Peacemaking on Palm Sunday by way of The First Precept

First, I would like to make clear that on Palm Sunday, the recital of the Passion is a sermon in itself. The Passion narrative is a proclamation that needs no adornment or explanation. To that end I offer only a simple meditation.

This week we have seen another violent tragedy play out when the copilot of a plane fixed a crash killing himself as well as everyone on board. What could have possessed this person to do such violence? Well if we are to be honest we must first acknowledge that we live in a society framed by violence. And violence  happens on many different levels. Inequality, for instance, is a form of violence, not only in its very nature, but in the way in which creates conditions that promotes visceral violence. The repeated shooting of black youths by white police in Ferguson is a stark example. Injustice is form of violence. The kidnapping of hundreds of thousands of very young girls in undeveloped countries to serve in the worldwide sex trade industry is an act of violence that begets violence.  The systematic destruction of the planet’s natural resources is a cataclysmic act of violence for which the generations to follow will pay a heavy toll. Consider that it is predicted that the next great war of the future will be over water. Our own creed of faith, the Nicene Creed, came into its final form over the countless tortured bodies of zealous Christian who died in defense of their proclamation.  It may not be of interest to you to know that young singer and pop star, Zayn Malik has left the wildly popular boyband One Direction. But perhaps it would interest to you to know that in response, young girls across the nation are cutting themselves as a way of showing their love and solidarity with the handsome superstar.  As I said, we live in a society formed and framed by violence. How then might the violent work of the cross serve to address such a condition and further the non-violent, peace-seeking nature of Christianity?

It is sometimes helpful to throw a wide net in order to get there, so bear with me as I, myself, try to understand such a deep mystery. In my reading of Thich Nhat Hahn’s  Living Buddha, Living Christ this week I reviewed the five precepts of Buddhism, which have parallels in all major world religions. In Christianity they are bound up within a single teaching: love your neighbor as yourself.  An advertisement I saw in a magazine recently said simply, If you want to heal the world, you’ll have to begin with yourself.  The healing of neighbor can only begin with healing our own deep wounds. That self-love is missing in our society in a big way is self-evident. Volumes could and have been written on this topic. But I think that perhaps Christianity itself might be to blame, in part. There is a strain of Christianity that has been very pervasive in the West that dwells on self-sacrifice as a way of living as a proper disciple of Christ. The misguided belief is that the more you suffer, that is, deny your own needs in order to provide for the needs of others, the more righteous you become in the sight of God. The image of Christ’s own suffering has been used as the central justification for this teaching. But let me say clearly, it is wrong-headed. To do so is to commit violence to yourself in a very real way. If the Passion has but one lesson it is that Jesus’s suffering was enough; it was large enough to encompass and carry all other suffering. There need be no more; that was the point. All violence of religious peoples was intended to be ended at the cross. Christianity’s gift to the world is non-violence.

If that seems too large to comprehend then perhaps studying how the commandment of love of self/love of others is incorporated into other traditions can be useful for us.  The Five Wonderful Precepts of Buddhism are as follows:

1.       Reverence for life

2.       Generosity

3.       Responsible sexual behavior

4.       Speaking and listening deeply

5.       Ingesting only wholesome substances

Since our topic is violence and how we have been commanded in our own tradition to bring about its end, let us focus on how that might be done.  The first precept, Reverence for life, reads as follows:

Aware of the suffering caused by the destruction of life, I vow to cultivate compassion and learn ways to protect the lives of people, animals, plants, and minerals. I am determined not to kill, not to let others kill, and not to condone any act of killing in the world, in my thinking and in my way of life.

What I like about the wording of this vow is that it takes into account the interconnectedness of the world we inhabit; the acknowledgment of the sacredness of all life: people, animals, plants and even minerals. In truth, we are all made of stardust, that is, minerals, and are positively charged by ions. We are energy, the stuff of the universe. Did you know that when you breathe, the molecules floating around in the air you are breathing was also once breathed by every person who lived before? Just as there is no new water, there is no new air. The elements that make up our breathable stratosphere have been recycled, polluted and mutated,  refined and renewed by nature’s own means, combined with other elements in countless chemical reactions and substances, and are continuously being transformed into what we know to be solids and gases again and again in what appears to be an endless cycle of life.  An unbelievable community of life is supported in the just the smallest dew drop. Each biological system on this planet is dependent on the stability of the others. It is a fragile balance. So is it any wonder that the suffering of others will result in our own suffering? If we want to end suffering, we must begin that work with ourselves. To that end  Christ suffering will have to truly mean something to us. It has to be taken personally or it will be just another story. It is just another beheading, another plane crash/suicide mission, another act of violence that seems senseless and quite disconnected from our own egocentric reality. It is not. Christ died for you. That you might have life and have it abundantly.

Jesus calls us not to self-sacrifice but to self-love – into profound, radical selfishness. The work of the cross has been done. It is not our role. It was his role. As one of my favorite teachers often says: Stay in role. We have been called to a different work; to the saving work of the cross and that begins with addressing our own wounds and brokenness. If you want to heal the world, you must begin by healing yourself. It is only from this place that we can have the kind of determination demanded by our own tradition not to kill, not to let others kill, and to take Christ's commandment to its most complete translation: that we should not condone any act of killing in the world, in our thinking and in our way of life. May the work of cross begin that work in you. 

