Chaos and Confusion

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Episcopal Church
October 18, 2015

24 Proper B

As some of you may know, the Archbishop of Canterbury was in the United States last week.  He was here to dedicate the chapel at one of our 10 Episcopal seminaries.  The historic chapel at Virginia Seminary in Alexandria, Virginia was destroyed several years ago in a devastating fire that was caused by a simple human mistake.  The cost to the seminary was tremendous. They had lost their place of worship, which is a central point in the life of a seminary.  The chapel held part of their identity, in much the same way that this space can hold much of our identity as a worshiping community. Over the following months and years, many conversations were held to determine how to rebuild and how to recapture something of what was lost.  At a gut level, the community needed to restore a sense of order in the midst of the chaos of loss.

I was not in Virginia last week, but several of my friends were, so I have heard about the dedication of the beautiful new space and the sermon the Archbishop preached.  One of my friends was struck when the Archbishop reminded the congregation that "Holiness is messy."  I have not heard the sermon or seen it in print, so I can only wonder about what the Archbishop meant. I wonder if the Archbishop meant to remind the people gathered for the dedication of a glorious worship space that holiness was found, not just in the beautiful chapel, but also in the chaos that reigned in the aftermath of the fire. God is present in moving worship, but God is also present in the chaos of tragedy and confusion.

Job, and James and John are all wrestling with messy situations they do not understand this morning.  Job has lived his life faithfully, but has lost his family, friends, health, possessions and his future.  To say that Job's life is a mess is an understatement.  Job, and all those around him, believe that faithfulness is rewarded with material blessings, so the assumption is that Job's sin has caused the loss of everything and everyone he holds dear.  But Job knows he has not sinned and in the course of the story he has moved from accepting his fate to railing against the unfairness of God.  This morning, God finally responds to Job.

James and John are also guilty of thinking that their faithfulness should be rewarded with honor and power.  They have left everything and followed Jesus. In an orderly world, they should be rewarded with something that looks like a reward.  Unfortunately, the lectionary leaves out the passage immediately before James and John's request.  In that passage, Jesus tells the disciples for the third time that he will be "handed over to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to death, then they will hand him over to the Gentiles, they will mock him and flog him and spit upon him and kill him, and after three days he will rise again." Talk about messy!  But as with the first two times Jesus told the disciples what is coming, the disciples do not understand.  The first time, Peter took Jesus aside and rebuked him for even thinking such a thing, which provoked Jesus to say "Get behind me Satan."  The second time, the disciples respond by arguing among themselves about which one of them is the greatest.  This time, the third time, James and John respond by asking for seats of honor on Jesus' right and left hand, the obvious reward for those who have been faithful.

While God does respond to Job this morning, God never does answer Job.  God never gives Job an answer to the question of why Job, and upright and godly person, should suffer so greatly.  God's soaring words this morning do little other than remind Job that God is God and Job is not.  God says "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?" and "On what were its bases sunk, or who laid the cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?"  God takes Job and us back to the creation of the world to remind us of a deep order to creation, even in the midst of the chaos of our lives.  Holiness is not always orderly.  Holiness is also messy.

In my imagination, Jesus' first response to James and John's request is a deep sigh.  But then Jesus asks the two disciples whether they can drink the cup he will drink or be baptized with the baptism with which he will be baptized.  Of course James and John say "yes." When Jesus was baptized, the heavens opened, a dove descended, and the voice of God claimed Jesus as God's own son.  What's not to like about that?  Since James and John have been faithful followers of Jesus, at least in their own minds, they have no reason to think their baptism will be any different.  They are clueless because they have not been listening to Jesus.   Jesus' response is to tell them that their request is not his to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared.  With this vague and unsatisfactory answer to the disciples' request, Jesus, too, is pointing to an order in the cosmos that is out of his and their control.  The choice of those to sit at Jesus' side is likely messy and will not include the people they think should be included and will exclude some who think the should be included.  No one but God gets to control the seating arrangements.  Holiness is messy.

