Sermons

Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost by The Rev. Martin Elfert

Posted on October 14, 2018October 18, 2018 by gracememorialpdx

Oct. 14, 2018

Lessons:

Amos 5:6-7,10-15
Psalm 90:12-17
Hebrews 4:12-16
Mark 10:17-31

The blogger and comedian Gaby Dunn talks about engaging in a do-it-yourself social experiment. Dunn’s experiment involved going up to strangers in coffee shops and other public contexts and saying:

Can I ask you two questions?

Most folks said “yes,” and so Dunn began. Her first question (and forgive me in advance if this is a little raunchy for church – you can plug your ears if you want, or you can plug your neighbour’s ears) was:

What is your favourite sexual position?

What Dunn discovered is that, by and large, folks responded to that question with enthusiasm, not only giving her an answer but volunteering a reason for their answer. The strangers would say to Dunn, O, my favourite position is this – and here’s why…

The first question completed – and sometimes it took a while for folks to tell Dunn everything that they wanted to share, they liked this question a lot – the strangers energetically asked Dunn:

What’s the second question?

And so Dunn asked them:

How much money is in your bank account?

This is the point at which folks became shocked and appalled. They couldn’t believe that Dunn would have the rashness, the uncouthness, the rudeness to ask such a personal question. This was the moment, if we lived in another era, in which the strangers would have slapped Dunn with a glove and said:

How dare you, Madam! I challenge you to a duel.

How fascinating.

We talk sometimes about how nothing is taboo anymore, about how we can now say or print anything, about how we can show anything on TV. But that’s not actually true. There are some taboos today that did not exist 20 or 50 years ago, and often we are richer for that. A generation or two ago, smoking was a marker of sophistication: today it is a marker of poor judgment. That’s probably mostly a good thing. And then there are other taboos – like the taboo around talking about money – that persist and remain powerful.

I’m not convinced that the taboo against talking about money is so healthy.

Here in the church we more or less mirror the culture around us when it comes to talking about money. (I would venture that virtually all of us in this room participate in this taboo to a significant extent. I tell you what: if you don’t participate in this taboo, just shout out how much money is in your bank account.) Talking about money is something we’d just rather not do. Sometimes we even feel more strongly than that, sometimes we feel like money is something we ought not to talk about.

And like a lot of taboos, the emotion that we feel around this monetary taboo is simultaneously vague and powerful. We will say, often with a bunch of intensity but usually without a whole lot explanation, I just feel like that money is something that is private. I remember a number of years ago at the Cathedral in Vancouver when a fellow parishioner, in a state of anger and annoyance and agitation said to me:

The church should not talk about money.

Ever.

I suspect that this taboo – inarticulate and powerful as it is – is the reason that so many Episcopalians kind of dread the fall financial stewardship campaign in their parishes, a campaign that we are starting here at Grace today. The campaigns are either boring because the leaders choose to honour the taboo and never end up talking about anything real. Or they feel kind of dangerous because the leaders choose not to honour the taboo, and we’re not sure what to do with that.

In case it’s not obvious, our financial campaign this year will be in the dangerous category.

However. My hope is that the campaign will also prove to be spiritually rewarding and maybe even fun.

Here’s the curious thing. We in church who participate in this taboo are disciples of Jesus, we are followers of Jesus. And Jesus, our teacher and model? Well, he doesn’t participate in this taboo at all. Jesus talks about money early and often and openly.

In Matthew 5:42, Jesus says when people want to borrow money, you should go ahead and lend it to them. Later on in the same book, Jesus says we ought not to store up riches on earth, but to store up riches in heaven. In Luke, in the story that we call the Good Samaritan, Jesus’ definition of a neighbour is the one who generously makes their resources – including all of their financial resources – available to someone in need. Elsewhere in Luke, he says that you and I cannot serve both God and money.

And here today in Mark, Jesus encounters a man. A rich guy who asks him a question: What must I do to inherit eternal life? This is a question, by the way, that for our ancient ancestors does not mean, “How do I get into heaven?” It means something more like, How do I participate with my whole life in what you are doing, Jesus? Eternal life, the age to come, is what happens, as the Lord’s Prayer has it, when things on earth are as they are in heaven.

Jesus answers the rich guy’s question:

You know the commandments.

Don’t murder. Don’t commit adultery. Don’t steal. Don’t lie. Don’t defraud.

Wait a minute. “Don’t defraud”? That isn’t one of the commandments, is it? There is a verse in Leviticus that says something like “don’t defraud,” but it sure isn’t chiseled onto the stone that Moses brought with him down from the mountain. Jesus is doing some on the fly editing of scripture here.

When he does that there is usually something important going on for us to notice.

Jesus says all these things and the rich guy responds: I’ve kept all of those commandments since I was young.

And then the text says that Jesus loved him. This, by the way, is the only time in the whole Gospel of Mark that scripture says that Jesus loved anybody. Apparently, Jesus is moved in a big way by speaking to this man. So he says to him:

Sell everything you have. Give it to the poor. And follow me.

And the guy does what I would probably do and, maybe, what you would do if Jesus said the same thing me. He goes away grieving.

For he has a lot of stuff.

Then our Lord looks around at his friends and he utters what might be my favourite Jesus zinger, my favourite Jesus one-liner in all of scripture: It is easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to get into the Kingdom of God.

Now, maybe I’ve just answered my own question. Maybe I have actually just explained why most American Christians, like most of the rest of our culture, don’t want to talk about money out loud. Because the way that Jesus talking right now? This is kind of squirm-inducing stuff. Jesus sure appears to be saying that being rich isn’t very good for you. Jesus’ implication sure appears to be that, just by being wealthy, by being on the rich side of what we would today call the income divide or wealth divide or, to use another contemporary economic term, by having equity that is working harder then labour, this man – and by extension you and me – are defrauding our fellow children of God. We are breaking God’s commandments, and therefore we are doing damage to our souls.

I don’t know what we do with a message like that in America, where being rich is everything, where being a winner while other people lose is everything.

