Catastrophe, Chorus, and Comedy : How does God open our eyes?

This sermon was given by Kellogg Fellow Emily Garcia on the Third Sunday in Easter, 14 April 2013, at the Episcopal Chaplaincy at Harvard. The readings for the day can be found here.

Dearest Lord, we ask that you would open us to you, so that the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts might be pleasing to you. Amen.

Friends, before I share some thoughts on the Scriptures, I hope you’ll allow me a short church-nerd lesson. You all probably know most of this already, but we have this opening prayer at the beginning of our service, and it changes every week. It’s called the “Cóllect of the Day”. (Just a tangent: when I first became Episcopalian I outed myself as a newbie by continually calling it the colléct.)

The name cóllect comes from the Latin collecta, whose foggy origins seem to mean “the gathering of the people”, the collecting up of many prayers into one. What’s reeeally interesting to me is that these Collects are paired with particular readings throughout our yearly lectionary.

So! The lectionary, at its best, places some of the myriad Biblical voices in conversation and counterpoint to each other. And the Collect acts as a kind of moderator, offering an opening remark to focus our attention. I’ve often found that the Collect raises questions in me, which find their answers or echoes in the readings.

I explain all this because tonight’s a good example, and I want to share some thoughts on the question the Collect raises. Here it is: O God, whose blessed Son made himself known to his disciples in the breaking of bread: Open the eyes of our faith, that we may behold him in all his redeeming work. Open the eyes of our faith that we may behold him. Open the eyes of our faith.

What are we asking for, when we ask to have the eyes of our faith opened? What are we asking for, or waiting for? And how does God respond—how does He open our eyes    to see Christ?

The authors of Acts, Revelation, and the Gospel of John all have very different answers to that question.

Caravaggio's Conversione

This scene in Acts says that God opens our eyes in startling, strange unexpected signs. Saul is approaching Damascus when, “suddenly, a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying, ‘Saul Saul why do you persecute me?’”. This light blinds him for three days, and he’s “led by the hand” to Damascus, where he prays until God sends the disciple Ananias to heal him and fill him with the Spirit.

I love all the paintings and drawings that have been made of this bizarre moment on the road. Sometimes Saul is shown flying off his horse, knocked by a blaze. Or Christ is leaning in from a cloud, and Saul has his ear turned toward him. Or Saul is falling forward before Christ in humility— or, like in the Caravaggio painting in your bulletin, Saul just lies there, stunned. Stunned silent, even, maybe still stunned long after the voice of Christ has left his ear.

Saul continues on where he’d been headed, but now he goes “led by the hand.” Later, he receives the power of the Spirit from Ananias, but only after he has been made powerless. God opens Saul’s eyes, but only only after they have been stunned shut.

When God opens our eyes in this way, it may not knock us off our path, but it’ll change the REASON we’re on that path. When we see Christ in this way, we might not turn around, but we walk on in a very different way than how we started. And, we might need a word and a prayer from someone who God sends to us, to explain what has happened.

This is one way God opens our eyes. How else does God open our eyes, to see Christ? In the Revelation to John, the narrator’s eyes are already privileged in one way,  because he has been taken into heaven, he’s seen the one seated on the throne who looks like carnelian, and the sea of glass, like crystal. But a crisis comes, and John weeps because no one can be found to open a scroll. An elder says, “Don’t weep, see, the Lion of the tribe of Judah has conquered,” and he is worthy to open the scroll.

John looks up, and instead of a lion, and sees a lamb, literally, “a little lamb,” “standing as if it had been slaughtered.” I imagine John is confused for a moment—can this be Christ? But then the voices of the creatures and the elders sing that this Lamb has “ransomed for God saints from EVERY tribe AND language AND people AND nation.” Then, comes our reading—a moment when ALL THESE who have been ransomed and redeemed begin to sing—and there are myriads of myriads, and thousands of thousands. And then, as if they could not help but join, “EVERY creature in heaven AND on earth AND under the earth AND in the sea, AND all that is in them,” sing, “To the one seated on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might for ever and ever.”

