Lent 2 - Year B
Romans 4:13-25

Paul begins the 4th chapter of Romans by asking "What then shall we say about Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh?"  The answer, it appears, is rather a lot - all of Romans 4, in fact, and the entire 3rd chapter of his Epistle to the Galatians.  God who addressed Abraham back in Genesis 12-17 is one who, still today, "gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist."  These words, says Paul, were written for us as well and not only to illustrate something which happened long ago.  They bear on the current life of Christians in Rome, in Croix de Neyrat and Chamalières.  They tell us how to be faithful in this church of ours - in this skin of mine.  

A brutally literal translation of Romans 4:18 would say, of Abraham, that he

against hope

in hope

believed.....

which, while ugly English, at least has the benefit of emphasizing the two different ropes which we hold on to.  One is our own self-sufficiency.  It is admittedly quite a frayed thing.  Our character is flawed and sinful.  Our neurons are no longer fit for purpose.  We are too old.  We are young and stupid. The opportunity has fled elsewhere.  The judgement is against us. Our pipeline is vetoed.  That rope - whatever it was - will not support our weight.  We only delude ourselves by hoping that its fragmentary fibers will do what, we know full well, they will not do.  Part of the process is to let that fact sink in - definitively.  That first rope is hopeless.  It will not hold us up. 

So why not switch ropes?  God never showed Abraham a mirror in order to encourage him that, if he eats all his veg, he might locate a bit of life left in that old frame of his - one more lap around the track, if you like. God pointed Abraham beyond himself - to the innumerable stars in the sky and the grains of sand on the beach.  "So shall your descendants be", says God.  I will make it so.  And "Abraham believed God".  The second rope.

Many young clergy imagine that their job is to tell people to keep their chins up and that things are probably not that bad.  "Hoping against hope" (NRSV!) is too often understood as an exercise in optimism - redeeming that one useless rope in the face of all evidence.   Instead of the power of God made accessible to those who believe we ape the motivational speakers and embark on some project about the power of positive thinking. 

And that's not it - not it at all.  It's a whole 'nuther rope.

Prospect  
Matthew 17:1-9  

Squint and you won't look so fat in the mirror.   Take your specs off and you could obscure your vision still further.  The world might look even better.  Or follow the old platitude and take a second gander at your familiar cloud.  Find its silver lining.  Force yourself.  Deep down, though, you know that it's a normal exercise in self-deception.  We do it all the time.  We're working hard to cover up reality.   We hide much.  We reveal nothing.

In this Sunday's Gospel reading, Jesus takes Peter, James and John with him to a high mountain (the story appears in all first three Gospels).  In their presence Jesus is "transfigured".   Matthew and Mark use the passive verb "was metamorphosed" while Luke chooses to describe the process thus: "...the fashion of his countenance was altered".  Jesus shines.  His clothing becomes bright.  Two characters from Israel's history - Moses and Elijah - suddenly appear at his side.  A voice speaks from heaven. The disciples are afraid and do not understand.  They babble or, at least, Peter babbles.  

 Recognizing that the disciples do not have the words to describe what they have seen, Jesus tells them to keep their mouths shut:  "Tell no one about the vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead".

Unlike the normal impulse to prettify a shabby situation, this vision strikes the disciples out of the blue.  It is one which I believe has been better painted by artists, over the years, than it has been retold by preachers.  It is what it is: a hint or a first installment of something that is to come. For the three disciples it is precisely what they will know and preach with clarity after Easter.   It is what St Paul will one day write about to his congregations.  For Peter, James and John that day, God opens the door just a crack.  They catch a glimpse of the full picture: Jesus the light to the world who unites the present (and future) world of his followers with the mighty and saving acts of God in the history of Israel.  

Willful self-deception closes a door.
Unbidden mystery forces it open.

"This is my Son", God says, "Listen to him!"  

Lent 1 - Year B
Mark 1:9-15

One man's desert is another man's paradise.  Is it a testimony to human ingenuity that the "empty real estate" of the Negev, or the deserts of the American west are turned into the sort of places where Iceberg Lettuce can be successfully grown?  Look what we've done: We've made the desert bloom!  You might risk war with your neighbors in the Middle East over the ownership of the water resources necessary to do this.  The subterranean aquifers deep beneath your country might be at risk of running down sooner rather  than later but, yes, it can be done if you believe that all deserts are empty and unproductive places without evidence of green things growing in tidy rows.

Deserts are irrigated, then.  Wetlands are drained.   Only as an afterthought do we realize that what we regarded as useless, empty and even hostile environments were filled with life and hosted complex and interdependent systems of creaturely existence.  Such places set the minds of poets, monks and scientists aflame.  They represented that part of the world which was not completely under the control of commerce and agriculture and was, therefore the source of much novelty, mystery and possibility.  It is no longer taken for granted that we can transform a desert or wetlands into a profitable piece of ground.  In most places of the world we now require permission and our business plan will meet with resistance.