If we take this passage seriously (and a number of our fellow Christians have worked pretty hard not to take it seriously – the same folks who will tell you that 1 Timothy’s prohibition on women teaching or holding authority over a man is eternal and universal will tell you that Jesus’ instruction to the rich man is only about that rich guy, not about you or me; and even those of us who don’t make that argument are likely to rationalise that we aren’t really rich because there are other people who have more stuff than us) then what does that mean as we embark upon this year’s financial stewardship campaign?

Well, there are probably, assuredly a number of answers to that question. But I’m just going to explore two. First (and maybe this is obvious, but I think it bears saying out loud), the example of Jesus is that money is something that disciples talk about directly and honestly and in an unvarnished way. Maybe – and let’s try this idea on – one of the things that Jesus wants us to know if that money is too unimportant to be a secret. We give something big power in our lives when we refuse to discuss it. Let’s not, Jesus says, give money that kind of power.

Second – and this is where I am going to spend a little more time – Jesus’ teaching, his example, is that how we spend our money is a spiritual exercise that shapes our capacity to participate fully in the Kingdom of God.

Whether or not we reckon that Jesus’ words today are directed at you and me, whether or not we think that he is really telling you and me to sell everything and give it to the poor (and let’s be clear, there have been Christians, like St. Francis and his friends, whom we remembered a couple of weeks ago, who figured that these words absolutely did apply to them), what is clear is that the Western way of clutching on to money and stuff, of living lives of anxious scarcity as opposed to lives of holy generosity, comes at a cost to our souls.

When we clutch on to material possessions and money, when we store up treasures on earth rather than in heaven, our hands become too full and too clenched to hold the Kingdom of God. They become too full and too clenched to be Jesus’ hands and feet in this world, to participate in building the Kingdom of God.

So.

There is a thread. A thread that goes back into the past, way back to Jesus, way back before that to the beginning of time, when God created and said:

It is good. It is good. It is good.

For most of us, for all of us, the thread passes into the clouds and out of sight long, long before its beginning. Maybe as far back as we can see is 100 years or so, back to the place where people whom we know and loved walked and whose stories we have heard.

100 years or so ago at Grace, some people had a holy vision – a vision for a church building in this place. And so a woman by the name of Angeline Berry made a gift. Through that gift, she was for a while the hands and feet of Christ in this world. So many people have benefited from her ministry, we are the beneficiaries of her ministry to this day. In the 1980s, some folks at this parish decided to stretch their financial resources and purchase the parking lot outside. For a while, those folks were the hands and feet of Christ in this world. So many people have benefited from her ministry, we are the beneficiaries of her ministry to this day. Around the same time, Bobbi Anderson’s family made the gift that made this stage or platform that the altar sits on possible. How many people’s theology has been shaped by having the altar in our midst rather than way back there? For a while, Bobbi’s family were the hands and feet of Christ in this world. So many people have benefited from her ministry, we are the beneficiaries of her ministry to this day.

None of these people – let’s be clear about this – bought God’s love through their gifts. God loved them unreservedly no matter what. Rather, through their gifts, they participated in God’s love, responded to God’s love.

And then we come to here. This amazing moment that we call now. This is the moment when, if you and I want, we can be Christ’s hands and feet in this world for a while. If we want, we can, with God’s help, shape what happens further down the thread. Perhaps one day – 10 years from now, 100 years from now, further down the thread – someone will say your name and say thank you.

In a month’s time you and I will be invited to make a pledge to Grace. Between now and then, we will be engaging in a spiritual practice together, a time of discernment together. We’ll be reflecting on questions about how we have experienced God’s generosity, about how we spend and save and give money, about how we want to spend and save and give money, about being Christ’s hands and feet in this world.

On November 11^th, our discernment will end as we bring our pledge cards to the altar. This year as we do so, our pledge cards will look slightly different than in years past. There will be a check box on the card that says: This is a proportional gift. That statement is deliberately ambiguous. For me, when I check that box, it will mean that our family has made a tithe to the church. I have a gross salary of approximately $80,000 a year, and so our family’s pledge will be $8,000. Phoebe has income and we tithe that as well to God’s work outside of this parish.

I am aware that the subject of tithing leaves some of you here grinding your teeth. I am aware of that because you have told me. But I would be remiss not to talk about tithing. Friends, the tithe has become one of the most rewarding parts of our family’s spiritual practice. It is a way of making sure that our first fruits go to God, it is a way, as my friend Caroline McCall puts it, to stop haggling with God about how much God’s church is worth to us. Should I give what I gave last year? Should I give three times what I give to me alma mater? That’s not discernment. As Steve Lovett, our Senior Warden says, that’s just math.

Regardless, I encourage you to find your way to a place where you can check that box. Where your gift, in a way that makes sense to you, is proportionate to your income, to your spending, to your wealth, or to something else.

If your experience is anything like mine, a proportional gift will change your relationship with God. It will help the parish, yes. Imagine what this parish could do if we all became proportional gives, let alone if we all became tithers! We could dream big. But more importantly, a proportional gift will open your hands. It will declare that your money doesn’t own you. It will free you up to be Christ’s hands and feet in the world.

Jesus is a lot like Gaby Dunn. He will talk to you directly about money. He will ask you how much money is in your bank account. This fall, may you and I discern a gift to God’s church that, when Jesus’ question comes, will allow us to go away from him not like the rich guy, not grieving but, rather, will allow us to go forth rejoicing.

String or thread going into the past
Opportunity to shape reality and to shape ourselves
Tithe – I’m not ashamed to ask you for one; I know this bothers some of us
Series of questions, encountered by lay people and by you and me
Done haggling with God
Pledge card – proportional gift
Relationship with money that will leave us not going away from Jesus grieving but, rather, allow us to go away rejoicing

Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost by Rachel Sanborn

Posted on October 7, 2018October 12, 2018 by gracememorialpdx

Oct. 7 2018

Lessons:

Genesis 2:18-24
Psalm 8
Hebrews 1:1-4; 2:5-12
Mark 10:2-16

The Feast of St. Francis of Assisi, Blessing of the Animals by The Rev. Martin Elfert

Posted on September 30, 2018October 5, 2018 by gracememorialpdx

Sept. 30, 2018

Lessons:

I’ve been struggling these past few days. Maybe you have been struggling too.

