Looking Up

One of my best friends got engaged this weekend, and I could not be happier for his fiancée and him. In a call the day after the romantic endeavor had transpired I could still hear in his voice a joy that might have very well lifted them a few inches off the ground. The night before my buddy had sent me some photos from the engagement, which included one of the couple with a picturesque, autumnal valley somewhere in Virginia as the backdrop. I commented on our phone call about that shot in particular, and his response caught me off guard. He said, “It was a bad shot of us. The angle of the pic was from above, so we look weird.” I laughed, but keep thinking about this.

Another one of my friends stands six feet, seven inches tall. He has to bend over to give me hugs, which typically makes me smile and at least laugh inside my head when it happens. On a hiking trip we took I asked him to take a picture of me with another valley somewhere in Utah as the backdrop. I never liked how the photo turned out. The viewpoint of the shot seemed rather off, and I felt like I was smaller in the photo than I feel like I am in real life. As I kept talking to my friend, the one who had just gotten engaged, I wondered in my heart and mind about the juxtaposition of feeling so huge and so small at the same time. 

“Jesus looked up at his disciples,” is the way that the Gospel reading for All Saints’ Day begins. This might be a insignificantly small detail, but considering the words that follow I hesitate to overlook the picture that Luke’s Gospel account paints for us, especially when the words that follow are the Lukan Beatitudes. In a moment when Jesus says blessed are the poor, the hungry, the weeping, and the hated for they will become rich, full, joyful, and heavenly the posture from which Jesus speaks matters. In this person God came to dwell as fully human and fully divine, but coming to recognize this as truth sometimes makes me feel more off-putting than looking at a picture of myself from an odd aspect. Still somehow imaging Jesus revealing the counter-cultural truths of the Beatitudes makes complete sense when we see the one through whom all things were made crouching down in a stance of servanthood.

Even more so than in Matthew’s version, Luke’s Beatitudes at the Sermon on the Plains provide this magnificent mix of paradox that would seemingly fit better with Matthew’s Emmanuel, that is God with us. This is to say the first shall be last and last shall be first message of the Beatitudes comes across all the more strongly in Luke’s telling in part because Jesus, the King of kings delivers them while stooped down, and yet there is more. Luke’s version flows straightway from blessings to woes, which are split up in Matthew’s Gospel account. Woe to the rich, the full, the laughing, and the well respected, for they will experience their comeuppance! Even in this moment of warning I imagine Jesus crouching down, and maybe his voice even quieted, so that the disciples would lean in closer to hear his words. God incarnate in man stoops down to lift up the lowly and humble the exalted ones. This is the lovely, counter-cultural, upside-down beauty of the Good News of Jesus.

This strange paradox we see when we look upon Jesus dumbfounds me sometimes though. In this one person we believe we are looking upon someone who is all God and all human. Perhaps the helpful thing as we look towards All Saints’ Day is that he was not alone in pointing to this truth. Jesus may have been the Beatitudes incarnate, and yet, there were, are, and will be hundreds and thousands of witnesses who pointed, point, and will point to this strange truth of God’s love. This week we will celebrate all the saints, the ones formally recognized by the Church and the ones who we alone may know. As you are going through this week look at the saints in your life. They may not look like spiritual giants, pro athletes, movie stars, or celebrities, but even if the angle looks weird if you look closer you will see that paradoxical truth that even in regular old humans God still chooses to dwell!

IN and OUT

When doing some work to discover my typology in the Enneagram Personality Indicator I have found that I am an “achiever.” This means that I function out of a desire to feel valuable and I do this by accomplishing as much and as many achievements as possible. Put another way, I want to impress other people into loving me by all the things I have done, and how good I look in doing those things to boot! So, in reading this coming Sunday’s Gospel lesson I have a hard time not immediately thinking, “Oh no, I am the Pharisee!”

 

While I have not said it exactly this way, I can hear myself praying as that religious leader did in Jesus’ parable, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.” Now my colleague Evan Garner has written a thought-provoking blog about how the Pharisee most assuredly went home justified alongside the tax collector from the story; however, I am still left confounded in my own (and the Pharisee’s own) trap falsely believing that God’s grace happens in a comparative way, instead of an overwhelmingly non-competitive, all-encompassing way!

