Wisdom

A sermon preached at`St. Paul’s Church, Bantam, Connecticut, on  January 29, 2012, by Christopher L. Webber.

Marcus Borg is a well-known scholar with a doctorate from Oxford who has written a lot of books  about Jesus.  I heard him speak a few years ago at the Cathedral in Hartford  and he spoke about his upbringing in  a Lutheran Church in the upper mid-west and how he had rebelled against  the very narrow and judgmental expression  of Christian faith he found there.  Later in life he became an Episcopalian, and if he found mid-western Lutheranism too confining  he has apparently found the Episcopal Church not confining enough.

Borg is a member of the so-called “Jesus Seminar,”  a group of scholars who meet everyyear to exchange views and get publicity for themselves.  They vote, for example, as to whether or not Jesus really said what the Bible says he said or did what the Bible says he did.  Which is all very interesting as an academic exercise  but kind of misses the point.

Borg is a Canon Theologian at the Episcopal Cathedral in Seattle but when someone asked him once to differentiate  his views from those of the Unitarian Church (which denies the divinity of Christ) he said there really wasn’t very much difference.  But there is all the difference in the world  between studying an historical record  and understanding its meaning for human life. Here is this widely read and highly educated man who knows so much about Jesus – but doesn’t know Jesus.  And that’s sad;  and it really misses the point.

The Epistle this morning makes a critically important point in its opening words when it says, “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.”  St. Paul is writing to new Christians  who are trying to live out the gospel as they are beginning to understand it.  “You are free from the law,” said St. Paul.  So some of them had set out to break the law  to demonstrate their freedom.  “We don’t have to keep kosher any more,” they said,  and they invited their friends in for dinner and served up a roast that had been offered previously at a pagan shrine.  And their guests said, “Wait a minute! How can you eat food offered to idols.” “No problem,” said the hosts, “we know idols are foolish.” “That’s true,” said the guests, “but once food has been offered to idols, true or false, we don’t want to eat it. It offends us to be associated with idols in any way.” So they wrote to St. Paul and asked, “Who’s right?” And St. Paul said, “You’re both right.”  (Paul was probably an Episcopalian.) “We know that idols are nothing,” he wrote, “but if my knowledge offends my fellow Christian, I won’t take advantage of it. Love is more important than knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.”

Well, OK, but then why do we send our kids to school? Why do we read the papers? For that matter, why do we study the Bible?  Just to get puffed up? I think we need to make some distinctions between different kinds of knowledge. I think, for starters, there’s a difference between knowledge and wisdom.   There are “wisdom” books in the Bible  but they aren’t chock-a-block with facts.  What they offer is something far more important:  the knowledge gained not of facts but of life.  They tell you how to live.

This is wisdom:

“Let another praise you,  and not your own mouth.”  (Wisdom 27:2)

“Better is a neighbor who is nearby than a friend who is far away” (27:10)

“Like vinegar to the teeth and smoke to the eyes, so are the lazy to their employers.” (10:26)

“To guarantee loans for a stranger brings trouble (11:15)

Now is it better to know that kind of thing, or the square of the hypotenuse and the President of Croatia?  Can you get wisdom from a microscope  or a test tube or a CAT scan?  No way!  So there’s knowledge and there’s wisdom;  knowledge is good, but wisdom is better.  Wisdom is a deeper kind of knowing, isn’t it?  A knowledge not acquired by reading books  or going to school  or working in a research center.  It can’t be measured, or analyzed, or demonstrated by scientific experiment, but what a difference it makes to have that kind of knowledge!

You may remember that the word “sophomore” means “a wise fool” – someone who knows a little  but not enough.  I don’t know why we use that for people in their second year of high school or college when it might fit better on recent graduates: people who know some facts but still have to leam about life.

Here’s another way to look at it:  I’m sure you’ve heard of “carnal knowledge.”  The Bible also talks about that kind of knowledge.  God says to the chosen people,  “You only have I known of all the people of the earth”  and the word used is the word used for a sexual  relationship.  God knows us that intimately -  unfortunately – because the Bible then goes on to say, “Therefore I will punish you.”  But isn’t that the way we behave too?  Punishment is for our children not the neighbors children;  they are the ones we know and therefore they are the ones we discipline.

I was watching the morning news one day and they brought on a child development expert and I’m always interested to see  whether they have some wisdom to pass on -  wisdom, not information. And this one said you should talk to your child everyday. Not that’s pretty basic; you would hope we lived in a society where you didn’t need to be told that –  but we don’t.  There are parents who think that buying toys for their children and  putting them on the school bus will do it.  It won’t. That’s not enough.  So to say, “talk to your children,”  is some wisdom that needs to be passed on -  wisdom, not information.  But if you don’t talk to your children,  how can you know them,  really know them or know anyone, for that matter?  And how can your children – or anyone else -  know you – if you don’t talk to them?  And what kind of community would we have if we didn’t know each other?  That’s a real question today.

They talk about computer systems that will bring you movies and groceries and  everything you could possibly want and you’ll never have to leave your  easy chair –  and we will truly become vegetables, no longer human beings at all, knowing no one and nothing, all the information in the universe and no wisdom.  Small children and rocket scientists  can cope with computers  and even set the VCR, but we don’t put them in charge of foreign affairs; that takes wisdom, it takes a knowledge of human life  and, ideally, of moral principles.

Now, I’ve been talking about the opening words of the epistle, but I think we ought to put that together now with the gospel readings of the last few weeks.  We’ve had two stories about Jesus calling disciples, and today a story about the formal beginning  of his ministry.  He goes into the synagogue to teach and a man possessed cries out  “I know who you are: the holy one of God.”  And Jesus rebukes him and silences him.  The man had knowledge of a sort, but not wisdom.

Jesus called – well, we say he called “disciples”  but that’s our word not his.  I think it’s too narrow a word; it means someone being taught.  But Jesus called people to follow him;  not just to listen to him, but to be with him, to know him. And it wasn’t a matter of sitting down for advanced instruction in religious principles; it was, literally, following -  going from village to village,  climbing an occasional mountain,  taking a boat from one side of the lake to  the other,  being with him in a storm,  being with him at a banquet,  being with him when he healed the sick,  being with him when he reached out to the lepers, and being with him when he sat down with the tax collectors.  Every now and again he gave them a little test: when I fed the 5000 how many loaves did we have?  Who will love more,  the one forgiven a few sins or the one forgiven many?  Who do people say I am?  Who do you say I am?  

The disciples did fairly well on those tests, but then there was another test; “Simon son of John, do you love me?”  Actually, that was a make-up exam because Peter had failed the first test.  And eventually Peter passed it,  when he was crucified himself.

Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.  In one version of the epistle, they put the word “knowledge”  in quotation marks  and I think they’re trying to indicate  that there’s a knowledge-so-called  and there’s a knowledge-that-matters.  Maybe you could also call it wisdom; why not?  But also you might call it love, perhaps,  call it an experience of the love of God -    the kind the disciples gained by watching Jesus respond to the sick and  hungry and needy – and by watching him die -  the kind we ourselves can gain  by faithfulness in prayer and  Bible study, and by gathering around an altar  to share the bread of life  and by working with other Christians  to create a community in which God’s love can  be experienced right here, right now.  That builds up.  It builds us up into something more like the potential implanted in us.    It’s also the kind of wisdom the disciples gained by watching Jesus respond to the sick and  hungry and needy – and by watching him die.  It’s the kind of wisdom  we ourselves can gain  by faithfulness in prayer and  Bible study, and by gathering around an altar  to share the bread of life  and by working with other Christians to create a community in which God’s love can be experienced right here, right now.  That builds up.  It builds us up into something more like the potential implanted in us.  It’s the kind of wisdom that unites us in love with God.