Watching and listening to and reading about Thursday morning’s hearings was hard. Witnessing the kind of pain we saw on Thursday morn, the kind of grief that we saw, the kind of anger that we saw, the kind of trauma that we saw; well, I think that many of us paid a price for our witness.

I know that many of us paid a price for our witness.

I am not a survivor of sexual violence. I know that there are survivors here this morning. And I know that all of us have survivors whom we love in our immediate network. I don’t know what to say except I’m sorry. As paltry as that is, I am sorry that these past few days have touched such profound wounds in so many lives.

The price that we paid for watching these hearings was magnified for me and maybe for you by the deep mistrust and even contempt that it is apparent that many of our elected officials feel for one another and that many of our fellow citizens feel for one another. The marriage researchers, John Gottman and his spouse and collaborator Julie Gottman, have learned that contempt is the most consistent and reliable predictors of a divorce. What does this kind of mutual contempt mean for our country?

I realised how much all of this was weighing on me when I got up on Friday morning in a state of amorphous anxiety and anger. I was pissed off at nothing, at everything. I felt like I had been mainlining the news, that the reports out of Washington were an IV running directly into my arm and leaving me dangerously off-balance. On Friday morning, it felt like losing my keys or stubbing my toe might be the sort of thing that would be too much, that would leave me shouting and my hands shaking.

I remembered the scene in that movie About a Boy, in which a single Mom, played by the incomparable Toni Collette, is unable to fit a dish into her kitchen cupboard. And so she just begins to sob.

What do we do with an experience like this? How do you encounter it and not feel despair? How, in particular, do we encounter it as church?

Here’s what I don’t want to do. I don’t want to regurgitate something that you have heard elsewhere, somewhere outside of church, except dressed up in religious language. There is a quip from maybe 50 years ago that the Episcopal Church was the Republican Party at prayer. Here on the West Coast in 2018, our danger is almost the opposite, our danger is in becoming the Democratic Party at prayer – and the left wing of the party at that.

That’s not any better.

When a preacher, when a Christian, takes pre-existing taking points and then proof texts them with the Bible, when they enlist Jesus to back up whatever they were already going to say – that’s something that I have probably done, that I have assuredly done – well, we fail as disciples when we do that.

Here’s what I’d like to do instead. I’d like us to notice that this is the day when the church is full of an unusual number of furry parishioners, the day when we talk about and celebrate St. Francis. On occasion of shared hurt, I’d like to wonder about what this gentle Saint from the town of Assisi might have to teach us.

Generally speaking, we don’t spend a whole lot of time remembering Saints these days. Gone is the time when Feast Days were a big part of our shared life, when an English village would turn into something like a carnival when the Feast of St. Lydia or St. Stephen or whoever came along.

But Francis remains kind of a big deal. You see his statue in a lot of places, including Grace’s own garden. And on this day, we move his readings from mid-week to a Sunday in order to specially remember him. (That practice, by the way, while widespread is authorised nowhere in the Book of Common Prayer. This is a total deviation from the rules.)

Why do we do it? Is this just kind of harmless fun?

Maybe it is that. There is something wonderful about the prayers of the people when the congregational response includes a few barks. But I think that there is more than that going on. I think that this is a day that reminds us of who God is, of what God is like, and of what God thinks about us.

Every now and again, you’ll encounter one of those bumper stickers that says Dog is my co-pilot. And I have at least one friend who finds those stickers offensive or blasphemous.

But actually, I think that they might be okay theology.

What if the love with which a dog looks at the members of its family is a lot like the love with which God looks at you and me?

I have heard folks say that what they value so much about their pets is that their pets love them unconditionally. But as a theologian observed a while back, putting the word unconditional before the word love is actually a redundant. Love that is conditional isn’t love at all: that’s just approval. Genuine love is without limit or constraint. That is the kind of love that God has for you and me. We see that love made manifest in our pets.

In this season of hurt, know that you are loved. You are loved absolutely and without reservation.

Maybe that is a platitude. But it’s also true. And Francis knew that it is a truth that, should we come to believe it, should we come to trust in it, will change everything. Imagine what the world would look like if we all knew ourselves, knew in our bones, that we are God’s beloved children, and that our neighbours are equally beloved.

Francis was not, is not, a naïve saint. He knew about suffering, he lived in poverty, he worked for justice. Late in his life, he received the stigmata, the wounds of Christ. His body bore the hardship of being alive, of risking love. But he also was and is a saint who knows that this life is so, so beautiful. And that Jesus is with us every step of the way, whispering God’s love our ears, challenging us to grow in faith and in compassion, to grow not so that God might love us, but to grow because God loves us.

We have big work to do. Big work as individuals, as a parish, as a county, as a human family, as a family of all of God’s creatures. If we are to do that work, the work of bringing justice nearer, of bringing the Kingdom of God nearer, we need the strength of God’s love. We need to voice of Jesus, which never ceases to say:

You are loved, you are loved, you are loved.

Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost by The Rev. Martin Elfert

Posted on September 23, 2018October 2, 2018 by gracememorialpdx

September 23, 2018

Lessons:

Jeremiah 11:18-20
Psalm 54
James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a
Mark 9:30-37

A professor emeritus from the University of British Columbia by the name of Dennis Danielson has taken on an unusual retirement project. Danielson decided to examine curricula and student handbooks from educational institutions across Canada.

Danielson reviewed these documents looking for a particular word. Late in his career, he had started noticing that this word was appearing over and over. And he had a hunch that he would find it similarly repeated across the nation. The word that he did indeed find in one context after another was the word inappropriate.

Certain conduct when writing an essay is inappropriate, certain conduct when interacting with your fellow students is inappropriate, certain conduct when interacting with your professors is inappropriate.

Prior to his retirement, Danielson was a professor of literature. He was and is, like me and like many people in this room, someone who loves words. And he was and is, also like me and like many people in this room, someone who knows that words play a huge role in creating our understanding of reality. How we tell a story plays a huge in creating reality.