If I am not careful my egoic-self pushes me into a place where I do not feel worthy on my own, and so I begin to compare myself with others. Thus, I say—not so much in prayers as much as when I am driving around in my car—“Thank you Lord, for making me who I am and not like those drivers who do not use their turn signals, yield at red lights, or wait their turns at stop signs.” The trouble here is that I am justified in being a good driver, but I am failing in being a free-flowing vessel of God's grace. In my fear I attempt to deceive myself and others into believing that I am better than them when the truth is that all of us are made worthy not in our accomplishments, but in the free gift that is the love of God! 

The Pharisee (from Jesus' parable) and I (when I am unhealthy) tend to want to make life about who is IN and who is OUT! And yet, in the life of God, which includes all of us and all of life itself, when we come together we are always made greater than the sum of our parts. Even though the passage hails from another Gospel account entirely, I believe that is why Jesus said, “When two or three are gathered together I will be in the midst of them.” When we come together we realize that Jesus is among us, and when we discover we are all IN-cluded in the Body of Christ powerful transformations occur, our work gets multiplied, and we discover that God leaves no one OUT!

My small self may want to continue to say, “At least I am not like him or her,” but Jesus in this parable confuses and expands the traditional understanding of who is IN and who is OUT. When we instead pray for the ability and understanding to come together the hope shifts from “I will make it, instead of you” to “I am not diminished but made greater being part of something larger than myself individually.” Lord, thank you for giving us the sinners and the saints, the thieves and the servants, the Republicans and the Democrats, the old and the young, the rich and the poor, all races, all genders, and all sexual orientations for we are much more when we realize that there is no OUT only IN, for we are all invited into the life and love of God. Now, if we can only allow this truth to sink into our being and our doing I wonder how this world might explode with new life and spirit!

Saint Philip: If the Spirit Leads

If you have come here today, then I imagine that for just a moment you are seeking some sort of respite. A word of peace that pierces the awfully violent, loud, and overwhelming balloon of a world that spins and circles around the sun these days. Even at this moment something might be screaming out for your attention: the chores at home, the work still to do, the impending doom of an election, the bills to pay, and even really good things like time with family, social gatherings, or a favorite book or TV show. St. Mary’s Chapel at St. John’s Church in Decatur does only a minimal job of shielding us from the outside noises of a world that screams for our attention, but even if the traffic is silent the inner rumblings of our thoughts, feelings, and emotions may prevent us from experiencing true peace. You have come here though and probably not to hear a great sermon, but to commune with God.

 

In this violent, loud, and overwhelming world you might believe that God does not speak, or maybe you are here wondering if in this peace God might speak. The silence of God might seem like the case. How could it not be with the state of things? I believe that God never ceases speaking. God never stops talking with us. God speaks overwhelming love that still creates, restores, and sustains all things, but if we never stop to listen how will we hear God’s voice?

Philip, a deacon and an evangelist, could not help but hear God talking with him. So, in this moment of rest listen to the story of Philip. One of seven honest men appointed by the apostles to distribute the common funds and resources of the nascent Church, Philip stationed himself at first in Jerusalem. When a group of murderous men stoned Stephen to death Philip traveled to Samaria to preach the gospel there. Amazingly while Philip traveled he listened for God’s voice. Even more amazingly he heard it.

A messenger from God spoke to Philip telling him to travel south to Gaza. This appears strange enough to us that an angel made his travel arrangements, but then the Spirit of God sometimes asks us to do peculiar things. This was even more the case when Philip felt God calling him to approach a treasurer from the queen of the Ethiopians. This Ethiopian eunuch had traveled to Jerusalem to worship. On his way home he struggled in his chariot to understand a beautiful passage from Isaiah about the suffering servant. So upon God’s calling Philip (out of nowhere) ran up to the chariot to ask, “Do you understand what you are reading?” This was a bold call by the ever bold Spirit!

To put it into a modern analogy, I believe this would be like someone running down the aisle of an airplane to grab an open seat (on a Southwest flight obviously) next to someone who seemed to be struggling reading the Bible on their Kindle. Although we may find this type of behavior crazy, I think the Spirit is starting to call us into this type of absurd behavior. As our Presiding Bishop says we are the Episcopal branch of the Jesus Movement and we are called to be Crazy Christians. To do this though, we need to be like Philip.

Philip did not just run up to the Ethiopian man and say you need to believe in God or else. No, Philip saw this man struggling with the Word of God, so he approached, he asked, and then once the invitation to share had been extended Philip shared the good news of Christ Jesus. We do not think that we like evangelism in the Episcopal Church, but the truth is that once we actually try it we are pretty good at it. I know you are skeptical, but let’s slow this down using Philip as our example.