Dying into Life

A sermon preached by Christopher L. Webber at St. Paul”s Church Bantam Connecticut on the Feast of the Epiphany – The Baptism of Christ – celebrated in most parishes on January 8 but, at St. Paul’s Bantam, for local reasons, celebrated one week late on January 15, 2012

I think it was my birthday party ten days ago that started me thinking about milestones and remembering how life can go through dramatic and unexpected changes.  I think sometimes we hardly realize until long afterwards how something we once took for granted has just disappeared, no longer part of our lives.  Here’s an example: When Peg and I first met and were getting engaged we ate out a lot. We lived in Manhattan and there were all sorts of options available – good restaurants of all sorts. They weren’t expensive so even though neither of us had much money we could eat out maybe even every week – I remember an Armenian restaurant on the lower east side and a French restaurant on the west side and a Japanese restaurant uptown.  It was a wonderful education. We got to know each other and at the same time we got to know something about culinary variety, international cuisine.

Then we got married, then there was a baby, and we were no longer in Manhattan and if we ever ate out, I don’t remember it.  We began a whole new life and the old life died, it just disappeared without any real decision. Well, yes, we had made a decision: we decided to create a life together and a family and there wasn’t room or time or money to maintain the former life. So a new life was created and the old life died.

Now, I tell you that story because it just happened to be on my mind with my birthday celebration and the reminiscing that went with it and because today we celebrate the baptism of Christ. I think there is a connection.  The story I told is a story about life and death and in the biggest terms, of course, so is the story of Jesus; from his birth in Bethlehem to his death at Calvary we can’t help reading the gospel between those two events: life and death. But if you zero in just on the baptism itself, that, too, is about life and death. Every baptism is.

I usually point it out to parents when I meet with them to plan a baptism. We read through the service and suddenly there’s a prayer that talks about being baptized into the death of Christ. So we bring this child to the font and everything is about new life and great joy and suddenly we are told it’s about dying, about sharing Jesus’ death. I don’t think that’s what we usually have in mind when we come to a baptism. Is it?  Do we think “baptism: dying”?

Maybe part of the problem is the size of the font.  The ordinary church font isn’t very big. More and more these days when a church is built or renovated they put in a font big enough to make Baptists happy, big enough for an adult to be immersed, because only then do you see what’s happening. The little fonts that became popular somewhere along the line won’t really do if you want to see what baptism is all about. Not even a small baby can be immersed in our font.  But without immersion you don’t see the point, which is death and resurrection, submersion in the water, burial in the water, and emergence to resurrection life.  The point is that you can’t have a new life without dying to the old one. You can only live one life at a time and if you cling to the old one you can’t really get into the new one.

There really wasn’t any way that Peg and I could have continued to go back to restaurants in Manhattan. Add to the cost of the restaurant the cost of the train and the baby sitter and just the time it would have taken into Manhattan and back and there was no way.  But we had chosen another life and the old one was dead. It ought to be like that at baptism:  If we choose to live in Christ our old life has to go.  That’s a hard decision to make and I don’t know that we ever really do fully let go of the old life. How many people do you know whose life is – as St. Paul put it once – “hidden with Christ in God”? But if we aren’t serious about baptism, why do we bother? If we’re not serious about life in Christ, what are we doing here? If we don’t expect life to be changed, what are we thinking?

I think there are people who get married without any idea of changing their lives. You see the stories on television all the time. We talk about “Hollywood weddings” but they happen in Connecticut too. People make a life-changing commitment – they go to the altar and say “I will” with no idea of changing their life and so it doesn’t change. The one who remains committed first to self never discovers a true marriage, dying to self and discovering a new life with and in someone else. And that also takes a lifetime.  An English theologian, Helen Oppenheimer, once wrote, “Call no one married until they are dead.” It takes a lifetime and there always new challenges. But marriage also is about dying: it’s about dying to self to find your life in someone else.  And that’s an excellent way of understanding baptism and Christian commitment:

Baptism, like marriage, is about dying to self in order to live in another, it’s about dying to self to live in Christ. And it takes a lifetime.  We can always find parts of ourselves that are not yet converted, not yet given to Christ.  I think the evangelicals have it easy.  For many of them conversion is about a dramatic change: yesterday I was a sinner and today I found Christ and gave him my life.  Good; what about tomorrow? It’s great to stop drinking or gambling or beating your wife or lying or stealing or whatever it was.  You can do that and that’s a whole lot better.  But what about tomorrow? It’s great to start reading the Bible and saying your prayers but what are you doing with the rest of your time? Yes, volunteer for the soup kitchen, serve on a committee, start to tithe. But that’s still the easy part.  Those are specific, concrete decisions you can take about specific, concrete things. But how will you vote in the primary?  Is it right to eat out in a world where millions are hungry?

I remember reading once about a 20th century industrialist who would check his watch every fifteen minutes to see whether his mind had been on God in that time. Now that seems a bit obsessive, but how often during the day do we remember that we are in God’s world, in God’s presence, in God’s hands, that God has a purpose for us and we may not be serving it?  They tell about the European tribes in the early days of Christian missionary expansion who became Christians because the king was converted and ordered them all to be baptized.  And the story is told that some of the warriors would go down to the river or lake to be baptized and hold their weapons, their sword of bow and arrow, up over the water so it would not be baptized and could continue to kill as before.

Well, what part of our lives are we holding above the water? What part of our work or spending or recreation or time is somehow unrelated to our faith?  You know, these are questions I ask myself almost every day: when was I last aware of God’s presence with me and God’s guidance? I think we need to be asking ourselves that on a regular basis in order to carry out our baptismal commitment, in order to continue to grow as we move from death into life.

Children of Light

A sermon preached by Christopher L. Webber at St Paul’s Church Bantam Connecticut on the Epiphany, celebrated as a “Festival of Light,” on January 8, 2012

The first thing God ever said,  according to the Bible, was “Let there be light.” The God we worship  gives us light. 

But do you know that for centuries  and still today there have been Christian churches  that have tried to block the light, even to keep Christians from reading the Bible?  There are churches today that try to prevent scientists from doing research and to control what children are taught. And that’s not surprising  because truth can be dangerous and if you are insecure,  you don’t want new ideas and possibly different ideas filtering in and raising questions.  North Korea is the ultimate example today of a government afraid of light, afraid of knowledge,  afraid of information.  Russia used to be that way.

It’s understandable that people in power  would try to control what people know, to limit information,  to prevent asking questions and to inundate people with their own point of view so they will agree with them and support them. Well, you know, it’s annoying to have people disagree with you. It would be so much simpler  if they would just ask your opinion and go with it. You are ready to give them the light  and they seem to prefer the dark. You have to wonder why.

We celebrate tonight a Festival of Light because we are celebrating the Epiphany, and the very word means “showing forth,”  “enlightening,” specifically “enlightening the Gentiles,”  showing forth God’s light to the rest of the world, even to us. And however much light may threaten some of us,  our God is a God of light, relentlessly shining into the dark places,  relentlessly challenging us to look and to see and to understand.

God is not threatened by the light.  God made the light. God the all-powerful is not threatened  by those of us who have doubts  and questions to ask.  God wants us to see.  But look at what God shows us about God. First at Christmas:  a child is born, God comes into this world as a helpless child. That’s a lot of light right there, an enormous revolution in our knowledge of God.  The Bible speaks of God as “dwelling in light inaccessible”  and a modern French spiritual writer,  Simone Weil, once said, “God out of love withdraws from us because If we were exposed to the full radiance of his glory without the protection of space, of time, and of matter, we would be evaporated like water in the sun.”  But it is that unknowable, inaccessible God  who created a billion suns who nevertheless comes in the simplicity and helplessness of a newborn baby and comes, not to compel us but to draw us and love us, not to overwhelm us  but to speak to us at our level, in our life, where we can see without being blinded and come without being overwhelmed. God wants us to see,  God wants us to know.  And so we have Christmas and we learn something more of what God is like.