When we use the word waterboarding – waterboarding sounds like some kind of sport, like it might be fun – to describe simulated drownings that sometimes turn into actual drownings, that shapes how we think about the actions of our country. When we use the term collateral damage to talk about accidentally killing civilians in a bombing raid, that shapes how we think about war. When we talk about an allegation of sexual violence and our words focus primarily the harm that might be done to the alleged perpetrator’s future or how the incident in question happened decades in the alleged perpetrator’s past rather than on the trauma of his victim, those words shape how we think about justice.[1]

Danielson’s thesis is that the educational documents he reviewed are doing something similar, that their heavy use of inappropriate in lieu of words that would have been common a generation or two ago – words like wrong or immoral or in a church context, sin – is shaping how we think about right behaviour, about just behaviour, about loving behaviour.

Inappropriate is a word that has a bland, conditional, equivocal, punch-pulling flavour to it. “Plagiarising your essay is inappropriate” is a seriously different and seriously weaker statement than “plagiarising your essay is wrong.” “Engaging in vicious gossip is inappropriate” is a seriously different and seriously weaker statement than “Engaging in vicious gossip is immoral.”

Now, I understand how we got to where we are. (I think I can safely use the word “we” here – while Danielson’s study focuses on Canadian educational contexts, but my guess is that it is not a stretch to say that American syllabi and employee manuals newspaper articles use inappropriate as early and as often as Canadian contexts.) Words like wrong and immoral and sin have a pretty long history of being used in a poisonous way, especially here within the church.

I have an acquaintance who says that it is almost impossible for her to hear the word should (as in, “you should clean up your room”) without all of the guilt of her conservative church upbringing crashing over her like a wave. That’s not an accident. These words are used by people in positions of power – people like pastors – to induce shame and the off balance state and the compliance that comes with shame.

These words are used as well to shut down debate. “Homosexuality is wrong” is a statement that doesn’t invite a whole lot of conversation. Or let’s track back a generation or five: “Women having the vote is wrong” or “Ending slavery is wrong.” How do we respond to statements like that?

I guess what I’m saying is that I get the instinct to excise these words from our vocabulary. Reaching for inappropriate early and often, by and large, is a choice that comes from a place of good intention.

However, it is also a mistake.

One of the most important things that the GLBTQ community and that other marginalised communities have taught to me is that we are not required to cede the meaning of words to anyone, including to people with power or privilege. The GLBTQ community has said, for instance, that we refuse to allow words referring to gay men to be insults or to be diagnoses. That is not and must not be cannot be what those words mean.

Inspired by my GLBTQ friends, I’ve wanted to ask the question: Do we want to cede control of church words and/or moral words to people who use them in a screwed up way? Does evangelism need to mean aggressively pushing your faith on people who just wish you would get off of their porch? What if that word meant loving Jesus so much and finding so much freedom and joy and meaning in following Jesus that you want everyone to have what you have found?

And could words like should, like wrong, like immoral (or for that matter right or moral or grace) function not as triggers for shame, not as devices for shutting down debate, not as perpetuators of patriarchy but, rather, as catalysts for moral clarity?

The problem with inappropriate and its wishy-washiness is that all but invites one of the great rejoinders of our time:

That’s just your opinion.

Whatever the moral question is that may be before us, your response to it is just your opinion, it is one opinion amongst many, all of which are equally valid. And sometimes that’s okay, I guess. But sometimes it really isn’t.

I remember vividly my professor when I was in first-year university doing a thought experiment with our class. Imagine, he said, that there are a row of babies sitting on the floor, babies of every gender, every colour, every everything. And now imagine that I walked down the row of babies, kicking each one in the head.

Would any of you think that was okay?

No! Kicking babies is wrong. It is evil. That is not just my opinion. Such an action would be categorically, unequivocally evil.

Taking children away from their parents at the border is wrong. Selling guns that meet three-quarters of the test for being assault rifles to the general public is wrong. Snipers gunning down unarmed protesters as they near the Gaza Strip border is wrong. The way that human beings treat God’s creation is wrong. Allowing people to sleep on the streets of Portland because the rest of us more or less like things how they are is wrong. Marching through the streets of America with a Nazi flag and a Tiki torch is wrong.

In his marvellous sermon last week, Corbet talked about Jesus as teacher and, in particular, about Jesus as asker of questions – sometimes a great teacher will ask a question that just opens everything up, that changes everything. This week we see Jesus using another tactic of the great teacher, and that is he employs the strong moral language that we have been talking about, accompanied by a strong moral image.

Sometimes Jesus says to us, to his students, You brood of vipers not You people who are behaving inappropriately.

So, the disciples are walking along. Jesus has just told them that following him means taking up their crosses, but they have no idea what this means. We know that they have no idea because the text says so – they did not understand what he was saying. We also know that they have no idea because, talk of the cross notwithstanding, they start arguing about which one of them is the greatest. James says to Peter: I am way more holy than you. And Peter says: Are not. To which James replies: Am so.

Are not. Am so. Are not. Am so.

And Jesus interrupts them and he says:

What are you guys talking about?

And they immediately clam up. They are like, O crap. He heard us.

Jesus, of course, knows exactly what they were talking about. And so he says:

Sit down.

They sit down and Jesus sits in the middle of them. And he says: Whoever wants to be first must be last. Not “it would be appropriate for the first to be last,” not “This is just my opinion, but maybe the first could be last.” But the first must, must be last.

And then a child runs into his arms. And the two of them sit there for a moment, in the middle of the disciples, Jesus holding the little girl or boy.

Whoever welcomes this child welcomes me.

So, whoever welcomes the one without power or status or money or fancy words, welcomes me. And this teaching is underscored by where Jesus and the child sit, here in the middle of the circle of disciples. Is this the place where the teacher sits? Maybe it is. But remember that Jesus has just been talking about the cross, so maybe the circle represents something else. Because the middle of the circle is where the one who gets stoned by the mob stands, it is where the first martyr, Stephen, will die in a few years’ time. The symbol backs up the words: I am with those on the margins, I am with those who suffer violence. If you are my disciples, you must be here too, you should be here too.