John had already seen God, had seen heaven, but couldn’t understand what Christ was, until it had been explained to him in the voices of myriads of myriads of saints. John’s eyes were opened by the voices of every people and nation proclaiming the truth of God, and by the whole chorus of creation singing the truth of Christ’s reign and redemption.

For many of us, God opens our eyes to Christ in the singing voices of others—in the saintly lives led by others, in the glory of the created order. We may think we have seen God on his throne, we may think we know the Lion who has conquered, only to have our eyes opened by another’s song, our ideas upended by the Lamb.

But how ELSE does God open our eyes to behold Christ? Our Gospel reading, interestingly, has a couple different ways God opens our eyes. In this story, the camaraderie of the disciples and their friendship with Christ is still evident. Peter decides to go out for a round of nighttime fishing, and his friends join him. At daybreak, after a fruitless—or fishless—night, a distant figure on the beach shouts, “Boys!” (The Oxford Annotated says this is a better translation than “children”.) As a master of understatement, this figure suggests they’ll find “SOME fish” if they throw their net on the other side.

The sudden absurd weight of fish in their net seems to be what opens John’s eyes to see that it is Jesus. He turns to his friend Peter and says, “It is the Lord!” And THAT seems to be what opens Peter’s eyes to Christ’s presence. The Gospel says, “When he had heard that it was the Lord,” he put on his clothes and impulsively dove in.

So God opens John’s eyes in this almost comical experience of abundance, and he opens Peter’s eyes through the words of a friend. And these aren’t judgmental or explanatory words—simply, “Look! It is the Lord!”

By the time the rest of the disciples get to the beach, and Jesus invites them to eat, their eyes have all been opened, and no one needs to ask, “Who are you?” God opened their eyes, they are beholding Christ, and they sit down to have breakfast on the beach at sunrise with the Lord.

So Acts, Revelation, and John tell us what it means to have God open our eyes to behold Christ. I wonder, then, how God has opened your eyes, our eyes? Perhaps he did this gently, in the breaking of bread or the voice of a friend? Perhaps he opened your eyes with a great light or a great catastrophe? Or with the holy lives of people you’ve read about, or with the singing beauty of nature? Perhaps he opened your eyes with a sign of abundance and plenty in your life, a loving family, a good friend? When has God opened our eyes? When have we seen Christ, and heard him say, “Tend my sheep. Follow me.”

O God, we praise and bless you for your mysterious ways. We look for you in the world, we try to understand you and how we should live, but we can’t do it alone. Open the eyes of our faith, so that we may behold your son, the risen Christ, in all his redeeming work, and know you.

No More of This! : A Morning Prayers Homily

This homily was given by our Chaplain, Luther Zeigler, at Morning prayers in Appleton Chapel on the morning of Maundy Thursday.

A reading from the 22^nd chapter of the gospel of Luke:  “While Jesus was still speaking, suddenly a crowd came, and the one called Judas, one of the twelve, was leading them. Judas approached Jesus to kiss him; but Jesus said to him, ‘Judas, is it with a kiss that you are betraying the Son of Man?’ When those who were around him saw what was coming, they asked, ‘Lord, should we strike with the sword?’ Then one of them struck the slave of the high priest and cut off his right ear. But Jesus said, ‘No more of this!’ And he touched his ear and healed him.”  (Luke 22:47-51)  Here ends the reading.

On Monday of this week, I traveled to our Nation’s Capital along with twenty Episcopal bishops and hundreds of fellow Episcopal clergy and laypeople from around the country to participate in a “Stations of the Cross” pilgrimage that started in Lafayette Square across from the White House, winded its way down Pennsylvania Avenue, and ended on the steps of the Capitol.  Organized by the Bishop of Connecticut in the immediate aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School killings, this Holy Week pilgrimage was intended to be a public witness against an American culture of gun violence that claims too many lives each day across this country, including not only the children and adults who were massacred last December in Newtown, Connecticut, but also the 2,244 Americans killed by guns in the three months since. 

