Seminary – Page 2 – Word In Process

“You Have No Power”

Good Friday-April 14, 2017-John 18 & 19

My Good Friday sermon from “Preaching Against Violence” class.

Jesus refuses to speak.

[Pilate] entered his headquarters again and asked Jesus, “Where are you from?” But Jesus gave him no answer. Pilate therefore said to him, “Do you refuse to speak to me? Do you not know that I have power to release you, and power to crucify you?” Jesus answered him, “You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above; therefore the one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin.”

Jesus refuses to speak.

“Where are you from?”

Silence.

“Don’t you know that I have the power to either release you or crucify you?”

Another pause. And then Jesus says, “You have no power … unless it was given to you from above.”

“You have no power.

“You may think you do, Pilate, but you don’t. Sure, you could have me killed, or you can set me free. If you set me free they will riot, and then they’ll find someone else to blame. You can have me killed, and they’ll be satisfied for a moment or two. It’ll buy you a few weeks, but they’ll be back. There will be something else, someone else.

“All of that out there—the angry crowd, the screaming, the hate welling in their hearts and spewing from their lips—you have no power over it; you can’t really control it. The only true power comes from above. My father has not given you that kind of power.”

Jesus knows that something far greater than human power is at work in the events of his crucifixion. Evil forces conspire to create divisions that Pilate and the angry crowd are completely unaware of. Jesus knows that the power of Satan is at work and its plotting to get exactly what it wants.

All around us the devil’s scandals run riot. Some develop quickly, others over long periods of time. Sooner or later those scandals envelope even us. They carry us unknowingly along with them, and all the while we are complicit in evils of which we are completely unaware. [1]

Don’t believe me? Take Jesus’ word for it. In John’s gospel he tells us, “If God were your Father, you would love me…you are of your father the devil and it is the desires of your father that you wish to do.”

“Your father, from the beginning, was not my father. My father you do not imitate, but you imitate the devil. You take after him. You’re using the devil as a model for your life, not God.”

We’re tempted to use the devil as a model for our life. Not God. Never has that been more apparent than it was on the day God died.

It is apparent because, we, in our frail human condition, have become rivals of one another. We, in our lowliness, have become living obstacles, stumbling blocks for each other. We, in our unworthiness have begun to think the worst of each other. When things get this bad, it starts to look a lot like our problems will be solved if we destroy each other. We begin to think that if we could just eliminate the enemy everything would be okay. We begin to think that if we can squelch our rival everything will be just fine. [2]

If only I could rid my side of town of that black family. It would be nicer. People would feel like walking up and down the sidewalks again and looking at the flowers. Parents would let their children play in the yard. We could leave our doors unlocked!

Satan wins when our rivals start to look a lot like our neighbors, and their rivals a lot like their neighbors, and in our effort to beat those rivals we all band together to take them on!

If we could just get rid of the Muslims then our country would be safe again! If we could just push the Mexican’s back across the border and build that fence high enough, then we’d have more jobs again.

Satan’s winning.

And if we all group together and lynch our rival, that’ll fix it!

Satan’s winning.

Once we’ve gotten rid of the Muslims and the Mexicans we’ll oust the Catholics! We’ll identify a new rival in our community. One of those who used to be one of us no starts to look a lot like our arch-nemesis.

Satan’s winning.

Boy, the devil’s really got us wrapped around tight, and we don’t even know it.

When we get rid of them, all will be right with the world! Yes! That’s right. And then we’ll take on the next, and the next, and the next and we’ll keep weeding out our enemies until until there’s nobody left to weed but God!

We have to understand that Satan gloms onto us like bacteria. He’s contagious. [3] We are infected with an evil that has no identity apart from its affect on us. It’s proclivity to make us sin is its lifeblood, and it’s detrimental to us and to the kingdom of God.

If we do Satan’s bidding, if we act as children of Satan instead of children of God, then why is Jesus silent? Why doesn’t he speak up? Well, I don’t know, but in his silence he says more than we could ever hope to understand, more than we could ever hope to be able to say out loud.

Where are you from?

Silence.

Why even dignify it with a response?

“You have no power,” he tells us. “You have no power unless it comes from God.” We have to understand that before we can understand what comes next. As long as we lead lives of service to spiritual forces of wickedness, to hatred, to that which stands opposed to God, then we have no power.

But we do! We do have power. We have power to drive out the Muslims and the Mexicans!

No, Jesus is here to tell us we don’t.