The institutional church has worked pretty hard to make words like wrong and immoral and sin refer overwhelmingly to sexuality and then to make that into a source of shame. But the example of Jesus is that sin refers to something way more important than that. Maybe we could venture that sin is another way of saying selfishness. Sin is refusing to be last, refusing to serve. Sin is when we abandon Jesus and the child in the middle of the circle. It is when we say that I am safe where I am and I’m going to stay here.

We need words that talk about our calling, about our mortal duty as disciples. These words have been used in defence of a bent theology. But we don’t need to let that bent theology own them.

It is wrong, it is immoral, it is a sin to hang back on the edge of the circle. It is right to stand with Jesus, that is something that we should do. It is right to stand with the child, to be Jesus’ arms and hands holding that child within this hurting world. And here is the good news: when we say yes to that calling, when we risk stepping into the middle of the circle with Jesus, when we risk becoming last, we will find God’s freedom not only for that child but God’s freedom for ourselves.

[1] This argument is profoundly indebted to George Orwell’s Politics and the English Language.

Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost by The Rev. Corbet Clark

Posted on September 16, 2018September 20, 2018 by gracememorialpdx

Sept. 16, 2018

Lessons:

Isaiah 50:4-9a
Psalm 116:1-8
James 3:1-12
Mark 8:27-38

I’m feeling a little strange so far this Fall, because this is the first Fall in thirty-five years that I haven’t been working in a school. I’m so used to the rhythm of school – of the school year and the school day. I realize that much of my identity is bound up in being a teacher. So now that I’m officially retired from teaching high school I’ve been doing a lot of reflection about teaching and learning, and what it means for me to be an educator at this point in my life.
It’s been discouraging in recent years to read about the various ways that the status of
teaching in this country has declined, which includes the low compensation that many teachers receive. Good education is expensive, but bad education is even more expensive, in terms of its negative impact on the potential of our young people.

But I suspect I don’t need to convince all of you of this – there are so many educators among us. What I’d like to do is to consider teaching and learning from a divine perspective and to suggest that education, the activity of teaching and learning, is essentially a divine activity and something that both reveals God’s nature and that draws us closer to God.

I’ve been thinking I would like to talk about education, so I was pleased that this week’s readings are all about teaching – did you notice that? Isaiah talking about the powerful gift of teaching that God has given him, and James talking about the powerful responsibility of teaching, since it can be used for both good and evil. And in the gospel lesson today we have a perfect example of Jesus as teacher – I want to come back to this.

The themes of teaching and learning are everywhere in the Hebrew scriptures and Jewish tradition. Torah, the Jewish law, is not law in the simple sense of “do this, don’t do this.” It’s really a guide for how people are meant to live their lives, in order that they, and the whole community, can come closer to God and understand God’s nature. At its heart is a process of dialogue, both with God and with one another, that leads to understanding and right action. The Jewish tradition of Wisdom (or Sophia) builds on this idea and focuses not so much on wisdom as an intellectual concept as on the everyday practices of life that draw one closer to God.

The ancient Greeks had a parallel understanding of education which, though it’s secular
rather than religious, has much the same goal. The Greeks called this paideia 1, and it meant the education of young people to be good citizens of society, focusing not just on intellectual growth but on all aspects of life (including, for example, the athletic). It was practical and community-oriented, as in the Jewish Wisdom tradition.

If there is a Christian Paideia, a divine education, what does it look like? In the first place, it is fundamentally relational – based on the relationship between teacher and learner, a relationship that reflect that between God and believer. If you think about your own education and teachers who had the greatest influence on you, they were probably those you had a strong, positive relationship with, built over time. Learning in the Jewish tradition is a process of dialogue, of conversation, of give and take among people who are searching for the truth together and are open to new understandings.

This divine education is also fundamentally challenging: it challenges our easy assumptions, our prejudices and narrow preconceptions in order to draw us to a broader vision of reality. It draws us out of our focus on self and opens us to seeing in new ways. In this way it aims to be transformative, to invite us to grow into the people that God wants us to become, and to help the community grow and change in the process.

And in this process, divine education is liberating: in freeing us from self-absorption, opening our eyes to a broader vision of things, helping us overcome our prejudices, it strengths our identity and gives us courage to undertake new challenges.

We can see this at work in today’s Gospel lesson. Jesus’ engagement with his disciples is
built on friendship and trust. Most of the stories of Jesus teaching are not about him lecturing but telling stories and then inviting people to ponder what he says. In this episode, he draws his friends into conversation and asks questions. “Who do people say that I am,” he asks, and they respond – it’s clear they have been thinking about this. Then, in response to “Who do you say that I am,” they answer “the Messiah.” They have drawn their own conclusion, but they still don’t understand fully.

He challenges what seems like an obvious answer and points them to a more difficult truth: the path that lies ahead entails suffering and death. They don’t want to hear it, but he demands that they listen. This invites the process of transformation, of them becoming more the disciples that God is calling them to be. And we know they were transformed, to become a community of visionaries who could carry on the work of the Kingdom.

Okay, you’re thinking, that sounds great, but I’m not an educator. But if teaching and
learning is really a divine process, that leads us closer to God, then it’s something we should all be engaged in, one way or another.

There are those who are formally engaged in Christian Paideia – church school teachers and youth group leaders and Bible study teachers – but all of us have the opportunity to engage others in conversation, to help others reflect on their experience, or to introduce them to new practices we find helpful, or to help newcomers feel at home in the community. And each of us has the opportunity to take on the challenge of learning, of broadening our own understanding and being willing to try new practices, even when they are hard. God is calling us to continuous growth and transformation.

I’m not sure how I will continue to be an educator now that I’m retired from teaching, but I hope I will be open to new possibilities, to continue to deepen my own conversation with God.

The Rev. D. Corbet Clark

1 “ Training of the physical and mental faculties in such a way as to produce a broad enlightened mature outlook harmoniously combined with maximum cultural development.” (Merriam-Webster)

Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost by The Rev. Martin Elfert

Posted on September 9, 2018September 12, 2018 by gracememorialpdx

Sept. 9, 2018

Lessons:

Isaiah 35:4-7a
Psalm 146
James 2:1-10-17
Mark 7:24-37

A couple of minutes ago we listened to part of a letter written by James, an epistle that today might be most famous for reputedly really annoying Martin Luther.