Through this pilgrimage we hoped, among other things, to persuade Congress to inject some sanity into federal gun control law so that weapons of death are not so readily accessible to those prone to misuse them.  Our public witness was designed, in the words of National Cathedral Dean Gary Hall, to demonstrate to our nation’s leaders that “the gun lobby is no match for the cross lobby.” 

We are not naïve.  We know what we are up against, and we are mindful that the sources of violence in American society are myriad and run deep.  We understand that limiting access to guns is not, by itself, enough.  Any comprehensive response to this epidemic requires, among other things, improved mental health care for our most vulnerable citizens, an assessment of the economic and social conditions that often spawn the resort to weapons, and a critical look at all aspects of our culture’s glorification of violence.  With our presence in Washington we hoped to shine some of God’s light on these issues as well.

At bottom, though, what distinguished our pilgrimage from other demonstrations in Washington was that our primary motivation was not political but religious.  Our witness against violence was embedded not in the rhetoric of public policy but in the narrative of the Passion.  For those of you unfamiliar with the “Stations of the Cross,” it is a dramatic liturgy commonly practiced by Christians during Holy Week in which participants prayerfully re-enact the biblical events that comprise the final moments of Jesus’ journey to the Cross.  Stations of the Cross are usually observed within a church or in some other sacred setting.  Our pilgrimage, by contrast, was quite intentionally a public one, with stations set along the iconic landmarks of our national corridors of power.  

In this setting, we sought to juxtapose Jesus’ life and death at the hands of a ruthlessly coercive Roman empire against the lives and deaths of all the innocent ones we Americans each day allow to be victimized by our own obsession with guns.  We came not sanctimoniously to condemn our legislators, but to confess our own sin of complacence in not doing more to stop the violence in our own neighborhoods, and to invite our representatives to search their own hearts in a similarly penitential spirit.   

The Christian faith is unique among world religions in that we worship the victim of a murder.  Jesus of Nazareth was viciously put to death by a society deeply threatened by his willingness to speak out against injustice, by his unrelenting commitment to the vulnerable, and by his unconditional love for all those persons unloved by the world.  The evangelists make clear, however, that in facing his accusers, Jesus never himself responds with violence of any sort.  Although his cause was pure and his arrest and conviction unjust, he refuses to retaliate.  Jesus knows only acceptance; he does not condemn, resist or exclude.

As we see in our text from Luke today, when Jesus’ followers understandably react to his betrayal and arrest by brandishing the sword against those who would harm him, Jesus rebukes them, reaches out to heal the wounded ear of his oppressor, and responds unequivocally to all who would hear:  “No more of this!”  No matter how just the cause, no matter how pure the victim, Jesus’ response to the violence of the world is never counter-violence, but always loving protest:  No more of this.

The Christian faith rests on this seeming paradox:  God’s chosen one is the crucified one, the purest and most innocent of victims.  And yet, Jesus is no mere martyr.  By the resurrection that is to come three days hence, we are assured of the Father’s refusal to permit the hatred of the oppressor to extinguish the life of love embodied by the Son.  Rather, God stands with and vindicates the Son, just as He stands with all victims.  As the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, once put it, what the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ teaches us is that “it is with the victim, the condemned, that God identifies, and it is in the company of the victim . . . that God is to be found, and nowhere else.”*

This is why during Holy Week we turn toward the Cross.  In a relentlessly violent world, our only hope lies in facing the victim.  It is there that we confront not only the consequences of our own complicity in the harm that has been done, but also the possibility of forgiveness by a God whose mercy will not permit our brutality to have the last word.  But our redemption can begin only by first facing the victim who bears the marks of the hurt we caused, or at least allowed to happen. 

Ultimately, then, this is why we went to Washington this past Monday:  to stand with all the victims, and to do so in the name of the One whose love overcomes all the hate the world can muster, and whose healing presence never abandons those crucified by its violent ways.  With Jesus, let us say:  No more of this.

         

         

*Rowan Williams, Resurrection: Interpreting the Easter Gospel (Cleveland: The Pilgrim Press, 1982), p. 5.

