Letting God outa' the Box

Wednesday, April 21, 2004

 
Brief Sermon for my Practicum course (aka 'Play Church')
From Lent 5 Year A: Ezekiel 37:1-3,11-14, Psalm 130, John 11:17-44

People get ready
There's a train a comin'
You don't need no baggage
you just get on board
All you need is faith
To hear the diesel comin'
Don't need no ticket
you just thank the Lord

These lyrics by Curtis Mayfield kept playing in my mind as I read today’s lessons.

The end of our Lenten time is upon us. The time to look forward to Palm Sunday and Holy Week is at hand. Both Ezekiel and John are preparing us for great things to come.

From Ezekiel, we hear of the wonderful power of our God to raise up even dry lifeless bones.

From John, we hear of our Lord raising up the dead Lazarus from his tomb.

I have noticed that when I hear these stories, childhood images form in my imagination.

From Ezekiel I get images of dancing skeletons who grow muscles, skin and hair…images not unlike the special effects from Science Fiction or horror films…amazing sights that grow out of my imagination.

So too with Lazarus. The mummy emerging from the tomb, staggers in a straight-legged walking motion, wrapped in discolored bandages.

As a kid, such images amazed me. After seeing them, I would play them over and over in my head thinking “wow…wouldn’t it be the coolest thing to see them for real”.

Growing up, my family would go to my Grandparents in Georgia almost every summer. Very close to their house was a train track where freight trains going to and from Atlanta would pass each night. My brother and I would always save pennies to place on the tracks so the wheels would squish them flat. Because the trains ran so late at night, we never saw them. We often lie awake in our bed and here the horn blasting in the distance and await the rumbling we feel and here as the huge train thundered over our pennies. In my mind, I could just picture the enormous diesel locomotive, with its single headlight cutting through the night as I felt my bed quake.

John and Ezekiel are giving us images as a foretaste of the days ahead. They are as the freight train horn blaring in the distance. They are great and wondrous images of God’s power and involvement in our human lives, yet they are also signs of something greater and more wondrous to come.

As we look ahead to Palm Sunday and Holy Week, I invite us to open our minds, and hearts so that we can see the wonder that our Lord has in store for us. Allow God to fill our imagination so that we can see the love and joy our Lord has for us…which is even greater that a child’s joy of finding shiny, freshly flattened pennies by a railroad track.

People get ready
There's a train a comin'
You don't need no baggage
you just get on board
All you need is faith
To hear the diesel comin'
Don't need no ticket
you just thank the Lord

Fr. Bill 10:30 AM

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Saturday, April 17, 2004

 
Sermon for Easter 2 year C
John 20:19-31

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

For a moment, I want to be Thomas in today’s Gospel. I want to retell the events through his eyes and ears.
For now, think of me as Thomas:

As Thomas, I refuse to believe until I see it for myself!
Jesus came here…resurrected from the dead…at least that is what I keep hearing. But, how can this be? It is beyond human reason…It is beyond my own comprehension that such a thing has happened. I must be the target of some joke.

They say “We have seen our Lord”
As Thomas I think: Yea…right…they are just going to make a fool of me.

They tell me he has forgiven all our sins.
As Thomas I think: Sure…God has forgiven all my sins…yea, right…what do I have to do?

They say “Nothing…He breathed on us and said ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’…we did nothing”
As Thomas I think: That can’t be right…surely I need to do something…offer a sacrifice…something

They say, “No all you have to do is forgive. Jesus said ‘If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained’…come on don’t you remember the prayer he taught us? ‘Forgive us our trespasses as we for give those who trespass against us’

As Thomas I think: These guys must really be pulling my leg. Could it be so simple? Can I believe that my Lord gave his life and I am the receiver of the gift of forgiveness for all my past, present and future sins? Can it be true that Jesus was also the full perfect and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world, now and forever…freeing not only me but you and the whole world from our enslavement by sin?