And then we have the Epiphany, the manifestation to the Gentiles, the shining out to the rest of the world, the breaking down of barriers between nations and races and religions.  We don’t know who these magi were, these wise men from the East who are often shown as kings, but east of Bethlehem is Jordan and beyond that is Iraq and beyond that is Iran and it’s perfectly legitimate to see a message here about the overcoming of divisions: God throwing some light on the darkness of our divisions, our lack of understanding of all our human differences  God shows us, enlightens us, on the insignificance of our differences  in the light of the glory of God.  God is not afraid -  it seems strange even to have to say that -  God is not afraid of knowledge,  of otherness, of differences,  of questions.  God created us in all our wonderful diversity and we do God no honor  by trying to close minds or close books or build barriers.  There’s no reason to fear questions, no reason to tell scientists they’re wrong  about evolution or climate change. If they are, they’ll find that out themselves but it’s likelier that what they find out is something more about the glory of God.

There was a time when human beings imagined a universe no bigger than the solar system and now we know that we would have to travel for years at the speed of light even to get to the nearest star and no one knows or can know  how far the universe stretches beyond that and that enlightens us, that tells us something about the glory of God.  Who would ever want to go back to the tiny, narrow  universe Christians once imagined? Yet there was a day when Christians tried  to block that knowledge as if somehow a smaller less glorious God  were preferred.  Whatever we learn, whatever we know, is knowledge of God, is the light of God’s glory.

We are fortunate, you know, to come from a tradition that has tried to be open and inclusive and respect the opening of the mind and the expansion of knowledge.  Lots of Christians came to this country to limit knowledge and escape the clash of ideas. The Puritans and Pilgrims were brave and principled people but they wanted to live in a state where everyone agreed and that remains a very strong strain  in American Christianity. It’s unfortunate that some of the loudest voices  in American religion still take that perspective and give non-Christians the idea that that’s what Christianity is about,  that we are afraid of knowledge, afraid of new ideas, afraid of change.  We need to do everything we can to let people know there’s a difference, that Christianity at its best  Is not afraid to ask, not afraid of freedom.

We’re just at the beginning  here at this festival of light but we’re setting the tone for the rest of the year. Week by week we follow the story and we see Jesus teaching and healing and reaching out never controlling, never fearing the questions,  always open and ready to come where we are and give us the light we need: the knowledge of a God  who is light, who wants us to know and to ask  and to understand.  And the climax, of course, is that great burst of light that we call the Resurrection  when we see that death is not the end, that God’s will for us is life  and that life is stronger than death and light is stronger than the darkness.

When we understand that, we need to do everything we can to shed light ourselves, to make known in our lives the kind of God revealed to us in Jesus,  a God of light, of life, of love,  of openness and compassion, who seeks those farthest away, those most in need, those least likely to be here on Sunday but not beyond the reach of God, not beyond the light.

It’s appropriate that it’s dark outside and that the light from these windows penetrates that darkness. But it doesn’t go far enough, not nearly far enough.  So we go out from here like rays of light to penetrate that darkness, to show others something of the light we have seen  and absorbed and carry with us.

St.  Paul our patron saint once wrote  “Walk as children of light.” That’s our task this year  and every day and every year: to walk as children of light. Take the light with you  and let others see something of what we have seen  and what guides us and transforms us.  You can’t shine the light into a box and close the box and keep the light inside but you can carry it with you  and light up your home and your neighborhood  and the place where you work.  So let the light of God shine through you  into God’s world and among God’s people.  Let that light shine in you  because we are called to be children of God, children of light.

In Jesus’ Name

A sermon preached by Christopher L. Webber on the Feast of the Holy Name,  January 1, 2012, at St. Paul’s Church, Bantam, Connecticut.

I don’t usually preach  on the Sunday after Christmas. It’s too soon, usually, so I have often read someone else’s sermon like John Donne or Philips Brooks or we’ve just sung some carols. But today is different.  It’s not too soon – it’s almost eight days instead of seven -  And it’s a special day, not just another Sunday.

Today is the Feast of the Holy Name or what the old Prayer Books called The Circumcision.  It’s the day when Jesus was named, and the Name of Jesus  is so really important in our faith and worship that we ought to take time to think about it.  Most of us, most of the time,  probably take names for granted, but there’s a whole industry that does nothing but think up new names for new products – like “Edsel” and “New Coke.”  Remember those? But you can’t just come out with a new product  and not have a name for it. How would people know what to order?  So you need a name, preferably short and memorable  and something that gives a sense of the product. And, as I said, there are people who earn a living inventing these names.

When a baby is baptized,  the parents have often spent a lot of time thinking about names. Maybe there are family names  or names of famous people: presidents and athletes and movie stars, and we give children those names in hope that they will have  some of that character themselves.

I think people used to put even more time and energy  into giving names than we do. Older societies put a lot of stock in the idea that a name had power, that it really would help shape the child.  And there are some old societies  that keep the name secret because they believe knowing the name gives you power over the person.  And, of course, it does.  If you see a friend in a crowd of people you can control that person by calling their name. They will look around and probably come to where you are.  If you don’t know their name, they’ll ignore you. It’s also true that if you know a certain name  it will get you in where you might not get otherwise. When someone says to you, “Just mention my name,” that opens doors.

Names have power.  They make a difference.

Think back to the early chapters of Genesis.  Do you remember in the Creation story that after making the animals God brought them to Adam to see what he could call them.  And “whatever he called them,” it says, “that was their Name.” Adam was put in charge, in other words,  with power over the rest of created life. And then, remember, God made a woman  and brought her to the man and the man said, “She shall be called woman.” But notice the difference.  Whatever the man called the animals that was their name. But the Bible does not say that when Adam said “She shall be called woman” that was her name. Because it isn’t a name; it’s a distinction.  The man and woman are distinct but one does not have power over the other; not at the beginning anyway.

And then do you remember  how Moses had a conversation with God at the burning bush and at the end, when God sent Moses to Egypt,  Moses asks God’s Name to he can tell the Hebrews who sent him  and God says simply, “I am” – tell them “I AM” has sent you.  God will not give Moses a Name to use  because God is God and Moses is Moses and Moses can’t have the control  that comes with knowing the Name. To know God’s Name, to have God come when you call, that’s not for Moses, or Abraham, or the prophets.  In fact, as you read on in the Old Testament and the Jewish understanding of God grows, the idea of knowing God’s name becomes more and more unthinkable. In fact, as you read on, even to use the noun “God” becomes unthinkable.  Who could presume to say that word? The prophets more and more often used other terms like “the Lord” and finally they even forgot how to pronounce the name for God they once had used because Hebrew was written without vowels and you often can’t tell how to pronounce a word  unless you know it already. When Jews came to the letters JHVH they said Adonai, the Lord, instead.  Jehovah, you know, is a made up name,  a guess at the way the letters JHVH might have been pronounced. Our Prayer Book uses the word Yahweh,  but that’s also a guess.  But the point is that the name of God  became increasingly remote and the gulf between humanity and God  greater and greater.