Those of you who know a little bit about Lutheran theology, who have hung out with Lutherans even briefly, will likely have heard about Luther’s vigorous objection to what he and other theologians called works righteousness. Works righteousness is the notion that I can buy my way into heaven, in this case not with money, but with good deeds. So, when I serve at the Friday Feast or engage in some other act of generosity or compassion, I am paying into a cosmic bank account – or, if you are into roleplaying games – I am accumulating the experience points that eventually will allow me to level up into salvation.

Luther – following in the example of Jesus – did the important work of reminding us that works righteousness isn’t and never was the Gospel. You cannot buy your way into God’s good books. Not with cash, cheques, credits cards, or bitcoins: remember from history class that the thing that got Luther into so much trouble with the institutional church was his critique of indulgences, with his insistence that you cannot pay off God. And not with good behaviour: God is not Santa Claus, God is not watching to see whether you are naughty or nice and deciding whether to reward or punish you accordingly.

The story goes that, because Luther was so on guard against works righteousness, because searching out works righteousness was a huge part of the lens that he looked through when he read the Bible or a theological commentary, when Luther got to James and this line about faith without works being dead, steam started to come out of his ears. No, no, no! Luther said (or the German 16^th-Century equivalent thereof). He pounded the table and said, James is making it sound like faith and everything good and holy that flows out of it is contingent on something that human beings do. But that’s not true. It’s not about human beings. It’s about God!

In the first introduction that Luther wrote to own translation of the New Testament, he declared that James is a “really strawy epistle,” and that “it has nothing of the Gospel about it.”

What I’d like to suggest this morning is that Luther was write about the Gospel, right about Jesus – indeed, you cannot buy your way into heaven – but wrong about James. When James says that faith without works is dead, he means something different and harder and better and more freeing.

Before I go any further, I am going to ‘fess up to some of my own theology. I believe that God’s love is relentless, that God is continually seeking out our hearts, that God never gives up on inviting us to freely choose to reciprocate and to live into the love that God has for us. And I believe that God’s pursuit of our hearts does not end when we die. You will sometimes hear folks argue that if you haven’t confessed that Jesus Christ is Lord before your dying breath, you are out of luck: it’s straight to hell for you.

I have more confidence in God than that, more faith in God than that. I don’t believe that God’s power is that small or that limited, I do not believe that God is constrained by death. My guess, my faith, is that even after death, God keeps on showing us the towering, infinite goodness and love that is the Trinity. And that when we encounter that love, we will eventually choose to say yes to it. I believe that the theologians got it more or less right when they wrote that the Christian is required to believe that there is a hell – but that they are not required to believe that anyone is there.

Now, let me acknowledge that the theology I just shared has two significant problems. First, it’s kind of unfair. And second, it obligates us to ask the question: if we’re all getting into heaven anyway, then what’s the point of going to church, what’s the point of being good?

Let’s look at each for a moment. First, is everybody getting into heaven totally unfair? Yes it is. Jesus is actually quiet clear about the unfairness of God. Remember the parable about the day labourers working in the vineyard? The master (whom, I am going to venture, Jesus intends for us to understand as God) goes out and finds folks and brings them into the vineyard to work. She says to the labourers, harvest my grapes and prune my vines and rake the ground, and I’ll give you a hundred and fifty bucks. And the labourers say, Okay.

Some of the labourers start at 8am. Some of the master doesn’t find until noon. And some of them she doesn’t find until quitting time. The 5pmers have no sooner walked into the vineyard than she says, The day’s over! Time to go home!

Everybody lines up to get paid. The last are the first in line. They get a hundred and fifty bucks. And when they see this, the labourers who started work at 8am begin rubbing their hands together. There is going to be some serious overtime! But then the labourers who started at noon also get a hundred and fifty bucks. And furrows start to appear on the brows of the 8amers. When it is their turn and the master gives them the promised fee, the flip out at the master. You hosed me! they say. I was here all day, picking your stupid grapes under the stupid sun! And now, this!

And the master says: But I gave you exactly what I promised you.

The 8amers are doing something totally human and totally understandable here. They are saying: I can’t enjoy the thing promised to me unless those who are less deserving than me get less. It’s not fair.

I can’t enjoy heaven unless those who lived in a way I don’t like are kept out. It’s not fair.

And what does the master say to our It’s not fair?

She says: You’re right. Here’s your hundred and fifty bucks.

It is exasperating when God behaves like this. This is either the worst news or the best news that there is. I’m not sure which.

Here’s the second problem: If the 5pmers are getting a hundred and fifty bucks, if the adulterer and the murderer and the most selfish rich person in the world are getting into heaven – if works righteousness doesn’t work – then what’s the point of all of my efforts? Why am I in church right now? I could be reading the New York Times or sleeping or eating eggs benedict. Why should I be generous or kind or loving when, like the Prodigal Son, God is going to welcome me home no matter what?

Let’s stop for a second and do a thought experiment. Imagine the most loving person whom you have ever known. That might be the person sitting beside you right now, it might be someone far away, it might be someone whom you knew long ago, someone who is now in heaven. You receive a card telling you that this person’s birthday is coming up and that you are invited to their party. You have an opportunity to attend and to give them a present.

Now imagine that I run into you while you are looking for that person’s present. You tell me what you are doing. And so I ask you a question:

If this person is as loving as you say, then they are going to love you no matter what. So why are you bothering to get them a present, why are you wasting your time going to their party when they are going to love you even if you don’t?

Friends, I think we all know that question is absurd. I don’t give the one I love a present or spend time with them in the hopes of buying something from them. This is not a transaction. I give them a gift because the gift is a symbol, it is an outward and visible sign of the love between us, because giving them a gift brings me joy, because it somehow transforms me.