The Wedding at Cana : A Morning Prayers Homily by Graham Simpson

Graham is a graduating senior and the student President of ECH. He gave this Homily on Wednesday in Holy Week at the Morning Prayers service in Appleton Chapel (Memorial Church) on Harvard Yard.


This morning’s reading comes from the Thirteenth Chapter of the Gospel of John, verses 34 and 35: “Jesus said, ‘I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.   Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.  By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.’”

I spent part of Spring Break this past week with a handful of close friends away in rural Vermont, relaxing with food, games, and jigsaw puzzles.  One of these puzzles was that of a 16th century painting by Paolo Veronese, depicting The Wedding Feast at Cana.  None of my friends were familiar with the Biblical story that this painting illustrates so I felt obliged to share the tale with them.  In his Gospel, John writes about a wedding banquet where the guests finish all the wine as the party is nearing an end.  Jesus is a guest at this wedding and he takes matters into his own hands.  He takes some hundred gallons of water and miraculously transforms the water into wine.  And not just any wine, but exceptionally good wine.  According to John, this was the first miracle Jesus performed.

My friends enjoyed the story and deemed it fitting for a Spring Break where we never did run out of wine.  And I enjoyed sharing the tale, but it is not a Biblical passage I had ever really reflected upon.  Though I remember it from my childhood book of illustrated Bible stories and had brought it up in at least one friendly argument about Christianity and alcohol consumption, it is not a story I had thought twice about before and couldn’t recall a sermon preached on the miracle.  When I did think about it, I realized that an important element of the story and what really makes it fitting for a Renaissance painting or a child’s illustrated Bible is that the miracle takes place in an atmosphere of celebration, full of many people, reveling in each other’s company. 

For this first miracle, Jesus chooses a setting of community and friendship.  This detail reminds me of the holiness of such social gatherings of friends and families.  Today’s reading came from another congregation of friends, John’s telling of “The Last Supper” which we will remember tomorrow on Maundy Thursday.  When Jesus brings together his friends for this last Passover meal, he has a simple commandment for his disciples: to “love one another” as he has loved them.

As people of faith, we cannot survive without gathering in groups.  We need communities in which we love one another.  This is why – though our religious journeys are unique and personal – we come together in congregations like this one to pray, reflect, and listen.  We need friends and communities with whom we can share our joys and sorrows.

My last year here at Harvard has been full of many joys: memorable formals, exciting classes, parties in Eliot House.  But it has also been full of a great deal of stress and anxiety as Commencement looms closer and closer and a new, unknown stage of life awaits me.  Fortunately, in all these days of joy and anxiety, I have never felt alone.   I have shared these days with my loved ones and my communities at Harvard: These include my religious communities, here at Memorial Church and Morning Prayers as a member of the Choral Fellows, and the Episcopal Chaplaincy, where I worship on Sunday evenings; and also the other wonderful people that I have in my life, friends from extracurricular clubs, those I work with at the radio station, the roommates that I live with.

With these friends, I have shared many laughs and many tears over the last four years.  Now, I’m guessing the guests at the wedding in Cana also shared laughs and tears with one another when they gathered.  Such is the case at any wedding.  And I’m guessing the disciples partaking in Passover dinner with Jesus thousands of years ago also laughed and cried at that table.  For these wedding guests and these disciples loved each other and were in community with one another.  Only with such relationships can we hope to make it through the highs and lows of life.

As my post-graduation plans currently stand, I intend on leaving the United States this summer to live abroad as a Peace Corps volunteer, where I will remain for over two years’ time.  The scariest part about this plan is leaving my loved ones here in the States and dealing with the inevitable changes in how I relate to the important communities in my life.  How will I handle days of happiness and sorrow without these friends in my life?

I find peace in knowing that I will not lose these relationships or these communities.  I will think of them and know that they will consider me.  With the marvels of modern technology, I will be able to stay in very close touch with these friends and groups.  But also, I find peace in knowing that I will make new friends and find new communities abroad.  For wherever God’s children live, God’s presence will bring them together in love and compassion.

Let us pray:
Almighty God, we thank you for the blessing of family, friends, and significant others, and for the care which surrounds us on every side.  We thank you for the communities to which we belong, our churches, our towns, our universities, and the increasingly connected global community to which we all belong.  Help us to love one another as you love us, so that we may grow closer to one another and closer to you.  Amen.