Now let’s look at today’s readings.  First, the gospel:  The angel tells Joseph what to name the child: “You shall call his name Jesus.” Notice first that Joseph is not allowed to name this child. The name is given. To give a name gives control.  No human being can name this child. This child is not subject to human authority. But a name is provided for us to use. So God, you might dare to say, chooses to place God’s power at our command. And remember how Jesus himself told his disciples  to call in him and goes so far as to say, If you ask anything in my Name,  I will do it. No wonder we end so many prayers, “In Jesus’ Name.”  We have access. We go to God saying, “Jesus sent me. He said I should mention his name.”  That’s a great gift, a Christmas present we can make use of all year.

But then, secondly, if we can use that name we need also to honor that name  because the name is a symbol of God.  And that brings us to the Epistle.  St Paul wrote: “At the Name of Jesus every knee should bow of things in heaven and things in earth and things under the earth and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.”   “At the Name of Jesus, every knee should bow: that’s why some people bow their heads every time they hear or say  Jesus’ Name. Now, you may or may not do choose to do that, but what is obviously out of line is the use of Jesus’ name or the name of God just to emphasize what you are saying.  I hear people using the word “God” as casually as apples and oranges.  “OMG” has become a common abbreviation. And that’s impolite at best and blasphemous at worst. It’s more specifically a violation of the Fourth Commandment: “You shall not take the Name of the Lord your God in vain.” If nothing else, it’s stupid.  If your friend Albert says, “You can use my name,” he doesn’t mean for you to use it every time you stub your toe or lose your temper.  If you use the name too often, he’ll not only stop listening but cross you off his list of friends.

So God has given us at Christmas time an amazing gift: a way to come to God in confidence with all our needs and thanksgivings and praise, but a gift like that is also to be treated with respect and care. If you break your gifts,  you lose them.  So give God thanks for the gift of Jesus’  Name and use that gift well.

Christmas in Iowa

A sermon preached by Christopher L, Webber on at St. Pail’s Church Bantam Connecticut on Christmas Eve 2011

Aren’t you glad you don’t live in Iowa?  Can you imagine what it’s been like for the last few weeks when you wanted to do Christmas planning, make decisions about gifts, set up a tree, all of that, and night and day you were being told you need to vote for – well, you know the names – or maybe you don’t because it’s not our problem, not at the moment anyway.

But suppose you did live in Iowa  and now you still had to face another nine days from Christmas until after New Year’s Day of being constantly told  that you needed to vote for candidate X to save the world. Turn on your television or radio,  pick up your newspaper and there it is again. I saw recently that already the independent Political Action Committees have spent six million dollars and there are only three million Iowans and that doesn’t include the money the campaigns have spent themselves.

It’s times like this when you can be glad to be a Christian because one thing a Christian knows is  it doesn’t really matter.  Don’t misunderstand.  Yes, it’s important and I think most of us ought to pay more attention to politics than we do. But it’s not THAT important.  Whoever wins in Iowa, whoever wins the Republican nomination, whoever is elected president for the next four years, if you are a Christian, you have a perspective that makes a critical difference. Not one of these candidates is going to save the world.  That’s been done.  Jesus did it already. And the best any one of them can hope to do is make things a bit better for a little while – maybe.

I think the problem we have in American politics (and there are historical reasons for it)  is expecting too much. Whether it’s Iran’s nuclear program  or the cost of health care or dozens of other similar issues, one man or woman will not resolve it any time soon. Give me a break.  These are human beings; nothing more. We tend to forget that. They’re human; they’re limited by their experience and wisdom and advisors and pressure from every side.

We’re not choosing a messiah.  But we figure if we could just get  a different president,  we could live in a better neighborhood  and the kids would get better marks and my car wouldn’t ever break down  and I would never again be frustrated by my computer or spouse or job  or the NY Mets. If we just elected the right president,  it would all be just fine.  Christians know better.  Christians know what human beings are because we read the Bible.

I was listening to a call in program on radio a couple of weeks ago and a caller was telling the host  who is pretty far to the right that the problem with Libertarians (who are even further to the right) is that they think they can save the world  but, he said, they forget  that human beings are sinful.  The host said “Oh no, that’s a terrible point of view.” “It’s the Christian faith,” said the caller;  “Read your Bible.”  But the host hung up on him saying, “Terrible, Terrible.”

But the caller had it right.  And, yes, not just Libertarians but liberals and conservatives  of any and every party and clearly the talk show host tend to forget the basic Biblical doctrine of human nature: we are born in sin, raised in a sinful society, soaked in sin from birth to death. You cannot even go from breakfast to dinner a single day without one single self-centered thought: “I need.  I want.”  Can’t be done.  And every candidate for office -  all of them – have flaws.  They’re like us. They’re human.  And if you are frustrated now, you will also be frustrated this time next year  and the year after and the year after no matter who is elected.  We need to know that.  We need to keep politics in perspective.

I hear that there are certain churches and clergy in Iowa who take sides, line up behind one candidate or another  as the best for Christians to support. Big mistake.  The church and clergy are here  to talk about God, not candidate X, and to remind everyone who will listen  that no candidate is perfect even if saying that offends half the congregation.  But the minute we look to someone  other than Jesus as a Savior,  that minute, we are in big trouble.  And bigger trouble because we set our human hopes too high.

We haven’t changed that much, you know, in 2000 years.  The people of Israel 2000 years ago were frustrated by long years of Roman rule and they wanted freedom  and they imagined that God would send them a Messiah to set things right – beat up the Romans, “take our country back,” as they say, lower the tax rate, end the occupation,  get me a better job  and a house in a nicer neighborhood.  That’s what they wanted and it’s what most people still want.  But what they got – well, what they got was what you’ve seen in the pictures  on the Christmas cards -  touched up a bit, photo shopped to make the animals look friendlier and the straw look softer  and all that but what they got, bottom line, was a baby who couldn’t change a single thing.

What they got was a Messiah who told them to turn the other cheek and get on with it.  What they got was Jesus. What they got was so angry and frustrated because they thought they knew what God would do  – that God would give them what they wanted – that they couldn’t see what God was doing  and they killed their own Savior. And we’ve been doing it ever since.

We believe we know what God is doing in the world and can’t hear what others are saying who have a different vision.  If I were not a Christian  and heard Christians denouncing each other as happens in this country today I would never go near a church.  When faithful Christians line up on opposite sides it’s time to stop shouting and try to listen. It’s time to look and see what God is doing  and try to listen  and encourage others to listen or look carefully at what they see and pray for guidance and deeper understanding.

Let me tell you what I see.  Let me tell you what I see God doing.  You can see it yourself on almost every Christmas card. I see a newborn baby lying in a manger and I hear God saying: “Look and learn.”

Now, that is not what people wanted in Jesus time or in ours. It’s not a lower income tax  or a super majority in Congress or a fence high enough to stop illegal immigrants  or universal health care or an eternal supply of non-polluting energy or an army strong enough to control  Iraq and Iran and Pakistan and North Korea and all the places in the world  that are angry at somebody. If that’s our need, this is no answer.  A baby has no power to do that. But God sees deeper than we do and sends us a baby. And you see, a baby solves none of our problems  in any obvious way.  A baby has no power to change anything. But a baby does what no politician can do:  he calls out of us – evokes in us – love and joy and hope. He calls it out of us.  He doesn’t give it to us or compel us to respond but draws out of us, evokes in us,  love and healing and peace.

What happens to a roomful of people  standing and talking about one thing and another, their concerns, their frustrations,  when someone comes in with a baby. The whole atmosphere changes, doesn’t it?  The emphasis is no longer on my concerns, what I want or need, but about the joy and hope of a new life. And that’s the whole difference.  People were hoping that God would do it for them, come down from above in power and solve their problems but God came instead into our lives, lived among us as one of us and never compelled, never threatened,  never raised an army or increased taxes but showed us the power of love.