That Jesus spends time in a wilderness at the beginning of his ministry is no accident.  Israel has always come to its senses in the desert - in a place where the din of human conversation is silenced and where the usual comforts are set aside.  The desert is a place where humans are sheltered by whatever structures God had made and not by the labour of their own masons and carpenters.  It is a place where food is found and not grown.  It is a place where priorities are reassessed and new decisions are made.  Do you have such a place around you?  Do you have such a place within you?  At the end of your lives, or even now, you might well identify a stretch of time when things were taken from you - some traumatic episode in your life when change was forced upon you by a tweak in your circumstances. 

At the time it was no fun at all.  You would have welcomed a friendly enterprise with bulldozers or drilling equipment.  Let us fill in those low bits for you, let us drill a well so that we can provide your  habitual comforts for you.  In retrospect, however, you profited from that season of want and absence.  It made you the person you became.  On the other side of that desert experience you would not have traded it for anything.

Last Sunday after Epiphany - Year B
Mark 9:2-9

The Gospel of Mark was written down to be read by Christians.  It was no quick guide to Jesus for the enquirer or the sceptic.  That introduction to Jesus in the life of the reader had already happened.  He or she had, at some earlier time, been grasped by the power of the Holy Spirit through the evangelizing efforts of the Christian community and had been reborn through Christian baptism and nourished by the worship life of the Church.  The Christian reader is the observer of Mark’s account of Jesus’ ministry.  When the crowds in Mark’s Gospel - in Jerusalem or the Galilee - are confused about who Jesus is, the reader of the Gospel is watching them work that confusion out:  Who will believe and who will not?   Who will follow him gladly and who will not?  

In the middle of Mark’s Gospel you’ll find the story of Jesus’ Transfiguration on the slopes of Mount Tabor.  What the voice from heaven had proclaimed in the beginning of the Gospel at his baptism (Thou art my beloved Son; with thee I am well pleased - 1:11) and what the Roman centurion would later deduce from the events surrounding Jesus’ crucifixion towards the end of the Gospel (Truly this man was the Son of God - 15:39) is here not only told to Peter, James and John on that hillside but is shown to them as well.  The veil is folded back for a moment.  Christ is revealed in a blast of light and surrounded by figures from Israel’s past - Moses and Elijah - representing the Law and the Prophets.  Here is no add-on to Israel’s religion.  Jesus is at the centre of God’s revelation to humankind.  

Our Christian readers in the first century (or the twenty-first) turn from the Gospel account and look around at the lives they lead in the world as it is.  They might believe they have much to fear.  Their community is small and their future uncertain.  The world seems lukewarm to the truth of the Gospel.  Some of their own family members remain untouched and unreached.   Within the household of faith itself there are hearts not fully warm to the promises of God.   The Christian reader of the Transfiguration story knows, however, that the revelation of Christ to men and women is something granted.  It is a gift for which men and women should be more thankful than anxious.  Nothing is completely in our hands.  The disciples present at the Transfiguration - Peter James and John - can only babble.  Such is the extent of their contribution in this story.  They cannot yet understand the depth of Jesus’ person as it will be revealed.  God will work through us, around us and even in spite of us.  Christ stands revealed in glory as the Lord of heaven and earth.  His glory will be revealed to the ends of the earth.  He will be proclaimed and his purposes accomplished.  

Prospect                 
Matthew 5:13-20 

     As with many of the parables and pronouncements of Jesus he takes something well-known and gives it a twist.  That salt and light are necessary and good is the truism in this Sunday's passage from Matthew's Gospel.  Of course salt and light are necessary:  Without a healthy pinch of salt all the flavours in the dish are understressed and hidden.  Without light the colours and contours of the room are hidden and one would be excused for having missed them entirely.  The absence of salt and light renders the world unremarkable.

     The twist in this passage is Jesus' claim that his newly gathered band of followers is that salt and light for the world.  The Sermon describing the blessedness of his followers and their vocation in the world appears almost immediately following the call of the disciples - when they bear very little with them to the hillside.  They were fishermen or householders once - once upon a time they were far more implanted in structures of human community than they are now.   Now they are (merely) followers - part of the first community Jesus has built around himself.  In Matthew's version the followers' effect on the world is described using the dual metaphors of salt and light.

     The great turns in Salvation History usually involve applications of human freedom at the impulse of God's word.  As proud as we may be of having held to a steady course for the sake of our families and our treasured networks it will be those curious and sometimes costly about-turns which we find to be necessary or right or which we feel called to undertake in the midst of life which will give our life's story its ultimate sense.  Our example of discipleship (and not just rigorous consistency) points the world to the value which must be discovered like a treasure in a field and not merely chipped from a quarry in a daily grind.  Our children could be concerned - let them be concerned!  Our abandoned co-workers might well cock their heads and wonder at it.      

Every day need not be the same.  Life can taste and look that good.