When we freely choose to say yes to discipleship, we don’t show up in church because God needs us to show up in church, we don’t give glory to God because God needs our glory, we don’t serve the Lord because the Lord needs our service. We do these things – and we are at or beyond the limits of language here – because it’s what deep freedom looks like. Remember the vision in Revelation. Heaven looks like everyone gathered around the throne of the lamb, freely and joyously offering their praise.

My guess is that Luther tripped so hard over James because he accidentally read James’ intention backwards. When James says Faith without works is dead, he doesn’t mean, Do the works and then you’ll have faith. He means, When you have faith, you will automatically choose to do works, joyfully and freely. To put that another way, James is not saying:

You do good things: therefore you know that God loves you.

James is saying:

You know that God loves you: therefore you do good things.

He means that a living faith cannot help but invite us into loving service.

We are reading James on the very day that we are welcoming new members into the church. Avril Johnson would say that is not a coincidence. Here is James’ admonition against being excited and super welcoming when one of those members looks rich. And kind of indifferent when they don’t. James’ letter is almost 2000 years old but it could have been written last week.

This is real.

I am part of the team that administrates the budget at Grace, part of the team that is responsible for keeping then lights on and the rain out. And it is a terrible temptation to look at a new member and say:

That person looks like a solid pledger – I better make sure we do a good job of welcoming them. Unlike that other person.

James says: Don’t you do that. James says: Share the love of God with the same abandon that it has been shared with you. Share the unfair love of God, the love that is not and never was a transaction, with everyone, even if they can’t pay you back, maybe especially if they can’t pay you back.

I am not saying that pledging doesn’t matter. It does. What I am saying is that we pledge not in the hopes of making God love us but because God loves us and because doing so brings us holy joy. We go to church not in the hopes of making God love us because God loves us and because doing so brings us holy joy. We serve the Lord – however imperfectly – not in the hopes of making God love us because God loves us and because doing so brings us holy joy.

Maybe we could flip James’ statement around. Maybe Martin Luther would like it that way better. Instead of saying Faith without works is dead, maybe we could say:

When you have a living faith, you will do works that are full of joy, full of freedom, full of love, hull of justice, full of the Kingdom of God.

Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost by The Rev. Dick Toll

Posted on September 2, 2018September 7, 2018 by gracememorialpdx

Sept. 2, 2018

Lessons:

Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-9
Psalm 15
James 1:17-27
Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

Our lesson from Mark’s Gospel today is probably the most controversial of the teaching that Jesus gave to the people in the 1^st century. Why? Because it touched the nerve of religious law…the nerve of religious practice.

Thirty years ago I had the opportunity to spend some quality time with the Chief Archaeologist at the Rockefeller Museum in East Jerusalem. We spent good time together on several subjects and one of the subjects we talked about was animal bones. The old city of Jerusalem had gone through some major archaeological digs and of course there is always an interest in what ancient people ate. He said that sites of where the citizens of Jerusalem who lived near the Temple Mount were often sites where pig bones were dug up and were from the first century. But in the Galilee region very few pig bones were discovered. What that suggested to him was that the food laws of not eating pork were not being adhered to in Jerusalem while they were being honored 100 miles away in the Galilee region. In other words, the people in Jerusalem, probably including religious authorities, were violating the food laws while telling others to follow them. And, so, Jesus recognizes the hypocrisy and challenges the authorities in the teaching today. And it got him into a lot of trouble.

He challenges traditions and it threatened to undermine the authority of the Pharisee and Sadducees.

Then he called the crowd again and said to them, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand:…there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile, since it enters, not the heart but the stomach.”

What each of us is experiencing all the time, every moment of time, is what it means to be a human being. It is not what we eat that makes us human, it is what we smell, taste, hear, see, and touch that allows us to process how we are to act as a human being.

How do we develop as human beings? As a child, there are moments that we will never remember…the care of a mother or father…being held, nurtured, from the earliest of moments to our point of death where a loved one may hold our hand or touch our face and offer words of love and care as the last words we hear on this earth.

We are less than human when we loose sight of the other and spend all of our time and energy on our own self-needs. We in effect can destroy the good around us as well as that good within us. The word narcissism comes to mind.

As an individual, as a community, we are challenged to be human. To Love. To love God, to love our neighbor, to love ourselves…the Trinity of Love.

Keith Moore, a developmental psychologist who has studied infants for decades and is a very special friend of mine from St. Marks Cathedral in Seattle, has spent his career in understanding the development of children from infancy to three years of age and into adulthood. I asked him to comment on this scripture and the following comes from that conversation: “As human beings we develop from early infancy of seeing the other as like oneself. Our moral development is built on a realization, which begins in infancy and we probably experience it as parents as we watch our infant babies imitate us…like sticking out your tongue and your child responds to you by imitating you. We laugh because it is cute. The child laughs back and communication has occurred. They cannot see their own tongue or face yet they realize that your face and tongue are like their own and they copy. This ability can be shown in many facial gestures and even newborns. The implication that this innate “God given” ability to see the other like me is the root of all later understanding of moral development.”

When I was in seminary I remember reading about experiments that went on in Nazi Germany regarding how to perpetuate the super race that Nazi Germany saw themselves to be…the ultimate in white nationalism. They found the perfect people who represented for them all they could define within the culture. Men and women were paired to have children. It was like a manufacturing process. Men would impregnate many women and many children were born. They were raised without parents to become the super race of the Third Reich. The children were seldom held, did not receive nurture and did not feel loved. They were born to perpetuate the super race. After the war studies were done to define these children and their lack of development. It showed the lack of development in infancy and early childhood that are natural to adults who raise children in love and nurtured their growth.

We define ourselves and others as we receive gifts into our inner life that makes us human.

How do we receive these gifts into our lives? Primarily, through our five senses.

We have ears to hear, to listen to the other is such an important part of knowing the other and learning about ourselves.

We touch…we touch the other in order to share intimate moments and to allow ourselves to be touched by the other. I can remember when the passing of the peace in the liturgy of the church began in the 1960s. It was difficult for people to touch another person at that time. An interview on NPR yesterday with a POW that had been in the camp with Senator John McCain was asked how they survived. His answer was, “We held hands. We held each other.”

We taste…we have taste buds that help us to enjoy the food we eat, the wine we drink, the bread we eat. We share meals together. Community is formed around how we taste life with each other.