Philip was called by others. He was given a servant’s position. He listened to God and used common sense that he must move after Stephen’s death. He heard God’s voice calling him elsewhere. He approached a person in need with humility. After an invitation to converse Philip shared God’s Good News. Once he did this the man even wanted to be baptized! This is the model of discipleship.

We have been deputized at our re-birth in Baptism to be just like Philip: To listen and be fed by the Holy Spirit; to seek out with humility those who are in need; to share the Good News (not scary news or bad news) of Christ Jesus as we have received it, and even, in emergency situations, to baptize those who want to be part of this movement with us. You have come here to be fed, to experience a bit of respite, but you will be sent out to serve others and to share the Good News. This Good News is that God has shown us a path of Salvation through Christ Jesus. Let us be so wise as to listen when God calls us, like God called Philip, even if it seems a bit crazy what God may tell us to do next!

Inside Out!

We so easily get caught up in what we see. The lives we live often focus so much on the external that we completely forget about what is happening within ourselves, our souls, and bodies. This reminds me of some beautiful, hammered copper mugs that my wife and I received as wedding presents.

 

After receiving the mugs over the summer I wanted to utilize them as much as possible. So some evenings I heartily enjoyed making myself a drink or two. The cold and delicious beverage tasted so refreshing. As I drank though, I noticed condensation gathering on the outside of the mug. If I procrastinated enough to wait awhile before cleaning the vessel, then that condensed water would stain the copper. A few times this happened, such that I retrieved the copper polish to restore the original state of the mug. 

One day as I was doing this my wife noticed that I was polishing the exterior and she asked if I had cleaned the inside of the mug. Sheepishly I looked at her, then I excitedly pointed to the outside of the container, “Look how clean it is!” Then, as she continued to give me a particular stare, I reluctantly took the mug back over to the sink to clean the inside as well as the outside had been polished. Through her words I heard Jesus’ own, “You fool! Did not the one who made the outside make the inside also?”

Jesus in today’s (slightly extended) Gospel lesson corrects the practices of Pharisees and lawyers who made a show of small gestures they exhibited, but neglected their own interior needs and others’ needs. Justice and the love of God cleanse both inside and outside of us all. And yet, often we are worried about the ways that others perceive of us. Vanity, vanity as Ecclesiastes reminds us. We want our outside lives to be shiny and streak free, just like I wanted my copper mugs to shine. This way of living though tends to distract us, such that we miss our interior longings for life in Christ. If we are focused so much on how we appear to others, are we really allowing God to work on our own souls?

The Jesus that Luke’s Gospel account paints often appears difficult and challenging. We may even be offended by him. I can hear my fragile self crying out in the words of the lawyer, “When you say these things you insult us too.” But, the truth is if we turn our personal devotion into something that is showy, if we demonstrate our piety to impress others or to gain a seat of honor or to shame someone else into acting like we think is right, then we are tying heavy burdens on others and even on ourselves. If we focus solely on how polished our lives look to others rather than how much God loves us and how much the love of God transforms us, then we may be shiny on the outside, but we are like that unwashed copper mug on the inside. 

Just like those Pharisees and lawyers we live in a time of both injustice and God’s love. It is the best of times and the worst of times. We may feel that we have to live our lives externally, so that others may see. For some reason social media has made it such that we believe we must get our opinions and beliefs out into the world because everyone is waiting to hear what we think—right! Aren’t we forgetting the inside of the mug?

Woe to us who hide in echo chambers, for we will miss the Christ present in the opposing viewpoint! Woe to us who scream what we think at others who believe something different, for we are too busy talking to listen with our hearts to hear the pain of someone else! Woe to us who sacrifice next to nothing, as we neglect our neighbors who are suffering! Woe to us who want respect from everyone else, but will not show it to someone who is of a different creed, color, background, or belief than ourselves. Woe to us, for we may keep telling people we have good news, but they will walk over us like unmarked graves, as no one stops to hear a bad news gospel made up of “shoulds” and “don’ts”! Jesus may sound insulting to us, I may sound insulting to you, but until we begin focusing on more than just how we appear to others we will be missing the message of Christ. We are called to focus on both an interior and exterior life that allows the true Christ to heal our aching souls, bodies, minds, and hearts together. Otherwise we will remain a shiny copper mug that is unclean and unusable.