Epiphany 5 - Year B
Isaiah 40:21-31

Have you been waiting long?

I might ask this question if I already knew the answer - that we had agreed to meet at ten o'clock and now I've come running, out of breath, to the appointed street corner at 10:20.  You are sheltering from the rain under an awning.  You look bored to tears.  You're shifting your weight from one foot to the other.  Have you been waiting long?  Yes.  Precisely 20 minutes.  What have you been doing in the interim?  Nothing.  I've been waiting.

The reading from Isaiah this week says that "...they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength.  They shall mount up with wings like eagles".   This might mean that the eventual arrival of the Lord on the scene will have been worth the wait, the rain, the inactivity and the long frustration. It could mean, however, that "waiting" is a more active pursuit than merely standing under an awning in the rain, puffing away at a sodden cigarette and staring down the street.

The verb in Hebrew has both a literal and a figurative meaning.  "Waiting" here means, literally, to braid together a cord out of various strands or to weave something together.  Figuratively, it means to strive after insight, to discern something solid amidst the confusing things of the world, to seek out the open door after one has been closed in your face.  It is quite active and expansive - not passive and exclusive at all.  

The reading appears towards  the end of the 40th chapter which is a grand description of everything that God is doing in the world and with his people and it has already contained one word specifically critical of those who stand around grumbling that God has not come up with the the timely goods they were expecting.  They complain that "my way is hid from the Lord and my right is disregarded by my God".  Their inclination is to stand in the rain wondering why their number has not come up. To whom the Lord gives a pointed reminder that he is at work in the world.  He is raising up the valleys and causing the mountain heights to tumble and causing life to appear in the wilderness.  He is building community and giving second chances to sinners.  

You were waiting, perhaps, for something particular.  You will do nothing until that very ship comes in or that particular letter comes tumbling through the mail slot.  But you are not waiting - not in the sense that this Sunday's reading would prescribe:  That sort of waiting would require that your eyes were wide open and not focussed narrowly on what you thought you were entitled to.  God is at work in the world.  Find your place in that work.  Discern what has an enduring value.  Be part of what God is about in the world.  It will be for you both strength and wisdom.  God will surpass your expectations.

Prospect           
Matthew 5:1-12  

You don't get rich by being faithful. We've all known faithful people who remained folks of modest means and frequent sorrows throughout their lives. What does Jesus mean, then, in the Sermon on the Mount when he says that the poor (Luke's version) or the poor in spirit (Matthew's version) are "blessed"?

Jesus must have meant something other than "rich".  He speaks to a humble and disenfranchised crowd who know that their economic fortunes are limited and vulnerable to catastrophic change.  In the Sermon on the Mount he goes nowhere towards promising them that the blessedness will translate into monthly income, houses or possessions.  Jesus intends these words about blessedness as a play on words and a paradox.  He, himself, is living as a guest in Peter's house in Capernaum.  His first disciples, rather than increasing their family incomes, are all walking away from their livelihoods in order to follow Jesus.  

We might be driven to the internet or to to our Greek dictionary to find out what the word "blessed" (makarios) meant when Luke and Matthew used it.  With its root makar meaning "extended" or lengthened or increased,  it would appear that the blessed ones, the makarioi, are going to have some bigness about them and something - if not earthly riches - in abundance.  Lots of it - the full measure, pressed down and overflowing!  

But what is it?  What is like riches - but not?   Or like the earthly harvest of fish, grain and miscellaneous revenue but attractive enough to prompt capable people away from these things?  Why do they follow and why do they believe?   Do we not marvel a bit at their freedom?  
There is no question that the words of Jesus, then and now, access a deep hunger that earthly enterprise with its uncertain and transient blessings will not satisfy.   Faith becomes the chief asset in this new economy.  The bottom line is blessing - satisfaction that following Jesus has assured our participation in the big world of the Kingdom, the discovery that other followers have become our family and joy that we have discovered a purpose in life beyond carving out an abundant niche for ourselves.  

The parables and sayings which follow in the Gospels will further unpack this to a group of new disciples who, from time to time, will waver in their newfound faith.
 
We shall be attentive!

Epiphany 4 - Year B
Luke 1:26-38

About five months ago I used an illustration in a sermon of the electrical arc which jumps from one electrode to the other in an oil-burning furnace.  Arcs don't occur when the two electrodes are touching.  That would just be the normal transmission of an electrical current. Arcs take place when there is a space between the two electrodes and a gaseous medium between them (like air) which doesn't normally conduct electricity that well.  There is a "medium" which is resistant and there is a "something" which defeats that resistance.  In the case of the oil burner the electrical arc is hot enough to ignite the atomized fuel oil that is blown over it, the furnace heats up nicely and you are able to sit in a warm house with your book on a winter evening.

I thought again of the electrical arc when I read the interaction in this week's Gospel between the angel Gabriel and Mary.  Gabriel ends his words to Mary by saying that "...nothing will be impossible with God".  Mary's response to the angel is swift: "Here am I, the handmaid of the Lord".  

