An Attitude of Gratitude

Luke 23:33-43
November 25, 2007
I was out running one day last week – my head was a bit stuffed up, my knees were achy, my back was feeling every one of its almost 48 years – and my heart was filled with a profound gratitude for this flesh, for being incarnate, for being embodied.
The fall colors stood out against a slate grey sky and filled my field of vision. I could hear a crow cawing in a tree overhead, and hear the flow of Four Mile Run alongside the trail. I could feel the solid ground beneath my footfalls, and nod at other folks on the path with whom I share this common wealth. I felt as if a doxology was sounding forth all around me.
If Henri Nouwen was correct in saying that gratitude is the fundamental perspective on the world shared by all of the world’s great religious traditions, then my several miles in the church of the great outdoors was the most religious experience I’ve had recently. Likewise, following Nouwen’s observation, Thanksgiving is the most essentially religious holiday that we mark. Oh, not sectarian, to be sure, and not even theist, but fundamentally religious.
So I thought it would be appropriate this morning, as the Sunday after Thanksgiving coincides this year with the final Sunday of the liturgical calendar, to stop for a moment, and lift up our own doxology, and name some of things for which we are grateful this day.
So, what are you thankful for today?

At the risk of sounding way too churchy and giving a stereotypical preacherly response to the question, I want to offer thanks this morning for Jesus.
I don’t want to offer a Christology or an apologetics or any orthodoxy; rather a more simple doxology – an offering of praise and thanksgiving for the one who stands inescapably at the center of my life and faith.
Oh to be sure, there are many times when I’d rather not even acknowledge that center where Jesus stands. There are many times when I’d prefer a dark, quiet absence to the bright demanding presence of Christ in my life. There are many times when I’d prefer to pretend that I don’t know him at all and that, perhaps more to the point, he does not know me.
This final Sunday of the liturgical calendar – celebrated as Christ the King Sunday – can be one of those times. Frequently the lectionary places before us the famous passage from Matthew 25 where Jesus tells the parable of the king who sends to glory those who fed the hungry poor and visited the least of these in prison, while sending away to eternal damnation those who did not and reminding all of us that what we do or do not do to and for the least of these we do or do not do to Christ.
I love that particular text; and I stand under its judgment. I read it and prefer a quiet corner out of the way of the risks that reaching out to the least of these always requires. I read it and prefer a quiet corner out of the way where Jesus won’t be looking at me asking me to take the risks that incarnate faith always asks of us.
So how is it that I should come to offer thanks for Jesus this morning? I mean, when I’ve just given this list of reasons why I’d so often rather avoid him altogether, why this claim of gratitude?
To begin with: gratitude. That is to say, following Nouwen, I believe gratitude is the fundamental attitude, outlook, perspective of authentic religious feeling – true faith, deep spirituality. Gratitude opens our hearts, and our hands. Gratitude opens us to the present moment – with all its earthy messiness, its mix of joy and suffering, its inescapably incarnate, bodily fullness. And, just as importantly, gratitude opens us to the possibility of a future otherwise; in other words, to hope – the primary form of expression of any authentic religious experience of gratitude. In other words, when we feel gratitude, we express hope.
During my years in Cleveland, I was fortunate enough to meet Willa Carpenter, a feisty retired postal worker who was five years past a diagnoses of terminal cancer that had given her one year to live. I visited Willa regularly for the two years we were in Cleveland – at first in her home, then in the hospital, and finally in a nursing home. She’d long-since lost all of her hair to the drugs, so she had the most amazing collection of hats – such that, at her funeral, I read from a Nikki Giovani poem about black women in big hats on their way to church.
But the funeral is rushing ahead of the story. Indeed, focusing on the funeral would make it seem as if the story was Willa’s dying – as if the story of life can be reduced to the inevitability of death.
And although she was dying the entire time I knew her – progressing from one stage to the next of the disease that would eventually claim her – my many visits with her were never about death and dying. Indeed, although she thanked me profusely every time I stopped in to see her, I always felt that it should be the other way around. There was about her an air of such gratitude for every little thing that, even though she was wasting away, she was, till the last breaths were leaving her body, surrounded also by an air of profound hope as well.
I would never have numbered Willa Carpenter among “the least of these.” Indeed, she would have greeted the notion with a guffaw and probably the back of her hand, as well. She was feisty, as well as grateful, until the very end.
But, of course, in her extremity, she was – as are each of us – among the least.
The story of Jesus is the story of how power is confronted by the reality of powerlessness. It is most obviously a political story, but it is also, subtly, a quite personal story as well. The struggle between power and powerlessness plays out within each of us.
On the cross, that struggle is turned upside down, as Jesus – in the least powerful position imaginable – claims ultimate authority over the powers of death itself.
My friend Willa understood this deep in her cancer-ridden bones, and the gratitude with which she lived was the incarnation of this hope.
When we live into this hope, which we Christians encounter in the person of Jesus, our lives become a bold, risk-taking incarnation of the Christ whose light shines within us.
So this morning, no matter what places that may take me, no matter what risks it may impose upon my life, I’m simply giving thanks. Amen.

