can do. It's so much not enough. It's so inadequate. But still bless me anyway. I want more life.

A propensity to hope, even against hope. We can’t help ourselves. It’s how the Creator made us.

 St. Augustine once said that hope has two beautiful daughters, and their names are anger and courage: anger at the way things are, and courage to make sure they don’t stay that way.

I remember the words we both heard and shouted so often in those dark AIDS years “Act up! Fight back!” -- words of anger and courage, words of hope. And how so many reached out to care for the dying, transforming all that pain and grief into something truly beautiful and powerful.

 I’ve seen a similar hope in undocumented immigrants who stand up and tell their stories before crowds of strangers and before Senate committees, calling for reform.

 And mothers who’ve lost kids to gun violence stand up and demand a change in our gun laws.

 Recently I listened to a man whose marriage had fallen apart. He told me about the months he’d spent paralyzed by anger both at himself and his partner, and about his fear of losing everything, including the close relationship he’d had with his son.

 Then, after many dark months sorting through all the anger and grief and depression, he suddenly decided -- it was a decision -- to step out of the darkness and live into the hope that he could make all the necessary and difficult decisions, create a new life, one in which he and his son would be even closer than before.

 Today’s gospel is about redemption; it’s about the hope that the One who made us placed deep in our hearts. We are invited to see the future through the eyes of hope.

 It’s true that your past and how you perceive it has a lot to do with making you the person you are today -- the opportunities you were given, your family background, education, and health.

 But it’s also true that the future and how you perceive that also makes you who you are. How you perceive your future governs and shapes how you are in the present, whether you eagerly move forward with confidence and grace, or hold back in fear, living a diminished life.

 If we perceive the future to be, as George Orwell believed, “a boot stamping on a human face forever,” then this will shape how we live now -- either striking out in anger and desperation at the injustice of it all or cowering in fear and despair.

 But if we have a hunch that today’s gospel just may be right, that the future is full of redemption, then we move forward differently, with confidence and gratitude and hope.

• If in the world to come God will wipe every tear from our eyes, then we wipe the tears from each other's eyes now.
• If in the world to come all people will live in peace, then we let the weapons fall from our hands now.
• If in the world to come every refugee and every immigrant and every person sleeping on the street will have a home, then we reach out our hands in friendship and welcome now. 

The way we perceive our future shapes how we are in the present.

 So on this first Sunday of Advent, we turn the calendar page to start the new church year, whisper a prayer of thanks and hope, roll up our sleeves, and get back to work.

 Raise your heads. Tomorrow is already on the way, and it is full of redemption and hope.

A Way Past the Trauma

The Feast of Christ the King

Sunday, November 22, 2015

The Rev'd Dr Richard Smith

There are lots of good-hearted jokes about the memory loss that can afflict us as we age. Here’s one:

An older gentleman named Harry was telling a friend about a restaurant where he and his wife had eaten a couple of days before. Harry was trying hard to remember the name of that restaurant, but just couldn’t. So Harry asked his friend, “What is the name of that flower that smells so nice?” His friend says, “You mean a rose?” Harry says,”Yeah, that’s it! A rose.” Then he turns to his wife and says, “Rose, what’s the name of the place where we ate the other night?’

In today's gospel, Jesus says he came to testify to the truth. The Greek word he uses for truth means, literally, not forgetting. Part of Jesus’ telling the truth means not letting us forget. Not letting us forget what?

One theologian suggests what Jesus, in his entire life and ministry, is trying to keep us from forgetting is an ancient, primal trauma that occurred somewhere at the very beginning of the human story, an unhealed trauma that continues to distort every human heart to this day. That trauma --whatever it was, we’ll never know its exact historical details--is what the scriptures try to describe in a mythical way in the ancient story of Cain and Abel, the story in which Cain violently murders his brother Abel. That ancient trauma -- of a brother murdering a brother -- has never been healed, and so it still plays itself out very dramatically today.

Mental health professionals say that when we go through a trauma, whether physical or emotional, it can take some time and effort to heal. Sometimes children who have been abused can take years before they are able to speak about the pain they went through. The memory is too painful to bear, so they block it out, bury it. But eventually, if they are to be whole again, they have to recall the pain and the trauma and tend it in a conscious and loving way. If they can do this hard healing work, their hearts can become more supple and alive, forgiving and compassionate. But without that healing, the trauma continues to fester, and can explode like a grenade, harming them and those around them in addictions, violence, perhaps suicide.