A week later, Jesus again appeared and I, Thomas, was there. My friends were not kidding me…HE IS RISEN.
As Thomas, Jesus offers his wounds to me to see and touch. At that point, I realize that by His wounds, we are healed. Through His death and resurrection, Christ is inviting us into new life through His forgiveness of our sins.
In sharing in his death we are risen anew, reconciled with God.
As Thomas, my encounter with Jesus is written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that though believing you may have life in his name.

After thinking of myself as Thomas, I, Bill remembered a time, several years ago, when I experienced forgiveness and reconciliation, first hand. It happened with my Dad while we were watching an episode of “Leave It to Beaver”.
During a commercial break, my Dad said he would have liked to be as good of a Dad as Ward Cleaver. I replied that no real Dad could be like Ward Cleaver. He retorted, ‘yeah…but I wanted to be a good father to you and your brother and sister…and I think I could have been better. I replied that I could have been a much better son…made better grades…a better football player…helped out more around the house. He told me that I was always harder on myself than he was on me. He said He did not expect me to be perfect and that he loved me just for who I am. I replied that I loved him also for being himself and just being my Dad…and noted that if he had been like Ward Cleaver, he would have driven us all crazy.

In that silent moment that followed, we actually forgave each other for not being perfect. We both realized that we accepted each other ‘warts and all’, acknowledging the efforts to meet each others expectations and accepting the effort as an act of love.

For me, that was a point where I saw his love for me more than I had ever seen it before. He showed the wounds in his soul. His brokenness in not being the perfect Dad that he had hoped to be. Through my own feelings of brokenness at not being the perfect son, we were able to connect. We opened up our wounds and exposed our sins. Our sins were the ideas and assumptions that we allowed to separate us from each other. They became as infected splinters. Once we allowed the splinters to be removed and accepted each other’s forgiveness, our wounds began to heal and we became reconciled to each other…acting and loving one another for who we really are.

As Christ says to us in today’s Gospel, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

I guess like Thomas, I had refused to believe until I saw it for myself. It was not until I reconciled with my Dad that I understood what Christ was saying in this passage. Just as I began to see forgiveness and love from my earthly father, I began to understand the forgiveness and love that Christ brought to us from our Heavenly Father.

May we today accept the Holy Spirit, allowing God to forgive us our sins, and truly believe that Christ can remove the splinters from our wounds. May the Holy Spirit guide us into healing and reconciliation with ourselves and all creation.

In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit

Fr. Bill 10:48 PM

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Tuesday, April 13, 2004

 


Lord God,
to those who have never had a pet,
this prayer will sound strange,
but to You, Lord of All Life and Creator of All Creatures.
it will be understandable.

My heart is heavy
as I face the loss in death of my beloved Heather
who was so much a part of my life.

This pet made my life more enjoyable
and gave me cause to laugh
and to find joy in her company.

I remember her fidelity and loyalty
and will miss her being with me.
From her, I learned many lesson,
such as the quality of naturalness
and the unembarrassed request for affection.

In caring for her daily needs
I was taken up and out of my own self-needs
and thus learned to service another.

May the death of this creature of Yours
remind me that death comes to all of us,
animal and human,
and that it is the natural passage of all life.

May Heather sleep on
in an eternal slumber in Your godly care
as all creations awaith the fullness of liberation.

Amen +


From Prayers for the Domestic Church by Edward Hays
Fr. Bill 8:07 AM

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Thursday, April 08, 2004

 
The Foolishness of Anglicanism?



Why would anyone choose to juggle authority in theology? Who would try to keep three 'plates', call them scripture, tradition and reason, in balance when they could just pick one and make it the foundation for their faith? Is a triune theology just to logically attractive in describing the mystery of a triune God?

Scripture...the Word of God
Tradition...the history of human's interaction with God
Reason...the "how's" and "why's" of interactions with God
{yep...simplistic and incomplete definitions}

If we are going to persist in such a foolish juggling act, what happens when more 'weight' is give to one plate? or two plates? Will the fight to achieve balance become too great and cause our theology to crash...eventually?

Is it easier in community?




Fr. Bill 9:29 AM

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Monday, April 05, 2004

 
Looking forward to Easter...
Reading The Mystery of Christ & why we don't get it...
Listening to "Without a Net" by the Grateful Dead....