Apocalypse Now?

November 18, 2007
Luke: 21:5-19
"When you hear of wars and insurrections … Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom … there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues; and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven.”
I don’t know about you, but I really don’t need that just now. After all, it’s the Sunday before Thanksgiving, we’ve just celebrated the baptism of a beautiful baby, we’ve dedicated our pledges for the coming year.
Apocalypse now? Why? Who needs this today?
Apocalyptic literature always confuses me.
I can assure you of at least one true thing: when it comes to understanding “apocalypse” it does not help any to Google it! Oh, sure, you’ll get about 2.5 million hits, including hints for surviving a robot uprising, ten reasons why we’re the last generation, and 666 numerological reasons why Prince Charles just might be the antichrist.
OK. I made up that last part – not about Prince Charles being the antichrist according to some strange numerology, but the 666 reasons why.
Really. You can look it up.
Again, I wonder, who needs this?
We tend to hear in such literature portents of the end times – although the root meaning of the word “apocalypse” actually refers to “opening up” or “uncovering,” thus we translate the Apocalypse of John as Revelation.
Now matter how we translate such writing, though, it often seems to obscure more than it reveals.
The temptation is to believe that we know precisely what is being revealed in such writing, to believe that we are Nostradamus-like and can discern in these 2,000-year-old words warnings related to next Tuesday.
I suppose this tendency is fundamentally human, and is among the bags we carry because we have the gift of imagination and of time. I mean, my dogs don’t worry about next Tuesday. Indeed, if they experience worry at all it’s not about next Tuesday, it’s about the next dog biscuit – and they only worry about that when the dog-biscuit box is rattling right in front of their noses. Unless Jesus was standing in our kitchen holding the box of dog biscuits, my dogs are not going to be concerned with anything he – or any other prophet of apocalypse – has to say.
But we human beings can imagine next Tuesday, and Wednesday and the day after that and the one to come way on down the road. And we can worry about it, too: what will we wear? What will we eat? What will we be doing? Where will we be? Who will we have to be taking care of? Who will be taking care of us? What work will have to be done? What threats will we face? Who will be sick? Who will die?
We’d like all of that and more answered for us. Depending upon our personalities and preferences some of us would like nice neat memos in outline form, others would prefer pictures, still others like lists. We want to know because we want to be prepared because, ultimately, we want to be in control.
But the language of the apocalypse insists that we are not in control. There will be wars – and in wars, as the present reality so painfully underscores, chaos reigns and plans dissolve in the fog of brutality. There will be famine – and we will be at the mercy of weather. There will be earthquakes – and we can do nothing to stop them. And we might learn, if we are paying attention, that we are not in control.
We could toss up our hands and despair that we are at the mercy of forces beyond our power. We could turn to cynical detachment or selfish gluttony.
Or, we could rage, rage against the dying of the light, we could kick at the darkness till it bleeds daylight. That is to say, we can take responsibility without claiming control.
Acknowledging that we are not in control – that God is in control – does not lift from us the responsibility for acting: for working for peace, for doing justice, for binding one another up, for bearing one another’s burdens, for loving one another. But it does liberate us from the oppressive tyranny of expectations.
Faithful living in the world looks like that.
For example, when we witness for peace – as a number of folks will do this afternoon at 5:00 in Lafayette Park – we do not step into the public square under the oppressive tyranny of expecting a particular outcome. But, at the same time, we do not free ourselves from the responsibility of working for a just and peaceful world. We step into the public square to witness to a deep faith – even in the midst of nation lifting up sword against nation – our deep faith in the one who comes proclaiming “peace on earth,” the one who promises that the peacemakers will be the children of God.
For example, when we offer our pledges to the work of the church we do not step forward under the oppressive tyranny of expecting the church to be ours, of expecting its future to be dependent upon our work. But, at the same time, we do not free ourselves from the responsibility of being the church – of joining our lives to the fellowship of the body of Christ and of living as those called out to be disciples. So we step into this responsibility to witness to our deep faith – even in the midst of famine and economic insecurity – our deep faith in the God of abundance who has given richly to us that we might want to be those who find deep joy in giving of ourselves.
For example, when we baptized Isabella a few minutes ago and pledged to nurture her in the faith, we do not do so under the oppressive tyranny of expecting her salvation – no matter how we consider it – to be in our hands. But, at the same time, we do not free ourselves from the responsibility for loving her just because, in baptism, we acknowledge that she is first, last and always in God’s hands.
But we do experience a wonderful liberation – a freedom to love, if you will – at the very moment that we let go of the illusion of our own control. We are freed from the future, to love in this moment as if this moment is the only one we have. Even if this moment is one of terror and warfare and deep brokenness – for God has been revealed in this very moment as the God of love and the lord of history.
God is revealed in this moment as the one who is about to do a new thing: the one who is about to create a new heaven and a new earth, as Isaiah understood in the midst of his own apocalyptic moment.
This is the meaning of the apocalypse – what is revealed now, in this very moment, what is opened up in the midst of history, in the middle of the stream of time: that in the center of all that is there beats a heart of love that beats for Isabella – for one as small and fragile, as beautiful and powerful, as momentous and as temporary as a child. That same heart beats for you and for me and for each of us.
Join the beating of your own heart to the rhythm of the divine heart that beats with love for creation – that we might join ourselves to that rhythm and be peacemakers, joyous givers of our time, talent and treasure, faithful parents, loving friends, compassionate community builders, repairers of the breach, disciples of the living Christ. Amen.