The Mind of Christ: A Sermon for Palm Sunday

This sermon was given on Palm Sunday, March 24th, in the new sanctuary at Christ Church Cambridge, by our Kellogg Fellow, Emily Garcia.The readings for the day can be found here.

Philippians 2:5-11 is as familiar to my ear as John 3:16 (“for God so loved the world”) or 1 Corinthians 13 (“but have not love, I am but a clanging cymbal”). And it’s familiar for the same reason: I had to memorize these verses for Bible class at least once a year. I really didn’t like this passage—I thought it was rhythmically unsatisfying, and it seemed to me to have that extended anaphoric quality that Paul probably enjoyed writing but that middle schoolers hate memorizing.

            But it turns out that Paul probably didn’t write this little apparent list, and in fact, it’s not so boring as it first seemed to me. These seven verses were originally a hymn, an early Christian hymn, earlier than the Gospels, sung by the faithful when they gathered. I wonder, what was it like to sing this, back then? What would it be like, to sing these words in a world where you were not really welcome? What could it be like for a group of people from traditionally disparate even antagonistic backgrounds to sing this hymn together? “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, emptied himself, humbled himself, and become obedient to the point of death.”

            This word, “mind,” the mind of Christ, is translated from the Greek word “nous.” It doesn’t really mean “mind” as in the mind and the body, the thinking mind, mind and soul, brain, head, intellect. Rather, “nous” in Greek has the sense of a way of comprehending, a way of coming to comprehend.

            As Frederica Mathews-Green explains in her essay on the Jesus Prayer, the nous is the receptive faculty of the mind, the part of the mind that engages directly with life, which comprehends and takes things in. The nous is also the perceptive faculty, the part that perceives truth in a direct, intuitive way. “Nous” is our understanding.

            “Let the same nous—the same understanding—that was in Christ Jesus be in you.”

            On Ash Wednesday this year, I had a very different hymn going through my head. There’s a song by the Alabama Shakes whose refrain says, “You—you ain’ alone / Just let me be / Your ticket home.” These words are sung over and over again to close the song; they sound almost wrung from the singer after she has described another’s confused sorrow. But there’s a kind of triumph or strength in them too—the same triumph we hear when she sings, “If you’re gonna cry / Come on, cry with me.” She sings all these words slowly, heavily, hitting every sound in every word, the lines equal part invitation—and challenge.

            Today on Palm Sunday, it strikes me that these lines are the lines that Lent sings to us, that Christ sings in his Passion. “So if you’re gonna cry / Well come on, cry with me.” “You, you ain’ alone / Just let me be / Your ticket home.”

            This is the nous, the mind, the way of understanding that Christ shows us in his Passion. Did you notice, in his triumphant entry, he’s all but silent, letting his followers and friends praise him, but keeping quiet himself. In the Passion according to St. Luke, though, he has many words to share. Not words of pain or petition, but words of compassion and forgiveness.

            As he makes his way to the place called The Skull, he turns to the women wailing for him. He says, Don’t weep for me, but for you yourselves, and your children. He knows that Jerusalem will see more suffering in the future than he is feeling now, and his response is to warn them, to share their pain.

            And then, crucified, humiliated, he asks for forgiveness for those who have done this to him. Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing. Even in pain his gaze is on these people’s hearts and souls. He sees a way they can be redeemed, transformed.

            And again, almost the last thing he says—words of comfort to the criminal dying next to him. This man’s heart was still open even as he hung there and in a desperate moment asks this innocent man just to be remembered. And Christ doesn’t say, You should’ve thought of this earlier, before you committed a crime—he doesn’t pause and he doesn’t hold back. He responds with generous, generous love and forgiveness: Today you will be with me, in Paradise.

           

            Let the same mind be in us that was in Christ Jesus.

            That passage in Philippians is one of the foundations for “the imitation of Christ”, an understanding of Christian discipleship as an attempt to become more and more like the Christ we know in the Gospels. (That’s why my Bible teacher had us memorize these verses so many times.) We should imitate Christ.