We always read this exchange as if the wires were touching.  The invitation of God meets the willing and immediate response of the human conversation partner with little resistance, no flash and no mess.  We do not read even a moment's silence into the story between the end of the echo of Gabriel's words in whatever dwelling they were spoken and Mary's response - a silence in which both "yes" and "no" remain a possibility.  Nor do we read such a pregnant pause into the majority of encounters between God and all the heroic humans of the Bible's stories.  At the right side of the painting God speaks through an angel or a prophet. At the left side the object of God's discourse says simply "yes, let it be so".

God asks great things of us:  That our lives as families and individuals be placed within the economy of his unfolding Kingdom; that we welcome the stranger and make provision for the poor; that we act fearlessly, graciously and sacrificially with the things that make up our substance and that we forgive even when others will not.   God asks that we continue to exercise our faith in him in circumstances which would rightly rob others of a reasonable basis for hope.

This is not nothing. 

It is worth at least a pause.  

Faith - mine, yours and the faith of young Mary in Nazareth - is what ventures, appropriately paused and open-eyed, across that uncertain and resistant space.

Prospect                                       

Matthew 25:1-13  

"...those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast; and the door was shut."  

A number of Jesus stories concern things which go wrong at weddings.  Guests don’t show up when invited.  Folks show up badly dressed and are unceremoniously tossed out of the banquet hall.  The drinks run out.  In this Sunday’s reading a group of attendant young women was given the job of welcoming the bridegroom back to his house with his new bride through a gauntlet of lighted lamps.  He was late back from the bride's family home where the marriage contract had been signed.  The girls had all fallen asleep and, when they were roused, half of them were unable to fulfill their appointed task because they had forgotten the fuel for their lamps.  Take a seasoned clergyman out for supper someday.   Ask him about strange things which occur at weddings.  You’ll be entertained.    

This Sunday’s parable leaves us none the wiser about wedding services in the ancient world.   The point is elsewhere.  Chapter 24 and 25 of Matthew’s gospel are all about events and reckonings which may take us by surprise.   They shouldn’t, though, because we ought to have been expecting them.   It looked like a nice morning but by this afternoon the gale was howling and our roof blew off.  We thought it was just an ordinary day but then the telephone rang.   Everything changed immediately.  All the jobs we were putting off were suddenly required of us - now - this instant.  Come to my office with the promised presentation prepared.   Show us your accounts and how they balance. Line up your children and have them recite the Nicene Creed.  Feed the dozen people who have just now landed on your doorstep.  You did, after all, say “Drop by any time”.    

Readiness is a virtue in the apocalyptic world of Matthew 24 and 25.  Would you prefer to live in a world where the faith of individuals and communities is an option?  Are you only aware of vague promises about, some day, changing your hardness of heart towards the people around you?  Have you taken a gamble that, eventually, you will try and figure out what the nature of your attachment to Jesus is?    

Do understand that this same Jesus, in a story framed by Matthew the Apostle, is putting the wind up you and calling into question the time you imagine you have.    How you live now tells the story of who you are now.  These things are all crucially important.  Don’t let the clock tick on.  Don't let the door shut.   

Prospect                                                                                               
Exodus 33:12-23 

It's been a tough trek.  Stress, anger and uncertainty have been the order of the day.  Exhausted, Moses checks in with God.  Is it alright? ask Moses.  Are we still your people?  Even with the incident with the golden calf and the nonstop discord on the people's part?  Will you continue to lead us God? Moses receives affirmative answers to all these questions.  The whole reading is a bit curious.  It even appears that God is tired of being angry.  Moses proceeds, at this point, to ask a question of his own - one which is important to him alone and seems almost irrelevant to his role as the leader of this sorry band of Hebrews in the Sinai desert:   

I want to see you God.  "Show me your glory"  

The earlier conversation with God is something with which we are all familiar: We lay before God our faults, we lay before him our needs, we struggle to review our situation in such a way (or to change our situation in such a manner) that we can be assured that things are alright.  We have some hope for the future.  We restore a balance.  That is frequently enough.  Moses goes further, though.  "Show me your glory" he asks.

Is this relevant?   

Yes - the knowledge of God is relevant, the enjoyment of God's presence is relevant.  It may be the most relevant thing.  The Presbyterian/Reformed catechism states that "Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever." Our relationships have a way of becoming identified with the responsibilities attached to them.  To the man or woman we love, and whose presence we enjoy, we are also husband and wife and bear certain duties and obligations.  The children we delight in also need shoes and transport.  They grumble in the back seat and argue with their sisters.  We rejoice in Christian worship and the presence of our brothers and sisters in the Church but somebody on the vestry needs to tackle the knotty problem of scheduling events and ironing out the finances of the parish.  