New Year's note on change and rEVOLution (a nod to Russell Brand)

I must admit that by year's end I was feeling the full weight of the year's trial and tribulations, frets and frustrations. I was worn thin by taking stock of things gained and things lost in the preceding 364 days.  How was your 2014? Mine was a real mix. You know that saying, The only thing that is constant about life is change. Change, accept, adjust, hold tight, let go, fight, surrender: each of us owns a piece of that real estate.  And there is another saying, and that is that all change is perceived as loss; even if its change that is acknowledged to be for the better. Change in which no good can be perceived is the worst. I will openly confess to you that I usually go into change kicking and screaming and making sure that everyone in my world knows that I am not a happy camper. This year I relied heavily on Louis L'amour's saying, which bears repeating: "There will come a time when you believe that everything is finished. That will be the beginning." Like some of you, I had some endings that were really beginnings, though I could only take Louis's word for it at the time. In fact, I just gave in and posted his words on my computer so I'd see them all the time.  I hung out there on faith that some changes, especially the ones that mark a clear ending point, are at the same time places where something new is about to happen.

But on New Year's Day I woke up feeling a bit differently.  For me there is something magical that happens on January 1; it’s a new start. It feels to me the way I think we're supposed to feel on Easter. That whatever came before is past; it's done. And New Year's Day seems a good time to make a break from whatever emotional baggage we're still hanging on too. So turned on some Michael Buble, his song "Feeling Good," seemed to be a good theme song for 2015. It goes like this: "It's a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new life." And by the end of the day I was dancing around my kitchen; blissful in the euphoria of new beginnings.

King Herod had a little issue with change. But he had a plan; not a new one actually. Same song, new tune that goes like this:  If something is going to get in your way, threaten your kingdom; then kill it. Well, that's one way to deal with change. And it's not like the world we live in doesn’t witness to that option on a daily basis. Just because you and I wouldn't take that route doesn't mean someone else won't. They do. People are condemned to death through social and economic means all the time. Killing is quite institutionalized really these days. It's so common now we are simply desensitized to it. It's right in front of us and we just pretend don't see it. Or we feel so legitimately overwhelmed by own efforts to survive we yield to our own perception of personal powerlessness. We do things like have fundraising dinners for people who can't afford their cancer treatments. So they might have a chance to live, but they'll drown in debt. I get calls all winter from elderly people who have to choose between food and paying the heating bill. Even with a discount from the gas company, winter here with -18F. degrees on a regular basis for a month can cripple someone on a small fixed income for the next year. It's death by a million cuts.

Back to Herod. We all know how that story ends - the shepherds see the change on the horizon and the change they see is to them good and right. So they make a choice. They go home by a different route. They take a different route.

There have always been people who have been outspoken critics, if not outright prophets, to point, we the masses, in a new direction; to give us the choice of taking another route.  One such current figure, is Russell Brand, hailing from Britain, author of the new book, Revolution, who is taking the worldwide political scene by storm. Here are a couple of excerpt from his recent interview with Amy Goodman, on Democracy Now, which aired this Friday. I'm just going to go ahead and warn you:  Buckle up.

AMY GOODMAN: .....I want to talk about your book, because you talk about the kind of revolution you want to see. Talk about the revolutions in your own life, how you’ve changed over time.

RUSSELL BRAND: Well, the reason I have such faith in the capacity for change, for people to change their lives, is because my own life has changed radically. All a revolution is, really, is to create structures outside of the existing structures, to create change without using the sanctioned means for change. And me, I’ve gone from a life of being impoverished and drug-addicted to a life where I’m sort of affluent and free from drugs. So, that’s what gives me this belief that change is possible on an individual level. 

Part of Amy's interview was a segment of Russell's interview with Jeremy Paxman a television host of a British newshow: 

JEREMY PAXMAN: Is it true you don’t even vote?

RUSSELL BRAND: Yeah, no, I don’t vote. 

JEREMY PAXMAN: Well, how do you have any authority to talk about politics then? 

RUSSELL BRAND: Well, I don’t get my authority from this pre-existing paradigm which is quite narrow and only serves a few people. I look elsewhere for alternatives that might be of service to humanity. Alternative means alternative political systems.

JEREMY PAXMAN: —if you can’t be asked to vote, why should we be asked to listen to your political point of view?

RUSSELL BRAND: You don’t have to listen to my political point of view. But it’s not that I’m not voting out of apathy. I’m not voting out of absolute indifference and weariness and exhaustion from the lies, treachery, deceit of the political class that has been going on for generations now and which has now reached fever pitch, where we have a disenfranchised, disillusioned, despondent underclass that are not being represented by that political system. So, voting for it is tacit complicity with that system, and that’s not something I’m offering up. 

 Back to Amy:

AMY GOODMAN: .... yesterday, our big special was on Mexico— and these 43 students who disappeared in the state of Guerrero. And it turns out that the mayor and the police turned them over to drug gangs. And the question is -- going right up to the president, the billions of dollars, for example, the United States has given the Mexican military and Mexican police, in the name of the so-called drug war, where has it really gone? And is it in fact a real war, but a war against people, particularly poor people and indigenous people?

RUSSELL BRAND: Some people would argue, like in that brilliant film by Eugene Jarecki, The House I Live In, he argues that what’s actually happening is that the bottom 15 percent of society are no longer needed because of the collapse of the manufacturing industry, so it’s a lot better to just criminalize them and put them in prison. So, yeah, it’s like it’s a proxy war on poverty. It’s a proxy race war. I certainly think that argument holds. I mean, I think addiction can affect people from any economic or social background, but those who tend to suffer most are those without money. And there’s no doubt that social conditions have a huge impact on people’s tendency to get addicted to substances. I think if people live in communal environments where they’ve got access to support and—forgive me for using the word—love, then they’re less likely to get addicted to drugs.