"God thought he'd have a big ole party, and call it planet Earth"
From One More Saturday Night

Easter Vigil...wow, what a party it could be...the realization that our sins are forgiven
God came down to Earth, in the human from of Jesus. We ignored him, abused him, tortured him and hung him on a cross to die....AND HE FORGAVE US! WOOOAAAAA...now that is a reason to celebrate!

We prodigal children...wasteful and foolish...who couldn't find our way home to heaven if we were given a map, are forgiven and given the keys to the Kingdom.

No need to bicker or argue about who did what to whom...FORGIVENESS is the WORD!
God has forgiven us...why can we not for give each other?

Capon argues some tough points...which are counter to the culture of the Christian Religion. Asserting that chief purpose of Christianity is not as a moral guide, but the Good News of complete forgiveness of our sins through the birth, death and ressurrection of God in Christ. The assumption that it is the Good News, rather our belief and total faith in God's forgiveness that will lead us into more a moral life seems to be in his theology...though I have not gotten there with him, yet. From Capon's point of view, we have put the cart before the horse, moral living before full acceptance of God's forgiveness of our sins. Is doing such, merely a side of the incomplete belief that God has forgiven us? Capon also seems to futher my analogy...if the cart is place before the horse, we can not move forward...backward movement may be attainable or even done out of frustration...hmmm...maybe 'that is why I sing the blues'


I went down to the mountain, I was drinking some wine,
Looked up in the heavens Lord I saw a mighty sign,
Writt'n fire across the heaven, plain as black and white;
Get prepared, there's gonna be a party tonight.
{sounds like a Revelation}

Uhuh, Hey! Saturday Night!
Yeh, uhuh one more Saturday night,
Hey Saturday night!
{Easter Vigil}

Everybody's dancin' down the local armory
With a basement full of dynamite and live artillery.
The temperature keeps risin', everybody gittin' high;
Come the rockin' stroke of midnite, the whole place gonna fly.
{Drastic life change!}

Uhuh, Hey! Saturday Night!
Yeh, uhuh one more Saturday night,
Hey Saturday night!

Turn on channel six, the President comes on the news,
Says, "I get no satisfaction, that's why I sing the blues."
His wife say "Don't get crazy, Lord, you know just what to do,
Crank up that old Victrola, put on them rockin' shoes."
{His wife sharing the Good News??}

Uhuh, Hey! Saturday Night!
Yeh, uhuh one more Saturday night,
Hey Saturday night!

Then God way up in heaven, for whatever it was worth,
Thought He'd have a big old party, thought He'd call it planet Earth.
Don't worry about tomorrow, Lord, you'll know it when it comes,
When the rock and roll music meets the risin' sun.
{the Good News...the world will never be the same!}



Fun theological reflecting...I am just compelled to see God where God is not often seen...especially in the lyrics of the Dead...just want to keep my blog name fortified.

{Please note that I am not advocating the 'drug culture' often associated with the Dead, but if you have ever been to a Dead Show, seeing a spiritual presence in the crowd is not a difficult leap}


Fr. Bill 7:19 PM

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Friday, March 26, 2004

 
Sermon for Lent 5 year C at the Church of Saint Philip in Jackson MS

Isaiah 43:16-21 * Psalm 126 * Philippians 3:8-14 * Luke 20:9-19

“Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus”

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

In today’s lesson from the Gospel of Luke, we hear the parable of the tenants of the vineyard. Often our reflections on this parable are limited by its ending. “When the scribes and chief priests realized that he had told this parable against them, they wanted to lay hands on him at that very hour, but they feared the people.” A quick read or listen can lead our minds to wander…if it is applicable to us at all. Not a scribe or chief priest, this parable may not seem pertinent to me. Or, we could see the parable through a lens of historical understanding, assuming the parable only speaks to the nation of Israel who, like the tenants, killed the messengers of God, the prophets in the Old Testament. On the other hand, this parable can also easily lead our thoughts to our own stewardship of our world…God’s gift of creation in which we live and have our being.