Rather than worry about who is in or who is out, or whether God is fair or not, or whether or not the disciples have a clue what is going on, Jesus points the disciples to something they do have control over: the way they live their lives.  Jesus calls them, and us, to be servants as he is a servant.  In the midst of all that we do not understand, when God seems unreasonable at best, absent at worst, when chaos seems to reign, Jesus calls us not to understand, but to serve.  And serving is messy.  We don't always get to serve the people we want to serve, when it works for our schedule, or in the ways we are most comfortable serving.  But when Jesus tells us to serve as he has come to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many, serving is made holy.  There is an underlying order to the cosmos that we may not understand.  At the same time, chaos and tragedy do not always have a reason.   Both are true and holiness is messy.  Jesus calls us to live in this tension simply by serving as he has served.
Amen.

Ridiculously Complicated

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Episcopal Church
October 11, 2015

 23 Proper B

Some days, Jesus seems to make following him so complicated, so ridiculously hard, that I have to wonder why any of us even try.  Take the man in today's gospel reading for example.  The man has a simple question, which he begins by addressing Jesus with respect.  "Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?"  To me, the question sounds perfectly respectful and reasonable.  But, rather than simply answer the man's question, Jesus says "Why do you call me good?  No one is good but God alone."  That seems like a snarky response to a respectful question.  Then Jesus implies that the man already knows the answer to his question. "You know the commandments: You shall not murder.  You shall not commit adultery, You shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness, you shall not defraud, honor your father and mother."  This response is interesting for two reasons.  First, when Jesus points the man to the 10 commandments, Jesus only mentions the last 6, which are about our relationship with other people.  Jesus leaves out the first four, which are about our relationship with God.  Secondly, these commandments seem like a pretty low bar, quite frankly.  All we have to do to inherit eternal life is honor our parents and refrain from murder, adultery, lying, cheating, and stealing?  The man must have been ecstatic to hear that the answer to his deep longing for eternal life was something so simple.  He says to Jesus, "Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth."  Then Jesus raises the bar.  Jesus looks at the man and loves him, a good thing, but then says "You lack one thing: go, sell what you have and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.  Then come, and follow me."  Is Jesus messing with this poor man?  Jesus is on his journey to Jerusalem which will take him to the cross and beyond.  By the time this guy goes home, has an epic garage sale, finds the poor to give them the money, then catches up with Jesus, Jesus will have suffered, died, and have risen, just as he has been telling his disciples would happen.  Jesus has gone from setting the bar ridiculously low to raising the bar impossibly high.  And the man gives up.  And we call this good news?

Now Jesus has some explaining to do for his very perplexed disciples, both the ones in the gospel lesson and us.  Jesus has just told the disciples in a previous passage that whoever is not against them is for them, and the man clearly seems to want to be for them and follow Jesus.  Jesus answer does not help their perplexity, however.  "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God."  Clearly this is an impossible scenario, so the astounded disciples ask "Then who can be saved?"  The prevailing theology in the first century, and I am not sure we are much different, is that the possession of riches means that someone has been blessed by God.  If such a person cannot be saved, then who can possibly be saved?  Jesus replies "For mortals, it is impossible, but not for God.  For God, all things are possible."

Peter, never one to miss an opportunity to brag, begins to say to Jesus "Lord, we have left everything and followed you."  What Peter means is that he and the other disciples, unlike the rich man, meet the qualifications for salvation.   Jesus seems to affirm Peter's claim with his statement about leaving house, siblings, parents, and field.  But then Jesus says "But many who are first will be last and the last will be first."  What is that supposed to mean?  Is the rich man the person who thinks he is first but will be last because of his wealth?  Or is Peter, who thinks he is first because he has given up his wealth, going to be last.  Might the rich man who went away sad for he had many possessions and now thinks he is last, be first after all?  All of this in answer to the man's simple question "What must I do to inherit eternal life?"