Russell Brand hasn't just taken a different route: he's standing at the Y in the road and begging us to go another way. He defines revolution as the creation of structures outside of existing structures; to create change without using the sanctioned means for change. You and I should be familiar with that tactic; its straight out of the gospels. If you think Russell Brand is just too far out there for your taste but at the same time you love your nice church and its lovely music and its good works then I suggest you take another look at the person you pray too. Jesus was a revolutionary; he opposed the status quo at every turn. He never stopped confronting and arguing and engaging people's minds to think about what they were really doing, what they were really supporting - calling out the sheer hypocrisy of at every opportunity. If you actually met Jesus you probably wouldn't like him; he might actually offend you because he was real and so intense. And we generally don't do well with people who are so on point, so confrontational all of the time. He didn't do small talk very well and he was a bit moody actually and he had very high expectations for anyone who pledged their allegiance to him. He would openly criticize his followers just as soon as his detractors.  He was not playing it small. There was too much as stake. There is, now, right now, too much at stake.  It's time for change, for a revolution that is not based on fiscal security which can only condemn those on the short end of that spectrum to a life of misery, but rather a revolution in which love, that's right, love is the basic tenet on which all parts are built. If we think this love thing is simply a ridiculous way to structure a society, then we clearly have not heard a single word Jesus said. And when he was hung on the cross and dying and said, "It is finished." What he was really saying was: This is the beginning.

 

I was at a diocesan meeting yesterday in which someone postulated that one of the reasons that the church has seen such decline is that we don't really expect a lot from the people in the pews; that we don't call people to account for how they live out the gospel. Yes, the bar is really low. Christianity isn't just a personal preference, like whether you're a Steelers fan or a root for the Cowboys.  It's a call to arms actually. Being politically correct these days we shy away from such language, but I think that's right. We're not just called to feed the poor, we're called to do something about it. What other reason would there be for being a disciple?  Personal enlightenment? If that's what you are seeking then I recommend Buddhism. It's lovely really. Personally, it’s a big part of my own sense of spirituality; but it’s not the end game. Christians follow a revolutionary who waged war on the powers and principalities that created conditions of death and despair. Herod is alive and well in every segment of our life. We've been co'oped and made complicit in his deadly schemes.  It's a new dawn. It's a new day. It's a new life. It's time to take another route. 

Love Letters of Christmastide

Very recently I presided over a lovely wedding here at St. James.  The sermon title was, Love is Love, which I stole from the email of an acquaintance. When I confessed to him that I had stolen his line for a sermon title, he said, well here’s another one: “All you need is love. Steal that one too.”  The next day I went to meet someone over at the Wired Rooster in Wellsboro and what should I see on the tent sign outside of the café? Chalked up in blue and white were the words: All you need is love, of course followed by, and a good cup of coffee.  I took out my smart phone and I stole it.  

Earlier this week while wandering around TJ Max fixated on a gift finding mission, I rounded a corner and found myself face to face with a large framed picture of some familiar words:  All you need is love.  I laughed and thought, how remarkable. Then I looked all around me and was astounded to see that I was in an entire section of framed words, all variations of the same line: All you need is Love.  All you need is Love in white cursive letters on blue pastels, All you need is Love in large block print letters on a black background, All you need is Love in larger than life gold sans serif letters floating against a light blue background. And then there were variations on the theme:  the single word, “LOVE.” (note the period), black letters on a white background, framed boldly; then there was the single word love, written in script, repeated many times taking the shape of a heart. Two walls and several shelves of All you need is Love. I would have laughed again, but I was truly astounded at the bold audacity of the universe.  I just stood there literally surrounded by Love. I wondered, What is the Holy Spirit trying to tell me? What is she, not so subtly, putting out there for me to grasp or perhaps just for me to see?

But there is another question that begs an answer. If marketing efforts were so keen on selling love, then there must be a market for it. Clearly the world is hungry for love.  By the millions we are buying printed images of words about Love, some tattoo it on their bodies, and others wear t-shirts to proclaim our beliefs about it.  And yet it seems just beyond our reach. Were it so easy to grasp, so easy to claim, so easy to give, so easy to receive, so easy to see, so easy to understand then Love art would no longer have any buyers.  We do not need to buy what we have in abundance.  It would seem that the culture we live in is asking all manner of questions about Love.  The question for the Christian community is, do we have anything to say about Love?

Well it’s Christmas and that has something to do with Love or at least it’s supposed to.  I’m not sure Love is the first thing that comes to mind when we think of Christmas though, if we’re honest.  Every year my first thoughts of Christmas occurs in October when the stores begin to put out their Christmas decorations; right next to the Halloween displays. It’s blatantly about the bottom line; end of the year consumer spending making up a goodly part of many business’ profit/loss statements.  This is in keeping with American culture in general, of course: if you want something then it’s simply a matter of saving up the money and buying it.  But what you and I know, really, is that Love can’t be bought. We can buy a framed picture of the word Love, but that is not Love. At some level I think we’re in Love with the idea of Love; of the picture of Love that has been shaped in our common imaginations by culture itself.  

Just think, where did you learn about Love?  I learned a lot of what I know about Love from books and movies.  I must be honest and tell you that did not learn about Love in the church. Or perhaps more correctly: for a very long time, I did not realize that what I was learning about was Love. I thought I was learning stories that portrayed the state and struggles of humanity throughout the ages.  I thought I was learning theological ideals about God. I thought I was learning about discipleship and how to act in the world; how to be a better person; how to find purpose in my life.  I thought I was learning doctrines and dogma that was instructive for living a life meant to emulate Christ himself.  I thought I was learning how to be kind.

Last month someone I care about moved far away. The last thing you really want to give a person who is moving is something else to pack so I decided just to give a blessing. But I’ve never given a blessing to a single person before in that way and I didn’t want to look completely stupid and suddenly forget the words. So I practiced saying the words which I have been known to stumble upon in front of an entire congregation; which is as embarrassing as suddenly forgetting the order of the words at communion when I put bread into open hands: The body of Christ, the bread of heaven – how many ways can you screw that up? Ask me, I can tell you. So here are the words I repeated over and over again:

Be swift to love and make haste to be kind.

Be swift to love and make haste to be kind.