We might find ourselves, as Moses does in this reading, relatively exhausted by duty and desiring the mere presence of the one we love.  That, I think, would be a sign of health.  God grants Moses his desire.  He places Moses in a cleft in the rock and passes by.  Moses gets the glimpse of God's glory that he needs.  

We need that cleft in the rock.  Where will you find yours? It may need to be consciously searched out.  If you look for it you will find it.  It is a place where we are simply who we are in the presence of the one we love - that man or woman, those children - that first love.  We begin by declaring our hunger for it and reminding ourselves that our chief delight is the presence of the one we love.  While such love will always contain the structures of duty and obligation we have a right to feel the heat of the fire and to thrill in the sound of the voice.  It is completely proper to desire such things. 
 
Moses does well to ask.  There's more to life than a slog through the wilderness.

Prospect               

Matthew 22:1-14  

Many are called but few are chosen:  Hard to sort out the good news from the bad here.  On the one hand the net is cast wide and the message of invitation is sent abroad widely and comprehensively.  On the other hand there’s a narrow gate and a small and winding path which not everybody takes - to their peril, according to this Sunday’s parable.

Sermons on the passage from Matthew's Gospel which we will be reading have caused more than one sleepless night across the centuries.  Am I one of the few?  Am I on the right path?  In the words of the Tom Paxton song (sung best, of course, by Johnny Cash):  

And I can’t help wonderin’ where I’m bound, where I’m bound I can’t help wonderin’ where I’m bound.  

People are always a surprise--those who seem weak demonstrate great strength in the end and those who appeared most apt and capable give up and cave in.  I have no meter to measure anybody around me in terms of their final destination and how the Master of the Feast sorts us out at the end.  As the song says in its opening line:  “It’s a long and dusty road”.   There is hope in every instant.  

What I am most aware of is that we are all being sorted out right now - in the process of living the lives we do and keeping our eyes on the prize in the midst of a world filled with both the best and the worst of charms and inclinations.  Something is being looked for in us - the turning of one out of a crowd of ten healed persons who returns with thankfulness to the healer, the young men who leave their father’s business to follow the Rabbi, the one hand in the crowd which is raised, the one who says “Me, Lord, that’s me.  I’m the one who wants it, I’m the one who’ll stray off the main road and who’ll stick to the narrow path”.    

I would suggest that teachers and priests, coaches, trainers and mentors all have their eyes open for that one moment when a man or woman breaks from the crowd because what pushes them from the inside becomes stronger than what holds them back or returns them unchanged yet again to the common lump.  

If you’ve been “...wonderin’ where you’re bound” then you know and have felt the question which Jesus poses as he sorts us out in the midst of this life.  It doesn’t bear repeating here.  You may even know what you need to do.     

Proper 22 - Year A

Pentecost 18 

Matthew 21:33-46 

This Sunday’s parable is one of the “hard teachings” within the Gospels.  I’ve seen it used aggressively in congregations where established historic congregations fail to take stock of the changing face of the neighborhood or where older traditional leadership in congregations have failed to reach out to the younger families looking for ministry and welcome in their local church.  It’s often used badly by young clergy.  They practice “ferocious” in the full length mirror at the Rectory as they rehearse the final lines in their sermon.  Like any edged implement it needs to be taken carefully off the shelf.  It has its purpose primarily to heal and improve - not to cut and bash.    

The setting is that of a middle eastern vineyard which forms part of the estate of a non-resident owner.  He has hired it out to tenants whose job it is to till the soil, trim the vines, and effect a reliable harvest.  The master is here a circumlocution for God.  The vineyard is Israel - a chosen nation filled with the promise of bearing the message of God’s desire to reconcile the whole world to himself. 

The vineyard is fruitful and God is at work there.  Vines grow even in the poor and rocky soil - grapes are produced which would be a source of blessing for the surrounding community.  In the parable, though, the controversy centers around this fact: The vineyard is both the master’s vineyard with a particular purpose within the master’s mind and also the place where the tenant farmers live - where they raise their children and put their nameplate on the door.    

It is mine - says the Master.   

It is ours - say the tenants.  

I will not be preaching this Sunday.  I’m off the hook.    A wise preacher would encourage his or her congregation to fulfill their task of cultivating this vineyard aggressively with an eye to the richest possible harvest but to develop, above all, some genuine excitement about sharing the fruits widely.  Such preachers would encourage wistfulness and realism about keeping a light touch upon our possession of the work in the Kingdom.  Ripe grapes or heavy-headed grain late in the season - they are there to be given away, to enrich others, to feed communities and to be something beyond the bounds of our natural communities.  The vineyard may be a source of blessing to us and to our families.  It does not end with us.  If we force the issue, God will find a way around us.   

Proper 21 - Pentecost 16
Year A
 Matthew 21:28-32


In Sunday's Gospel reading Jesus explains that the tax collectors and the prostitutes are getting into heaven before the Pharisees and the Scribes because they have seen the light and changed their ways.

