February 3, 2019 Sermon

         There was a comic strip called Bloom County that was kind of a big deal back in the mid eighties.  One of my favorites featured the character Opus (who was a Penguin) looking for a way to lose weight, without actually having to do much of anything.  In the strip he is perusing various fad diets with names like the “Broccoli Broth and Bean Bath Diet” and weighing their merits.  During his perusing a character named Milo keeps interrupting him saying that he might instead try “eating less and exercise.”  But Opus will hear none of it and ultimately settles on “Dr. Frank’s Frog Legs, Figs and Flatulence Diet.”  And while I know explaining why things are funny ultimately makes them less funny, I do want to point out that the humor in it comes from the fact that we try to find shortcuts around reality.  Eating less and exercise is not the fun alternative.  But losing weight ultimately comes down to fewer calories going in than are going out and there is no way around that fact. 

         And on some level all of today’s readings are dealing with remembering the way that things actually work, that is how things operate at their most basic level, because our scriptures are ultimately about drawing closer to God and doing it in the way that God asks.  In Jeremiah God comes to Jeremiah and tells him what he needs to do.  But Jeremiah objects to following God’s plan, citing his youth.  He wants to be in relation with God but on terms different than the ones God has imposed.  In Corinthians Paul reminds his readers that all of the trappings of the spiritual life are for naught, if we forget to imitate the defining characteristic of God, which is love.  He is essentially telling us that we cannot just pick and chose the parts of the spiritual life that we like.  And lastly in the Gospel, those in Jesus’ hometown have heard about his miracles and want to get in on the action only to have Jesus remind them that God chooses how things will work not them.  The common link here is that we want God but we want him on our terms, just as Opus wanted to only lose weight on his terms.

         As you know today is that most spiritual of days, the annual meeting, where we discuss things like budgets and plowing.  But as Jesus reminds us where our treasure is our heart will be also.  Annual meetings may seem detached from the spiritual life of the church, but I would argue that dismissing them is like looking for the diet that will help us lose weight without doing any work.  The annual meeting is where, if done correctly, we discuss what kind of people we want to be.  Will we follow God with all our being or will we seek to meet God only on our terms, demanding that God show up when we want like those in Jesus’ hometown.  There is the old joke about the vestry meeting where everyone shows up and the vestry makes a number of decisions.  After this is done the Vestry closes with a prayer telling God to bless everything that they have just decided.  In other words we like to decide what to do and then ask God to grease the skids to make it a reality.  Be it a diet or a Vestry meeting the risk is to want our will done in the easiest and most painless way possible.

         So here is the thing that I would ask not just for this meeting, but for our lives in general.  Let’s commit to living the other way round.  That is seeking to discern what God’s will is first and then commit to that; commit to acting what accords with God’s will.  And committing to this means that we will not always get our way and this goes for me as well.  For as Jesus while on the Mount of Olives said, “Father, if thou art willing, remove this cup from me; nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.” 

         So as we get ready to go into the annual meeting I would ask for us to listen, to try and listen for that still small voice of what God is telling us.  And sometimes it may be telling us of something which we would never think.  To be a bit stereotypical it seems that when people start thinking about what a church should be there is kind of one stock answer.  That is the church, whatever church it is, should grow and be bigger than it is right now.  And if we get into details the growth should come from young families with well-behaved and photogenic children.  Furthermore this growth should in no way change the dynamics of the Church.  We will look exactly the same as before, just a little bigger, like Alice after she drank from the bottle at the White Rabbit’s house. 

         But is this the only formula?  Is all the Church is called to do is be a little bigger?  And I am not saying this is bad, after all Jesus tells us to go and make disciples of all nations.  But Jesus also says things like, “For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother, and sister, and mother” and “whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”  So I would suggest that as we get ready for the annual meeting and the year to come we start with the basics – the things that we are reminded of in the scriptures today.  We need to ask are we doing the will of God are we emptying ourselves of our egotism and selfish will, so that we may hear from God about what it is that we are supposed to be doing.

