"You Lack One Thing" March 25, 2018

Mark 10: 17-27 Mark 10: 46 – 11: 11 There are few more archaic stories of pomp and circumstance than this morning! What does Jesus riding a donkey into Jerusalem, as children waved Palm branches and shouted “Hosanna” have to do with any of us? In Central There are no palm trees here! Children leading a march chanting sounds a lot like yesterday’s Marches. “Hosanna” is a lovely word sung on Palm Sunday, but has there ever been another time anyone said this word? We know Alleluia is the sound of Angels rejoicing at the resurrection, but what does “Hosanna” even mean? Yet, personally, I think this is one of the most important passage for our time! According to Mark, “a person”, representing any of us, came up to Jesus asking for the secret to life. What do I need to make me happy; how can I have it all; who/what should I be; “What must I do to inherit eternal life”? According to Matthew and Luke, he was Rich and Young, with great possessions, which probably also fits any of us, but Mark just says “A Man”. Mark does include several nuances the others do not. The man calls Jesus, “Good Teacher”. Jesus’ reply is that you cannot earn “Good”. Whether we name our goal: Good, Salvation, Eternal Life, Love of God, Happiness, these are not a reward, not a prize for being the best, or avoiding things wrong. Grace, Salvation, Eternity, Goodness can only be given by God, because God is the only source of these. The man describes having lived the 10 Commandments all his life. Unique to Mark, “Jesus Loved Him”. Does not Jesus love everybody? But that is not said in the other versions, and “Jesus loved him” is not said about anyone else in the Gospel. In the Greek Culture of the 1st Century, they identified 4 kinds of Love, which you may have heard before. The first is the love we might call Affection or Devotion, it is the love between parent and child, teacher and student, Owner and Pet. The second, is what we most remember coming from Greek: “Philos” Brotherly love, the relationship between neighbors, people from the same place or experience, this is where “Philadelphia” received that name. Yet, more and more committed to our social media, technology and polarities, we have less and less connection/ less trust with our actual neighbors in this world today. The third is what our culture recognizes as being “Love”. Romantic, erotic love. That which makes your heart skip, which excites your passions, the hope that the other feels the same towards you as you feel towards them, it is passion. But the fourth kind of love, was without value in the Greek world. The Greeks were a Capitalist society that believed you needed to receive back something of value, but the 4th is what is regularly identified with Jesus, “Agape”. Christian Love is what the King James Bible described as “Compassion/Forgiveness”. Coming to recognize that it hurts me too much to not forgive, forgiveness is not so much about the other as that it hurts me too much to live without the other in my life. This is the love of God described in Hosea, for why he must redeem the adulterous spouse he had put away, why God redeemed Israel from Babylonian Exile. What 1st Corinthians describes as “a still more excellent way” than Faith or Hope or Knowledge, Arts or Truth. Something occurred to me recently, that I had never heard or thought of before. The whole of the Bible, we could summarize as God’s Forgiveness of Humanity. But listening to others describe wounds from long ago, they described having confessed to God, to spouse and children others they hurt; however the forgiveness they found the most difficult, was forgiveness of self. While all of Faith, regardless of Religion is about the Forgiveness of God; our most difficult forgiveness is our own egocentric psychological guilt, forgiving /loving / having compassion for Self. Different from all the generations of humanity before us, from Adam to the present, we imagine it to be more difficult for us to forgive ourselves, than for God to forgive! This Person whom Jesus loved, who is so like us, is the only individual in all the Gospels who leaves Jesus without receiving healing, who leaves more sorrowful than he came. This is the first reason, I believe something I have found no where else in all the commentaries and sermons, that our second reading from the same chapter, answers the first. I believe the blind man identified as Bartimaeus, is the same rich, young man who came to Jesus! In Greek, the prefix to a name “Bar” means “Son of”, so Bartimaeus means “Son of Timaeus”. In Greek Philosophy, in the writings of Plato, there is identification of a man named “Timaeus”, these are the only references to Timaeus or Bartimaeus in Literature! It is also, the only Greek reference to the existence of the Island Atlantis. According to Plato, 400 years before Jesus, Timaeus was a wise and learned scholar, who had studied and learned all about the Natural Order of the universe. According to Timaeus everything in creation could be viewed elementally through triangles, which in turn comprise Squares, Rectangles and Circles. That the perfect shape of things was when the one part, was equal to one and a half times the shorter side. Timaeus’ mathematical formula being what Dan Brown describes in The Da Vinci Code and which the Apple Company uses in all of their products. All of which identifies that BarTimaeus, was a child of Greek Philosophy, who had studied and learned all there was, but ultimately concluded: there needed to be More to Life. After meeting Jesus, I believe this healing was not instantaneous, but a confrontation of an Empty Soul, this Philosopher came to recognize just how blind he was, though he had great possessions. He went and sold all he had, giving it to others, but now penniless and blind of spirit, he sat on the roadside begging, as Jesus passed. And Mark records, Bartimaeus cried out “Jesus, Son of David, Have Mercy on Me!” Those words “Savior, Son of David, Have Mercy on Me” in Greek are expressed by the word: “Hosanna!” which all the crowds, the children and the poor begin to Cry as Jesus entered Jerusalem Palm Sunday.