I was staying with former parishioners from Montreal in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  They were out and I was reading a book.  A  campaign robocall came in on the telephone and was picked up by the answering machine.  An election of some sort was going on.  The candidate's recorded message was clear about the shortcomings of his opponent.  There were the usual over-the-top assaults on character but I particularly remember that opposing Candidate X had also offended by "flip-flopping" on Proposition Ten or Twelve or something.  I have no idea what the issue was but it was clear that flip-flopping, in itself, was a very bad thing.

Flip-flop.  Verb.  Je flip-flop, vous flip-floppez, il faut que nous flip-floppions.  Once upon a time, Candidate X had an opinion.  Now he has another.  He is not the man he was before.  I, on the other hand, have not changed my mind. Vote for me.

What has candidate X done?  Has he read a few more books on the subject?  His bright young intern has brought along the latest research on the topic to the morning meeting.  Candidate X has talked to his constituents and realized the economic and political consequences of Proposition Ten.  His changing opinions have even strained his relations with members of his own party.  A good Democrat or a good Republican would be the sort to believe in something like Proposition Ten.  Candidate X, though, has changed his mind.  He now believes Proposition Ten to be a complete dog.  It should be opposed.  

Bring on the flip-flopper, I say.  There's someone I can trust.  Where did we get this belief in the immutability of opinion or in the goodness of people behaving like Newtonian solids traveling through space in never-ending straight lines?  Biographers are forever trying to present consistent pictures of their subjects.  The greatness of the man and woman was somehow present in embryo from the earliest years.  In the words of Dylan Thomas

The oak is felled in the acorn

and the hawk in the egg kills the wren.

You have the right to change your mind.  Jesus is asking men and women to change their minds.  Evidence of such would be that you no longer do quite so well as the men and women you were before.  Your opponents will have a heyday.  Your wineskin no longer fits.  Those who love you will worry.  Your children may regard you with uncertainty.  But it is no weakness on your part.  It may be your greatest strength and the source of your (and others') liberation.

Why have you not changed your mind?  Are you simply not listening?

Proper 20 - Year A
Pentecost 16                                                                                         Exodus 16:2-15 

The Old Testament readings from the Book of Exodus have been quite fruitful these last three weeks.  This week’s reading is no exception.  The topic is the anxiety which the Israelites feel in the midst of their wanderings through the desert after a dramatic escape from Egypt. Moses and Aaron are feeling the full weight of the individual and familial angst. The task of leadership becomes difficult as hitherto forbidden questions begin to be asked: Was the life we led as slaves back in Egypt really that bad?  Was there not bread back home - occasionally even meat in the pot?  We might die out here in the desert.  It could all go so wrong.  

We might recognize an undercurrent of anxiety in our community here in Clermont-Ferrand.  Topic headings might well include:   

- The distance from family members - both young and old - who must face life transitions far away and without us.  

- The loss, in some cases, not only of an income but frequently the vocational world of one spouse who must retool and mourn the loss or suspension of one of the things upon which his or her self-worth was based.  

- Places which were strange, foreign or incomprehensible were once seen on television or in National Geographic.  Now they are all around us.  Our children’s education is in a different mode, perhaps even in a different language.  We don’t understand how the bureaucracy works or even, for that matter, how the shops are set out.  How are we going to find what we want to eat? 

And so there are a few (slightly stretched) analogies between the way some of our lives feel and those of the people of Israel in the desert.  What the heck are we doing here, anyway?  Do we know if it’s even going to work out?    

In Sunday's passage from Exodus the challenge is addressed by Moses and Aaron.  Recourse is made to faith in what God promises: The people will eat both bread and meat because God can provide even in out-of-the-way places.  The second point is a challenge: The people will need to change their diet.  Quails and Manna is the plat du jour.    

God is faithful.  We will have enough.  God provides, but the people must learn to delight in the food which he gives. 

Prospect                                          
Ezekiel 33:7-11   

There was a choice of Old Testament readings this Sunday and the Rector’s eye fell upon Ezekiel 33 as somehow being “just the ticket”.  Oh, here we go:  wickedness, sin and death.  Clergy are a jolly lot, aren’t they? As the 10:30 AM services at the Royat chapel kick off again for the year might we suspect that a new era of fiery preaching (in a tasteful Episcopalian mode bien sur ) is about to begin?  
Know this, first of all: The passage relates to a growing self-awareness on the part of the people that all is not well with them.  The preaching of the prophet in troubled times has hit a nerve.  They say “Our transgressions and our sins weigh upon us, and we waste away because of them; how then can we live?”

They have come to believe there is no remedy for what ails them.  

God’s question to them - through the words of the prophet Ezekiel - is this:  Why should you die in your sins?  It is not necessary.  It is not the pleasure of God that men and women should find no remedy.  

So it usually goes with the people of Israel in their lower moments.  Life is Egypt as slaves,  life under the occupation of foreign oppressors, life lived with a corrupted religious life or under the leadership of violent and corrupt Kings - it’s just the way it is.  It’s their lot in life.  They’ve made their beds somewhere along the way and now need to lie in them.  Bring on, then, successive and eternal chapters of the same damned thing.