A little over a year ago, on one Sunday after mass, we walked up to 16th Street where a young man, Bennie Martinez, had been shot and killed the night before. We prayed for him and his family. A few days later I went to his funeral at St. Peter’s. I learned that, when he was 11 years old, he saw his mother get shot and killed by gang members on the front steps of their family home up on York Street. Bennie had never healed from that trauma, with all its bitter pain. Eventually, to seek retaliation for what had happened to his mom and their family, it led him into the other gang, the rival to the one that had killed his mom. As a leader in that rival gang, he himself inflicted violence on others. So the cycle of violence continued and eventually he himself fell victim to it that night up on 16th Street. The ancient trauma of Cain and Abel playing itself out in our neighborhood.

Entire societies can go also go through trauma. Our own country did not heal from the trauma of 9/11, and because we did not heal, all our unresolved pain and anger exploded onto the world like a huge grenade in the invasion of Iraq. The effects of that unhealed trauma are now felt all through not only Iraq but also Syria and Beirut, throughout the Middle East, the city of Paris, and Africa. The trauma of Cain and Abel -- of a brother murdering a brother -- playing itself out today on the world stage.

We’re coming up on the holiday season, and maybe you saw the article about Pope Francis in the Chronicle. Let me read a portion:

In a mass Thursday, Pope Francis called Christmas celebrations this year "a charade" because so many nations wage violence, according to media reports.
...the head of the Catholic Church said God and Jesus were weeping "because we have chosen the way of war, the way of hatred, the way of enmities," Vatican news reported.
"Christmas is approaching. There will be lights, parties, Christmas trees and nativity scenes... it's all a charade. The world continues to go to war," he said,
It comes less than a week after terrorist attacks in Paris prompted nations to step up bombardment in Syria, where the United States has launched 6,300 airstrikes in the past 15 months, destroying 4,517 buildings, according to government data from November. Other nations, including Russia, France and Saudi Arabia, have also collectively dropped more than 1,000 bombs on Syria.
The offensive is meant to counter the Islamic State, or ISIS, which has expanded its reign of brutality across parts of Syria and Iraq, where sectarian violence persists more than a decade after the 2003 invasion [of Iraq by the United States].
Russia continues to support militant rebels fighting in Ukraine, Saudi Arabia has also recently waged a months-long bombing campaign in Yemen, and President Barack Obama recently announced indefinite prolongation of the 14-year war in Afghanistan.
"We should ask for the grace to weep for this world, which does not recognize the path to peace. To weep for those who live for war and have the cynicism to deny it," the pontiff said Thursday.
"What shall remain? Ruins, thousands of children without education, so many innocent victims, and lots of money in the pockets of arms dealers...
...The men who work war, who make war, are cursed—they are criminals."

Or as we could say, these men are still caught up in the bitterness and pain of the ancient trauma. Not having healed from it themselves, they unleash that bitterness and pain like a grenade on the rest of the world.

When Jesus testifies to the truth, when by his life and teachings he refuses to let us forget that trauma that lies buried at the beginning of the human story, he does so to offer us a way past the pain, a way past that trauma. He offers an alternative to the violence and retaliation that is the way of Pilate in today’s gospel. He offers the path of nonviolence.

This alternative path of nonviolence is what Jesus is referring to when he says his kingdom is not from this world. Many preachers have taken his words to mean never on earth, but always in heaven; or not now in present time, but off somewhere in the future; or not a matter of the exterior world, but of the interior, spiritual life alone.

Jesus spoils all of these possible misinterpretations by going on to say, “If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to be executed.” In other words, “Your soldiers hold me, Pilate, but my companions will not attack you even to save me from being killed. Your Roman Empire, Pilate, is based on the injustice of violence, but my kingdom is based on the justice of nonviolence.”

His kingdom is not from here. His is a different strategy. The strategy of nonviolence.
We’re about to immerse ourselves in that strategy once again as we re-enter the story of the incarnation, of God coming among us simply because he loved us, because he was crazy about us, loved hanging out with us, sharing our ups and downs, our joys and struggles. Sharing as well our own brokenness, including the ancient trauma of Cain and Abel. This is how he went about the task of healing.

This healing involved him breaking the cycle of that traumatic violence. Rather than striking back at the ones who sought to kill him, he submitted to it, dying at their hands without bitterness or retaliation, forgiving them, loving them to the end, loving them and not taking it back.

