Sermon (Fr Peay) July 15, 2018

St. John Chrysostom Episcopal Church – Delafield, Wisconsin

Eighth Sunday after Pentecost – July 22, 2018

V. Rev. Steven A. Peay, Ph.D.

[texts: Eph. 1:3‑14/Mk. 6:14‑29]

She danced and her besotted stepfather offered her whatever she wanted, “even up to half of my kingdom.” What she took instead was a pesky prophet’s head. The Gospels, Mark and Matthew, tell the story of Herodias’ daughter; though they don’t tell us her name. We learn her name, Salome, from the Jewish historian Josephus in the Antiquities. It’s ironic that her name means ‘peace’ or ‘well-being’ when you think about what she does. But Salome does enter history and especially the history of art.

Images of Salome’s dance, along with John the Baptist’s head on a platter, show up not only on the walls of churches, but as a favorite subject for painters and sculptors. Regardless of the period or the style, the artist attempts to portray the allure that would beguile her stepfather into murdering God’s prophet. Salome’s dance has also served as the inspiration for music, Richard Strauss composed a controversial opera by the same name in 1905. It has also served as a point of titillation in religious films, like King of Kings. For years Salome’s dance was synonymous with decadence and moral weakness. Perhaps it was because Salome danced to her own beat, in order to get what she wanted, which was to make sure that things in her life didn’t change. She very well might have been graceful, but she was hardly grace-filled. By contrast, God’s prophet, John the Baptist, danced to God’s beat, was grace-filled, and knew that change could come as a result. Being graced means dancing to God’s new beat.

When God enters into the midst of things very little is left the same. God's creative power is constantly at work. When that power is unleashed the sick are healed and those who are crippled in attitude or action are made whole. Herod may have abandoned his dignity when Salome danced, but there was another king, David, who also let his kingly dignity go for a whole different reason – because of joy in the presence of God. The Hebrew Scripture lesson we didn’t read today is the story about David’s dancing before the Lord and I just have to mention it because there is a story I want to tell. The story is told of an elderly rabbi who was afflicted with crippling arthritis. He began to tell the story of how David danced in front of the Ark. He got so caught up in his own story, that while telling it, he suddenly was swept away and started to dance himself, despite his disabled joints.

Rarely do we allow the creative power of God to "cut loose" in our lives because then we might HAVE to change, we might HAVE to be different. The story of God's creative presence has power to make us dance to the new beat of God's love and care for God’s people. Those who get caught up in the dance can, indeed, run into difficulty.

John the Baptist, the Christ's Forerunner, danced to God's new beat. Herod, and others, didn’t like him, because he threatened them and their comfortable way of doing things. Herod used another dancer and a foolish oath as the means for silencing John the Baptist. That's why he was so spooked when news of Jesus' mighty acts circulated among his people. Could John be back from the dead? Could this great agent of change be here again?

Little did Herod know that an even greater agent of change, the Creator Incarnate, was loose in the world. At one point, shortly before Jesus would be sent to the cross, Herod asked Jesus to work a miracle for him. So many people who are holding back from relationship with God do the same thing, don't they? They wait for a miracle, for God to prove God’s self to them and don't even see the truth that God in Christ already did that on the Cross. Miracles aren't the key to understanding Jesus' person and work, they are only sign posts along the way to point to the true "mighty act," which is that of self‑giving love acted out upon the life‑giving Cross.

When Paul talks about the "glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved," he's talking about the redemptive act of Christ through the Cross, Resurrection, and the subsequent gift of the Holy Spirit. In this momentous act, Paul tells us, that God has "made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth."

What Paul preached is that as Christ acted on the Cross he changed once and for all the relationship between God and the whole human race. It is now a matter of our willingness to enter into relationship with the Lord of the Dance, to move to God’s new beat, and that demands change.

One cannot stand in the presence of what God has done in Jesus Christ and remain unchanged – and if we do, we are simply missing the point. We are called to a recreation, from the inside out, that allows us to approach ourselves, other people, the whole world from a different perspective. To be "marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit" is to be marked for change on a daily basis. Every single day of our lives we are called to rise from our beds and begin our days looking at the world in this new way, with God's eyes and not our own. How can we possibly accomplish it? We can't, but God ALREADY HAS, that’s the grace part – it’s all about God’s free gift of love offered to us. However, we have to be willing to cooperate and the cooperation is where the change comes in. Because each day we have to open ourselves more and more to God and allow less and less our own selfish nature to get in the way of God's work. The dance of God reaches out to others and opens us to relationship. The cost of change is our very selves, but the compensation is union with the living God – it is not too great a price to pay.