I believe that Jesus' very complicated answer to a simple question is meant to point out the flaw in the man's question.  "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" implies that there is some action one can take to inherit something.  As a rule, an inheritance is a gift.  We inherit because of who we are, or, to put it another way, to whom we belong.  We inherit because we are the beloved child, or niece or nephew, or friend or favorite charitable organization of someone who has died.  And we never know that what we are scheduled to inherit is actually ours until after the person has died, the will has been read, the bills have been paid, and there are sufficient assets to cover the gifts made in the will.  My guess is that the man wants to bypass this uncertainty and guarantee that he will receive eternal life by earning it.  What we earn is ours by right.  What we earn belongs to us and anyone who takes that away from us is committing theft, which is against one of those 10 commandments Jesus just mentioned.  What we inherit is pure gift and out of our control.  Jesus makes earning eternal life look impossibly complicated and ridiculously hard, because it is impossible.  There is nothing we can do to earn eternal life.  Honoring the 10 commandments won't get us there, and neither will selling all we have and giving to the poor, as Jesus's comment to Peter shows.  No combination of offering our time, talent, and treasure will earn us eternal life.  No number of afternoons serving at the Food Pantry or Saturday mornings on Altar Guild, or Sundays teaching Sunday School will earn us eternal life. Earning eternal life is impossible.

Last week, we saw Jesus take little children into his arms and say "Truly, I tell you. Whoever does not receive the Kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it."  Little children receive joyfully and do not expect to have to earn anything.  In an ideal world, little children know they are loved and live like they are loved, and little children know they are dependent on those who love them.  Perhaps Jesus is not the one making following him so very complicated.  Perhaps we are the ones who make discipleship complicated.  Jesus calls us to depend on him, not our wealth or possessions, and believe that we have been given eternal life as a gift.  Then Jesus calls us to live like that gift matters so the world can tell the difference.  Whatever combination time, talent, and treasure we offer to God, Jesus calls us to let that offering show the depth of our gratitude for what we have already been given.  Following Jesus is hard, but we are the ones who make following Jesus complicated.
Amen

What God Has Joined, Let No One Put Asunder

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Episcopal Church
October 4, 2015

22 Proper B

A small group of clergy and lay leaders got together this week at St. Raphael's just down the street and began to make plans for this year's Interfaith Thanksgiving Service.  Some of us have been sitting around the Interfaith planning table for a while.  For others, this was their first planning meeting.  Each year for decades now, this group has planned a thanksgiving service that brings all of us together and focuses on what we have in common, rather than what divides us.  As we talked this week about possible themes for the service, we realized that this Thanksgiving service is what keeps is connected to each other in a world that tries, in a variety of ways, to divide us.  Coming together once a year as we do is a bit like a family reunion.  Perhaps your family reunions are different from the ones I have been too, but if the reunion draws people who are connected by a common ancestor two or more generations back, not everyone knows each other.  We often do not have a lot in common in terms of politics or religion, so fortunately we have family stories to share and talk about, and those stories are what keep us connected to each other.  At our Interfaith Thanksgiving Service, the three faith traditions that come together are the three Abrahamic faiths, so we, too share a common ancestor, and we all give thanks to the same God.  We also noted at our that, even though we only gather once a year, when we gather and give thanks together, we have a bond that has served us well in times of crisis.  After 9/11, for example, we were able to come together, Jews, Christians, and Muslims, stand together, and pray for peace.  Each of the clergy and lay leaders gathered last Monday morning believe that our own faith is strengthened when we live as people who are connected to each other.

Job, on the other hand, is feeling quite disconnected this morning.  In a story that develops over many chapters and raises more questions than answers, Job finds himself tested by Satan and disconnected from his health, his family and friends, his belongings, and his future.  The story raises disturbing questions about God when we hear God agree to let Satan test Job's faith right up to the limit of taking Job's life.  While the intent of the story is to wrestle with the problem of why bad things happen to good people, the story also points to the fundamental importance of being connected with other people as part of our being connected to God.  Job feels quite disconnected from everything and everyone, including God, as he sits on the dung heap this morning.