Be swift to love and make haste to be kind.

Be swift to love and make haste to be kind.

Be swift to love and make haste to be kind.

Be swift to love and make haste to be kind.

It occurred to me that over the eleven years I’ve been saying this blessing, that I’ve never actually heard the words. They’ve been words for someone else to hear. But this time, they were meant for me. I heard, that is I internalized, “be swift to love.” 

If you think about it, really ponder it, you might come to the conclusion that have I reached. It’s really hard to be swift to love.  When we are small children we are hard-wired for love. Undamaged, unbroken, untrained, not yet tempered by hurts and disappointments and disillusions; not yet devastated by heart break and loss, we are all about love.  It pours out of us.  It’s easily read in our eyes and we hold it our small little hands with such ease. We do not think about it, because one does not need to consider one’s own nature; it simply is.

For those of us who have great difficulty understanding Love as it portrayed in the violence of the cross, then Love as portrayed as an infant child can be our way in. When we hear the nativity story we can connect with it because it is still so innocent, so pure, it is the time before – and all of us have a before and after story. It’s the before part of our stories that can once again connect with this Love. It is the window through which we might be able to see and understand the very nature of God. If you have not heard me say it recently, then hear it now: God is Love.  There really isn’t anything else you need to know about God, or religion, or spiritually, or even Jesus, beyond this. God is love. And what I realize now, what is so clear to me in this moment, is that everything I learned in Sunday school, or in the Bible, or in seminary, or in all the sermons I’ve ever heard, or written or preached, or by anything I’ve ever read by any theological author is that these expressions are all different forms of love letters. Letters written to tell me that I am loved.

I’m an avid fan of letter writing. I’ve been writing letters to the people in my life for as long as I can remember. Letter writing puts words on a page that have flow directly from your heart through your body into your wrists, hands and fingers, finding expression through a pen or a keyboard.  There are letters that were hard to write but needed to written; letters for truth-telling that once received will have consequences for both parties; there are unexpected letters we receive that fill us with complete joy and knowledge that we have been remembered; letters that tell us news that will forever change our lives; letters that are filled with happy news and the deepest desire to be appreciated; there are letters that beg in desperation for us to be seen and heard, letters that tell stories that make us laugh, or cry, or perhaps just think more deeply about things; there are final letters, final words; there are letters that are not meant ever to be sent, and letter we’ve written that we deeply regret sending; letters to lovers (the Song of Solomon is such a letter), letters with ill intent written in the blood our deepest wounds; there are letters we frame and letters we burn.  All these letters we write and receive, each in their own way, are love letters. 

In that same way, the story we have heard this night is a love letter written by someone who went long before us. It was written for the generations to follow. It was written for you. It is a love letter that tells a story about the Love of God, who is Love, who was born just like you were. But unlike you and I this love will not be corrupted over time and through the years of living.  This Love will do that for which we can only strive. It will grow instead of fade. It will intensify with the passing of years. It will embrace all things, accept all things, forgive all things, know all things. It will embrace you, accept you, forgive you and know you completely.  This Love we can only see in small glimpses. The most intense love we have known is but a shadow of this Love. In life we can see only part, but in death we will know it fully.  It is our life force. It grows in us as we learn to accept things and people and situations for what they are, as we do the work of forgiveness, and as we seek to know, to deeply know another human being. 

As a priest and as a health coach I refer to the work of love as healing. Healing is to me, is the final manifestation of love accomplishing its purpose. Healing is love in action.  Healers then are required, first and foremost to love those who come to them in pain and suffering. Healers begin their work from a place of acceptance, forgiveness and a willingness to identify with their own humanity as it is mirrored back to them through the ones who stand before them. All Christians are called to the work of healing. You are called to the work of healing. It is what the world requires: an army of healers.  Our only tool, our only weapon is Love.

Twenty years ago I was most fortunate to spend several years in the care of an excellent therapist while I traversed the landscape of life experiences known to many if not all of us: death, divorce, loss, more death, more loss, remarriage, rebirth, recovery and a birth.  As part of my personal spiritual journey a few months ago I wrote a letter to my dearest friend with whom I had not spoken in all these years.  It occurred to me she would not remember me and I was at peace with that because the work of love she had begun in me can never be undone. But within days of sending my letter, complete with a lovely stamp, she sent back to me her reply.  There I was standing in my kitchen holding her letter in my hand. I didn’t even need to open it to feel that measure of healing.  But I did.  It’s been 20 years and I am loved still. 

That’s what the nativity story has to teach us: Love that is truly Love doesn’t die, it cannot.  We are surrounded this night by flowers that signify the remembrance of those we love, many of whom have passed from this world into the next. The love we have for them and they for us does not die. Death cannot destroy love; not any longer. Not since Love was born into the world; not since God became Love incarnate. Love itself has insured that love cannot be destroyed or even diminished.

Someone recently told me about the death of one of their parents: regardless of what came before, what remained in the end was love. Love is unaffected by death, or by any separation. Love is both the substance and the residue. It’s all we really have to offer anyone that is of any value whatsoever. When people see us, what they are really looking at, what they are really sizing up about us, is our capacity for love.  Love for self, love to give, love to express through our lives’ work and our acts of kindness, hospitality and generosity; but also in the lines we draw and the boundaries we enforce, and in what we chose to give away and in what we chose to keep. That’s what we see in that little baby who we have come to know as the person of Jesus. We see in that child a vast and wide, all encompassing capacity for love. It is his greatest gift. Actually it is his only gift.

Christmas Eve Homily, 2014

Love is love

Marriage Homily for Lynn Johnson and Joel Costello, Dec. 13, 2014, St. James

I begin with a little ditty from the last time Joel and Lynn and I met for pre-marital counseling.  Lynn was telling me that the wording on the marriage application has not yet changed to match the law; so the clerk asked the two men which of them would like to be “the wife.”  Lynn said he’d do it because, after all, he has the girlie name. Joel pushed back a little and said, Yeah, but I’m the one who carries a purse.