"Between Lightning and Thunder" March 18, 2018

John 11: 17-44 John 12: 20-33 When you see Lightning flash across the sky, what do you listen for? Many of us are so busy with our business, we do not hear the Heavens rumble. Many of us get caught up in nature’s beauty, as if God’s own Fireworks display. Many are so fascinated by our own knowledge, we are certain lightning is a static electric charge seeking to ground itself in the earth, that it breaks the sound barrier by traveling faster than the speed of light, we listen to hear what we know comes. Still others, knowing more about science, know that as the light travels to ground itself, radiating back a heat signature from the earth to the sky like ripples in the sea. Many learned as children that every 5 seconds between flash of lightning and the roar of thunder represents a mile of distance, so we calculate our security. But when the Savior speaks to God, at his Baptism, Transfiguration, Lazarus’ Burial, when Jesus considers whether to go through with his own sacrifice or not, and at the Crucifixion, at all these THERE IS LIGHTNING / IS THUNDER, and in that charged space, those moments of time in between, THERE IS GOD. This morning’s two readings are only in John; not Matthew, Mark, Luke or Acts and I believe the Evangelist identifies these two as the final reasons for Jesus’ Crucifixion. All the rest of the Gospels describe Jesus challenging the Religious Authorities, Overturning the Tables of Commerce, as the reason for his arrest. But John recalled from Isaiah, prophecy that through Judaism the Word of God, like Light in the Dark, would go out to all the world, like a flash of LIGHTNING across the sky, and all Creation wanting to respond to the Love of God in Christ, would come to Jerusalem, to kneel at the mountain of God reverberating like THUNDER… According to John, when Faith in God reverberates beyond the disciples, beyond the crowd of followers to Greeks and Romans, to heathen Gentiles, to all the world, this was too much. The story of Lazarus, rivals the resurrection of Jesus, for being the most often used at funerals. What greater message could depict the love of God for us, than that when he came to Lazarus’ Tomb, “Jesus Wept”? It is the shortest verse in all the Bible, and what we most desire to say about the deaths of our loved ones: God Wept. The beauty of this story of faith, is that every person responds to death differently. As 21st Century Americans, we have too much tendency to get stuck in our heads! 2,000 years ago, before the Enlightenment, before Einstein, before Stephen Hawking, before Google, human beings experienced life through our senses. Like the disciples, many of us, when a friend comes down with a Cold, reason “Well, if only a virus, if he has only fallen asleep, he will get up again.” But tarrying to respond to relationships, putting off our concern and faith, avoiding our feelings, rationalizing, it can be too late. Like Martha, many of us cope with our emotions by thinking “Resurrection is the Christian Ending on the last Day”. We imagine life as a Story, and if there was a day of Creation, Once upon a Time when you were born, there must come a final time of Resurrection, when all the Cemeteries will be opened, when all will be gathered home, when The End is written and the book of life closes. The End! When first I came to this Church, I heard a recurrent concern from the older women, that they believed centuries from now Jesus would open the graves, calling everyone from death to eternal life. But after that many years of sleeping, of decay in the dirt, they were afraid they would not be very attractive… “Lord, it has been 4 days, there is gonna be a stink.” Jesus challenged Martha to not accept easy religious answers, but to wrestle with what trust and relationship with God in Christ means! “Martha, I Am the resurrection and the Life!” Old and New Testaments, whenever we read the English words: “I AM” for Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses at the Burning Bush, Kings David and Solomon, here too, we need to insert: “This is the Holy Name of God!” Do we only accept that Resurrection is a future reality, of an End like Creation’s Start happened long long ago? Or can we live in Resurrection, live in relationship to God, speaking to those who have died as being with God in the here and now? Where Martha is the practical and pragmatic figure, her sister Mary is the Disciple. Odd, that the Bible does not say Jesus was asking for Mary, but Martha comes to her saying Martha heard Jesus was asking for Mary… How often, we have the sense to prompt others to faith, to prompt others to question, when it was not really invited. The crowd of mourners represent all of us. How often, when a spouse, parent/child, loved one