Paul offered himself completely to God when he cried out to the Galatians, "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me¼" Even our Lord gave himself completely into the Father's hands, saying, "Not my will, but yours be done." Herod couldn't change, he couldn't give up his pride, couldn't admit that he had made a foolish promise that bore disastrous consequences. How often do we get like that? How often, even here at church, do we draw lines in the sand and declare, "I don't care what anyone thinks. I'm NOT going to change." How many people have become turned‑off to the message of faith, to the promise of God's love because one of God’s people has been unwilling to be graced, dance to God’s new beat of renewal and change by entering into the reality of daily conversion?

Conversion, change is not an easy topic to broach. I, for one, am not a person who likes change. In its one hundred and sixty-four year history this parish has experienced a great deal of change. Some of it wonderfully constructive, some of it jarring and damaging. It's never easy, but I want to commend you because you are trying to follow the Lord's lead, to grow into the people that we are called to be, to become the example of God's love reaching out to the people in Delafield and beyond. There’s work to do, however, it’s far from finished. As John Henry Newman wrote in The Development of Doctrine, "In a higher world it is otherwise, but here below to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often." God calls us to perfection dear ones, we are called to dance to God’s tune of unselfish love, graced existence and to meet the cost of change and grow. As a result we will each day find ourselves more and more in the image and the likeness of God.

And, we are called to invite others to the dance, to be agents of change in the lives of others and in our world. God wants to work through us to have more and more people come to appropriate the life God offers in the new creation already accomplished through Jesus Christ. We cannot dance to the new beat, be agents of change until we have been open to change and been changed ourselves. We do that by listening with the ears of our hearts for God’s new beat. We open the Scripture, we pray and there learn God’s new tune.

            Two dancers, one dancing to her own beat, the other to the beat which set creation in motion; which one do we follow? I think we all know the answer. There is a hymn, “Lord of the Dance,” and its final lines sum it all up. “. . . I am the life that’ll never, never die; I’ll live in you if you’ll live in me; I am the Lord of the Dance, said he.” Be graced. Listen for the new beat with the ears of your heart. Dance with the Lord of the Dance to the tune of new life. Be open to the wonder of what God can do through us . . . and dance!

Sermon (Fr Peay) July 8, 2018

St. John Chrysostom Episcopal Church – Delafield, Wisconsin

Seventh Sunday after Pentecost – July 8, 2018

V. Rev. Steven A. Peay, Ph.D.

[texts: 2 Corinthians 12:2-10/Mark 6:1-13]

            I appreciate Mark Twain’s humor a great deal and one of his best lines, as far as I am concerned, was: “Familiarity breeds contempt . . . and children.” Of course, this is a variant on the original by Aesop, which came from his fable called “The Fox and the Lion.”

When first the Fox saw the Lion he was terribly frightened, and ran away and hid himself in the wood. Next time, however, he came near the King of Beasts he stopped at a safe distance and watched him pass by. The third time they came near one another the Fox went straight up to the Lion and passed the time of day with him, asking him how the family were, and when he should have the pleasure of seeing him again; then turning his tail, he parted from the Lion without much ceremony. Familiarity breeds contempt.

            Jesus says something quite similar today in Mark 6:4, “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin and in their own house.” In those oft-heard words we’re given the formula for why familiarity breeds contempt: we get so close, so accustomed and so comfortable that we can’t see the whole of who a person is. We only see what we’ve known or remembered -- even something new really can’t be trusted. John Shea, the theologian and story-teller, talks about it as putting someone in a box.

            In the case of the villagers in Nazareth it was such a tightly constructed box that, as Mark tells us, “he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid hands on a few sick people and cured them. And he was amazed at their unbelief.” It would not have mattered what miracle Jesus did, the thought that the carpenter’s son was doing it dropped the box tightly about his work and limited it to what was previously known, experienced and expected.