         When I was at my last parish I would come every Sunday morning before service and pray that God would fill the parish with people.  And we did grow some, but what I have come to realize is that growth only matters if we are growing in the ways that God calls us to grow.  I was trying to skip the hard work and go right to having full pews.  There was recently an article in The Guardian newspaper about how the Church of Satan has been growing quite rapidly.  And while I know this is an extreme example, growth for growths sake can go lots of ways that are not the will of God.  My wish for the future of St. John Chrysostom is that we would be known as the Church that follows God’s will.  The church that says, “Thy will be done.”  And that can happen in a myriad of ways. 

         This may be the last time I quote from The Mountain of Silence (even though I may have said that the last time), but in it there is talk about the three stages of following God.  These stages are this: 1. Catharsis – this is the purification of the soul from egotistical passions. 2. Fotisis – this is the enlightenment of the soul, where our egotistical passions are replaced by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. 3. Theosis – which is union with God which is the state of humanity before the fall.  This is really what we should be concentrating on.  We need to be asking if what we are doing is ultimately leading us to full communion with God.  And the church is really here to help us to grow in holiness.  Everything else must be the handmaiden of this pursuit. 

         And so as we go into our annual meeting and our hopes and dreams about the future of this church we need to ask what will help us most follow God.  I realize that some of the things will feel “non-spiritual” like the budget for the water softener, but in a round about way they are things that help us in our mission of growing towards God and loving him fully.  There are really no shortcuts going forward.  I do not know what the future holds, but I do know if we follow God with all our heart mind and soul things will work out just fine because we know that if we do we will be God’s both now and forevermore.

January 27, 2019 Sermon

I assume that many of you are familiar with the book Lord of the Flies, but if not here is the quick version.  A group of British boys become stranded on an island during the Second World War and while things start of all right they quickly go awry with the boys breaking into tribes and killing each other, looking something like the current U.S. political landscape if we used pointed sticks instead of twitter.  The book ends with the children being rescued by a passing British ship.  The rather poignant thing that happens at the end is that when the boys, who by this point have become savages (if we can still use that word), see the British sailor they all revert back to their age and prior view of the world.  They break into tears because they realize what they had become. 

         Something similar happens in our reading from Nehemiah today when we hear, “And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people, for he was standing above all the people; and when he opened it, all the people stood up. Then Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God, and all the people answered, ‘Amen, Amen,’ lifting up their hands. Then they bowed their heads and worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground. So they read from the book, from the law of God, with interpretation. They gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading.”

         Now to understand this a little better and why it reminds me of Lord of the Flies, it would probably be good to have a little background.  I assume most of you do not flip through the Book of Nehemiah on a regular basis, but if you do God bless you.  But for those who don’t let me quickly summarize.  The book takes place after the exile, that is after the Jewish people who had been hauled off to Babylon return to their traditional homeland.  Once back they set about to rebuild Jerusalem and after a few setbacks this is accomplished.  We join today where the city has been successfully rebuilt and Ezra and Nehemiah are now setting out to rebuild the inner lives of those who have returned from exile by reading from the book.  It is generally understood that what was read was from the Law of Moses, which as you know tells people how they are to live in relation to God and to one another.  And this is where I get reminded of Lord of the Flies.  For based on the reaction it would seem that there is a realization that they had not been living in the way that they were supposed to be living.  And instead of the tears that the young boys shed that they bow their faces to the ground and realize just how far short they have come to the glory of God.  On a more personal level I sort of think of it like when we are driving and suddenly spot a police car.  In those brief moments of panic we become incredibly aware of everything that we may have been doing wrong – perhaps speeding, looking at our phone or drinking a 40 of King Cobra.  The police car rouses us from our slumber.  But I really don’t want to make this a sermon about inventorying all of our shortcomings, even though, according to Amy, I really like to do that.  What I instead want to focus on is what we convert to in these moments of extreme lucidity.  The boys in Lord of the Flies realized in an instant that they were civilized human beings and were part of British society.  Those in Nehemiah realized that they were the chosen people and that God had shown them a way to live.  And as Christians we know that we were created in the image of God and that our identity should be that of a child of God.  At our inmost being we should reflect God, because that is the tribe from which we come.