dies, there are calling hours, where the ones grieving-most are expected to comfort everybody else. How often, when there is death, we react with adrenaline, rushing to bring a cake, Jello-mold or flowers… and yet a year later, their sons and daughters have gotten over their own adrenaline and are wrestling with the memory of their loved one, the resurrection that they cannot change. Is it up to the crowd of mourners, whether we can find love again, or us, and how soon? Pre-figuring Easter morning, Mary went to the Tomb to see Jesus! Begging the question we all ask: “If you are God, If only you were here and cared, you could have stopped this!” Here and on Easter morning, Jesus does not try to reason with her, but instead acts in love and compassion. He weeps, and he goes to the Tomb. In all the years I have preached this passage, in all the sermons I have heard, I have not before considered this passage from the perspective of Lazarus. What does it feel like to be in a dead relationship, to go on after others no longer believe in you, no longer trust what could be possible through you? Here death is like depression. Lazarus became more and more ill, weaker and weaker, closer and closer to giving up life. We try to deny reality. Like sleep, in the past we always got better. There are moments of believing: this is all a bad dream, and we will wake up. But there comes a point when you cannot fight, when you know fighting makes it harder on those around you. Besides after death, they wash the body with water, a reminder of baptism, washing away all the sin, washing off the residue of life, of sickness, preparing the dead to be forever grounded. Sealing everything in a cave behind a stone, in a grave beneath a headstone, that marks the dates of birth and death as if that was all there was to life, past tense. Death is dark. Death is lonely. Death is being buried away, away from the light, away from those you care about, away from life and possibility.At death, others talk about us as if we are no longer alive, of value, as if we no longer hear them. I wonder if death is silence, or if we can hear and listen as we do not in life? Then miraculously, the stone was rolled away, shafts of light enter the crypt and Jesus calls “Lazarus come out.” Like God in Genesis calling “Let there be light” Jesus called “Let there be LIFE!” and there was. What would Resurrection smell like? After the taste of Death, what doesLife taste of in our mouths? There is no record of how many months or years Lazarus lived after being raised from death to life. Did he die again? This is not one of those Zombie movies or Walking Dead television shows, this is the story of Christian faith, the story of life. When Jesus opens the Tomb of Lazarus, we need to know that not long in the future Jesus will be the body in the Tomb, and God will raise Jesus from the dead. I have to believe there was an electric charge in the air. Where instead of people checking their watches, each experienced this moment as living with God! How long until the light enters into the darkness again, or the Thunder rumbles Creation? (Largest pipes of Organ rumble with the sound of thunder)

"Never Satisfied" March 11, 2018

Numbers 21: 4-9 John 3: 14-21 I’d like to let you in on a secret, Ministers graduating from Seminary, do not have all the answers. Oh, we earn Masters in Divinity and Doctors of Ministry, we know Church history and Theology, but the Seminary cannot and do not teach us how to confront the circumstance in the church, let alone all the problems in the world. Our 21st Century world is changing so fast, we have a hard time just keeping up. Several months ago, I got to a point of not wanting to listen to the news any more, but came to realize that if I did not, I would be as out of touch as someone in the 1890s looking at the world today. Our passages deal with questions without easy answers. There is part of me, that would like to cut John 3:16 from Nicodemus’ story and insert this at the very beginning. “In the Beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God, because God so loved the world, that God gave God’s only begotten son!