Through this path of nonviolence and love, he transformed the trauma into something life-giving. This is the story of his death and resurrection -- of violence being absorbed, suffering being redeemed, the primal trauma being healed, life and love having the final say. It’s a story we become part of each time we come to this table.

At the height of the civil rights struggle, Dr. King echoed this story of Jesus’ death and resurrection in these words addressed to his enemies:

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.

I spent part of yesterday morning with the parents of Alex Nieto. They went through their own trauma over a year ago when their son was shot with 48 bullets by the police. I see them now so bravely transforming that trauma, redeeming the suffering. They show this in the compassion they show to other families who have lost children to police violence, crying with them, hugging them, standing in vigil with them, marching with them, working for the reform of our justice system.

Earlier in the week I was with two African-American mothers, Paulette and Maddie, whose sons were killed by gun violence. In each case, the pain is immense, sometimes feels unbearable. But I see how they, too, heal that trauma of losing their sons. They show it by their powerful and relentless work to end gun violence. They carry large pictures of their sons as they stand in vigils across the city, telling their painful stories to political leaders, often with tears running down their cheeks, calling for gun control laws, and doing so with great power and eloquence.

On this Feast of Christ the King, with Advent just a few days away, may we do as Dr. King, the Nieto’s, Paulette and Maddie are doing -- embracing once again the strategy of Jesus, letting love be stronger than the pain, doing what we can to heal the ancient trauma of our human family.

Thin Days

Feast of All Saints, November 1, 2015, 

the Rev'd Dr Richard Smith

These are thin days --  the Feast of All Saints, El Dia de los Muertos, the Feast of All Souls -- thin days when the membrane between heaven and earth becomes very thin, when we who are still walking the planet are brought closer to those who have gone before us.

Over here we have icons of some of better-known spiritual ancestors: Oscar Romero, Harvey Milk, Our Lady, St. Joseph, many others.

And a few moments ago in the garden we called out the names of some of those who have gone before us. On the altar in the back, many of us have photos of beloved friends and family members who have died, including Nico, Dennis Gould, and others from this community.

It’s a time of remembering, of giving thanks, and of grieving, which can be a wild ride.

If psychotherapists and philosophers can chart the path of grief and measure its duration and predict its stages, it’s only because they’re not up to their necks in it; they have the luxury of sitting back and observing. But when you’re in the midst of it, it’s a different story. It's as though you yourself are an occupied land. Grief has a life of its own, and there’s really nothing you can do about it. You can’t go around it; you can only find your way through it.

My first experience with grief came when my friend Tony died during my sophomore of high school. Our high school was along the shore of Lake Washington in Seattle. Some huge trees had been cut down and the logs were floating near the shoreline. Tony went out on the logs, jumping playfully from one to another, when he slipped and fell between them. The logs closed over him, and they were too huge for him to push them apart and climb back up, and so he tragically drowned, leaving all of us, his friends, in trauma and shock.

Weeks later the grief would creep up on me unawares. I’d be getting dressed for school, or walking to class, or waiting in line at the grocery store and something would make me think of Tony and suddenly I’d burst into tears. This was my first experience with grief, and it left me frightened and confused. Grief can be a wild ride.

One day, a priest at my school saw me in tears, and knew right away what was going on. He came over and put his arm around my shoulder and said simply, “Richard, you're going to have days like this. We all will.” And he was right.

This is our human story: the deeper the love, the deeper the grief. We will have days like this. We don’t think about this when we give our heart away, but this is our human story: that our first kiss and our first tear are linked.

A few months after Tony's death, my dad died, and this time I didn't know what to feel. My dad had left my family when I was a year old, leaving us in poverty and my mom to raise two kids on her own. I knew I loved my dad, and I cried when I got the news, but this moment was also filled with much anger and regret at what was not to be. Unresolved feelings toward my dad that I carry to this day.

If what an old priest once told me is true, that some of our relationships will be resolved only in heaven, then it certainly describes my dad and me. Coming to terms with our fractured relationship remains part of my own spiritual journey. Someday, in addition to all of my other conflicted feelings toward him, I hope I'll also be grateful for him.

I remember a reflection by Henri Nouwen about gratitude. He wrote,

To be grateful for the good things that happen in our lives is easy, but to be grateful for all of our lives--the good as well as the bad, the moments of joy as well as the moments of sorrow, the successes as well as the failures, the rewards as well as the rejections--that requires hard spiritual work.
Still, we are only truly grateful people when we can say thank you to all that has brought us to the present moment. As long as we keep dividing our lives between events and people we would like to remember and those we would rather forget, we cannot claim the fullness of our beings as a gift of God to be grateful for.