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who emptied himself, humbled himself, and became obedient to the point of death.

The mind, the nous, the understanding of Christ that we see in the Passion is not just servanthood and humility, but generous love. On the cross, Christ set a pattern for us to imitate, and this pattern is a way of comprehending our own and others’ suffering. A way of responding to impossible outcomes, the death of innocents, the unacceptable pain in the world. Theologian Simone Weil says that the glory of the cross—the point of the cross—was that Jesus felt himself lost and abandoned, but he kept (as she says) loving into the void. He loved the women who were crying; he loved these people killing him slowly; he loved the two men hanging there beside him. THIS, is the mind of Christ. This is what we should imitate.

          In this, in Christ’s Passion, it’s God who says, “So if you’re gonna cry, come on / cry with me. / You, you ain’ alone /   Just let me be / Your ticket home.” Amen.

Our Own Weapons

 My dad wrote me an email a few days ago telling me about this new dramatized series on the Bible that is running on the History Channel. Growing up in a fairly devout Christian household, I have always had a bit of a soft spot for Bible stories. I remember watching biblical cartoons on the Evangelical television network, and I even had a biblical "barbie" of Ruth--she wore a red robe with a brown sash, had sensible flat feet, and came with a cassette tape of the story of Ruth. Childhood stories aside, I am intrigued by this new series, although I actually don't watch television so I have yet to see any of it. (Why do biblical dramatizations so often use British accents for the biblical people?!) But I did watch a few clips where Sojourners' Jim Wallis reviews some of his favorite moments from the series. One of them is this one, about David & Goliath. It's a classic story, of course, and an inspiring one to those of us who may think of ourselves as the "little guy" in the world--the one who is ignored, who isn't strong, who doesn't have much money or prestige, the lone activist crying out in the wilderness. Apparently it's one of Jim Wallis' favorite stories, and he uses it to make a simple yet important point: David doesn't fight Goliath with spears or swords--the weapons of the strong and militarily mighty. Rather, David uses that which he knows, that which is his unique gift. And he is successful. He defeats the tyrant. I wonder: what are our unique gifts, our weapons of choice against injustice? How are we called to reverse the weapons of the powerful?

Be still: A Morning Prayers Homily by Greg Johnston

This homily was given by Greg Johnston '13 at the Morning Prayers service in Appleton Chapel (Memorial Church) on Harvard Yard. Greg is a faithful member of ECH and will be confirmed this year into the Anglican Communion.

A Reading from Psalm 46 (verses 1-4, and 9-12):

God is our refuge and strength, *
      a very present help in trouble.

Therefore we will not fear, though the earth be moved, *
      and though the mountains be toppled into the
        depths of the sea;

Though its waters rage and foam, *
      and though the mountains tremble at its tumult.

The LORD of hosts is with us; *
      the God of Jacob is our stronghold.

Come now and look upon the works of the LORD, *
      what awesome things he has done on earth.

It is he who makes war to cease in all the world; *
      he breaks the bow, and shatters the spear,
      and burns the shields with fire.

“Be still, then, and know that I am God; *
      I will be exalted among the nations;
      I will be exalted in the earth.”

The LORD of hosts is with us; *
      the God of Jacob is our stronghold. 

            It wasn't until I was sitting in the waiting room at the psychiatric ER that I realized I had left my book behind. So now I'm sitting there while a social worker talks with my best friend, without my book. It hadn't been a problem while she had been curled up unresponsively in my bed, or while I had been calling the HUPD officer, or while he had been calling the paramedics, or while they had been wheeling her down the stairs in their special chair, or while we had been riding in the ambulance to the hospital, her in the back and me in the front seat with the driver And it wasn't that I'm a particularly forgetful person: I had remembered her shoes and her ID and her bag and my wallet. This was in one of my late-semester research-paper-writing hazes, when I spent every Friday reading something or other, and I had somehow left whatever I was reading behind. I'll tell you a secret: I don't know what that book was, or what paper it was for, or even—unless you gave me a few minutes—the classes I was taking that semester. But at the moment it seemed important.