This is such a good day and a blessed event and I am honored beyond measure to have been asked to preside over this celebration of marriage.  This nation and its protestant churches have come such a long way in such a short time – its really breathtaking.  When I attended seminary from 2000 to 2003 the topic of gay marriage was front and center.  The national Episcopal Church was struggling with discernment on the issue and a national vote was set for the summer of 2003; anxiety was high church-wide. One day during a systematic theology class in 2001 one of my female heterosexual colleagues complained to the professor that she was tired of talking about this issue – it was all we ever talked about and she just wanted a break.  I though Professor Joe Monti was going to come completely unglued – he got right in her face and said:  You’re tired of it?  We’ll you better think again – ‘cause this is YOUR issue. You’re going to be on the front lines. This is your fight. Your church is positioned and ready to vote Yes at General Convention in 2003.  And you better figure out right now how you are going to live that out. And don’t ever tell me you’re tired of fighting for human dignity. This is what you signed up for.  

The irony of this is, of course, that she, and I, are only ordained to the priesthood because of the years of struggle that came from the women who we followed. We stand on the shoulders of thousands of men and women did not tire in their pursuit of the end of oppression, many of whom have lived to see the changes they fought for put into place and thriving. I am a beneficiary of social struggle. I try not to take that for granted.

I confess that even still, sitting in that classroom in 2001 I never thought I’d actually ever preside over a same sex marriage. Things at that time were so hostile, people were so staunchly set in their positions.  I never thought this massive church would actually be able to come to a resolution, much less put it into action. And yet, here were are, just over a decade later and today I am presiding over my second same gender marriage in three years – legal in both New York and PA as well as in the dioceses in which they were/are being performed.  As required by canon law I spoke with my bishop recently to seek approval for this union and I am required to do prior to all weddings and he gave his heartfelt and enthusiastic blessing.  And in preparing the liturgy for this service, in the space of five minutes I changed the language of the traditional Episcopal marriage rite from wife and husband to the wording we are using today. Imagine that, five minutes and a few strokes of the keyboard to change centuries of hatred, oppression, and exclusion.

What is important for our purposes today however is to understand what lies at the heart of this transformation.  The Episcopal Church has only seven doctrines. Just to compare, our Roman brothers and sisters have over one hundred and fifty. The over-riding doctrine for us, the one on which everything else rest is this: God is Love.  That’s it; three words. God is Love.  This doctrine, taken to its natural conclusion forces us to conclude without question that exclusion cannot be a part of our common life because it is not a holy expression of love, therefore it cannot be of God.  God is love – exclusion falls outside of that parameter. Likewise, oppression cannot be part of our common life because it is not a healthy or holy expression of love therefore is not of God. Christians must reject both exclusion and oppression and anything else that divides us from one another and from God based on a doctrine of three words. God is Love.

Of course this very simplistic understanding of the doctrine of Love turns on our personal perception of God.  If we think of God as judgmental and punishing then we are given license to mediate this to every person who does not meet our expectation of the way things are supposed to be. For some of us, love and its expression is a complicated issue; often tied to fear.  Human love invariable involves some level of pain out of which fear finds a sure home. 

I find the writing of Sri Chinmoy helpful on this score. Chinmoy is an internationally renowned spiritual leader and tireless emissary for peace.  He describes God as “the Love.” He writes: Where there is love, real love, there can be no fear.  Why do we fear? We fear because we have separated ourselves from God’s Love and we are apt to think of God the Omnipotent, not God the All-Love.  But even the Omnipotent God is not a God that threatens or strikes us with an iron rod every time we make a mistake. There is no such being as God the tyrant. There is only one God, and that God is God the Love. This God does not punish us. This God is constantly shaping us in His own way. ….. [We sometimes] feel that if we do something wrong God will punish us mercilessly. This is not so.  It is God’s Dream that each individual embodies. It is God’s Reality that each individual has to manifest here on earth.  It is in each human being that God’s Reality lives.”

Christians understand this concept of the God who is Love in the writings of the apostle Paul. The love of which Paul speaks in his first letter to the Corinthians is not love the verb. Paul is actually describing the very person of God.  God is patient; God is kind, God is not envious or boastful or rude. God does not insist on God’s own way, God is not irritable or resentful; God does not rejoice in wrongdoing, God rejoices in the truth. God bears all things, believes all things, God hopes all things, God endures all things. God never ends. Love never ends.

You might think theological discussion is boring and irrelevant but I assure you that were it not for such discussions you and I would not be here today celebrating the love that exists between these two lovely men; making legal and binding that love.  That love, the love that exists between two people, that love is why we are all here.

Have you ever wondered where love comes from?  You know, ...the kind of love that knocks you off your feet.  ….the kind of love that shows up when you least expect it or even want it.  …the kind of love that keeps that other person on your mind hour after hour.  …the kind of love that acknowledges that even the air you breath is made thinner by their absence.  

In his song, Sideways, Citizen Cope sings:

You know it ain't easy for these thoughts here to leave me
There are no words to describe it in French or in English

Well, diamonds they fade and flowers they bloom,

and I'm telling you these feelings won't go away
They've been knockin' me sideways
They've been knockin' me out lately whenever you come around me
I keep thinking in a moment that time will take them away
But these feelings won't go away, they won’t go away.

So are we born with it? Or do we learn it, like we learn to walk or ride a bike? From the Christian perspective, Love is God that resides in you. But we do not generally connect romantic love with God, as if there is something profoundly wrong with associating the two.  But Christianity has a long history of doing just that. The mystics have for centuries understood their feelings and yearnings to find union with God in terms of human love and longing. The two are very much one in the same. It does not benefit us to try to separate them, thereby rendering one lesser than the other.