The Pharisees are not the least bit interested in connections this morning as they arrive to test Jesus.  The gospel is clear that the  the Pharisees have come to test Jesus, not to get his thoughts on divorce.  What the Pharisees really want is to trap Jesus.  When they ask "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?" they full well know the answer.  Deuteronomy 24, verse 1 allows a man to write his wife a certificate of divorce.   So, if Jesus answers "no," he will be contradicting the law of Moses.  Jesus will also be in trouble with the Romans, since just four chapters ago, John the Baptist lost his head, literally, for criticizing Herod Antipas who had divorced his wife to marry his brother's former wife.  If Jesus says "yes," he will have raised an abundance of legal and theological questions about marriage.  The Pharisees seem to have Jesus in a loose/loose situation, which is right where they want him.

At this point, Jesus may not be squirming, but we are.  I doubt any of us came to church this morning to hear Jesus talk about divorce.  This is perhaps one of the most difficult and painful gospel readings in our lectionary and evidence, once again, that I don't pick them-I just preach them.  We hear hard words from Jesus, ones we would rather not hear and ones that cause great pain.  The Episcopal Church takes the issues of marriage, divorce, and remarriage very seriously, but Jesus' words this morning are far more strict than church teaching.  Jesus' words are uncomfortable at best, and at worst leave people feeling alienated from the church and from the gospel.  Is making people feel marginalized and vulnerable what Jesus intends?

Jesus responds to the Pharisees with scripture as he usually does when being tested.  But Jesus does not respond with the passage from Deuteronomy that the Pharisees have in mind.  Jesus raises the stakes much higher, as Jesus typically does when being tested, and reminds us of the stories of creation.  Those stories remind us that we are all connected, not just those who are married.  Jesus' answer to the Pharisee's question about divorce is really a teaching about all those places where hardness of heart separate us from each other, where the vulnerable are exploited and people are pushed to the margins of society.  And the vulnerable and the marginalized are exactly the people Jesus seeks to draw into the Kingdom of God.  The law in Deuteronomy allowed a man to divorce his wife, but not vice versa.  Women who were divorced, along with their children, often lived in poverty, where they were among the marginalized and the vulnerable.  When Jesus finishes with the Pharisees test, he takes little children into his arms and blesses them.  The disciples try to shoo the children away, because children had no honor or status in society.  But Jesus chastises the disciples because, again, the marginalized and the vulnerable are exactly the people Jesus wants to draw in.

This morning, Jesus holds before us the deep connections God intended for us in creation and intends for us now.  In the midst of a world divided by politics, the ever widening chasm between rich and poor, our failure to come together and find solutions to gun violence, those divide between who have food and those who need it, Jesus calls us to live as people who are connected to each other. Jesus has taken a simple but divisive question and raised the stakes.  In the stories of creation, what God has joined together is not just those who are joined in marriage, but the whole human family.
Amen.

The Need for Salt

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Episcopal Church
September 27, 2015

21 Proper B

One summer when I was a chaplain for 4th and 5th grade camp at Procter, we had a cooking activity with the campers.  Two groups of campers made chocolate chips cookies from an almost identical recipe.  The only difference between the two recipes was that one recipe included a very small amount of salt-probably 1/4 of a teaspoon, and the other recipe left out the salt altogether.  We wanted the campers to see that leaving out the very smallest ingredient made a big difference in the quality of the cookies.  And our point was made.  The campers who used the recipe that included the salt had beautiful, delicious, chewy cookies. The campers who had the recipe without salt produced flat, sort of beautiful, less flavorful cookies.  Leaving out just 1/4 teaspoon of salt made a big difference.

Jesus is rather angry with his disciples this morning when he compares them with salt that has lost its saltiness.  The disciples have run to Jesus tattling on someone who was casting out demons in Jesus' name without being an actual follower of Jesus.  These are the same disciples who had tried without success to cast a demon out of a young boy just a few verses earlier.  They are the same disciples who were just arguing last week over who was the greatest among them.  I think the disciples might be a tad bit jealous of the other person's success.  Jesus has harsh words for the disciples and anyone who would put a stumbling block in front of someone else.  Jesus closes his admonition with the words "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."  How does Jesus get from the disciples' envy of anther person's success to talking about salt?