And the question - “why” - well, it’s a child’s question, isn’t it?  Our kids ask it from the back seat of the car with the innocence of believing that one can always redraw a picture if it’s no good.  
Still, it’s a tantalizing question.  The question that God asks the people through the prophet Ezekiel might even nag us.  What is it that ties us down to weakness, failure, sin and unhappiness?  Do we not know of a better way?

“Why’ does it need to be the way it is?    

Lent 3
Exodus 3:1-15                      
Matthew 16:21-28  

Moses got distracted.

It might have been recommendable to keep to the path. With a comfortable marriage and a looming
inheritance all Moses needed to do, to ensure a comfortable future for himself, was to put one foot in front of the other.   He could have meandered into late middle age and a respectable dotage.  
A bush suddenly leaps into flame on a distant horizon and the twinkling catches Moses' eye.  He utters the fatal words:

"I will turn aside and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt".  

Significantly, I believe, God waits until he sees Moses turn aside from following his father-in-law's sheep.  When he sees him do this, God speaks to him, and the story of the Exodus begins.
We have all taken our eye off the ball at some time.  We might reproach ourselves for a misspent youth or a series of bad decisions as young adults.  When we were small and we looked out the window we had a blackboard brush thrown at us by a teacher.  Somebody might have insisted that we pare down our social, cultural or sports activities in order to concentrate on the three subjects most likely to give us the greatest purchase on a stable future.  

When the local minister joined the school for weekly Assembly there might have been a truly remarkable agreement between him and the Head Teacher or school Principal that regular habits of work and stable progress towards a goal were "just the ticket".  Funny how that works.

We will talk this Sunday about risk and uncertainty.  Both the first reading from Exodus and the Gospel reading from Matthew's Gospel throw a wrench into the idea of the stable life gained by increments being the be-all and end-all.  There are things worth wrenching your life apart for. Moses heads off to talk to God.  He loses the life he has built for himself in Midian.  Jesus declares his intention to leave the Galilee and to undergo great suffering in Jerusalem.  The reaction of his disciples is conservative and predictable: Heavens no - stay safe and consolidate what we have begun here.  His words to them extend beyond them to us:  

"...whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it"

I look forward to speaking with you about this on Sunday.  We'll see you there.

Proper 13 - Year A - Genesis 32:22-31

Proper 13 - Year A

Jacob at the river Jabbok

(Genesis 32:22-31)

What was Jacob thinking - standing thigh-deep in the river Jabbok - ushering his flocks, his wives, his maidservants and his eleven children across to the other side because he fears what will become of him when his much-offended brother Esau catches sight of the returning troupe? 

“You first”, he says, to his family

This is Jacob sneaking back from exile - never the gentleman and always reluctant to face his demons honestly.  Perhaps the sight of these little nieces and nephews will soften the heart of Esau once he sees them in the flesh.  And so the family crosses the Jabbok as a potential sacrifice to Jacob’s misadventures.  Our “hero” remains on the safe side of the river.

He’s a tough nut, is Jacob.  God must need to squint to see the Patriarch in him.   Now - at possibly the lowest point in his story - God decides to show Jacob a mirror.  A man (God?  An angel?) wrestles him until the dawn.  The stranger begins to lose the battle but then defeats Jacob with an underhanded move.   At daybreak the man tries to break the clutch and to depart.  Jacob cries out to the ghostly figure in his grasp: 

“I will not let you go until you bless me”

God in the form of a man appears to lose but then wins and becomes the source of blessing for the one who grasps him in hope-against-hope.  You know the story.  You’ve heard it preached in different guises.  The identification with Christ is not lost on the Christian reader.

What about our similarity to Jacob, then?  How much desperate behavior - our raging, our crying, our violation of other people’s space and boundaries, our historic immaturity and our dishonesty in work and play is based on our need to be loved and treasured and our belief that we have not been so blessed? What is the central part of this story - the pivot around which it turns - if it is not the pleading of Jacob to the one who has defeated him.  

I have nowhere else to go.  I have no one else to turn to.  See through my sin and weakness.  Bless me, Lord!

If not God, then nobody.  If not his blessing, then nothing at all.

Prospect                                   
Genesis 28:10-19a  

Visions belong to spiritual athletes, no?  Don’t they properly belong to hermits and cloistered religious, vocational mystics and prayer warriors?  Do not these men and women deserve visions because they have succeeded in putting away from themselves the sort of grinding wheels which distract the rest of us?

This Sunday’s Old Testament reading from the Book of Genesis contains just such a vision:    A ladder reaches up into heaven and on it the angels of God move up and down.  Jacob was one of the Old Testament heroes.  It all fits - this saintly man off in a desert.  Unlike us, at least.  Better than us, probably.  The stories leading up to, and following, this vision, however, reveal just what a fractured man Jacob was.  He was a thief and a fraud and a coward.  He is like the comic-book brother-in-law who plays fast and loose with his business, even family business, and who you can just about tolerate over turkey and green bean casserole at Thanksgiving.  