At the end of the day, there are some things that are indisputable in regards to love: You do not possess it, nor can you harness or control it. It is life-giving and ever-growing and expanding. Ultimately it is a force for good; seeking to bring about peace and wholeness both internally and externally.  No matter how hard you try to beat it down or dismiss it, it will prevail.  To deny love is to do violence to yourself.  It will not be denied.  Given half a chance, love will consume you, motivate you and compel you like no other force on earth.  Unbridled it has the power to bring you back to your truest self.  If you wonder, Who am I? Ask instead, Who do I love? 

So let this marriage be for you a model of what love looks like when it is righteous and true and holy; two men who are winding their way back to God through their authentic expression of love. It is undeniably God’s own doing.

The necessity that changes a course

In the Benedictine spirituality reading this week, Joan Chittister quotes an old Sanskrit saying: “necessity changes a course but never a goal.”  In Matthew’s miraculous account of the loaves and the fishes we can see this old adage in play. Necessity changed the course, but did not alter the goal. The story of the feeding of the 5000 was so important to the early church that is was reproduced in all four gospels. Jesus and the disciples have just learned that John the Baptist has been beheaded. And Jesus for his part, is at the height of popularity - the crowds can't get enough of him, but all he wants is to find somewhere to be alone.  Some days are like that.  Some days everybody wants a piece of us and there doesn't seem to be a single moment of the day to just sit down.  And there's nothing to do but take a deep breath and get to the next thing on the list, or go to the next committee meeting, or teach the next class, or fix the next meal or drive to the next appointment. Some days there's hardly a moment to catch a bite to eat. That's the kind of day Jesus was having.  His teaching was winding down and it was getting dark and the crowd was hungry but there was no food. Equally exhausted and short tempered the disciples wanted to just send the people away, especially since there was barely enough food for them. But Jesus is mindful of the expectation of hospitality and the centrality of a shared meal that was foundational to Judaism, then and now.

Mindful that Jesus himself was not a charismatic leader of Christianity but in fact a devout and practicing Jew, a rabbi and preacher of the Torah, it might be useful to look at the way in which Judaism understands the sacredness of the meal. Thich Nhat Hanh wrote about meals as an expression of piety, saying, “Piety is an important word in Judaism, because all of life is a reflection of God, the infinite source of holiness.  The entire world, all the good things in life, belong to God, so when you enjoy something, you think of God and enjoy it in his presence. … When you wake up, you are aware God created the world.  When you see rays of sunshine streaming through your window, you recognize the presence of God. When you stand up and your feet touch the ground, you know the earth belongs to God.  When you wash your face, you know that the water is God.  [You cook, set the table, and eat in the presence of God.] Piety is the recognition that everything is linked to the presence of God in every moment.  The Passover Seder, for example, is a ritual meal to celebrate freedom of the Israelites from bondage in Egypt and their journey home.  During the meal, certain vegetables and herbs, salt and other condiments help us touch what happened in the past – what was our suffering and what was our hope.” 

This is the perspective we must understand as we come to study this event.  For Jesus this was a matter of piety; to deny the meal would have undermined the teaching. Necessity was pressing them to change course, but they were ill-prepared.  They had been looking for a moment of quiet in the countryside, but the crowds had followed them.  Nonetheless, Jesus confidently blessed the meager five loaves of bread and two fish and gave it to his disciples. They in turn broke the food into pieces and put it into baskets, lots of baskets in fact. So much so that after all have had their fill there are 12 baskets left over.  Let us understand that Jesus did not add anything to the food that was not already there.  The food was good and sufficient in its own right.  Wholesome, simply, basic food is in itself a sufficient expression of God’s generous nature. Jesus simply lifted it up to God so that that attribute, God’s generous nature, might be made manifest.  And it was. God then multiplied the pieces with a greater abundance that was even required.  Necessity required a change of course, but the goal was not altered.  The goal was always the revelation of God.

There is another way to look at this story.  I remind you once again that the gospels are, if nothing else, political documents.  The Roman coin had on one side the picture of Nero and on the other, Cere, the goddess of agriculture. The coin also had a phrase translated to: "The annual harvest of the emperor." So by extension, it is the king who provides the basic necessity of food for all of inhabitants of the Roman kingdom. Jesus’ act is not just a simple act of kindness, random grace, but a bold political statement about the reign of God in direct contradiction to the Roman establishment delivered in the authentic cloth of piety. It is God who feds the people in their hour of need; providing what is needed both physically as well as spiritually. We must also consider that the gathered crowd may have understood the significant of the feeding more than we give them credit if word of John’s death had arrived to them. John was a well-known figure, regularly drawing large crowds of his own, and word of his death would have spread quickly throughout the Judean countryside.  They too would have been deeply grieved and worried about the abruptly shifting and dangerous winds threatening Jesus’ safety and those associated with him.  If it could happen to John it could happen to Jesus just as easily.  The sudden provision of an unexpected and abundant meal reassured Jesus’ followers that God would provide for their needs, even in the face of John’s death and Jesus’ own threats from the Roman and Jewish establishment.

In addition to the use of this story to reveal God’s generous nature as well as to contrast the worldly kingdom of Rome against the spiritual realm of God kingdom, there is yet another way to understand this event.   Because it’s such a large crowd, it’s easy to miss the human factor.  We do this as a matter of course in our world today. In a crowd individual identity is lost.  But we might ask, who are these people who are in this crowd?  Well, they were mothers and fathers, who undoubtedly had their children with them, and probably quite a number of them, together with aunts and uncles, nephews and nieces, and all the cousins.  This was a crowd of whole, large families in addition to widows and outcasts, and a goodly number of sick, carried for miles by relatives in hopes of a miraculous cure. And each one of them had a story, a life, a history, a present and a future, hopes and dreams and all the things they planned for and all the things they wanted to forget.