            And it was something like that the day there was no food in the refrigerator, which was also—coincidentally—the day that my dad moved out of the house. He and I had driven back from a week-long vacation together, with my mom and my sister in a separate car. “Should we stop at the store for groceries?” I asked on the way home. “No,” he said, “I'm sure Mom will want to do her big back-in-town shop on Monday.” And so on Sunday morning when he sat us all down in the kitchen, and told us he had to go, and took his suitcase and left, all I could think of as my mom and my sister sat there crying was that there were no groceries, and that I needed to go get some. And I'll tell you another secret: I have no idea—absolutely no idea—what we ate for dinner.

            “God is our refuge and our strength, a very present help in trouble. ...Be still, then, and know that I am God.” And yet when we are in trouble, God seems far off, and stillness even further. For me, there's a little voice, instead: a voice that tries to distract me with thoughts of being helpful in a time and a place when there is nothing to be done to help; a voice that tries to control something, some little thing—a book, or groceries—in an uncontrollable situation.

            Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk and mystic, offered this prayer: “Lord, I have not lived like a contemplative....My actions prove that the one I trust is myself — and that I am still afraid of You. Take my life into Your hands, at last, and do what ever You want with it. I give myself to Your love and mean to keep on giving myself to Your love — rejecting neither the hard things nor the pleasant things You have arranged for me.” That little worried voice, I suspect, comes from something like this: trust in myself, and fear of what the psalmist calls “the works of the Lord.” Now, this distraction has its very real benefits: it keeps us from feeling our feelings, from giving in to emotion entirely, until we are in a place we feel safe. And it has its very real drawbacks: it keeps us from feeling our feelings, from giving in to emotion, until we are in a place we feel entirely safe. So often, we misjudge that safety. If there's a safer place to feel emotions than the psychiatric emergency room, I haven't found it. If there's a more loving place to be upset than at the kitchen table, only God knows.

            So how can we feel safe? How can we feel those emotions in a healthy way? How, in other words, can we quiet that anxious little voice and be still in the presence of God? The answer, for many people, is prayer. Not prayer the way we usually think of it, full of words and impressive-sounding phrases and pleas and praises, but contemplative, meditative prayer. After all, as the now-retired Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams writes, prayer is primarily a matter of “putting aside our defences and disguises, coming into silence and stillness so that what stands before God is not the performer, the mask, the habits of self-promotion and self-protection but the naked me.”

            Now meditation is primarily about one thing: stillness. It's about quieting those worried thoughts, calming that voice that tries to distract us from our pain. It's about being silent in the presence of God. And most importantly, it's about loving yourself even more when you realize that—for the thirtieth or fortieth time in the last five minutes—you've failed at the seemingly-simple task of stillness and quiet.

            God, somehow, is “our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” “Therefore we will not fear, though the earth be moved, and though the mountains be toppled into the depths of the sea; Though its waters rage and foam, and though the mountains tremble at its tumult.” Though our friends are in pain and our families are falling apart. Though our wars have not ceased, our bows are not broken, our spears are not shattered. “The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Israel is our stronghold.”

            “Be still, then, and know that I am God.” If only it were so easy as saying the words. But the beautiful thing about us as human beings is that we are not hopeless, we are not helpless. We are in a process of re-building ourselves, every day, into something new, with God's help. Be still, then, and know that I am God.

Let us pray.

O God of peace, you have taught us that in returning and in rest
we shall be saved, in quietness and confidence shall be our strength:
By the might of your Spirit life us, we pray, to Your presence,
where we may be still and know that you are God;
through Jesus Christ our Lord, who taught us to pray, saying,

Our Father . . .

 

“Another year”: Thoughts on Repentance

This sermon was written by Emily J. Garcia, our Kellogg Fellow, for the third Sunday in Lent, March 3, 2013.

Tonight’s Gospel features one of my favorite words : “repent.” I don’t like this word when people shout it at other people in the street; I don’t like this word when it’s used to flay others into guilt, when it’s just a way of saying “You’re bad.”