His story in the Book of Genesis will, moreover, do nothing but get worse for a while.  Jacob is, however, part of the story of God’s love to his family and to the world which will ultimately share the faith of Abraham’s children and grandchildren.  Unbidden and certainly undeserved, God grants him the grace of reminding him what part he plays in the restoration of the world.  

You may share no DNA with Jacob’s family and yet he is one of your ancestors in the faith.    Read on.  God wins over Jacob.  The earlier vision comes to bear fruit at the end.
What are the wheels that are grinding for you right now?   If your thoughts on Sunday morning were audible whispers what would we all hear?  How much family business?  How much business business?  What about grudges or complaints about what you lack?  What renders you insecure? What made you angry this morning?  

The life of our worshipping community, the Sunday morning panoply of words, prayers, sermons and songs, the ringing of bells and the elevation of bread and wine in ancient formularies - the midweek fellowship between us - these are moments and occasions of grace.  Do not reject those moments when you are seized by some fleeting glimpse of wholeness and beauty and unimagined possibilities.  Though the wheel continues to grind - be tender, even with yourself.  The vision has a purpose.  God can win you over.

Prospect                                                     
Genesis 22:1-14  

The reading from Genesis 22 - the Akedah or “Binding of Isaac” - is a deeply disturbing piece of Scripture.   The powers-that-be down at Lectionary Central have even graciously provided your Rector with an alternative - should he so desire.  It’s from the Book of Jeremiah and I was tempted to use it since, otherwise, that would make two weeks in a row of heart-rending Patriarchal family politics with potential victims (Hagar - Ishmael - Isaac) seemingly put in harm’s way by God and then rescued in the nick of time.  

The emphasis in our story this Sunday is that God intervenes once again to preserve life. This is true.  
That he first colluded in the expulsion of Hagar and her son Ishmael from Abraham’s camp and that he initially commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son on Mount Moriah is, however, highly problematic.  Soren Kierkegaard wrote an entire essay on the Binding of Isaac (Fear and Trembling) in which he retold the story four different times in order to try and unwind the conundrum with only limited success.

Another point of emphasis is that what we have received in this life is all a gift.  It all belongs to God. It can be given back.  This also is true.

But what of the godly origins of the love which should tie us unequivocally to our children, to our communities and to the vulnerable within them?  Is our ethics and our capacity for loyalty something of merely human origins which God would dispense with in the name of religion - as a quotable example of faith?

I must, of course, refuse to spare you from struggling with this text.  Jesus points back to the Abraham story.  So does St Paul.  It contains motifs of faith, obedience and sacrifice which are the building blocks of the Christian faith and cannot simply be expunged in favour of something more uplifting.  Explaining it neatly away would be a lie.  
 
I didn’t want to be the sort of clergyman who turns hard readings into pabulum.  And so - between now and Sunday - I will struggle to make sense of a difficult text.  

Pentecost 3 - Year A
Proper 7
Genesis 21:8-21 

Among the hymns of my childhood was the one where:

God sees the little sparrow fall, It meets his tender view; If God so loves the little birds,I know he loves me too.  

As a boy I filed this one in the envelope marked "God is very big and can do all sorts of things at the same time" because, while it seemed very good of God to take care of the sparrows of Winnipeg, it was certainly not the BIG STORY which God seemed most concerned about which was obviously the family of Abraham and his descendants - the whole biblical epic which culminated in the ministry of Jesus and then beyond to the evangelization of the world, foreign missions, etc, etc.  
Sparrows were, at best, a sideline.

You remember the story of Hagar, the Egyptian servant of Abraham's wife Sarah?  She was given to Abraham as a surrogate when Sarah was unable to conceive a child.  She was given to him so that the BIG STORY would continue in spite of Sarah's barrenness.  And then Sarah, miraculously, becomes
pregnant herself and so Hagar and Ishmael, her son by Abraham, are cast out of the camp.  The scene in Sunday's reading is poignant: alone and without support, food or water, Hagar lays her boy beneath a tree and retires to a distance so that she will not need to witness the boy’s death.  She lifts up her voice and weeps.  And God hears her.  He points her to the immediate satisfaction of her needs - a well of water - and to a future which had not existed prior to his intervention.

You've been there.  So have I.  

Our particular desperate corners - our crises, our illnesses, our family problems - do not appear to be part of the BIG STORY.  God has more than one script, however and when things appear to be lost, the game to be over and our goose well and truly cooked, we may be heartened by the fact that the testimonies of countless thousands across the history of the Christian faith begin at precisely there - at that moment of imminent or certain loss.  We cry out to the only one who can save us.  Grace is shown to what is small and cast away.  The sparrow.  The marginalized servant woman.  You.  Me