Jesus is not the only person who is angry this morning.  King Ahasuerus is furious. The story of Esther is a great story, full of humor and plot twists, suspense and intrique, along with no small amount of violence and other scenes that would disqualify the story for a PG rating, which a sermon must have. So, the PG version of the story goes something like this.  Persian King Ahasuerus has had his wife, Queen Vashti, banished for disobedience.  Esther is the orphaned Jewish niece of Mordecai, chief minister of the King.  Esther becomes the new queen without the King ever knowing she is Jewish.  Esther's uncle, Mordecai, discovers a plot to kill the king so Mordecai tells Esther, who tells the king, incurring the King's favor.  Haman is the King's prime minister, and custom requires that everyone bow to the Prime Minister.  Mordecai refuses, as he is Jewish and will not bow to any human being.  So Haman plots to kill not only Mordecai, but all the Jews in Persia.  Esther finds out about the plot, so when we hear the King ask Esther this morning for her request, even up to ½ his kingdom, she is ready.

Esther asks the King to spare her people and reminds him of the dangers to himself should the entire Jewish people be killed.  When the King hears of the plan to kill all the Jewish people, he is outraged and asks who is responsible for this plot.  The answer is Haman, his very own Prime Minister.  Haman is hanged on the very gallows Haman had prepared for Mordecai, a gallows that is 75 feet tall, and we are told that the anger of the king abated.  Then we hear that the Jewish people celebrate the feast of Purim each year to remember the days in which the Jews gained relief from their enemies, and their mourning was turned into gladness.  So that's the PG version of the story.

What is really interesting about the book of Esther is that nowhere in the story is God, the Torah, prayer, or worship mentioned.  Nowhere.  Not one mention.  The deliverance of the Jewish people in Persia is due strictly and simply to the cunning and conniving of Esther, with some help from Mordecai.  God is nowhere to be found.  The pairing of this story with Psalm 124 in the lectionary makes it clear that, in Hebrew thought, God gets the credit for delivering God's people every time they are  delivered, which is why Esther is included in the Hebrew scriptures despite the seeming lack of direct intervention by God.

The reading from James tells us that the prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up, and their sins will be forgiven.  We are admonished to pray for each other so that we may be healed.  The reading from James describes the direct action of God through the actions of the faithful.  So, in our readings this morning, we have an example of a successful exorcism by someone who was not following Jesus and the disciples, the deliverance of the Jews through the trickery of Esther without mention of God, and the admonition to Christians to pray for one another and the assurance that God will work through those prayers. We have three very different examples of the way God works in the world.

So, when we hear Jesus admonish the disciples for having lost their saltiness, I wonder if what they have lost is the ability to see God at work through all people.  I wonder if what brings salt to our lives of faith is the ability to look beyond the places and ways we believe God works to see God's work at all times and in all places.  In his address to Congress last Thursday, Pope Francis lifted up four Americans for special mention: Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr, Dorothy Day, and Thomas Merton.  Two of these people were Roman Catholics, two were not.  Abraham Lincoln, whatever his personal faith might have been, did not belong to a church, nor did he attend.  And yet, because of their concern for the poor, the marginalized, the oppressed, or peace, the leader of the Roman Catholic Church held these four people up, not only as American heros, but as people through whom God worked to bring about justice and peace.

Jesus admonished the disciples because they could only see God at work in the very specific places where they wanted to look.  They had lost their saltiness, their ability to see God at work in all sorts and conditions of people and places.  Jesus tells them, and us, to have salt in ourselves and be at peace with one another.  It turns out, a little salt makes a big difference.  Perhaps Jesus is telling us that only when we can see God at work in all people, even those with whom we do not agree or understand, can there be real peace.

Amen.