It’s so simple and so basic and so hard to see because of our self-centeredness. But change comes from love, not power.

The people of India fought the British for a century and lost, and then followed Ghandi’s non-resistance to freedom. Northern armies attempted to remake the south  after the Civil War by military rule and brought on the Ku Klux Klan  and an epidemic of lynching that lasted a hundred years, but then Martin Luther King Jr and others set about to use the power of love and non-resistance and the south began to change and did change and will never again be the same.

There have been great conquerors in history:  Genghis Khan and Napoleon and Stalin and Hitler  wh brought death and destruction but changed nothing.  And there is that baby in the manger who transformed the Roman Empire and changed the world.

Think how in recent centuries a wave of missionaries  went out and changed the world. Anywhere you travel in Asia or Africa  you find schools and hospitals  planted by missionaries where no such things had been  but are commonplace now.

We have two models of change on display in the middle east:  Iraq where the American military spent ten years  trying to build democracy and Egypt where young people have set out to build democracy with no military power all.  We can’t tell yet what will happen, but I have more hope for Egypt than Iraq.

I think we need to bear the Christmas gospel in mind  as we move on into an election year. I ask that you keep this picture of Bethlehem in mind as you go on with your life.  Remember what God has done and see what God asks us to do by humbling ourselves, putting others first, trusting in love not power. Isaiah said it centuries before Bethlehem: “Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit says the Lord of Hosts.”

That’s exactly right.  And now we have seen it ourselves. And now the world needs to see that Spirit  in you and me.

Occupy Samaria

A sermon preached by Christopher L. Webber at St. Paul’s Church Bantam on December 4, 2011.

“We wait for new heavens and a new earth where righteousness is at home”    2 Peter 3:13

Almost 3000 years ago a farmer, a man who lived near Samaria, some distance north of Jerusalem, went into the big city  and was shocked by what he saw. Maybe he’d never been in a city before,  but it had never occurred to him that some were rich and some were poor, and certainly he had never seen a society in which the rich didn’t seem to care that others, at their doorstep, were hungry. Today we might say, it blew his mind.  Today he might have started a movement to occupy Wall Street. It made him mad. It enraged him, and he went through the streets shouting, proclaiming doom for this sick society.

It’s hard to tell from the records we have  whether anyone paid much attention. Obviously someone did write his words down  and we can still read them because it’s there in the Bible  in the Book of the Prophet Amos. “Hear this,” he said,  “ you fat cows on your beds of ivory who sell the poor for a bushel of wheat, who can’t wait for the end of the Sabbath so you can go back to selling with your crooked weights, who crush the poor, who oppress the needy.”  He said it was time for a change and he summed it up by saying, “Let justice roll down like the waters  and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Now, the strange and interesting thing about this is that no one had done it before. Certainly no one before had made  the same connection between religion and justice that Amos made.  Religion before that time had been mostly about fear and favors, a way to get the gods on your side to heal disease and save the crops  and get children and defeat enemies and all that sort of thing. But Amos had another idea. It seemed to him that the God of Israel was different; that this God had a bigger purpose  than just doing a few favors  for people who made the right offering. The story he had learned  had to do with a God who had found the Hebrew people enslaved in Egypt  and set them free.

You could, of course, see that as evidence that this God favored his chosen people the way Egyptian gods served Egyptians and Canaanite gods served Canaanites and so on but Amos didn’t see it that way. It seemed to him that the issue  was not favoritism but justice,  that God had acted to free people who were enslaved and therefore that God was likely  to act the same way again.  If now it was the Hebrews who were unjust  then Amos was sure that  God would be as ruthless with them  as ever God had been with Egypt.

This was not a popular point of view.  The chief priest sent him a message telling him to go prophesy somewhere else.  But Amos, who lived 800 years before Christ,  was not forgotten.  There were other prophets who made the same point,  in various ways and it made a permanent difference  in Judaism. Centuries later, in the Roman Empire, Judaism attracted a lot of attention  because it had not only a faith in one invisible God but a belief that that faith had consequences,  that faith required action.  And they had a set of commandments  that held up a unique ethical standard for human behavior.

There were Jewish communities scattered all over the Roman Empire and Judaism attracted a lot of interest, but not a lot of converts because it was hard to be Jewish. It marked you off;  it required a separation between its converts and society that most people weren’t unwilling to make.  If you were Jewish,  you couldn’t work on the Sabbath; you couldn’t eat certain kinds of food  and so no one could become a Jew  and still live any kind of normal life.  But then came Jesus and Paul,  also speaking about justice but now calling everyone to respond in faith  and to be concerned more for action in society than for any particular  diet or separation.  The challenge now was to live IN the world, to change the world from within and the followers of Jesus  spoke about Jesus as BEING God’s righteousness.
Now Jesus’ followers  were every bit as dissatisfied with the world as Amos ever was.  In this morning’s epistle  we find the author looking forward  to a time when the heavens and earth  will be melted down and replaced with a whole new universe  and did you notice how he puts it? “where righteousness will be at home.” Wouldn’t that be a change:  a world where righteousness is at home, where it’s normal to act with justice?

Can you keep your integrity  and be comfortable in this world of ours? I don’t think it’s easy. Can you bring up children in this community  and be confident that they will never be challenged to hurt themselves or others, can you be confident that you yourself can set an example  for them of people who take their standards from a higher authority than the people next door? Do we live in a world where righteousness is at home? I don’t think so.

The reading gives us a vision of a different world where righteousness is at home, where you could serve God  and be faithful  and not surprise your neighbors. It’s a message that haunts us still.  It’s a vision that’s changed the world.  It’s made people look at hunger and poverty and unemployment and people in power who don’t seem to care and ask, Does it have to be this way? Could it be better? Could I help make it better?  I think the demonstrations around the country and, indeed, around the world are evidence of a world where righteousness is NOT at home and yet a world in which a vision of righteousness has taken more hold  than it did in Amos’ day or Jesus’ either. There are people who clearly aren’t at home in it, aren’t satisfied with it, and that’s good.  Amos would have been glad to know  that he wasn’t alone any more  in caring about the poor  or about the environment. He was into protesting and demonstrating  himself.

Amos had a vision,  and of course that inspires protest, and I think some at least of the demonstrators in Egypt and Syria and Myanmar and Athens and elsewhere have a vision too: of a world without child labor, of a world in which farmers and workers  can sell their products everywhere and have greater opportunities to share  the world’s wealth. The trouble is that a better opportunity for  a Mexican peasant may take jobs away from someone in Detroit. And the vision of justice for one  may seem like injustice to another. A vision of justice is unsettling  but you can’t leave things as they are, if you have a vision of something better.

The vision of justice is a Biblical vision  and its influence today is evident everywhere. Where isn’t justice on the agenda these days? Why did we get involved in Kosovo?  There’s no oil there, no trade opportunities, nothing really to gain at all -  except justice.  Wasn’t that, in fact, the appeal of communism?  It didn’t work, but the appeal was the vision  of a truly just society where there would be work for all  and fair treatment for all. And there were lots of societies  so unjust and lots of people so unjustly treated that communism made a great appeal.  Communism failed but the vision is still there.   Wasn’t it that same vision  that fueled the civil rights revolution? Justice; justice now.
So that idea Amos had has changed the world  and, on the whole, for the better;  not necessarily for the easier, but for the better. To call for justice is to call for change, for an end of injustice, and injustice exists only because someone  benefits by it; usually someone with power, and reluctant to give up  the advantage they have or maybe simply because comfortable people want the peace and quiet of the status quo. And Christians themselves get torn apart by the vision of justice. Some would rather ignore it and get on with the old-fashioned kind of religion  that concentrated on fears and favors and didn’t worry about justice. And sometimes it’s hard to see  what justice is in a particular situation. Where does justice lie in the sexual issues that seem to be tearing churches apart?