            Mark Eddington makes a trenchant and disturbing comment on this text:

The theological assertion beneath this vignette is uncomfortable, but plain” the human capacity for investing in social norms, for believing in one’s own preferences is greater than the human capacity for faith. In Mark’s Gospel the person who acts beyond social norms through faith in God is rare. No socially constructed categories serve predictively: they may be rich and powerful (Jairus), poor and marginalized (the hemorrhaging woman), or acting selflessly on behalf of others (the paralytic’s friends). Even the demons that afflict the Gerasene are quicker in their faith than Jesus’ own neighbors: immediately they acknowledge his kingly authority (“What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?” [5:7]). The evil spirits are not bound by the social conventions that bind Jesus’ own people – and us. [Feasting on the Word, Year B – vol. 3, p. 214]

It appears that, if we choose, we can limit God’s action among us all because we can’t open ourselves to the possibility that God just might act if we got out of the way. We, then, put the limits on faith – not God – and perhaps here is an area where we might realize that we’re just not as familiar with God as we think we are.

            I am particularly mindful of this as we have just celebrated the two hundred and forty-second anniversary of our nation’s birth. If ever a people have become illustrative of the reality of familiarity breeding contempt, it certainly must be we Americans. Give me a moment to make my point – and fear not, don’t worry, I’m not going to get political!

            The late Daniel Elazar was a political scientist who taught at both the Bar Ilon University in Israel and Temple University in the United States. His area of specialization was the development of federal democracies. He wanted to get at the root of federal democracy and in multiple studies he traced it back all the way to the tribal confederation that was Israel. Along the way he discovered that those Old Testament roots also led up and through the Reformation to the Puritans and then, through them, to what became the United States.

            Elazar described federalism in his book Exploring Federalism:

The term “federal” is derived from the Latin foedus, which, like the Hebrew brit, means covenant. In essence, a federal arrangement is one of partnership, established and regulated by a covenant, whose internal relationships reflect the special kind of sharing that must prevail among the partners, based on a mutual recognition of the integrity of each partner and the attempt to foster a special unity among them. Significantly shalom, the Hebrew term for peace, is a cognate of brit, having to do with the creation of the covenantal wholeness that is true peace. [p. 5]

The goal of the covenant is to be in right relationship and to live accordingly. Here is the origin of our federal democracy, of our free land, of our “city set upon a hill” first envisioned by John Winthrop in his sermon to those about to embark on the ‘Arbella fleet’ in 1630.

            While I could spend a great deal more time talking with you about this concept, I won’t.  What I will do is remind us that over the years we – as a nation – have grown quite familiar, spawned a lot of children and, I believe, grown contemptuous of whence we came, who we are, and what we should be.

            Though I am a great believer in religious tolerance, I can say with confidence that the Pilgrim-Puritan founders did not feel, nor did they act in the same way toward those who believed or practiced faith differently. They saw themselves as God’s chosen people, as the “new Israel of God” set upon “an errand into the wilderness,” and thus they were the “Lord’s free people.” They would not have been open to others practicing alternative faiths, I am. However, that said, I still believe that we need to understand whence we came, what were the formative concepts of our nation and honor the roots of our founding.

            Many revisionist American historians try very hard to minimize the role of religion – and the Christian faith in particular – in the formation of the American nation. Speaking as a trained historian, I think they play fast and loose; and that we suffer as a people as a result. I certainly don’t want to canonize or apotheosize the Founders, but I think we need to remind ourselves of those covenant principles – those foundational, Biblical principles – out of which they worked and on which our nation was grounded.

            Part of the covenant principle engages the notion of “the common good.” Our free society is free because we have been mutually responsible toward one another. We have grown and survived as a nation because we were accountable, we were responsible, we were hard-working, we were innovative and inventive, and we took the time to care for other people. Somewhere along the 242 years of our existence we’ve grown enamored of the new holy trinity of “me, myself, and I” and have forgotten the value of community, the wonder of relationship, and the common good. It is one thing to mouth the principles of democracy, to wave the banner emblazoned “Liberty!,” but it is a very different thing to actually live one’s life in accordance with them.

            Jesus speaks the word, but he also did the word. His whole life – which, of course, is quite appropriate to the Incarnate Word – embodied integrity, unselfishness and other-centeredness. Something I read speaks to the difference that living in this manner – oriented toward the common good and not just our own – can make.