For me, this parable moves me to re-examine how I view my own thoughts and actions. The tenant seem to be highly convinced that they are acting rightly given their situation, but Christ points to their thoughts and action as wrong. More often than I acknowledge, my view of a situation can be skewed.

At Council this year, Bishop Gray touched on this point when he referenced Paul’s illustration of seeing truth “through a glass darkly” (1 Cor 13:12), also translated, “for now we see in a mirror, dimly” in the New Revised Standard. Before I came to St. Philip’s, my glasses had grown very dark and my view was very dim. My life of choices, experience, and culture had tinted and shaped my lenses in a unique way. During my time at St. Philip’s, my lens began to re-tint and reshape the view through which I saw the world within me and around me. I began to learn how to let parts of my life die and allowed new elements to grow in their place. However, if I had not forgotten the way I viewed the world before joining the St. Philip’s community, my new view would have appear surreal (and at times it did). I may even have thought it a dream or hallucination. I would have (and actually did try) to re-establish my old point of view where I thought that I felt comfortable, but I had changed, and even going backward brought me no comfort.

In Paul’s message to the Philippians, he is asking them to let go of their old view. Paul is addressing the sense of security the view we know often brings. When he states: “If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more”. Paul speaks out of his sense of security that he had in his Jewish past. He did all he was required to do, and more! In the language of the movie, “O Brother where art thou”, Paul is ‘Bona fide’! What Paul seeks to forget…to leave behind is his sense of surety arising from his own actions; his own view of himself as Bona fide. Paul’s blinding conversion on the road to Damascus changed his view. He says that “for [Christ’s] sake, I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish”.

The tenants in our parable today feel assured in their actions through their view of the situation. They had done all the hard work to produce the harvest. They see themselves as entitled to reap the harvest of their works. But, Christ’s parable tells them their view is rubbish. They are living, as Paul had before his enlightening road trip, in a consuming view of their own righteousness. Like the fig tree in last Sunday’s parable, they are alive but bearing no fruit. Their lives have become self–centered focused on their own wants and needs…a way of life I have often thought of as ‘survival mode’.

I have found it is all too easy when stress or pressure or change occurs in my life to slip into survival mode. However, in survival mode I hold everything I am dealing with inside and guard myself against intrusion by other people. My survival mode actually narrows my vision, hiding possible solutions to the issues causing me stress. I have even found that I am even guarding myself against intrusion from the Holy Spirit. My survival mode, while in theory guarding me from pain, also prevents any growth. As we all know, growth can often be a painful experience. Growth often means allowing the old to die to give space for the new. And this is where Paul speaks to me when he says, “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his suffering by becoming like him in death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.”

Paul is attempting to model for us and for the Philippians of old, the need to place our faith in Christ and allow our selves to experience the pains of life and humbly allow God to produce new life according to his will. Like the tenants, we have to surrender our fields, which we hold and guard. For if we rely on our own selves, our own knowledge, our own righteousness, we will be as the builders who reject the stone that is the true corner stone. It is only under the guidance of God, our true landowner that our vineyard can hope to grow and bear fruit.

On this fifth Sunday of Lent, we can look forward to see the upcoming pain and death that awaits our Lord. Has the Lenten period in the desert been a time when we have started to let the old die away or have we just hibernated in survival mode? Are we prepared to suffer the pains of letting go of our old selves? Are we prepared to share in Christ’s death, allowing our old selves to die? For it is only if we allow ourselves to experience the pain of dying to how we view ourselves and the world, that we can hope to grow into a new view and a new life.


It is only by daily dying to our old selves that we can hope to be born anew with our Lord each day.

In the name to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit

Fr. Bill 9:46 AM

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Saturday, March 13, 2004

 
Sermon for Lent 3 year C at the Church of the Atonement

Exodus 3:1-15 * Psalm 103 * 1 Corinthians 10:1-13 * Luke 13:1-9

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Last Sunday, Father Bill instructed us to embrace Jesus as the Savior. This week’s Gospel lesson moves us to surrender our lives to Christ.