Last year the Bishops of our Church heard him loud and clear. They issued a statement critical of our nation’s political climate during Holy Week saying, “We reject the idolatrous notion that we can ensure the safety of some by sacrificing the hopes of others.” [4]

They told us that even in a country shadowed by the lynching tree we continue turn against our neighbors. We seek safety and security at the expense of others, and we think nothing of it. Satan has made an idol of our privilege. Satan drowns us so deep in death that we are willing to stand by while our Lord is killed.

We have no power to save ourselves.

No, of course we don’t.

Only God can do that.

[1] Rene Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2001), 41.

[2] Girard, 38-41.

[3] Girard, 32-46.

[4] The House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church, A Word to the Church (Holy Week 2016).

Sermons

Proclaiming The Death

Maundy Thursday-April 13, 2017-1 Corinthians 11: 23-26

This semester I’m taking an elective called “Preaching Against Violence” which focuses on the church’s role in opposing state-sanctioned violence. Our assignments focus on Holy Week preaching. Here’s my first attempt at a Maundy Thursday sermon.

We still gather to remember and reenact that which Jesus did on the night he was “given up,” on the night he was betrayed. This is that night of remembrance, but it’s not about pleasing reminders of familiar words.

This is one of the most difficult times of our liturgical year; we are forced to remember and acknowledge the truth of a text encoded with betrayal. In the Last Supper Jesus shares a meal and offers himself to his friends who are his betrayers.

Jesus looked in the eyes of one whom he loved and who he knew would betray him and fed him in the sacrament of his body and blood saying, “Remember this.”

It’s a type of death.

“This is my body, this is my blood.”

Remember this. Remember what I have done.

Imagine the scene: “James, this is for you. And you too, James.

John, this is for you.”

It’s not so hard for us to imagine.

“You’ve always been close to me, Andrew, this is yours.”

What a kind soul.

“This is my body, Thaddeus.”

“Matthew, Bartholomew, Philip, and Simon, you’ve learned some important lessons. This is for you.”

“Thomas, you’re a bit of a pessimist, but here you go, this is my body. You will believe.”

Can you imagine that? It’s not so hard. Each of the twelve were flawed, made some mistakes, we can understand that.

“Peter, here’s yours.”

OK, this is getting a little harder.

“I know you’re going to deny me, but this is my body, this is my blood. I am for you in a new covenant. Remember this.”

And then Judas Iscariot.

It’s gets even harder.

“Oh, Judas. You’re about to set this whole thing in motion. Few can imagine the treachery, but Judas, this is for you. This is my body, which is given for you.”

Today, when we eat the bread and the wine of Holy Communion we are following Jesus’ command, a command given on a night when the evil of man’s heart dared to overthrow its God.

Through participation in this sacred mystery we proclaim death not simply by calling to mind the story of Jesus’ betrayal and the loss of trust with one he loved so dearly, but we are also forced to face our own experiences of pain, our own fractured relationships with our Christian brothers and sisters, and with Jesus.

By doing so we proclaim his death, a death that we too experience. After all, Judas was just the face of the betrayal.

Jesus shares his meal with us, too, a people whose hearts would still dare to overthrow him.

And we know it.

“We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table.”

Each time we take the bread and wine we make present the ancient reality, and remembering our role as Jesus’ betrayers and our own broken and dysfunctional relationships with the saints of God.

The eucharist may keep us on the right track, but God’s divine action through it does not inoculate those of us who receive it from the dangers of sin, and just like those saints who’ve gone before we fall prey to the betraying forces of wickedness in the world.

I’m thinking about that movie, Places in the Heart. That final Communion scene. The whole cast of characters sits together in the pews of a little country church in Texas passing the trays of bread and wine—those who have died, those who have betrayed and those who have been betrayed.

There sits a husband and wife. He cheated on her. They’re there together. Their sits the local sheriff, killed in the opening scenes of the movie and along side him the young black man who accidentally shot him, himself the victim of a lynching. They’re there together. I don’t know how they sit with that, some of those things those people had done to each other. The racist things said, the humanity denied.

Remember the death.

I’m thinking about a gay couple in New York. Together 16 years, not married because you couldn’t get married, but committed, living together, combined bank accounts. Might has well have been married. And then one of them tests positive. How did this happen? I’ve been perfectly faithful, perfectly committed. But someone hadn’t been. How do you get through that? How to deal with that? The trust is gone, the relationship fractured. You have given me something that you can’t take back, done something that can’t be undone.

Remember the death.

We are really participating with all of them. Holy Communion is no easier than this: sharing the sobering recollections of destroyed relationships. It’s how we proclaim the Lord’s death and to make those events which we recall to happen again, to happen now.