No Stupid Questions; No Small Plans

Luke 20:27-38
I’m sure all of you have heard, at some point or another, that there are no stupid questions. Well, that may be the dumbest utterance I’ve ever heard. For instance, a few weeks ago I asked myself, “wouldn’t it be a good idea to switch all my e-mail to g-mail and consolidate address books?” As many of you know by now, I’ve spent a good deal of the past week in that special little corner of hell reserved for those who change e-mail addresses. Well, “should I switch e-mails and consolidate address books?” is a stupid question – because there is only one answer: “run away! Run away!”
OK, for sure this question does not rate the level of curiosity that the question posed to Jesus does, but it’s caused me a good deal more grief than questions about the resurrection of brothers and widows ever has.
Indeed, in this passage from Luke, Jesus seems to be saying, “you know what, there are stupid questions, and I’ve had just about enough of them from the likes of you Sadducees.”
Think of the questions Jesus has been asked, according to Luke’s account. In the chapters leading up to our passage this morning he’s faced, among others, these inquiries:
• Why do you eat with sinners and tax collectors?
• On whose authority do you do these things?
• Should we pay taxes to Caesar?
Jesus just might be getting tired of it by the time this convoluted question about seven brothers comes along.
There seems to be more than a bit of pique in his response as he concludes, “Now he is the God not of the dead, but of the living.”
It’s as if Jesus is saying, “you just don’t get it, do you? It’s not about sinners and tax collectors and who you eat with or what you eat; it’s not about authority and hierarchies and pedigrees and rank or station; it’s not about Caesar vs. the religious institution; and it’s certainly not about what you cannot know while you are living.
“It’s about this – this one central, simple question: ‘are you following me?’”
So, how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
Who cares! Are we following Jesus?
What color should we paint the hallway?
Who cares! Are we following Jesus?
Should we sing this hymn or that one?
Who cares! Are we following Jesus?
Are you gay or are you straight?
Who cares! Are we following Jesus?
Do you profess a perfectly orthodox faith or do you not?
Who care! Are we following Jesus?
In Luke’s gospel, the series of stories that include the various questions I noted above includes the story of the rich young ruler who poses what I take to be a serious and faithful question – as opposed to the questions designed to test Jesus. The ruler asks, “good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
Jesus begins with a retort that, if we attend to it at all, immediately casts doubt on orthodox understandings of Jesus. Remember? Jesus first says, “why do you call me ‘good’? Only God is good.” Then he goes on to cast even deeper, more consequential doubt on the rest of us.
“Remember and live out all the commandments.”
“OK, fine,” says the ruler. “Been there, done that.”
“Well, then there’s this one last thing: sell everything you own, give the money to the poor, and come, follow me.”