“ What a wonderful message this is for Christmas! But it is not Christmas, this is the 4th Week of Lent, and John 3:16 is about confronting the fact that all life as we know it ends, everything we control, every relationship dies. The hard question, without easy answers that we face in Lent, is that: the very incarnation of God, that Gift God gave us in the innocence of a child at Bethlehem, would be the sacrifice on the cross, the atonement for our sins. Jesus was not simply a Messenger, or a Prophet, that most precious life, that which Jesus gave up Divinity to take on, was given to die. That someone would die for you, is overwhelming. We live in a culture of accomplishments and take pride in being self-made. While we have more guns in America than we have people, less than 1 in 10 of us are willing to serve defending one another’s freedoms. The idea that someone would sacrifice their life for us, would sacrifice everything for us, trying to satisfy our needs for us, is huge. For the Gospel of John, the Opposite of Faith is not Doubt, or Lack of Belief, the Opposite of Faith is Broken Trust, breaking the Covenant with God. God loves, that is who God is, but will we stay in covenant relationship, will we continue to love, or break trust? The weekend after Labor day 1996, Judy and I came to Skaneateles for the first time. The Committee had done their work in investigating us with interviews and reference checks. But that weekend, our first-time look each other eye to eye and face to face, the Committee began unveiling a more realistic picture of the Church. The building was in desperate need of repair; they had pledged a campaign, which might be repaid over 5 years, but that only paid the first 1/5 of what was needed. Like most the Northeast, the community had a large number of people who had left. There had been conflict, severe enough that the same people aligned together regardless of the issue, and part of that was related to old old secrets. The number of unresolved issues got to feel like the game JENGA, at what point are there too many issues stacked on top and the candidate is going to turn and run. Accept, while I don’t know about the other candidates, I did not turn and run. Instead I began making a list of everything that needed to be satisfied, believing, they know their issues, all I have to do is satisfy those, and we live happily ever after. Except over the years we came to understand people can never be satisfied, the church will never be satisfied. This last week, I was enrolled in a class that the Seminary now titles as Transitional Ministry, and they used a phrase that I have said over and over. We transitioned from one phase into the next into the next, never satisfied, never done. We had 4 years of building and repaying debt. We paused to reflect. We had 4 years of commissioning and expanding music, paying for that. Then debt-free, we shifted to missions: developing the food pantry ecumenically, rebuilding the Manor, sponsoring refugees, then developing Health care halfway around the world. The people of God with Moses complained, they were not satisfied with manna from heaven, with water from out of rocks, they complained, and they died! But God loved the people so much, God gave the people a reality check. Will you refuse to be satisfied, knowing that that way leads to death, as an Ending? Or will you look beyond and work through suffering, looking through death to the possibility of something greater? Moses made a symbol of their vision of death, and put it on a pole to hold up over the people, for the people to look on death, to name the reality of a death of relationships, a death of all we know, in order to believe in something we do not understand? There is an ethical dilemma “to knowing, to understanding.” If we understand, if we can know and choose, we are implicated in choosing what we will do. I heard the most marvelous story of a young family. The father was putting his 3 year old down for the night, having bathed him, and made a snack, three stories and a drink, it was finally time for lights out. But not wanting to be put to bed, as the parent reached for the light switch, the toddler screamed “I hate you!” And the parent stopped, and said, “I am sorry to hear that, because I love you.” Instead of reacting, with “I’m sorry Daddy, I love you to.” Or “It’s okay”… The child screamed all the more “Don’t say that!” The parent repeated, “But, it’s true, I love you” and the child screamed “I don’t want to hear that!” And the father said, “I am sorry, but I do love you. Whether you like it or not.” In the face of unconditional love, the child realized he was powerless. This is what we affirm at the Sacrament of Baptism, “We do not know all that life has in store for you, the challenges and careers and struggles are all a mystery to us. But no matter what, we will love you, making your joys our joys and your worries our worries, and your heartaches our heartaches.” The father could have equivocated, negotiating “I would love you if you laid down and went to sleep.” Or the parent could even just walk away without saying anything but the next night the child might have decided they did not want vegetables, or a bath. The father refused to negotiate, refused to make his love for his child conditional, that parent’s love could never be satisfied, all the child could do was accept or flee that love, and there was no where else to go.