In one of my lectures this week from my health coaching coursework was on the mind-body connection; the way in which all the events of our lives are expressed in some physical manifestation by our bodies.  In fact most all of the healing arts throughout the centuries all around the world have this precept and foundational for healing. It is only Western medicine that focuses completely on the body’s ailments to the almost total exclusion of the person themselves.  All ancient modalities of healing still widely practiced around the world consider this quite inadequate – like trying to feed 5000 with five loaves of bread and two fish.  Our bodies do not forget the events of lives.  And we all have a story.  Like every person in that crowd on the shores of Galilee, 5000 different stories.  There is one type of doctor practicing widely in the US that does not exclude the person from their illness and those are naturopaths.  When you see a naturopathic doctor, after the symptoms have been described, the first question is, What’s your story?  What has happened to you? And there’s quite a lot of talking and quite a lot of listening, deep listening – to all that is being said, and all that is being left unsaid. In my personal experience, there’s a reverence to this exchange that is also quite sacred.  The world we live in is all about being fixed as quickly as possible, as if we were machines.  But we are not machines; we are, each one of us, holy expressions of God’s greatest hopes for us. And we all have a story. And we each have our own pain and have made sacrifices, and incurred great losses. Sometimes necessity required not a single change of course, but a whole new map. Along the way we get wounded and scarred and our emotional and spiritual lives become neglected if not altogether abandoned.  The healing that most of us require cannot be found in a bottle and is not available at any shelf at any pharmacy.  The healing we require takes far more effort than most of us are willing to give.  Deep and complete healing requires not a simple change of course but a new goal altogether; a new paradigm for understanding that we beautiful, complicated expressions of everything that has ever happened to us.  God knows this because it is God who made us this way.  To fight against this is to fight against God.  I like the way this truth was expressed in a song called, Mystify. For all you hard rock fans, the band is Saving Abel. The lyrics go like this:

Consuming moments just like these,
I'm being broken down on my knees.
It's getting clear, what do I see?
I feel your love reaching out for me.
Oh, mirror, it's so clear,
That I'll run and disappear.
Why am I running from the past,
With all the memories that couldn't last?
So when you peek into my soul,
Why do I run, when you make me whole?
Mirror, mirror on the wall:
Who's the biggest fool of all?
With no light, no sight, no eyes I see,
I can't help, I feel you reaching out for me.
You know you mystify me.
You bring a light to the life, I'm breathing.
You bring a light to the life, I'm living.

We all think we’re so individual, but that not how the world sees us. To the government, we just the people who make up the crowd, the voters, the constituents, the lobbyists, the special interest groups. To the corporate world, we’re a crowd of consumers; we buy the products and services and do our part to keep the economy ticking along. There’s nothing individual about it.  There’s a certain irony here if you think about it in terms of the image of rugged American individualism.  But to God and in God’s kingdom crowds are not crowds, but people in close proximity to one another, each retaining their own uniqueness; each loved and treasured not for what we have or have to offer, but simply for who we are. We are the necessity that changes a course.  Our hunger is the priority; our pain, our suffering that matters to God.

So what is your story?  What has happened to you? For what do your hunger?  

Tell your story. Claim your story. Then ask for what you need and it will be given to you.

Parables as Instruments of Mindfulness

Heard, spoken, or enacted, parables confront us with a different picture of God and a more inclusive social vision.  What follows are three little vignettes about Gandhi. But because Gandhi is now himself an iconic metaphor, these stories can be heard as parables and not just amusing antidotes.  

When Gandhi was studying law at the University College of London, a white professor, whose last name was Peters, disliked him intensely and always displayed prejudice and animosity towards him. Also, because Gandhi never lowered his head when addressing him, as he expected.... there were always "arguments" and confrontations. One day, Mr. Peters was having lunch at the dining room of the University, and Gandhi came along with his tray and sat next to the professor.  The professor said, "Mr. Gandhi, you do not understand. A pig and a bird do not sit together to eat." Gandhi looked at him as a parent would a rude child and calmly replied, "You do not worry professor. I'll fly away," and he went and sat at another table. Mr. Peters, reddened with rage, decided to take revenge on the next test paper, but Gandhi responded brilliantly to all questions. Mr. Peters, unhappy and frustrated, asked him the following question. "Mr. Gandhi, if you were walking down the street and found a package, and within was a bag of wisdom and another bag with a lot of money, which one would you take?" Without hesitating, Gandhi responded, "The one with the money, of course." Mr. Peters, smiling sarcastically said, "I, in your place, would have taken the wisdom, don't you think?" Gandhi shrugged indifferently and responded, "Each one takes what he doesn't have." Mr. Peters, by this time was fit to be tied. So great was his anger that he wrote on Gandhi's exam sheet the word "idiot" and gave it to Gandhi.  Gandhi took the exam sheet and sat down at his desk…. A few minutes later, he got up, went to the professor and said to him in a dignified… polite tone, "Mr. Peters, you signed the sheet, but you did not give me the grade." 

In the New Testament Jesus’ parables attempt to convey the true nature of a loving and benevolent God.  For Jesus’ followers throughout the ages parables expose evidence for hope, delivering the assurance that God’s kingdom is inevitable, and at the same time, already here.  There are both stories that we understand as parables, but there are also parabolic expressions, like Jesus as the shepherd, or the door, or the vine, or the bread.  Such expressions are not necessarily exclusive to Christianity or found in the Bible.  For instance, the Buddha commanded his followers to “love your brother as the apple of  your eye.”  Here’s another example: In midwinter, St. Francis called out to an almond tree, “Speak to me of God!” and the tree burst into bloom.  Parables call us to life, sometimes new life, but more often, just awaken to the life that is in us.  Parables instruct us to look at the world around us as expressions, if not the very being of God.  But it is more than developing new sight, it is the redevelopment of our inner life; the transformation of our eyes that enable us to see what is clearly present but hidden from those who are still blind. 