So, do you have great faith or are you full of doubts?
Who cares! Are you following Jesus?
Do you call yourself a Christian or do you not?
Who cares! Are you following Jesus?
Are you a liberal or a conservative?
Who cares! Are you following Jesus?
That’s the bottom line, the essential question, for those of us still taken up with this enterprise called the church.
It doesn’t mean that other questions are not interesting or worthy of consideration, and even important in their own way. But they are secondary matters.
When I say “who cares!” I’m exaggerating for emphasis. Heck, I do care – ever so slightly – what color we paint the hall. But I’m clear about this: color choice will not stand in the way of anyone following Jesus.
And it is abundantly clear, that for Jesus, that was the point: follow me. He says it over and over and over again throughout the gospels.
Now, to underscore just how far I can stray from orthodoxy, I really don’t think it matters precisely how we understand the church’s orthodox teachings about Jesus. I mean, what exactly does “begotten, not made” mean anyway? “Very God of very God”? Not sure about that one either, frankly. After all, all we have, as human beings, are words – metaphors – to aim at the truth of God.
What Jesus invites us into, over and over and over again, is a relationship with one who’s life drew so close to the reality of God that to follow him is to draw ourselves deeply into the heart of God.
We can go there, no matter what questions we might harbor, although this series of stories from Luke does seem to invite us to ask questions not so much about others, but about ourselves.
In other words, Jesus seems to lose patience with the questions that focus on the behavior or beliefs of others – “why do you eat with tax collectors?” “how come we should pay taxes to a rotten ruler?” “do you believe the same thing about resurrection as they do?”
But Jesus looks with compassion on the young man who seems to want to follow, while, at the same time, pointing out quite clearly just what stands in the way.
He seems to say, “your questions are fine; you’re on the right track. But you are weighed down by your concerns about your own material well-being. Let go of that. Live in solidarity with the poor. That’s where you’ll find me. Come on. Follow me.”
Ah, and there’s the rub.
To follow … to take up the cross and follow Jesus.
That is, indeed, no small plan.
It does mean, perhaps, giving up on our quest to pin down every answer to every question that we might have, and to risk, instead, a journey of discipleship whose every turn is not spelled out in advance.
It does mean, perhaps, giving up on our desire to achieve status in the eyes and judgment of the culture – and, perhaps, even in the eyes of our families – and to risk, instead, a journey of discipleship that takes us to places of risk and poverty that we might prefer to avoid.
It does mean, perhaps, giving up our dependence on stuff and risking dependence upon Jesus and those who follow him.
Personally, there are many times when I’d prefer not to risk any of that. I enjoy digging at the questions. But I know that the questions themselves can become, for me, an excuse – a way to avoid the deep engagement that Jesus calls me toward.
I certainly know that I’d prefer not to risk financially or vocationally. I enjoy security in that regard. But I know that Jesus calls us to risk all – even security – for the sake of the gospel of love and justice. So I’ll try to hold that call in mind as we prayerfully consider our own response to the invitation to pledge financial support of this congregation’s work. And I’ll try to hold that call in mind as we prayerfully consider together in the weeks and months ahead God’s call to make no small plans for the sake of that same gospel.
I invite you to that same prayerful work of following Jesus.