Part of my own spiritual work is in coming to be truly grateful for my dad.

Grief can be a wild ride. Eventually our loves as we know them come to an end, perhaps through death, perhaps through human frailty or sin or a combination. A young widow once asked, “Why didn’t someone tell me that all marriages end either in death or divorce?”

And in the face of this simple fact -- that love as we have known it must end -- we have a choice. We can become cold and cynical, thinking of love as a waste of our precious time and energy. “Don't go there. It's all going to end in tears. It's not worth it. Just live for yourself. Don’t give yourself away.”

Or we can take another path, harbor a crazy suspicion that there is more going on with love than meets the eye, more than conventional wisdom or scientific analysis will admit. That love is stronger than death, that life may be changed but it is not ended, and what may seem like an end is not the end at all. This is the suspicion we harbor in these thin days.

I love the moment in today’s gospel, in which an emotionally troubled, weeping Jesus is swept toward the tomb of the one he loves. He does not stand aloof, unmoved, like a philosophical observer with his act all together. No, this is one of those moments when the story of the Incarnation becomes vivid, when God is at our side, vulnerable as we are.

If he had not loved Lazarus and his sisters, he would not have stood there crying his heart out. Like us, Jesus cannot go around the experience of death and grief; he can only move forward by going through it.

So he goes into that dark night, where God is thought to be most absent, into the place of death and human tears, into our grieving with all it’s wild turns, and by his simple presence with us there he redeems even those dark moments.

Because when do we know that we have a friend? Is it when someone gives us good advice, or solves a problem we’re having? Perhaps. But even more I think it's when someone comes to us in a moment when we are vulnerable and in crisis and says, “I don’t know what to say or do, I don't have any solution for you, but I do want you to know that I'm with you, and I won't leave you alone.” Then we know we have a real friend.

It’ in this way, by fully entering into our own struggles with death and grief’s wild ride, by proving himself to be a friend, that Jesus redeems even those dark moments.

Some theologians say that ultimately everything is brought into God’s heart.

Some things happen that are in line with what God desires. God takes those things and presses them to his heart.
Other things happen that are not what God desires -- like human betrayal, violence, broken relationships. These things, God redeems, and then takes them to his heart.

In the end, the theologians say, everything is brought into God’s heart.

In these thin days, all our ancestors and all our relationships, including those with unfinished business, come once more into the heart. And I find myself asking: What if these theologians are right -- that no love is ever wasted, that even our most broken relationships are redeemed, and in the end nothing and no one is ever lost? What if that suspicion really were true? What if we really believed that?

Bartimaeus; October 25, 2015; The Rev. Dr. Richard Smith

We don’t really know much about Bartimaeus, the blind man in today’s gospel.

Some scholars say his name means “son of poverty”; others say it means “son of brokenness”. In either case, the name suggests the guy’s been through a lot.

We know he’s a panhandler.
And we know he’s blind.

In the biblical view, blindness is not simply about eyes that don’t work. In the scriptures, the eyes are hooked up to the heart. It’s as though the eyes are headlights; the light that enables us to see originates in the heart and travels up through the chest into the head and out through the eyes. Bad physiology, but good spirituality. If your heart is in darkness, you will not be able to see. If you have no compassion in your heart, no human feeling for others, you will simply not see what’s happening to those around you, much less understand their joys and struggles, their laughter and tears.

This was the story of Bartimaeus. He could not see because somehow his heart had grown dark and cold.

The gospel doesn’t tell us how he got this way, what experiences might have hardened him so:

• Was it an old wound that had gone unhealed, leaving him numb and bitter? 
• Maybe it was the loss of someone who meant the world to him. 
• Perhaps he’d known a string of failures or bad breaks that left him exhausted, cynical, and without hope. 
• Perhaps in all the day-to-day busyness he had forgotten that the human heart needs conscious tending now and then in order to remain supple, compassionate, and alive.

In any case, this blind man with lots of pain and darkness in his heart is sitting by the road. And one day Jesus walks by. And in contrast to Bartimaeus, Jesus is loving and kind and full of joy. And somehow, in the exchange between these two men, the old scars in Bartimaeus’ heart begin to heal and he begins to regain his sight.

We Christians have a word for this experience. We call it grace. And to show you how grace works, let me tell you another story …

A young woman grows up in a very painful environment, with very little love as a little girl, lots of abuse and trauma. Her family does not love her. Eventually she is sent from one foster home to another, but none of her foster families ever really welcome or love her.