But repentance isn’t really like that at all!

Contrition and penitence are feelings of sorrow or conviction for the wrong we’ve done. But repentance doesn’t stop there—repentance follows this acknowledgement with a turn towards the right thing, the good thing—towards God. When we repent, we stop doing one thing and start doing something better. I like this word, “repent,” because I know I can trust the God we’re turning towards. I know that when we repent, we can say with the Psalmist, You have been my helper, and under the shadow of your wings I will rejoice.

             

Our reading from Luke starts off with a cryptic statement about Pilate and some Galileans. Bishop N. T. Wright explains that some Galilean pilgrims had been offering sacrifices in the Temple in Jerusalem. Pilate—perhaps fearing rebellion or a riot—had ordered in the troops and had them killed. Jesus immediately dismisses the idea that these Galileans deserved this sudden and violent death, or that it was a punishment of some sort. Jesus turns these sudden deaths towards his listeners—“unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.” Commentator Luke Timothy Johnson says Jesus’s point is that “death itself, with the judgment of God, is always so close. It can happen when engaged in ritual. It can happen standing under a wall. And when it happens so suddenly, there is no time to repent.” This repentance is “not simply a turning from sin, but an acceptance of the visitation of God in the proclamation of God’s kingdom.”

This is certainly one motivation to repent. If we keep in mind that any day may be our last, why would we waste time?! If our time here is short and fragile, certainly NOW is the time to ask for forgiveness from those you’ve hurt, to set things right with those you love, to start treating every person you meet with the dignity they deserve, to spend your time and energy on the things that actually matter.

I’m a nervous, worrying person, and this awareness of the fragility of my life has always been a strong motivator. But I found after a while that if this is your only motivation, it runs you down quick. It might get you sprinting, it might quicken your pulse, but if you end up living a marathon rather than a sprint, this fear of death might turn you bitter, instead of helping you live a holy and Godly life. Fear only goes so far.

Luckily, the second half of our reading from Luke holds another, longer-burning motivation for repentance. At first glance, it seems like this is another threat-filled story—our attention is definitely caught by those three words, “Cut it down!”

But I think that this parable shows the mystery of God’s righteousness and love. I think God is the vineyard owner, but God is also the gardener.

God looks at us and knows fully our pettiness, every hidden place where we are crooked and thorny, our nastiness, our dismissiveness, our small and petty cruelties. God sees all of this. And God says, This is not good enough. What have you done with all the sunlight and good soil and care, to produce these dry branches? We’re like the Israelites who Paul talks about in First Corinthians, who take the gifts and guidance of God and then—because they’re human—keep messing up.

But see, God is also the gardener, who says, Give her another year. In fact, I think God says this year after year—Give her another year.  He knows where we have hidden new roots, new branches, new leaves which we can’t even see in ourselves. He sees somewhere a capacity for generosity, giving without expectation of receiving. He sees that we can be patient and kind; we can be self-controlled, and at peace. And he sees, most importantly, that we can learn to love others even as he loves us—selflessly, entirely, joyfully. We look at ourselves and see the dried tree which gives no fruit; God sees that, but sees also what we might become, if we accept his love and help.

And THIS is in fact the best motivation to repent: God’s relentless compassion, his mercy.

This mercy and compassion is like the burning bush which Moses sees—strange, and apparently impossible. God’s mercy and compassion are so unexpected and wonderful that they draw us away from our usual paths, and closer to God’s flame.

And caught in his flame, how could we not change? As we’re drawn closer to him, we give up things that are not good enough for God. We give up things, and God takes them away, and the line between each gesture is sometimes blurred, so that we can’t tell where our will and God’s mysterious action interact exactly. As we come closer to God, these things are burnt away, discarded like Moses’s sandals. This is the mystery of sanctification, the lifelong process of being sanctified, made holy by and for God’s glory.

So, let us repent! Let’s leave behind whatever is not loving and good. Turn towards this God who loves us right now, as we are. Repent, and move closer to this God who wants to change us from glory into glory. Let us repent, and say with the Psalmist, “My soul clings to you; your right hand holds me fast.”