We see…we are able to look into the eyes of the other. We see beauty, we see terrible events that we do not want to remember, we look in a mirror and are often surprised at what we see, we see the other in ourselves, we see ourselves in the other.

We smell…we smell the very fragrance of creation. We breathe in the fresh air at the beach and smell the ocean. We smell the flowers in our garden, the food that we eat and we also smell the pollution that we smell in today’s world.

We know creation through all five senses.

And, then we speak to others out of our experiences and by doing so we share our inner thoughts, our inner struggles and our inner fears, our goodness, our badness, our own development and on and on and on as we share our lives with others.

And so the person of Jesus speaks to us today in the Gospel of Mark. He teaches us what is means to be human. He is able to touch people and they find healing. He tasted the food and bread with the crowds that he traveled with. He celebrated life with them…he rejoiced, he wept, he laughed, he challenged them.

He saw them as individuals who were on a journey of life and wanted them to know that God was with them on their journey.

He listened to their fears, their hopes, their confusions, their lack of understanding. As a reflection of the God of Creation, he used all of his five senses to relate to each of those who came to him. He modeled for them the very human aspects of life that is in relationship…..in relationship to the God of Creation…in relationship to neighbor…in relationship to his own inner self…all of it reflecting Love because Love is and always will be the reflection of God.

So here we are today. Sitting in a pew at Grace Memorial….listening to the One who challenges us to reflect our human life and not give in to the evil impulses that surround us and betray us. “For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come, fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within and they defile a person.”

We begin our lives in infancy in being able to know our own selves through how we are to know the other. We defile ourselves and the other by betraying ourselves as well as the other.

So it is true that by our fruits, we shall be known. What we do, what we say, how we live our lives so that others may know the meaning of life because we have learned it for ourselves and want other to join us in the journey. To be able to touch, to be able to taste, to be able to smell, to be able to listen, to be able to see, helps us to stay human. We can enjoy the journey as it opens up surprises and hope.

Amen

Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost by The Rev. Martin Elfert

Posted on August 26, 2018August 31, 2018 by gracememorialpdx

August 26, 2018

Lessons:

Joshua 24:1-2a,14-18
Psalm 34:15-22
Ephesians 6:10-20
John 6:56-69

This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?

Of all the things that the disciples say in all four of the Gospels, this one might be my favourite. It is such an unvarnished, such a direct, such a real response to a teaching by Jesus.

And it’s also kind of hilarious.

Although maybe we don’t actually have to choose between real and hilarious. Maybe the two often belong together. I have sometimes wondered if a serviceable definition of a joke is that a joke is something that tells the truth in an unexpected way.

Children often give us the gift of telling us the truth unexpectedly. Maybe that is the reason that Jesus tells us to become like the very young. My friends Jeremy and Heather tell the story of visiting a friend’s home to attend a party. Their youngest child, Theo, went to the bathroom and there he discovered that the toilet was outfitted with a bidet. Now bidets are common in Europe and in Japan, but they are unusual in our part of the world.

And so Theo came marching out of the bathroom, got the attention of everyone at the party and said, “You guys! In the bathroom they have a butt wash station!”

That’s hilarious – and it’s true. I suspect that Theo wasn’t the only one at the party who wanted to comment on the bidet, who was curious about it, who thought that it was really cool. He was just the only one who was brave enough or, maybe, unscarred enough by life to name his curiosity and delight out loud.

The disciples do something similar today. The disciples are not children. But many of them are young people. Some of them, perhaps, are what we would today call teenagers; in Jesus’ time, adulthood starts at around age 12 or 14. And, like Theo, they are brave enough or innocent enough or guileless enough or trusting enough in Jesus to listen to what he has to say (just like us here in church over the last several weeks, the disciples have been listening as Jesus says I am the bread of life and eat my flesh, drink my blood) and then to say out loud:

This is hard.

Who can accept it?

One of the churchy words that we use from time to time is discipleship. Discipleship means something like being a follower of Jesus, it means saying yes to the Gospel with your life, it means being friends with Jesus. And the example of Jesus’ first friends is that a legitimate and faithful way of being alive and responding to Jesus is to say:

This is hard.

Who can accept it?

This response suggests that faith is something more complex and more beautiful and more broken than a flawless and finished piece of art that we hold in our hands, that perhaps we ask other people to admire.

Have you seen my faith? It’s perfect.

It suggests that faith is something more like a verb, it is something we do. Maybe, to borrow an image from the book of Genesis in which Jacob meets the stranger in the night underneath the stars, faith is like a wrestling match, like a struggle.

Friends, to my mind naming out loud that faith can be hard is good news and freeing news. Because I suspect that many of us – most of us? – have moments of when we wonder if we are impostors in church or impostors in life, moments when we say: I’m the only one who doesn’t get what this passage from the Bible means or why it is in the Bible at all; I’m the only one who sometimes finds the worship service confusing or weird or even boring; I’m the only one who has moments when I experience suffering or loneliness or unfairness and I don’t feel the presence of God at all.

What if we were brave enough to name those experiences out loud? What if, like Theo telling everyone about the butt wash station, we could name when discipleship is hard, when being a Christian is hard, when believing in God or believing in ourselves is hard?

I wonder what would happen if, when we did a reading in church – imagine the first reading that we heard today, a reading from the Book of Joshua, a book that sure can be read as celebrating genocide and God’s presence in genocide – imagine if we heard that reading and then the lector said:

Hear what the Spirit is saying to the church.

and instead of us replying, “Thanks be to God,” we all said,

This is hard. Who can accept it?

Or imagine if we said the Creed together and at the end, instead of Amen, we said,

This is hard. Who can accept it?

Or what if we had a litany? A litany like we do at the start of Lent every year, where I chant or say a prayer and we all respond in prayer. A litany that names what is hard about being a Christian and being alive. Wouldn’t it be cool if someone wrote a litany like that? Wouldn’t it be amazing if someone wrote a litany like that?

I’ve written a litany like that.

Let’s try it out:

Cantor: The Trinity is comprised of three persons but only one God.