And as she grows, all the trauma and pain take their toll. Her heart shrivels up, she becomes cold and hard. She has to be this way; her world is cold and hard and she has to protect herself. This becomes very visible in the way she walks, the clothes she wears, the things she says. She gets addicted to drugs, gets involved in an abusive relationship, eventually falls into prostitution, tries several times to commit suicide.

Then one day, a young man sees her. He is from a very loving family, and so he himself is very loving and kind. And, for some crazy reason, he falls madly in love with her. Can’t take his eyes off of her, wants just to talk with her, just be around her.

And she responds to him as she does to everyone else: She doesn’t trust him, pushes him away, ridicules him. But the young man keeps coming back, wanting to talk with her, get to know her. Finally, after a long time, after he has come back over and over, she begins to wonder, “Well, maybe he’s different from the other men I’ve known. Maybe he won’t go away. Maybe he really does love me. Maybe I really can trust him.” Slowly the ice begins to melt and she begins to let down her guard.

As she begins to let this young man into her heart, she begins to change.

Her own body feels different now. She walks differently, talks differently, dresses differently. There is a new calm, a confidence, a joy in her face.

She notices things she never noticed before, some very simple: the sparkle in a child’s eyes, the lyrics to a beautiful song, the smell of the trees after the rain. She begins to see things.

All because of this young man loved her, and because she let him into her life.

This is a moment of grace.

When Bartimaeus’ shriveled heart encounters Jesus, it, too, is a moment of grace. Like that young woman, perhaps for the first time, he chooses to invite love into his life, except that he does it in his own boisterous way by shouting disruptively, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.”

Then, after Jesus calls him forward, he says, “Lord, I want to see.” A prayer not only for physical eyesight, but also a prayer for healing and a new heart.

This is the kind of prayer Jesus can answer. Jesus can’t answer every kind of prayer. He’s not like a genie or some fairy-tale character. Last Sunday, when James and John asked him to grant them the highest positions of honor in the kingdom, he could not grant their prayer. But this prayer of Bartimaeus, for healing and a compassionate heart that can see, this prayer Jesus can and does answer.

Today we conclude our series in the fundraising season, and I’ve been asked to speak about my vision for St. John’s. Which is easy. If you want to know about St. John’s, read today’s gospel, because you can see that story of grace played out over and over in our own midst, in our own hearts.

Week after week we come to this table, each with our own scars and joys, each of us vulnerable in our own ways, none of us perfect, each of us a pilgrim still on the way, who has not yet arrived at our destination.

And every now and then, in this place, with these unlikely people, we have moments of grace. As we break the bread and tell the old stories and sing the songs, sometimes we get a glimpse of a love we don’t fully understand but which we come to trust is real, a love that calls each of us by name.

Slowly, we begin to let down our guard, and our hearts become a little more supple and compassionate. We step out of the safe siloes in which we normally move. We see things we didn’t notice before, feel things we never felt before. This is the story of Bartimaeus. It is the story of St. John’s. It is a story of grace.

And this grace plays itself out in our lives, enabling us to teach math or cut hair or answer email, or manage a team, or chase after a toddler with a little more compassion, a little more joy. Slowly, over time, if we let it happen, our lives are changed by what happens here.

This is the gist of what I would say today.

I know I should also mention all the wonderful projects we as a parish have underway. I hope you’re as proud of them as I am.

• In these days when when racism and anti-immigrant hostility are being whipped up by shameful politicians for political gain, we continue to stand with neighborhood immigrant families under threat of being torn apart by our immigration system. In fact, we helped bring about an important victory on this issue this past week. I’ll say more about that later.
• And with our friends from SFOP, we are playing an important role in stopping the displacement taking its toll across our neighborhood and city.
• And several of us will soon travel to Nicaragua to help El Porvenir provide clean, safe water to rural families
• And Robert Cromey keeps vigil for peace each Thursday at the Federal Building
• And our Nightwalks for an end to gun violence are becoming an important institution in the Mission and spreading soon to the Tenderloin and other parts of the City
• And we continue to support the amazing work of Mission Graduates in helping young people stay in school so they can have a shot at life
• And a conversation is just beginning about how we can care for the homeless in the coming days of the El Nino downpours.
• And in any given week this building embraces a host of people: Native Aztecs with their powerful drumming and dancing; Buddhists in quiet meditation, the Julian Pantry, free community dinners, veterans healing from the traumas of war, a host of community meetings and town halls. 