A powerful illustration of the integrity and balance between “doing” the word and “speaking” the word was offered by one Hugh Thompson at the commencement exercises at Emory University several years ago. Honorary degrees were being awarded: the recipients made the requisite speeches. As is often the case, the students chatted through the whole ceremony. In fact, there was only one moment when they actually listened. “It was when a man named Hugh Thompson was speaking. Thompson was probably the least educated man on the platform. He . . . did not finish college, choosing instead to enlist in the Army, where he became a helicopter pilot.

“On March 16, 1968, he was flying a routine patrol in Vietnam when he happened to fly over the village of My Lai just as American troops, under the command of Lieutenant William Calley, were slaughtering dozens of unarmed . . .  villagers – old men, women, and children. Thompson set his helicopter down between the troops and the remaining  . . . civilians. He ordered his tail-gunner to train the helicopter guns on the American soldiers and he ordered the gunmen to stop killing the villagers. . . .Hugh Thompson’s actions saved the lives of dozens of people  . . . he was almost court-martialed. . . .It was thirty years before the Army . . . awarded him the Soldier’s Medal.

“As he stood at the microphone, the  . . . rowdy student body grew still.” And then Thompson talked about his faith. Simple words. Speaking of what his parents taught him as a child Thompson said, “They taught me, ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’” The students were amazed at these “words of Jesus, word from Sunday school, words from worship, words of Christian testimony . . . they leapt to their feet and gave him a standing ovation.”

Thompson’s words about his faith had weight because the man had obviously “walked the talk.” In the same way, the church will not be heard if what we do as Christians is incongruous with what we say about our faith. [Michael Lindvall, Feasting, p. 214-5]

            Perhaps if we get reacquainted with those basic things which have made us a great nation we would be more attentive to the common good and live integrally? Maybe the best way we can celebrate our independence, our nation’s birthday, isn’t with a day off, or with fire works (although those are wonderful things), but by celebrating our interdependence and living what we believe.

            Familiarity may, indeed, breed contempt, but looking at familiar people, scenery or activities from a different perspective can help change that. I have heard the story of My Lai many times – I’m of the age that I can remember Walter Cronkite reporting it -- I have a new perspective now. Hugh Thompson’s story is going to stay with me for a long time, because here was a man who could have looked, even flown, the other way, but acted instead on the principles of his Christian faith and of his understanding of the common good.

            In the days ahead our task is to get ourselves out of seeing life as the boxes we put around people, society, employment, church, faith, community, and even God. Rather than seeing the familiar, the ‘ho-hum,’ see God at work in and through those people and settings. Taking a new perspective -- trying to see and believe and live as Jesus did -- will make a difference in how we approach life day-to-day and then, so will we. Familiarity can breed many things; my prayer is that it will breed a new sense of, and commitment to, the common good, beginning right here at St. John Chrysostom parish.

Sermon (Fr Cunningham) July 8, 2018

            I think I am at the point where I will stop making jokes about the fact that I keep preaching from 2nd Corinthians.  I have moved from shock to denial and have now settled into acceptance – maybe sermon series are a long dormant part of me from my Presbyterian past that I just cannot escape (something like how the dinosaurs keep coming back to make new Jurassic Park movies).  Or it might just be that Paul keeps talking about things that I would like to spend a little more time contemplating.  Whatever the case, 2nd Corinthians is once again on tap, so belly up to the bar- its time for some Pauline theology of suffering. 

            This morning Paul states, “Therefore, to keep me from being too elated, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, but he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.’ So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.” 

The quick summary of it is this:  Paul has some sort of physical ailment and because of this ailment he is thankful because he believes that it has made him weak, which makes him more able to be filled with Christ.  Which is all well and good but it does leave a question sort of dangling out there which is: How did the ailment get there in the first place?  That is, if the result is that Paul is more filled with Christ and filled with his grace because of the thorn did God, being omniscient, intentionally give Paul this ailment?  Well…lets think about it.  God is the giver of good gifts, but this is an ailment and so would seem not to fall into that “good gifts” category.  So if that is the case does that mean the ailment came from Satan or at least one of his subordinates?  Well…unless it is clearer in the original Greek, I would have to say that Paul does not quite answer that question.   If you remember he says, “Therefore, to keep me from being too elated, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too elated.”  On one hand the ailment is described as being a messenger from Satan, while on the other hand it is described as having been given him with a specific purpose in mind, which is to keep him from being too elated, giving it a sort of divine plan like vibe.  You could reasonably argue either side, or no side for that matter.  And on one hand it’s disappointing to not know the answer, because we humans like to know the answers to stuff.  But that impulse to know everything was also what got us in trouble in the Garden of Eden, so we do need to be a little careful.  That being said I do think that this vagueness is closer to the right answer, partly because it guards against two very bad answers. 