A gnostic gospel, the Gospel of Thomas speaks parabolically about the kingdom in this way: Jesus said, “If those who lead you say to you, ‘Look, the Kingdom is in the sky,’ then the birds of the sky will get there first.  If they say, ‘It is in the sea,’ then the fish will get there first.  Rather, the Kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the children of the living Father. But if you will not know yourselves, then you dwell in poverty, and it is you who are that poverty.” 

Elaine Pagels, the foremost Christian expert on the gnostic gospels, says of these texts, “The ancient gospels tend to point beyond faith toward a path of solitary searching to find understanding.”  Parables do this. They foster a kind of solitary searching to find understanding. Here’s another parabolic example from Thomas:  “Knock upon yourself as upon a door, and walk upon yourself as on a straight road. For if you walk on that path, you cannot go astray; and when you knock on that door, what you open for yourself shall open.”   And another one:  “Jesus said, ‘If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you.  If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.” 

In Matthew’s gospel we hear Jesus teaching a series of parables; different stories, but the essence of the messages are not that dissimilar.  “He put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”  How much more significant this tale becomes when we understand that mustard seeds do not usually produce trees but are simply shrubs.  But they were not just any shrub, rather the most invasive and unwanted of all weeds in the ancient world.  Sometimes, it is helpful to get at the meaning of a particular parable by way of another parable, even from faith traditions that are not our own, like this one.  “One day when he was thirty-eight years old, the Buddha met [a king, who] said, ‘Reverend, you are young, yet people call you ‘The Highest Enlightened One.’  There are holy men in our country eighty and ninety years old, venerated by many people, yet none of them claims to be the highest enlightened one. How can a young man like you make such a claim?’ The Buddha replied, ‘You majesty, enlightenment is not a matter of age.  A tiny spark of fire has the power to burn down a whole city. A small poisonous snake can kill you in an instant.  A baby prince has the potentiality of a king.  And a young monk has the capacity of becoming enlightened and changing the world.”  So what do a mustard seed, a tiny spark of fire, a small poisonous snake, a baby prince and a young monk all have in common?  Some truths are simply universal. 

One of the most well-know Buddhist monks of all time, Thich Nhat Hanh, examines this particular parable in his book, Living Buddha, Living Christ, saying, “Matthew described the Kingdom of God as being like a tiny mustard seed.  It means that the seed of the Kingdom of God is within us.  If we know how to plant that seed in the moist soil of our daily lives, it will grow and become a large bush on which many birds can take refuge.  We do not have to die to arrive at the gates of Heaven.  In fact, we have to be truly alive.  The practice is to touch life deeply so that Kingdom of God becomes a reality.  This is not a matter of devotion.  It is a matter of practice.”  But how do we practice this? 

Which brings us back to parables. Parables teach us to see the world through God’s own eyes. In other words, parables teach us mindfulness.  And the only way to be mindful is to practice being mindful; to practice paying careful attention to the world around us and the people and events in it. Mindfulness helps us to see what is right before us in ways we had not seen it before.  You know that you are truly practicing mindfulness when you begin to interpret what you see and experience around you in terms of parables. A Zen monk spoke of the practice of mindfulness in this way, "Before I began to practice, mountains were mountains, and rivers were rivers. During many years of practice, mountains stopped being mountains, and rivers stopped being rivers.  Now as I understand things properly, mountains are mountains, and rivers are rivers.” 

A discipline of mindfulness trains us to pay attention to the seemingly most mundane things in our lives.  A warm bowl of soup, filled with vegetables from your neighbor’s garden or perhaps your own is not simply something to be devoured before moving on to more important things.   I am particularly drawn to the Five Contemplations Buddhist monks and nuns recite before each meal as an excellent tool for developing a Christian sense of mindfulness about God’s kingdom. They are as follows:  This food is the gift of the whole universe, the earth, the sky, and much hard work.  May we live in a way that is worthy of this food.  May we transform our unskilled states of mind, especially that of greed.  May we eat only foods that nourish us and prevent illness.  May we accept this food for the realization of the way of understanding and love.”  In this way each meal becomes an opportunity to realize how fortunate we are when each week some forty thousand children die from starvation. Each meal becomes an opportunity to empathize with those who are profoundly lonely, those without family or friends to share even the occasional meal. Each meal becomes an opportunity to develop a deep sense of gratitude for our many blessings, the love of God, and the way in which our love of neighbor is in turn a blessing to us.

As you wake up, you awaken to the awareness that God created the world and that the Holy Spirit is at work all around us, unceasing and undeterred in her greater purpose.  When you see steam rising from the grass after a summer rain, you recognize the presence of God. When you wash your hands, you know that water is not an element for waste and misuse, but the water itself is an integral part of the kingdom of God and it is precious. As we share with our neighbors the bread and wine, partaking of the body and blood of Christ, we do it in the same spirit of mindfulness, aware that we are alive, breathing and moving, and content to dwell briefly in the present moment. Hanh describes the Eucharist as "a strong bell of mindfulness."  To take in the body and blood of Christ is to take in the sun, the clouds, the trees, the wild beasts of the plains as well as the tiniest forms of life, the wind and the rain, and everything that is good and orderly and made by God. To be aware of this is to have a growing awareness of the kingdom of God.  The holy meal we share is in itself a parabolic expression of a greater truth; reenacted each week so that we might practice seeing it for what it is; and for seeing the one who kneels next to us for who they are. He goes on to say that the bread and wine are not symbols.  They contain the reality, just as we do.  

Can you see this?