"Surrender Your Life to Christ"…sounds like another Christian catch phrase that is often given without a good explanation. The assumption that we know how to surrender of lives is usually present in exhortation of this phrase. In Mississippi, we often referred to such exhortations as the "Altar Call" because most of us had at one time attended a Protestant church that at the end of the service called people to come down and have hands laid upon them and turn over their lives to God. Being a shy kid, I found the idea of doing such a thing in front of a large group was terrifying to me.

When I heard this phase in my late twenties, I thought: Sure, sounds like a good idea. I haven’t been doing such a good job controlling my life so far. My work was unsatisfying. I had some good friends, but we all seemed to be just doing the theme of the 1980’s in just ‘working for the weekend’ when we would drink beer and search for girlfriends. I felt much like the fig tree in today’s Gospel; I was living but I was not bearing any fruit.
I approached an acquaintance at church who had on of those "let go, let God" bumper stickers on his car. I told I was interested in letting go of my life and letting God take control. His response was, ‘Oh, you need to go to Cursillo’.

It was at Cursillo that I began to see what Christ was talking about in today’s Gospel. Like the people present with Christ, I was looking at the world through a lens of cause and effect. Simply thinking if I was good, God would reward me and if I were bad, I would be punished. In good southern dialect, I was told that was ‘stinkin’ thinkin’. In the words of author J. B. Philips, "my God was too small".

God is not simply a judge who rewards and punishes those who show fruit or not. God not waiting to push towers down on the worst sinners. Bad things do happen to good people. We cannot eliminate the effects of human free will in society. Often accidents, calamities and atrocities are acts of human will not God’s will. Today’s Gospel is not saying judgment will not occur…it is saying we cannot predict when it will occur. In essence, we have no control.

This was my first epiphany in Surrendering my life to God…understanding that I really have less control over my life and---what is more---less control over my death than I thought. My idea that I was truly in control of my life was only an illusion. The first step, in turning my life over meant giving up the illusion of my control. This sounded very similar to Neibuhr’s serenity prayer that I was familiar with:

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as He did, this sinful world
as it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His Will;
That I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with Him
Forever in the next.

As I began to understand the limits of my own control, the light began to dawn on a new understanding of the word ‘repent’. In the rural areas that I used to drive, there is always a small hand painted sign nailed to a tree with REPENT in black on a white background. I used to think repent meant simple ‘stop sinning’, but I began to see it for its true meaning ‘stop and return’…turn around and face God.

In today’s lessons, Paul is telling the Corinthians to repent…to turn from their old ways and face God. He refers to the Exodus, in our first reading, when ‘our ancestors’ lost their faith in God and sought after the old ways they knew…the old ways that gave them some illusion of control. Failing to die to their old selves as slaves in the ways of the Egyptians, our ancestors remained in the wilderness. Their perception of God was too small. Paul cautions us saying, "These things happened to them to serve as an example and they were written down to instruct us". Just as Moses, Pharaoh, the Israelites, we are called to set our faith upon a God who remains somewhat mysterious to us…telling Moses, "I AM WHO I AM". Our God cannot be limited like idols, which are subject to our control. Our God is a Great God, greater than all gods, or idols of human construction.

This step in Lent is a time to examine our lives. We are to look for the ways in which we have sought to wrestle control of our lives away from God and ways in which we have made our image of God too small. Where in our lives have we supplanted God for idols of control? Where have we found ourselves trying to change what we cannot change? Where have things or activities become idols we use to find control?

Surrendering our lives to God is no easy business for us just as it was difficult for the Israelites and the Corinthians. It requires us to constantly discern those things we can control and those things that we need to offer to God and allow God to control. If we seek to bear fruit like the fig tree in today’s parable, we have to allow the Gardener, our Lord Jesus Christ, to work in our lives. While some days we may be overwhelmed by the amount of fertilizer in our lives, we are called to accept the Gardener’s help and reach out our limbs to God. As we will sing in our closing hymn today, we will again be reminded that we are called to follow in Christ path, we are called to die daily to the way of self, dying with Christ, for if we do not die with our Lord, we will not rise with our Lord, like the Easter flowers in spring.

In the name to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit

Fr. Bill 7:16 PM

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