         There is a quote attributed to G.K. Chesterton, which says, “When a man stops believing in God he doesn’t then believe in nothing, he believes anything.”  What this is pointing out is that humanity has a strong need to belong to something; that is to believe in something.  No matter what we do, we will reflect patterns and beliefs of that to which we submit and we need to make sure that what we are submitting ourselves to the right thing, the best thing.  Today in Nehemiah they have rebuilt the city and the walls and here at the end they are seeking to have the people rebuilt.  To not have them running after this or that but to have their lives belong to the God of Israel and to show this in thought, word and deed. 

I was reading some interesting research the other day, which sort of shows what happened in Lord of the Flies.  Two Notre Dame Law Professors, Margaret Brinig and Nicole Stelle Garnett looked into what happened in communities after Catholic schools shut down for reasons that didn’t have to do with low attendance. It could have been something like the pastor being transferred and not replaced or a building that was condemned. The study found that in these neighborhoods, shortly after the school shut down, there were increases in public drinking, drug dealing, drug use, graffiti, litter, and abandoned buildings.  And it was not just physical manifestations.  In surveys conducted in such neighborhoods, people were less likely to agree with the following three questions: 1. People around here are willing to help their neighbors.  2. This is a close-knit neighborhood.  3. People in this neighborhood can be trusted.  When the tribe of God erodes the relations between individuals deteriorates.  That is why the Law that was read in Nehemiah today deals with the relation between God and with each other, because they are so linked.   Robert Putnam and his coauthor David Campbell in the book American Grace stated, “Religious Americans are, in fact, more generous neighbors and more conscientious citizens than their secular counterparts,”

I realize all of this may seem a little distant from Ezra reading from the Law, but stick with me for a second.This research shows that the less adherence there is to religion the less social cohesion and good will within a society; whereas more adherence to religion displays opposite, that is more community cohesion, trust and goodwill.One of the reasons for this is fairly obvious and that can be seen in the Israelites vowing to follow the Law.If people believe that they should not steal, covet, bear false witness or any of the other laws in the Books of Moses then they are going to be more trustworthy people and form a more trustworthy community.But I think that there is a second part to this.As the quote from Chesterton pointed out, those who stop believing in God start believing in all sorts of other things. And the things they chose to believe may not actually be terrible things.That is they may not go from worshiping God to worshiping Satan, but it does mean that they are worshiping something that is lessor than God.When people get to choose their own gods those gods inevitably do not get along with one another.That is at the heart of most of our discord today, people are angry because we do not show their self-chosen god enough reverence.But the God that we worship is the only one large enough to create harmony.And while I realize the Church has not always done a good job of modeling this behavior that is not God’s fault.In Psalm 133 we read, “How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity.”Like the boys in Lord of the Flies, we should cry when we realize the tribal behavior that we can exhibit and strive for the unity that is found in Christ alone.Living lives that are marked by our dedication to God and his word so that we may be his both now and forevermore.

January 20, 2019 Sermon

         I read a story a number of years ago about a man who went to the United States Naval Academy in the late 1960’s.  For a class project he had to do a survey concerning the 1968 presidential election and how those in his class intended to vote.  He found that the voting patterns at the Academy roughly mirrored those in wider society with some endorsing Richard Nixon and others endorsing Hubert Humphrey and possibly even a few endorsing the Yippies’ Pigusus.  A few days after conducting the survey he and the rest of the Midshipman were going to a Navy football game and were marching into the stadium, as was their custom.  Across the street from them was a large group of protestors (having been born in 1970, I missed much of this, but am told that yelling at and spitting on members of the military is what the young kids did for fun back in those days).  But back to the point: This gentleman observed the happenings on both sides of the street and noted that while on his side they were all dressed the same they all thought differently while on the other side they all were dressed differently and yet thought the same. 