In countless other ways, St, John’s remains, as we have been for years, part of the fabric of this neighborhood with all its terrible beauty.

All these amazing things. Political pundits might put their own spin on what some of these things mean. For us, they are simply ways of putting our faith, our deepest values, into action.

But beneath all these great efforts lies the story of Jesus that weaves itself into each of our hearts and holds us together as a community.

In the end, our story here at St. John’s is a story of grace that heals our hearts like that of Bartimaeus, and opens them to a compassion that can see out into the world where many of our brothers and sisters are struggling, sometimes literally for their lives.

And then we try in our own small ways to bring that compassion into the world, we try to make the world a little better.

But in the end, it’s all about grace. In the end, all is grace.

Gratitude Gestates Generosity, the Rev. Jacqueline Cherry, October 18, 2015 – Proper 19, Yr. B Mark 10:35-45

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O God.

This is the second week of our fundraising campaign. My task this morning is to talk about why we should give; specifically why we should make a pledge to St. John’s. Fr. Robert Cromey doesn’t like the word stewardship. He prefers we use “fundraising”. I love Cromey, but I don’t always agree with him. Fundraising is about money. Period. I believe if we put money at the heart of our campaign, we will fail. So, with pure delight, I will explain how the act of giving can transcend balancing a deficit budget and can, in fact, transform lives.

In the gospel stories we’ve heard over the last few weeks, Jesus and his disciples are traveling to Jerusalem.  Now Jesus is acutely aware of his fate, but the disciples have no idea that their messiah is a dead man walking. Rather, James and John, seized by vainglory, have their hearts set on scoring the exulted positions at the right and left hand of Jesus.

Last Sunday we heard about the rich man who asked, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus’ explicit response - “Sell what you own, give it to the poor, and follow me,” was hardly the answer the man was hoping for.  And I doubt it’s what we want to hear either.

Almost three years ago, when my 82-year-old dad was dying, and when nobody else was listening, he told me he had only two regrets: One, he wished he had traveled more.  And two, my dad wished he had given away more money.

Never in my life had I heard him say anything like that about money. It was precisely because he carefully considered every dime he spent, that we always had what we needed, and more. I’ll tell you a little more about William Robert Cherry, Jr. He was really smart, very handsome, charming and funny, and he was really stubborn. For 25 years he worked hard at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography at UCSD. He loved nature and cared about the environment. My dad always understood how precious water was. Way back in the 60’s he hooked up a hose to the washing machine that diverted the water to the plants in our backyard. When I was older, he timed my showers, and on occasion turned off the hot water if I had exceeded his time limit. He held firm to the conviction of “If it’s yellow, it’s mellow,” though he didn’t use those words. At heart, my dad was an environmentalist, and sometimes I teased him about it.  Oh dad, I would say, you don’t care about saving the water, you care about saving your money. Both things were true.

I’ve thought about how my dad must have felt at the end of his life, with more money than he needed, and regretting not having given away more. Though our theme this morning is “Why Give?”, in light of my dad I have to wonder why he didn’t give. Was he gripped by a relentless fear of not having enough? He was, after all, born 3 months before the start of WWII, during the Great Depression. For the last 6 weeks of his life, I stayed by his side. There are endless stories, both funny and gut wrenching I could tell. But this morning I want to tell you that I think my dad’s inability to believe in something greater than humanity was the reason he didn’t give away more of his money. You see, my dad’s empirical mind didn’t allow for the existence of God. He believed he was nothing more than flesh and bones. It’s interesting that the rich man in last week’s gospel turned away from Jesus even though he believed in God and the promise of eternal life. Either way, both men chose to hold on to their possessions.

By now, most all of you know that I’m alive today because I received a new, very healthy kidney last March. Many in this congregation intimately witnessed the rejection of my 20-year-old transplanted kidney, while prayers for healing flooded in from around the world. In mind-blowing acts of generosity, Sarah, Kevin and Kathy offered their kidneys. A loyal group of people, all of whom are from this congregation, drove me to, and sat with me through dialysis, week after week, month after month. They were with me for the early morning procedures, scans, ER visits, hospital stays and countless runs the pharmacy. At times I was so close to death that even now it scares me to think about. I suffered like this for 8 months. And, at the same time, my heart was broken wide open by the love of my friends. Before I ever got the transplant, I was healed. Even during dialysis treatments, I couldn’t help but feel grateful.