Sitting down, giving thanks and breaking bread is no small thing—especially not after being so utterly disconnected from our trust and our loss human freedom.

But we’re called to do it. But can we? Really?

It might make more sense to us later, when we strip the alter of it’s adornments and when light is extinguished. Perhaps then we’ll get it.

All ornamentation is vain when darkness comes and uncomfortable silence fills our hearts and our pews. Uncomfortable silence that is, until the choir begins to recite Psalm 22.

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

and are so far from my cry

and from the words of my distress?

O my God, I cry in the daytime, but you do not answer;

by night as well, but I find no rest.”

“[But as for me] I am a worm and no man,

scorned by all and despised by the people.”

“Be not far from me, for trouble is near,

and there is none to help”

Bulls encircle me, packs of dogs close in, the jaws of the lion threaten me.

As uncomfortable silence gives way to uncomfortable psalmody, we wonder if we could really imagine serving a meal to our betrayer.

Could we sit next to them at dinner and offer them a piece of bread?

Well, no, I don’t think we could.

But the truth is, simply standing next to them to receive one is enough.

Sermons

Everything To God In Prayer

La quinta semana en Cuaresma 4 de abril, 2017 – Numbers 21:4-9, John 8:21-30

I preached this sermon at one of our biweekly Spanish Eucharists. What an honor to be asked! I’m grateful for the seminary’s pastoral Spanish program. (See both Spanish and English versions below.)

Frecuentemente nos volvemos insatisfechos con Dios; no creemos que, en nuestras circunstancias actuales, le importemos a él. Vemos ejemplos de nuestra inclinación a la insatisfacción reflejada de vuelta a nosotros en ambas escrituras de hoy del Antiguo y del Nuevo Testamento.

Los israelitas eran impacientes, no confiaban en Dios, y empezaron a quejarse (algo que no resultó muy bien). En su impaciencia y desconfianza Dios les mandó serpientes para que les mordieran y muchos murieron. Solamente ante su muerte inminente admitieron su pecado y le pidieron piedad a Dios.

Del mismo modo, los judíos, como fueron representados en el evangelio de Juan, no aceptaron lo que Jesús les dijo. Muchos no lo tomaron en su palabra. Ellos también sufrieron una muerte, pero no una literal como la de los antiguos israelitas. Más bien es en su confusión y en su descuido que perecen. Es en sus pecados, en la seducción de este mundo.

Jesús les dice que no es hasta que el Hijo del hombre sea levantado – en la cruz, de la tumba, al cielo – que se darán cuenta de quién es. No es hasta que la serpiente de bronce es erigida en el desierto que vuelven a temer de nuevo a Dios.

Tenemos que admitir que, como nuestros antiguos antepasados, hay veces en nuestras vidas cuando estamos insatisfechos con Dios. La Cuaresma es un tiempo que puede traer insatisfacción al frente de nuestras mentes. Puede ser particularmente difícil de ver las maneras por la cual Dios trabaja en nuestras vidas al caminar por el desierto de Cuaresma y al prepararnos para recomprometernos a Jesucristo.

Cuando nosotros, como nuestros espirituales antepasados, nos volvemos impacientes, cuando no logramos entender lo que está haciendo Dios, cuando Dios parece estar lejos de nosotros, entonces tenemos que ser honestos sobre esto al orar.

Es en esta manera que somos llamados a observar una Santa Cuaresma. Somos llamados a orar, especialmente en horas de profundo aislamiento. Orar no es algo simplemente relacionado con agradecimiento o con júbilo. No es aún algo relacionado con enfermedad o muerte. Como me dijo un amigo hace varios años, somos llamados a orar el entero espectro de la experiencia humana. Cuando nos sentimos abandonados, somos llamados a orar una oración de los abandonados. Cuando nos sentimos olvidados, oramos una oración de los olvidados. Cuando estamos sin esperanza, oramos una oración de los sin esperanza.

No podemos simplemente apaciguar nuestras insatisfacciones recordándonos que “Dios está siempre con nosotros”. Ese tipo de respuesta trillada es inútil para nosotros cuando afrontamos una angustia profunda. Más bien, Dios nos llama a abrazar nuestros sentimientos de aislamiento, a ser honestos sobre como nos sentimos con nosotros mismos y con Dios, y asentarnos profundamente en una vida de oración a medida que nos preparemos para la mañana cuando podamos gritar, “¡Él vive!”.