"Foundations" March 4, 2018

Exodus 20: 1-17 John 2:13-22 What if, The 10 Commandments, Baptism, Marriage, Communion, Ordination, Worship, all that we think of as representing our Faith, were not our Highest Ideal, but the very Foundations, the root identity of our relationship with Christ? What if, The 10 Commandments, Baptism, Marriage, Communion, Worship, the Cross, represented a Foundational Counter-Cultural Challenge to our humanity? Regardless where it came from, as humans we have a desire for self-preservation and survival. We desire to take what we want. We have to be taught both not to bite, not to scream, not to covet what others have, and taught to share. We have natural lusts, and angers, and we must to be taught the limits of our roles, because without this, we would steal, and undermine relationships, and we could kill. These humans were the kind of creatures in chaos, God destroyed with the Flood. Slavery, is not only to use the abilities of another, but to break the spirit and the will. The Empire of the Pharaohs enslaved humanity as beasts of burden, as property for breeding, labor, power, slaves had no identity, no rights, they lived for Pharaoh. The origin of our English Word: Lynching, comes from Charles Lynch, founder of Lynchburg, VA, who tried to break the will of offenders by floggings and executions. When God set the people free, they turned to Moses saying “You are now Pharaoh, tell us what to do, tell us how to live, give us food and water.” The Commandments provide a counter-cultural foundation to form a different people. A people not focused on self-preservation, but on relationship to God. A people who treat God as unique and holy, to be worshiped and loved. A people who did not treat every day as disposable as every other, but stopped regularly, to reflect and recognize how blessed we are to live with God. A people who did not rebel against and attempt to kill or abandon their ancestors, but honor their parents. A people who did not commit violence against others for sex, or belongings; who value the truth and will not lie Who treat neighbor as extension of your world. What a stark difference, to having it all, winning at all costs, living life for today only! Yet, as human beings, just as it has taken me several minutes, to describe and having to describe, that the Ten Commandments are Counter-Cultural to our Natural World, we have difficulty passing on the idea of contrast. In order to protect ideas from one generation to another, we institutionalize and make Laws not only to preserve what we think are our ideals, but Laws to protect Laws. And we use shame and isolation, ostracizing, intimidation, as means of protecting our institutions. The Gospel of John begins with this beautiful prologue about Jesus’ relationship to God and to the world, as having existed with God before time and space, being one with us, and one with God in perfect communion. Jesus is Baptized by John and begins his ministry with John’s Disciples… Then in the Second Chapter Jesus goes to a Wedding and on the Sabbath to Worship. Could there be two more foundational acts? Is this important to the Gospel? The author identifies this as “On the 3rd Day” the first and only occasion other than Easter’s resurrection where the day is identified as “On the 3rd Day.” In contrast to Chapter 1, where we have the eloquent poetry of In the Beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God; in the Second Chapter there is a shift to the expectations and reactions and shame of people. Just as today, the focus of events at a Wedding are not about the Couple or their Marriage, but about The Reception. There is a scandal, because the affair has only just begun and they have already run out of wine! Can you imagine the gossiping that was going to follow in the Square? “What a terrible wedding, they did not even have enough wine! How can you toast the couple, how can you wish them well, or offer blessings, if there is no wine!” Forever after, they would be remembered as being the couple whose friends and family did not care enough even to provide wine to toast them. Now recognize, Jesus did not simply turn water into wine, there were SIX Stone Jars there for the Rite of Purification, but that rite having been done, the Stone Jars like the Wine, were exhausted. The Miracle of this story is not only about the Quality of the Wine, but the Super-Abundance; where there was limitation, emptiness, now there is more than could ever be exhausted. And despite Jesus saying “Tell No One” you know what was said in the Market, the following day… “What an amazing way to begin married life, after it seemed everything they had was exhausted, the best was yet to come! That is a Marriage blessing! Surely God will bless this couple for generations.” At the time Jesus was in Judea and Galilee, Worship of God was no longer about our Communion with God, honoring God, or reflection upon what God has done; instead Religion required that to atone for your sins you had to pay a sacrifice. Traveling a long distance to come to the Temple, people did not have a bull or sheep with them. So Religion became institutionalized as the raising and selling of animals. Because the Temple was located within a State occupied by the Greeks, now part of the Roman Empire, to buy an animal for sacrifice you first had to convert your Roman and Greek Currency to Jewish Currency to buy an animal for sacrifice. Imagine the stock yards of pigeons, sheep, goats and cows, the smells and sounds, all being raised to pay for your sins. According to Matthew, Mark and Luke, this is the final event causing Jesus to be arrested, he challenged the authorities of religion. Here in John it is one of the first, identifying that Jesus’ Foundation was challenging the basic precepts of what we believe and do and why. In America today, one of the most threatening issues, is how many people are addicted and die from heroin and opioids. Coming home last week, I heard an article on NPR identifying that challenges our basic assumptions, during the Vietnam War 20% of the Troops were using drugs and there were fears of what would happen when they returned home. Yet, the incidence of continued use was exceedingly rare. What the researchers found was that the opposite of Addiction was not Sobriety/ Purity: be it to Opioids, Heroin, Alcohol, Porn, Gambling. Addictions all correlated to isolation and loneliness. As human beings we have a need for something in our lives, if shamed and alone, isolated, we turn to one of these vices. But the opposite of Addiction is: community, connection, what we call Communion.