         I thought about this story as we read from St. Paul today where he says, “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.”  In other words there is a lot of diversity and unity within the Church.  And while I realize that to those outside of the Church we may be considered to be cut from the same cloth; To those of us on the inside we realize that we are a mixed bag and thankfully this is the way that God has intended it to be.  We are all given various gifts and these gifts will by no means be the same gifts for each person.  Or put another way there is no such thing as a standard issue Christian.  We will all be better at certain things than we are at others and this goes for clergy as well, which hopefully does not come as a surprise.  For I assume by now you have come to learn that I am not the master of all things Christian.  In fact there are many things that I lack and I am not just talking about the ability to bilocate.  If you have ever had the displeasure of standing next to me while I sing this fact should be blatantly obvious.  So while this may be an interesting bit of information, backed up by scripture, what are we to do about it besides getting a celebrate diversity bumper sticker?  Well, the two main things that I believe we are to take is a level of gratitude and understanding coupled with a realization that we are to use the gifts God has given us in service of the Church. 

         So let’s start with the “Subaru bumper sticker” observation of celebrating diversity.  God has made us all different and we need to be thankful for those who are talented in ways that we are not.  Because, the church is fortunately not made up of one type of person.  If it were we would be greatly inhibited in what we can do.  As Paul says in 1st Corinthians, “Now if the foot should say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ it would not for that reason stop being part of the body.  And if the ear should say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,’ it would not for that reason stop being part of the body.  If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be?  But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be.”  Paul reminds us that the Church body just like a human body works most fully when it has all of its parts.  And so we need to be grateful to those who have talents similar to us and for those who have talents different from ours.  The church is called to be one body, not to be a collection of cells that do not interact nor associate with one another. 

         There is a church in my hometown of Fresno that my Dad was telling me about over Christmas.  This church has in the past few years gained a number of members from people who were disillusioned with their former churches.  He said the strange thing is that those who have come have never coalesced into a single entity.  Rather everyone sticks with the group that came from the church, which they left.  They are not a body, but function more like the Hanseatic League, coming together when it suits.  But we are called to be a united group utilizing everyone’s unique talents in the strengthening of God’s kingdom.    

         Now there is a second part to today’s lesson that has a less groovy kind of feel and has perhaps a more drill instructor like vibe to it.  Yes, we are all given diverse talents and we should also rejoice in the diverse talents of others, but the fact is we must do more than simply acknowledge our talents, we must instead utilize them in the service of God and His Church.  That is we cannot simply sit around and enjoy the talents of others while doing nothing ourselves.  The Church is not an all-inclusive resort in which our every whim and fancy is catered to.  Rather the Church is a voluntary collective of people seeking to glorify God in all things.  And the Church only works when we all contribute in a way that brings glory to God.  But the question such an understanding should raise in us is: Are we contributing in a way that maximizes all of the time talent and treasure that God has given to us or are we just sort of along for the ride?  Are we, in the words of St. Paul, using the gifts “given [by] the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good?”

         One thing that tends to annoy most clergy is when we hear a person say that they left a church because it did not offer a certain service; as if the Church was the Four Seasons and the clergy just a holy concierge.  But that is not how the Church works.  As a collection of people manifested with unique gifts, individuals are also called to serve.  If a church lacks something it may mean that God is calling us to help make it a reality.  A student I knew when I was Dean at Nashotah House used to frequently come into my office and vomit up all of the things we needed to be doing.  He would then contentedly leave feeling that his job was done, he had passed on his brilliance.  The task of implementing, funding and finding large sheets of tempered glass was my job - a genius like him could not be weighed down by such trivial matters.  And while I am not saying that we should not have ideas, the fact of the matter is that is not enough.  For in searching the Bible I have never come across the spiritual gift of telling other people what to do.  The list Paul provides in Romans 12 lists things like, prophecy, ministry, teaching, generosity and diligence but there is no description for an ideas man.  And obviously what we contribute will vary based on types of talents and stages in life, but we can all do something, be it physical labor, singing, prayer or any host of other talents. 

So as we move into this year I would encourage all of you and myself to give thanks for all of those who God has brought together at St. John Chrysostom.Thank God for all of the different gifts that are on display here, but also I would encourage you to reflect on what gifts God has given to you and pray about how God is inviting you to use these in service of the Church both now and forevermore.