            The first bad answer to why less than pleasant things happen to us is the God model, which posits that God is instigating each and every thing that goes on to teach us something.  This answer is a sort of Christian take on fatalism positing that everything that happens, happens because God wanted it to happen in that exact way.  The obvious problem with this is that at some point it makes God the author of evil.  Because if God is creating bad situations for us to have to endure, it means he is creating the badness (and I mean bad in the not good sense, not in the Michael Jackson sense).  The other incorrect school of thought that Paul’s answer guards against switches the blame from God and rather makes Satan responsible for everything.  But we must be careful when we give Satan too much power.  As C.S Lewis stated, “There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.”  Lewis’ warning is not to give the devil too little power but also not to give him too much.  In other words every time our shoelace breaks or we get caught in traffic it may not be a satanic attack. 

            And so now that we have guarded against the two extremes where does that leave us in terms of explanations about bad things happening to us?  Well the brief answer is that it is complicated and that we may often be unable to discern who is responsible.  But in many ways, I am not even sure that this is the most important question to ask.  The more important question may not be who did it, but rather what do I do now that it has been done. 

            Back in my corporate finance days I worked for a large poultry company.  The guy who was the head of our Turkey division for part of the time I was there had a rather curious style of management and by curious I mean bad (and again not in the Michael Jackson sense).  Whenever something would go wrong he would call a meeting and demand to know whose fault it was.  Most times it was not really one person’s fault but the meetings would drag on until someone at long last would volunteer a name.  This manager then armed with the identity of the perpetrator would go find this individual and berate them.  Afterward he would retire to his office proud of a job well done.  Obviously, it did not work because he never fixed the problem, but rather made the problem the possession of one person, who now had very low self-esteem.  He was content to find out whose fault it was and stop there, forgetting that fixing the problem was the more important pursuit.  And I bring this up because I think we can also fall into this trap when things go wrong in our lives.  We want to find out whose fault it is and then stop.  But the important thing is not that, but is rather asking how we can use whatever the event may be to grow closer to God.  And I realize when I say things like this that it is extremely easy for me to prattle on about such platitudes, but much more difficult in reality to do this.  When we lose a loved one, suffer a financial crisis or discover one of our children has a disability, it is a little harder to immediately want to grow closer to God.  Our reaction is often one of anger or depression, feeling that it is all just too much.  And I certainly understand such sympathies.  Things that are easy to say are often the most difficult to do, but that does not make them any less true. 

Paul today tells us that power is made perfect in weakness.  And it is usually at our lowest points when we are the most weak.  It is those times when everything has gone wrong that we finally turn fully to God.  It is when we realize that we are not in control of everything that we can ask God to fill us with his power.  In the book I have been reading about Greek Orthodox monks on the island of Cyprus, the elder Fr. Maximos says this, “When your mind and heart get stuck on the objects of this world, whether these objects are called money or pleasure or the body, or egotism or opinions or ideologies or whatever else, then you are committing a sin.  You become enslaved by these distractions that keep your heart and mind away from God.”  

Paul today felt that the thorn he received kept him from being too elated.  What he meant by elated is a little mysterious.  The original Greek uses the “uperairOmai” which translates literally as over-lifted.  Which would seem that perhaps Paul ran the danger of seeing himself as a bit too wonderful.  I think whatever the case, it is fair to believe that Paul is saying that without the thorn he might have taken his eyes off of God, but this thorn kept him humble and focused.  Making him realize that he was most strong when he was most weak because that was the point where he could be filled with God.  So while less than pleasant things may enter our life, the important thing to remember and do is to use those times and events to become more reliant on God and his power so that we may be his both now and forevermore.