For All the Saints

Luke 6:20-31
Nov. 4, 2007
Last Sunday we remembered the Reformation, so it’s good and right to recall this morning that Reformation understanding of the saints: we are all the saints of the church.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t often think of myself in such terms, nor do I often feel very saintly. Oh, sure, last Sunday afternoon as the crockpot warmed the chili I’d made for the CALL group while I folded laundry and got a snack ready for my children – all, let’s underscore, while Cheryl was flying back from five days in Reno – sure, at that point I felt pretty darn saintly!
But in any grander sense? Not so much.
Sure, folded laundry and actual cooked food while Cheryl is on the road is something of a miracle; but it probably wouldn’t qualify me for the Roman Catholic understanding of sainthood – even if that chili was mighty tasty.
So what is the sense of sainthood by which we might understand ourselves as among that number?
If you’re looking for a how-to manual to sainthood, you could do far worse than consider the passage this morning from Luke’s gospel. This is Luke’s version of the Beatitudes, and here Jesus describes the blessed life – a life sanctified such that those who lead it might consider themselves among the saints.
What invitation might we hear in these words?
“Blessed are you who are poor …”
We spend so much of our lives scrambling precisely in order to avoid being poor, yet Jesus tells us that we will find blessing precisely in our poverty. Matthew’s version reads, “blessed are the poor in spirit,” and many find in that a softening of Jesus’ message. Either way, this blessing is a challenge to us. If we hear in it a comment on our relationship to the material, we may hear both a reminder not to allow our lives to be so cluttered with stuff and the striving after stuff that we miss Christ in our midst – especially as he comes to us in the face of the poor. If we hear in it a comment on our spiritual lives, we may hear an invitation to, in the words of the Hassidic rabbis, to hold in one hand the message, “I am dust and to dust I shall return,” while holding in the other hand, at the same time, the message, “for me the universe was created.”
In other words, to be poor in spirit means holding lightly to our selves – knowing that we carry within us a spark of the divine while knowing at the same time that we are finite, mortal creatures we dwell here but a short while in the midst of a wondrous creation that we did not make. Such humble spirit demands that we recognize in every other creature the same condition, and, as such, calls us to treat every other with the dignity and respect due to one for whom the universe was created.
We recognize this common humanity, this common creaturely condition, when our bodies want – for food, for drink, for care and caress. Thus we are blessed when we hunger for in our hunger we come to know ourselves.
What other invitation to blessing might we hear in these words?
“Blessed are you who hunger …”
In knowing ourselves – our authentic selves – we can open ourselves to the presence of God in our midst. When we know ourselves as created beings we are open to the creator. In such openness we will be filled.
Of course, it is one thing to wax poetic about being creatures crafted in the image of a loving God, about being those for whom the universe was created, about holding lightly to life. It is another thing altogether to face head on the reality of a creation that groans under the weight of so much suffering and brokenness. It is another thing altogether to walk upright into the “vale of tears,” and to find blessing even in our weeping.
The question, as posed by Mary Lou Kownacki of Pax Christi – the Roman Catholic peace fellowship – is this: “The poor in spirit – those who recognize the sacredness of life – and they who mourn – those who realize the violence under which so many live – face a dilemma: How do we restore dignity, how do we bring wholeness to those denied basic human rights? How do we bring forth that day ‘when every tear shall be wiped away and death shall be no more, neither shall there be crying nor pain anymore’?”
So surely there is challenge in the blessing of those who mourn, but, again, what invitation might we hear in these words?
“Blessed are those who mourn …”
No matter how we may spiritualize or romanticize these words of blessing, no matter how many pretty words we choose to put around them, Jesus clearly understood the stark challenge they implied, for he closed his litany of blessings with this:
“Blessed are you when people hate you, exclude you and defame you on my account.”
To find blessing in receiving love is easy. To find it in receiving hate is another thing altogether.
In the same essay I quoted earlier, Sister Kownacki writes this:
“Suffering love first attracted me to nonviolence. In the early '60s—before Vatican II and renewal—I can remember watching the evening news, staring transfixed at the blacks who sat at segregated lunch counters and refused to move until they were served, while angry whites poured ketchup on their heads, smeared mustard through their hair and eyes, and pelted them with racial slurs.
“I heard the word "nonviolence" and wondered how people could absorb such hatred without striking back. Then I read an account in the Catholic Worker newspaper where a black man was quoted as saying: "I will let them kick me and kick me until they have kicked all the hatred out of themselves and into my own body, where I will transform it into love."
“That unidentified black man let me see the cross of Jesus anew. No longer was it possible to see the death of Jesus as a mere historical event, a dogma of faith to adhere to but never connect to real life. No, the disarmed figure on the cross was an invitation to me to break the cycle of violence, to be an instrument of continuing redemption through suffering love.”
The beatitudes – whether Luke’s version or Matthews – are Jesus invitation to us to make of our lives instruments of God’s grace and mercy, God’s love and justice. They are an invitation to us to live into our fullest identity as children of God who carry within us a memory and spark of the divine presence. They are a calling and a guide, an invitation in the fullest sense, to live as though we truly are to be numbered among all the saints.