There are no easy answers.  If there were there, would be no problem.  I simply point out that justice often seems to mean one thing  to conservative Christians and another thing to liberal Christians. And I think it would be starting at the wrong end to use this sermon to tell you who’s right and who’s wrong. What I will say is it might help if we all went back  to Amos and Jesus,  to try to see more clearly what the Biblical standard is.  Amos was upset by the way the rich oppressed the poor.  Jesus upset the rich by the way he associated with the  poor and the outcast. But what was the principle behind what they did?  How do we find a principle to apply to the issues that face us?

Christians over the centuries have led all sorts of campaigns for justice and sometimes totally wrong-headed. Christians led the fight against slavery and that was good but many devout Christians opposed abolition.  Christians led the fight for prohibition and that didn’t work out as well.  Christians went on Crusades to free the Holy Land from the Infidel and Christians set up the Inquisition to unite the faithful.   Looking back, with the advantage of hindsight, that wasn’t so smart either.  Christians today are in the lead  on both sides of the abortion issue.  Some perform abortions out of principle and some shoot down those who do. Terrible things have been and are done in the name of Christian justice and it ought to give us pause before we launch our own crusades. Christians have been wrong before and Christians – even I – even you -  might be wrong again.

The word Amos used was tsedek -  and we translate it righteousness but it has to do with meeting a standard and the standard is too easily simplified  into laws.  The standard Amos held up was not laws, but God himself: we should be like God.  God is just, Amos said, therefore we must be just. And those who suffer injustice deserve our help. “I came to help those who need help,”  said Jesus. Surely we need to be concerned more  for those in need than those who are comfortable. But above all we need to keep sight of the vision;  hold up the vision, share the vision of a world where righteousness is at home,  a society more like the kingdom that Jesus came to bring.

Getting Our Attention

A sermon preached at St. Paul’s Church Bantam, Connecticut  on the First Sunday of Advent,  November 27, 2011, by Christopher L. Webber.

I remember driving to the post office one day and the radio was on and there came a commercial for luxury ice cream – hand made, a pint at a time.  Whether you have a few luxuries or a lot, it said, you ought to treat yourself to this. And that was followed immediately by a fund-raising message about poverty and hunger: 19% of the children in this country, it said, don’t have enough to eat, so they were auctioning off a guitar and some other things to raise money for food and training programs to help the hungry.  I wondered whether someone in the radio station did that on purpose to get some attention.  I wondered whether anyone else would even notice.

How do you get people’s attention?

I drove on into town and picked up my mail and as I drove out of the post office I saw a rescue vehicle for the Sharon Hospital go by – and noticed that the woman driving it was smoking. As if she had never heard that cigarettes and health care don’t go together!

How do you get people’s attention?

The first reading this morning raises exactly that question. Or maybe it starts just after the question was raised and the prophet is considering answers. How would God get our attention? The prophet has some advice for God: “Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down and make the mountains smoke … ” “Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down and make the mountains smoke” the way you used to. Let us know that you are God and that we’d better shape up. Do something to get our attention.

The prophets must often have felt pretty frustrated.  Here they come with a message straight from God: “The Assyrians are coming; we’ll all be destroyed; nothing will be left; repent.” And what happened?  Well, the Assyrians came, and the Babylonians came, and others as well and Israel was destroyed and nothing was left, but even then, you don’t get the impression that a lot of repentance took place. More than once when a prophet foresaw destruction the king had him put in chains and fed on bread and water to wait and see. After all they had serious business to take care of: armies to feed and foes to fight and walls to build or tear down and all the important business of running a small middle eastern kingdom which has never been easy. And this prophet is hurting people’s morale. We can worry later about repentance.  Of course, later was too late.  Later they were in captivity.

And still today the prophets have the same message.  We have scientific prophets who can foresee the melting of the Greenland icecap and the flooding of coastal areas and more violent weather and we can see it beginning to happen. But does it really get much attention, do you expect politicians to mention it when they could be talking about taxes and pocketbook concerns? Not likely. Human beings have a deep seated concern for whatever is right in front of them and doesn’t require too much thought or too many changes in our plans.  And the politicians know it.

How do you really get people’s attention?

Isaiah has a suggestion for God: tear heaven apart and come down. You used to do things like that, he complains, why not now? Well, fact is, that whatever God did before didn’t do much good either. Remember the flood?  Shouldn’t that have gotten people’s attention? As a matter of fact, it probably did as the water rose around them and they went under for the last time but by then they weren’t thinking about repentance so much as finding a log to hold onto.  I’ve always like the story of Dives and Lazarus and Dives suggestion to Abraham that his brothers would repent if someone went to them from the dead but Abraham, speaking from long experience, says: “If they don’t hear Moses and the prophets neither will they believe even if someone went to them from the dead.” Yes, we know that now because Jesus rose from the dead and when he met with the disciples the gospel matter of factly records that they worshiped him – but some doubted.

We have this amazing capacity to ignore whatever doesn’t fit our immediate plans.  And God has a long track record of respecting our freedom. If we have our agenda, God will not rend the heavens to change it. And for good reason.  First, of course, because, as we all know, coercion makes no converts. I can twist your arm and make you say uncle but that won’t change your character. It only builds resentment at having your arm twisted. Second, it’s also obvious that however dire the warnings we can easily ignore them or misinterpret them. Wouldn’t you think that by now someone driving an ambulance would know that smoking is dangerous to your health?  But visit any hospital and you will find hospital workers standing outside the door smoking. before going back inside to care for people dying of cancer and heart disease caused by smoking.  What more obvious message could God provide?

And then there’s misinterpretation. Maybe you know the story of the farmer who came to his pastor saying God was calling him into the ministry: he had looked up at the clouds and there were the letters PC- and he knew it was for him to Preach Christ.  (This was before PC meant something about computers) No, said his pastor, it means “Plant corn.”  St. Francis of Assisl had a similar experience when he knelt in a ruined church and heard God tell him “build my church.” So Francis set out to put the stones and mortar back in place and worked long and hard before he learned that the message had to do with people, the living church, and that his calling was to preach Christ and try to get people’s attention for the message of the gospel. And then there are all the stories people tell about near-death experiences: how they were certified as dead and how they found themselves in a region of blinding light and familiar figures all in white there to welcome them. But a famous scientist suggested that what that really was was a recapitulation of the experience of birth – neurons in the brain reviving long-buried memories of emerging from birth ~ into the blinding light of the delivery room with doctors and nurses bathed in light and welcoming the newborn baby. There’s always another way of interpreting the message.

So I understand Isaiah’s frustration, but on the basis of the record it would seem there isn’t much God can do that will get us to do more than give evidence of mild interest. You say I will die and that life beyond that depends on how I live now? Well, that’s interesting but right now I’m reading a good book, right now I’ve got a living to earn, right now I’ve got guests, right now I’ve got to work on my “to do” list and if responding to God is on it, it isn’t very near the top.

I think, in short, that getting my attention is something only I can do.  God has done everything God can do; now it’s up to me to listen.  Surely all of us know that human beings are not immortal and that there is an aspect of our nature that is more than physical, indeed that life without love is poor indeed. We know it.  We do know it. But connecting what we know with what we do somehow seems to be beyond most of us most of the time. And preachers can try to scare people into it or coax them into it but finally it’s up to each of us to use our freedom responsibly and responsively. And I would simply suggest that if the issue is – I think it is – an awareness that makes a difference that is built up very slowly, one step at a time.