One day, while hooked up to the dialysis machine, I had a great epiphany — gratitude gestates generosity. When I am grateful I want to give. And it sounds nice too — Gratitude Gestates Generosity. Then, in a wave of urgent compassion, and I had a clear vision of how I could put my gratitude into action.

Do you remember Jesus’ response to James’ and John’s self-serving request to occupy a position of extreme honor at his right and left side? Jesus says, “Whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.” This doesn’t mean we should abandon our power to become servants. It means that if we are fortunate enough to be in a position of power, because of authority or money, we should use that power to take care of others rather than manipulate them, or in Jesus words, “Lord it over them.”

Jesus is suggesting we use the resources we have to exalt others, rather than look to others for praise and recognition of our accomplishments. Jesus is telling us that power and authority manifested through grace and humility can reorder society.

In the kingdom of heaven there will be no thrones for the powerful.
In the kingdom of heaven stone hearts return to flesh;
In the kingdom of heaven the lowly are lifted up;
In the kingdom of heaven the thirsty have clean water to drink.
Brick by brick, step by step, prayer by prayer, this congregation is helping to build the kingdom of heaven on earth. It’s the love of this congregation that has inspired me to give what I can to help create a new and just social order.

As most of you know, Liz Specht helped to found El Porvenir, an organization that works side-by-side with rural families in Nicaragua to construct wells, latrines, and washing facilities. On February 12, a group of volunteers from St. John’s will travel to Nicaragua on a 10-day work trip. My understanding is that they will help the villagers install some 40 or 50 latrines. With my dangerously suppressed immune system, I can’t make the trip.

But because my dad showed me how to love nature and care for the environment, and because he loved saving money as much as he loved saving water, I am blessed with the opportunity to give away some of the money he regretted holding on to. I will be donating $25,000 to pay for those 40 or 50 latrines and to help with some of the work party’s travel expenses.

To be clear, I’m not giving away my dad’s money because I’m a good person;
I’m giving away his money because I’ve been inspired by good people.

Now I need to tell you one more thing about my dad. With all of his stubbornness, he fought death to the end (oh boy did he put up a fight). His last two days were spent in the Hospice of San Diego. Out of the blue an older woman, who reminded me of a sophisticated Aunt Bee from Mayberry R.F.D., walked into the room. She asked if she could touch my dad. I said she could. She stood at his head and touched his chest, then she leaned down and whispered something in his ear. She stayed with him just 3 or 4 minutes. When she finished I asked what she had said. She apologized for not asking my permission to talk to him. That was okay, but I really wanted to know what she had said. She told me she recited a couple of short psalms. I only remember one - Psalm 4:8

I lie down in peace; at once I fall asleep;
for only you, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.

He died shortly after her visit. Somehow this unknown woman spoke of God in a way that resonated with my dad. And the God he couldn’t believe in during his life, was there to comfort him at his death.

A couple of weeks ago Jamie told us that he gives to St. John’s because he hates change. I don’t want St. John’s to change either. Because when I enter this holy place, I am aware of God’s presence. It’s as if this very church were God’s dwelling place.  When I walk into this sanctuary, I know I will be loved just as I am. Every time I am here, I am filled to overflowing with gratitude. This church changes lives. This church saves lives.

And that’s why we should give to St. John’s. When we give we are not simply filling the gaps in a bare-bones budget. Giving allows us to keep the doors of St. John’s open so anyone can walk in off the streets and dwell in the peace of God’s presence. Giving allows us to keep our doors open so we can follow Jesus back out into the world in love, to lift up the lowly and offer clean water to the thirsty.

Amen.

Hellfire, Mark 9:38-50, the Rev'd Dr Richard Smith, September 27, 2015

We have a built-in desire to be great, to be awesome and fabulous. It’s the way the Creator made us, with an infinite desire to know more and more, to drink in more and more beauty, to love infinitely. Our mantra here at St. John’s, “More Love”, speaks to that desire. One medieval theologian calls it our most fundamental natural desire.

The problem is we don’t always know what truly satisfies that desire, where our true greatness really lies, so we try to satisfy it by various means: climbing the social ladder, running with the right crowd, dropping the right names, earning the right amount of money.

In this country, if someone asks “How much are you worth?”, we usually answer in dollar figures. “I’m worth $100K, $10K, or, embarrassingly we might say, “Well, uh, I have no money,” implying I’m not worth anything. We often measure our greatness by how much money we have.