_________

Often we become dissatisfied with God; we don’t believe that he cares about us in our current circumstances. We see examples of our propensity for dissatisfaction reflected back at us in both today’s Old and New Testament scriptures.

The Israelites were impatient; they did not trust God, and they began to complain (which didn’t turn out so well). In their impatience and distrust God sent snakes to bite them, and many died. Only in the face of their impending death did they admit their sin and ask God for mercy.

Likewise, the Jews as portrayed in John’s gospel, did not accept what Jesus told them. Many did not take him at his word. They too experienced a death, though not a literal one like that of the ancient Israelites. Rather it is in their confusion and neglect that they perish. It is in their sins, in the seduction of this world.

Jesus tells them that it is not until the Son of Man has been lifted up—on the cross, from the tomb, up to heaven—that they will realize who he is. It is not until the bronze serpent is erected in the wilderness that they come to fear God again.

We must admit that, like our ancient predecessors, there are times in our own lives when we are dissatisfied with God. Lent is a time that can bring dissatisfaction to the forefront of our minds. It can be especially hard to see the ways God works in our lives as we walk through Lent’s wilderness and make preparations to recommit ourselves to Christ.

When we, like our ancient spiritual ancestors, grow impatient, when we fail to understand what God is doing, when God seems distant from us, then we must be honest about it in prayer.

It is in this way we are called to observe a Holy Lent. We are called to prayer especially in times of deep isolation. Prayer isn’t just about thanksgiving or joy. It’s not even just about sickness or death. As a friend told me some years ago, we are called to pray the whole spectrum of the human experience. When we feel forsaken, we are called to pray a prayer of the forsaken. When we feel forgotten, we pray a prayer of the forgotten. When we feel hopeless, we pray the prayer of the hopeless.

We cannot simply placate our dissatisfactions by reminding each other that, “God is always with us.” That kind of trite response is useless to us when we face deep anguish. Rather, God calls us to embrace our feelings of isolation, to be honest about our feelings with ourselves and with God, and to settle deep into a life of prayer as we prepare ourselves for the morning we can cry, “He lives!”

Sermons

Help My Unbelief!

February 20, 2017 – Mark 9:14-29

You can watch and listen to this sermon by clicking here.

Take a trip with me back to Mark chapter six. Jesus called the disciples, “and began to send them out two by two and he give them authority over unclean spirits.”

Their confusion is understandable, then, when in chapter nine they ask, “Why could we not cast it out?” It says right there that he gave the Twelve authority over demons.

So why didn’t it work with this boy?

Jesus’s answer is revealing: “This kind can only come out through prayer.”

“Teacher,” the boy’s father calls, “I brought you my son; he has a spirit that makes him unable to speak; and whenever it seizes him, it dashes him down; and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid; and I asked your disciples to cast it out, but they could not do so.”

Again, Jesus’ response is revealing. “You faithless generation, how much longer must I be among you? How much longer must I put up with you? Bring him to me.”

“You faithless generation!”

We don’t know how exactly he said it. We don’t have any “non-verbal” clues. It can be tempting to manufacture our own, but forget any imagined tone of voice—just look at the words.

“How much longer much I put up with you?”

“This kind can only come out through prayer.”

The disciples and the scribes had been arguing, but their arguments only point toward themselves, a natural response when we feel like we’ve got something to prove.

While attempting to defend their own efforts, they forgot that it’s really about prayer.

“If you are able to do anything, have pity on us and help us,” the father cries.

He’s in an impossible situation. He’s come to a group of supposedly-certified healers and they’ve not been able to do anything for his son.

His faith it’s at the breaking point. “If you can do anything, Jesus, please just do it!”

That “if” language doesn’t exactly exemplify the unblemished faith that we all strive for, but nevertheless it is the reality of our own days and nights.

Every day we stare into the faces of faithless people, and we too lose faith. In an effort to reclaim that faith we often look to ourselves. Sometimes we are as sure as we can be that we will be saved by our own efforts, that we have all the prayers, all the faith—ALL it takes.

It’s not about winning an argument in order to *prove* that we have the ability. It’s not about us.

It’s about prayer, and faith, and God.

Jesus tells each of us: you have the power to be self-aware enough to recognize that it’s not about you.

He reminds us that we still need God.

He reminds us not of the basic truth that God can do anything through us, but rather he calls to mind the complex realization that we cannot do anything without God.

We depend on a God who wants what is best for us.

Do you hear it?

Our participation in God’s glory is not limited to our inwardly-focused testimony, “I believe.”

Rather it is more fully realized in the courage of our humble refrain: O God, “Help my unbelief!”