Maybe you remember that prayer of the Breton fisherman: “Lord, I will be very busy today and I may forget you, but do not you forget me.”  That’s a good start. But I was suggesting in last week’s sermon that what matters is what we do when we don’t have time to think what to do and what matters for the Breton fisherman and all of us is an awareness of God deeper than conscious thought that shapes every action instinctively, that flows out of who we are or maybe, who we have become and that, I believe, flows in turn out of decisions deliberately made and a discipline deliberately adopted that enable God to mold us into the kind of people God intends us to be.

This is Advent Sunday, New Year’s Day, a time to begin again. Who do we want to be this year? Is there a possibility that life would be better if I offered more of it more often to God?  The Prayer Book provides forms of prayer for morning, noon, early evening, and evening, it provides the classic daily offices which were intended to enable every Christian to frame every day with prayer and scripture. The Forward Movement publishers provide Forward Day by Day with daily meditations. There’s no lack of guidance. It’s up to us.  And what I know is that as you put some such discipline in place the awareness, deep awareness, grows and in the midst of struggle – trying to haul in that net in a high sea, trying to keep your cool in traffic, trying to remain centered in stress – the heavens will open – probably very, very quietly – and you will remember that you are not alone and that, as Isaiah puts it toward the end of this morning’s reading, “we are the clay and God is the potter,” and God is shaping our lives, shaping them to hold ever more and more of God’s grace and strength and peace.

“A Different Christmas”

The Church Pension Fund sends a monthly check or electronic deposit to those of us old enough to qualify and attempts to cheer our days with a couple of enclosures, one produced by outside professional advisors to the elderly – I seldom look at it – and the other an essay usually written by a retired priest or spouse.  This month’s was entitled “A Different Christmas.”

“For years,” the author told us, “our Christmases were reliably the same,”  familiar ornaments on the tree, same recorded music, and then the Christmas Eve service: “the Christ Mass – was Christmas.”

But the years went on, her priest-husband retired, and they found themselves spending Christmas with children and grandchildren in New Orleans, Arizona, New Mexico.  “But no matter where we were . . . we always made it to a Christmas Eve service in a local Episcopal church.”

So far, so good.  But last year, in Taos, New Mexico, there was a procession to watch and no time to get to the midnight service, nor Christmas Day “because we were, of course, opening presents.”  Of course.

But all was not lost.  The author and her priest-husband put on a formal candlelight dinner for the grandchildren on the second day of Christmas.  They sang Christmas carols, had a stately dinner at which everyone sat up straight and put their napkins in their laps, and then had Fourth-of-July poppers followed by bedlam.  It was, we are told, “a night to remember . . . telling the story, singing the songs, exploding the poppers, for Heaven’s sake.  It was as good as church.”

Excuse me?  What, I wonder, was her husband doing all these years? And what does the Pension Fund think we’ve all been doing with all that stuffy liturgical business when we could have just had a nice dinner at home and handed out poppers?  No wonder church attendance is going down.  We now know it’s just as good to stay home and hand out poppers!

Love and Judgment

A sermon preached at St. Paul’s Church Bantam, Connecticut, on November 20, 2011, by Christopher L. Webber.

It used to be  when a man and a woman were married in the Episcopal Church or anywhere in the Anglican Communion that they would come down the aisle and stand before the priest and he would look them sternly in the eye and say: “I require and charge you both, as ye will answer at the dreadful day of judgement when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed, that if either of you know any impediment, why ye may not be lawfully joined together in Holy Matrimony ye do now confess it . . .”   They changed that in 1979 but I still sort of miss it. Oh yes, it’s a bit overwhelming: “the dreadful day of judgement when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed.” It’s a wonder more brides and grooms didn’t turn tail and head back down the aisle, but if they stayed, you knew they were serious. You knew they weren’t taking it lightly and that God was serious about it too.  And that’s not a bad thing to be sure of.   It’s why I sometimes preach on judgment at funerals. I think it’s good to know that God cares enough to be your judge.

We’re down to the end of the Christian year. Next week we begin the new year with Advent Sunday. And what better Gospel reading could we have here at the end than this to tell us God loves us, really loves us, really cares, really puts a value on us, values every single thing we do. God loves us enough to judge us. That’s a lot.

Do you hear what I’m saying? Have you ever worked long and hard on something, really given it your best shot and thought you had done yourself proud, and brought it in to your boss, your agent, your mother, and been told, “I’ll look at it later when I’m not so busy”?  Have you ever been told, “Look, just do what you can; it doesn’t matter how it looks”?  Of course, that, too, is a judgment. To say, “You aren’t worth judging.” is a judgment. To say, “It doesn’t matter what you do,” is a judgment.  Better far to stand before the judgment seat of Christ and be separated out with the goats and sent to a warmer climate. At least that says, “You matter; God does care what you did.”

The souls in Dante’s Inferno at least knew God was not indifferent, that their lives were important, that their actions made an eternal difference.

To be judged  is to be valued, cared about, loved. When you tell a child to go to his or her room, you do it because you love them. You judge them, yes, and punish them, because you care. There are parents in every community – I think we all  know it – who don’t care, whose children are not judged but indulged, not disciplined but dismissed, not held to a standard, not seen to be worth their parents’ time. And that’s not loving; and children need loving.  We all need that kind of love.  We need to know someone cares enough to take the time to be critical, values us enough to think we could do better, loves us enough to expect us to do our best. That’s what judgment is all about: it’s about love. God is love: therefore God is our judge.

We have a good many people these days for whom there is no work to do, no place in our society. That’s a judgment too; a devastating, destructive judgment. And it’s not just the unemployed of the inner cities  who face that judgment.  There are many in every community who have been through the experience of being declared redundant. The organization you work for decides to reorganize and suddenly there’s no job for you, no place to go on Monday morning. It’s a judgment of value and it can be devastating, demoralizing. It says, “You don’t matter. Your skills are irrelevant. You yourself are a mere replaceable part.”  Better far to be judged and found wanting, to be held to a standard and judged by it even if we fail.

I think, to be honest, that the church often fails us in this respect. Unlike the God we worship, the church tends not to call for our best. We’re terrified to be thought too demanding, not friendly enough, not loving enough. There are churches that set standards: that list the amount each person pledges, that take attendance on Sunday morning, that send a committee around to visit each family each year and review their manner of life. What do we do? We look at someone whose pledge is insignificant compared to their income and express enormous gratitude; we keep sending the Newsletter to people who haven’t darkened the door in years; we write letters of appreciation to those who donate their old clothes to the rummage sale. Is that all we’re capable of? Is that really the best we can do? Does the church value us so little as to expect nothing much and be gratified when we achieve it? All I can tell you is, that when we do that the church does not reflect God’s love faithfully. Fortunately, God loves us more than does God’s church. Thank goodness! That’s good news. God loves us, therefore God is our judge.

Let me just point out two things about that judgment as it’s described in this morning’s gospel. First: it has to do with human relationships and, above all, relationships with those in need. Here we are at the last judgment and God does not say, “You weren’t in church on Sunday;  you didn’t pay your pledge; you used bad language .”  All the things we tend to center on as being what the church cares about. I wish I could tell you that on judgment day they will check your pledge card  and your regularity on Sunday morning.  That would make a great theme for stewardship Sunday. But it’s not in the gospel.  What is in the gospel is a very narrow focus on human need and our response: how we responded to the sick, the hungry, the homeless.   On that basis alone, if this parable is to be believed, depends our eternal destiny.