This misunderstood sense of greatness puts us in competition with others. We compare ourselves: I might not be as “great” as that person, but at least I’m “greater” than this person over here. This is a teeter-totter of elation and depression, because there is always someone “greater” or “lesser” than we.

In today’s gospel, this desire to be great affects how the disciples react to the outside exorcist they run across. They see someone casting out demons in Jesus’ name, and because this exorcist is not part of their own community, they immediately perceive him as a threat. Someone is poaching on our territory. They guard their turf against anyone who might rival them in importance.

I see this as a face-palm moment for Jesus. I see him slapping palm to forehead and going "OMG. Why did you tell him to stop?"

Rather than celebrating with the ones from whom the demons were cast out, rather than rejoicing that their nightmares have finally ended, the disciples have become a tight knit power group. When good is done, and it does not result in their own enhanced standing in the world, they try to stop it. Their focus has become not the work of Jesus, but that others follow them, admire them, hold them in esteem. This, and not the work of the kingdom, determines what they do, the decisions they make, the strategies they develop as they move through life.

It’s been a family neurosis in Christianity down through the centuries, with one Christian community seeing another not as a co-creator in an amazing adventure of bringing a kingdom of justice and love to birth, but as a rival.

Over the centuries, this rivalry has led Christians down the path of war and bloodshed -- Catholics and Protestants, Orthodox and Roman Christians, Anglicans and Roman Catholics slaughtering each other, warring against each other, burning each other at the stake. Not to mention violence between Christians and Muslims, between Christians and Jews.

I suspect it is this sad legacy that Pope Francis had in mind this week in Washington when he spoke of the need to serve people and not ideologies, and to create a culture of encounter and dialogue.

It’s this path of violence lurking beneath what seems at first like petty rivalry between two communities that Jesus rails against in this passage, using images that are both grotesque and disturbing -- images of unquenchable hellfire, of cutting off your hand and foot and plucking out your eye. The kind of strong and grotesque images some artists might use to make a point they feel is critical. We saw this in the gospel a few weeks back where Jesus tells us to eat his flesh and drink his blood. Grotesque images enlisted to make a critical point.

The southern novelist Flannery O’Connor also uses grotesque and disturbing images. She says, "I use the grotesque the way I do because people are deaf and dumb and need help to see and hear." Jesus is using the grotesque in this passage in the hopes of getting his deaf, dumb, and blind disciples to hear, see, and speak.

One of the grotesque images he uses here is a hell of unquenchable fire. Preachers often interpret this to mean a place of punishment for sinners after they die, but in the original Greek, Mark’s words suggest something very different. He’s referring to a place outside Jerusalem called Gehenna. The ancient prophet Jeremiah spoke of that place. It’s where the Hebrew people once disobeyed God by killing and burning their own children in sacrifice. It was a place of cruelty and violence, of painful screams and a fire that seemed unquenchable.

Jesus is saying that the path of rivalry among the disciples can lead to this same kind of cruelty and violence -- as in fact it has over the centuries. And he is saying he will have none of it.

He adds even more grotesque images to make his point: “I’d rather see you cut off your hand, cut off your foot, pluck out your eye than to take that path of cruelty and violence.” He's using disturbing images and extreme language to make a critical point against war and cruelty and violence among his followers. The tragic history of violence by Christians shows how little we’ve understood this teaching.

Is there a way out of this? This misunderstanding of where our greatness really lies, with its subsequent rivalry and violent cruelty. Is there a way out?

Jesus final words in this passage give a hint: “Salt is good; but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another."

Salt is what gives our lives zest. It unlocks the flavors, the meaning, purpose, pleasure of our lives. It’s our awareness of how infinitely great, how fabulous, how significant we truly are.

Salt is the simple awareness that our worth is not something out there that is somehow lacking in us that we must strive for, compete with others for. We carry it inside, a gift from the one who made us. It has nothing to do with how much money we have, or which social ladders we’ve managed to scale, or whose names we can drop, or what we have accomplished. Salt is that abiding peace from knowing that we are, without ever lifting a finger, worth more than many sparrows, and every hair on our heads is counted.

Have salt in yourselves, Jesus counsels.

The task is simply to become conscious of who we already are: each of us a beloved daughter and son of a God who loves us extravagantly. At the end of the day, that’s all that matters. The task is to live from that awareness, to become more and more who we already are.

No need for rivalry to shore up an insecure sense of our importance. We are already infinitely important, infinitely great. No one, nothing, can ever take that away.