Notice one other thing: neither the sheep nor the goats were consciously aware of the significance of their actions. Both alike  are puzzled: “Lord, when did we see you sick or in need and fail to visit you?” In other words, the actions taken were instinctive responses arising out of  deeply ingrained character.  They did what they did  because that was who they were – and they never
even thought about it or remembered it.  I think the lesson is that there’s no way to calculate our way into heaven: to do the right thing because of the hope of reward.  No, the judgment is not on our calculated acts but on our character; who we are when we aren’t even thinking about it. And that is the result of many things but the one that we can do something about is exposing ourselves to  God’s love and judgment now.  Isn’t that why we’re here on this harvest festival, this judgment Sunday of the year?

We never do get a harvest, you know, by a few carefully calculated actions.  You can’t plug an apple into the tree for a quick  fill up of juice and flavor; it has to hang there day after day for months and absorb all that the tree, the earth, the sun, the rain have to give.

We too have to absorb almost unconsciously the life God pours out on us in word and sacrament and Bible study and prayer  – in the life of a continuing Christian community. It’s nothing sudden and dramatic but slow and patient and mostly unaware.  You come, for example, and hear this gospel and all the other gospel stories week after week and after awhile it works on you and you see a need and you respond  without even thinking why you do it. It’s just who you are, who you have become.

Surely that’s what God wants: not the showy dramatic moment  but the slow formation of character, the habitual, instinctive response  that comes from long exposure  to God’s love.   When that day comes – the day described in the gospel this morning – we will be judged  because God loves us and the love that will save us in that day is the love God pours out on us now.

Judgment and Mercy

A sermon preached at`St. Andrew’s Church, Kent, Connecticut, on November 13, 2011, by Christopher L. Webber.

I sometimes think we live too long to understand the Bible properly. Not that I would change anything; I still like waking up in the morning  and living in the northwest corner, but science has so changed the shape of human life  that I’m not sure we can still look at it the way the Bible does. Every year at this time  we find ourselves reading Bible passages full of warnings about the end. The Old Testament reading spoke of a “day of wrath” and the Gospel warned of being “cast into outer darkness.”  This week the parable of the talents, next week parable of the last judgment, all with the same note of warning:  life is not forever; there will be a judgment; you need to be ready. And after next Sunday we come to Advent itself and the serious stuff: “heaven and earth will pass away” and all that.

But you know, I’m not really sure it gets our attention.  A century ago, when the normal life span was maybe sixty, back in the middle ages when the normal life span was maybe 35,  they had a sense of “the shortness and uncertainty of human life”  that I’m just not sure we can share. Yes, terrible things happen:  we know about the Trade Towers  and all that. and if we go to war, young people will die.  And, of course, no one yet has proved to be immortal.  Death is still out there somewhere, but when we see so many lives go on well into the 90s and often past 100, I’m really not sure we can relate to all this stuff  the Bible and Prayer Book give us about the approaching end the way we ought to. We grow up expecting to live to be 90 or 100 and that’s a long way off, and by the time we get to be 60 or 70  it’s been a long way off for so long that I’m not sure we really take in the fact that it’s closer than it used to be.  All of which is perhaps my own personal reflection,  how it seems to me. But think about it.  How does it seem to you?  Do these parables about the end and judgment have an effect?  Do they make you take stock? Do you go home saying,  “It’s a fact; I need to make some changes because I’m not really ready for God to send an appraiser to put a final value on my life the way I’m living it now?”

So that’s a first thought about today’s gospel.  Can we really hear it? Does it speak to us?  Does it get our attention? If not, what would?  I think we need to get that in place first because otherwise the parable of the talents becomes something about stewardship,  about our pledge, about contributing to a holiday bazaar, and that just doesn’t get it. This is about life and death, about why we are here, what life is all about. And it is very realistic. Talents are distributed.  Everybody gets some. It may not seem fair that one person gets five talents and another only one, but, hey, that’s how it is, and nobody asks you to bring back ten talents if you only started out with one. But whatever you start with, for that you are responsible. Whatever life gives us, we are responsible.

I’m sometimes wish we could keep election seasons to maybe a week or ten days because I’m tired of hearing politicians appealing to our greed, running for office and asking for votes on the basis of what you and I get out of it. Cutting taxes on one side, increasing your benefits on the other.  Isn’t there anyone out there who’s been formed by reading the Bible, who understands that with gifts  comes responsibility? I don’t remember ever hearing  Franklin Roosevelt speak. He was dead long before I was old enough to vote.  But I know that he said, “To those to whom much is given,  from them much is required.”  Some of us do remember John Kennedy saying,  “Ask not what America can do for you, ask what you can do for America.”  Of course, that wasn’t a campaign speech,  that was an inaugural address. Where is the candidate who can inspire us by challenging us, by asking us what we might do with the great gifts we are given?

As I read American history, there are two great traditions: one is the ethic of self-sacrifice,  of mission, of a calling to set an example for other nations, to share the gifts we are given: at every level, from the smallest community, to the world stage,  to give without counting the cost because God has given so much to us. Whether you think in terms of the wealth of this country  or in terms of the cross and Calvary, the Gospel and the promise of life, either way,  one strong strand in our common life has been thankfulness for gifts given  and the challenge of changing the world.

But there is another tradition,  and that’s the one of rugged individualism, of the self-made man,  of the pioneer who finds and exploits, of the one who sees an opportunity and uses it enrich himself.  Whether Bernie Madoff or Goldman Sachs, we’ve been there before.  Enron and WorldCom are not that far back.  And then there were Teapot Dome in the 1920s and the Robber Barons in the late nineteenth century.  The Vanderbilts and Goulds and Astors were not remembered for the holiness of their lives. But now we have institutionalized greed and we’ve made it possible for everyone to go to the corner store and buy a chance on making your own million or ten million. “Hey, you never know!”  Actually, you should know:  when governments support themselves by lotteries,  they prey on the poor, they encourage our worst instincts, and they insulate themselves from having to make tough decisions.  Why raise taxes if you can add a new enticement to the lottery?  But God will not ask us why we didn’t win the lottery.  God will ask us why we spent our discretionary cash on the lottery when we knew our neighbor’s need.

And look at the catalogs that they stuff in our mail box.  Every day they come, and who needs that stuff? What are they pushing this year that every child will die for and every parent kill for?  Bishop Smith spoke to our diocesan convention a few years ago about his embarrassment when he used his sabbatical time to visit countries in Central America and saw American television programs  being watched in the poorest slums. What must they think of us, he asked,  to have such wealth and use it on such foolishness?  I stopped asking for Christmas presents years ago.  I ask for gifts to Episcopal Relief and Development; isn’t that what Christmas is all about:  God’s love coming into the manger, into the poverty of this world, enriching us with the love we need  not with the toys we break and discard?  Suppose Jesus were to return on December 26  and ask us what we got for Christmas: how embarrassed would we be  to show him the list? Are we, will we ever be,  able to face a judgment on our use of our talents?

I suspect we don’t want to ask ourselves that question  because no society has ever been given so much and been so well aware of the need  to use it wisely and well.  And yet we fail the test. These Advent messages leave us, it seems to, me without hope – except for the mercy of God.  But that, I think, is really the primary message of Advent: not despair, but mercy.  I think what Jesus wanted people to realize was – and is -  that we are totally, totally, dependent on God’s mercy – and that’s not a bad position to be in. The good news of the Gospel,  the fundamental message of the Christian faith, is that, in spite of our failures, there is mercy – mercy enough and to spare. God loves us,  Jesus died for us, and our gracious God  invites us here today to taste and see how gracious the Lord is and how much God loves us all.