Trinity Sunday: Isaiah 6:1-8; Rev 4L 1-11; John 16: 5-15

SHEMA YISRAEL ADONAI ALOHANU ADONAI ACHAD
Hear, O Israel, the Lord, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.

Thus begins the Shema Yisrael, the ancient Hebrew prayer found in Deuteronomy 6. It is the foundational and daily prayer of the people of Israel from biblical times to this very day--a bold proclamation that there is only one God--a gutsy statement in the ancient world--the foundational understanding of God as well for us, the people of the new Israel, the new Covenant. The Lord our God is One.

It was this God who made the promise to Abraham. It was this God who called to Moses from the burning bush and promised to rescue the people from slavery in Egypt. And when Moses asked the voice for a name, he got a very short answer and no name at all: 'ehyeh asher ehyeh' translated "I am who I am" or better "I will be who I will be."

It was this God whose name could not really be uttered, a God of awesome mystery, who dwells totally beyond the world--and yet a God who hears the cry of the people. This is a God of absolute power, more powerful the Pharoah's army, more powerful than the sea--One who could rescue his people. This name and this God admits of no further penetration, no further interpretation.

But this God had to be called something: Adonai, El, Elohim or simply the short form of God's unpronounceable name "Yahweh" which means: "he is," or "he will be" or "he will cause to be." And, God tells Moses, "this is my name forever and my title for all generations." (3:15)

As we heard in the readings from Isaiah and Revelation a moment ago: This is the God who created the heavens and is now enthroned in the heavens and is called: "Holy, Holy, Holy." "Who was and is and is to come." The people will see who this God is when they witness what this God does--as Ezekiel reminds us: "And they will know that I am Yahweh." This is the God who tells Isaiah: "I am the First and the Last." (48:12) and yet a God whom Isaiah knows cherishes the people with a mother's love and comforts them as a mother comforts her child (49:15; 66:13).

This is the God who hears the groaning of all creation (Rm 8:22). This is the God who has mercy on his people in their struggles with sin and suffering and death. This is a God who connects with earth, not like the kite at the end of a string, but as One who comes among us: This is Emmanuel, God with us.

SHEMA YISRAEL ADONAI ALOHANU ADONAI ACHAD
Hear, O Israel, the Lord, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.

And yet there is more, far more. For this God is finally revealed in a way so new and shocking that it remains down through the centuries a scandal and foolishness. Within this one and only God, there is also community life. For in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. Distinct from the Father, and yet also God. This is One who is the image of the invisible God, and yet is also the firstborn of all creation, the One in and by whom and for whom all things were created...the One who is before all things and in whom all things hold together. This was One, who, though by nature God, thought it not robbery to leave aside the form of God and to come among us, taking on the form of a servant, being found in human likeness. This One became flesh and dwelt among us.

This is the Eternal Word of God who became speechless for us in the womb of a young woman. This is a God who did not turn away from a stable in Bethlehem, nor from human friendship and dinners and wedding feasts. Nor did this One refuse the torture and agony and awful death of the cross. This is the One, Jesus, Eternal Son of the Father, now Son of God in human flesh, whom God raised from the dead. This is Jesus, who shares our flesh, victorious over death and suffering, having destroyed the power of sin, now seated in at the right hand of the Father, who has gone before us to prepare a way for us.

Because we have seen the "Jesusness" of God, Paul can now rewrite the Shema Yisrael to include Jesus (1 Cor 8: 6) "There is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist."

And yet, there is more--far more. Within the one God, there is yet another Person, One who also has the power to create and to renew and to do all things. One who cannot even be imaged except as tongues of fire or a dove or as a powerful wind. The Holy Spirit. Called the Comforter, the Advocate, this One, promised by Jesus, as we heard in the reading from John's Gospel, This One now remains among us. Jesus, having gone before us in the flesh to claim for us our eternal inheritance, together with his Father, now sends among us this Advocate, whose powerful presence continually does in us those things that were accomplished in Jesus. Constantly re-creating and renewing us, the Spirit, with all the creative power of God, causes the work of God to continue among us.

So Paul can rewrite the Shema Yisrael yet again: "May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all." (2 Cor 13:14)

The name of God remains, still 'ehyeh asher ehyeh' , "I will be who I will be." But now this Name has new power, new meaning, for the Lord our God is One--and yet the Lord our God is a community of three divine persons. We can never understand this, for it lies beyond our comprehension, but it is revealed to us in a way we can just barely begin to grasp.

The power of God is absolute: the power to create in the first place and then to re-create, to bring redemption out of sin, peace out of suffering, life out of death. But so too is the love of God absolute: It is the boundless and infinite love that exists among Father, Son and Holy Spirit. When, as Paul tells us, we shall see God face to face, we shall see the face of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Incredible as it seems, we are called into this community life of God--and into the love of God. We are called, as scripture tells us, to be sharers of the divine nature--sharers, through adoption and as creatures, as co-heirs with Christ--but sharers nonetheless of the divine nature. Yes, we are called to enter in some way into the community life of God. All human community is an echo of the divine community. All human striving for love, acceptance, community can find its ultimate fulfillment only within the community life of God and within the limitless love of God.

So the mystery of the Trinity, that feast we celebrate today, reveals to us our final personal destiny, the will of God for the entire human family, and hence the life and mission of the Church. Trinity Sunday is our feast as well as God's, for we are baptized in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

This is no abstraction. It is God's reality here and now in this congregation, at this moment in the life of this parish. For even now, the voice from the bush "I will be who I will be," demands of us a response: who are we and who are we to become. We are called to enter into God's community life even now at this moment--as even now the One God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit is present among us.

SHEMA YISRAEL ADONAI ALOHANU ADONAI ACHAD
Hear, O Israel, the Lord, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.

May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

Homily for Gordon Buck's Burial Service, May 3, 2008. St. David's

The day before he died, Gordon heard the gospel we have just read. Within a few hours, Gordon was to take his own place in one of those
heavenly dwelling places. We can almost picture Gordon, the engineer,
so attentive to details, carefully checking out his new dwelling on the way in. As Brent said so beautifully in his email to the parish, "Never have the gates of heaven been open as wide as when Gordon strolled joyfully through."

Brent's description of Gordon's death was both accurate and deeply moving. He wrote: "Gordon died cradled in the arms of Louise and surrounded by friends of many years who have stood beside him (and Louise) in good times and bad. His death was peaceful and holy, as Louise hoped it would be. He knew that it was time to die and the passage was mercifully swift. The continuum between life and death was fully evident and Gordon made the transition with grace, surrounded by love."

The doctors and the medical staff at the VA loved and respected Gordon and Louise. In fact one of the doctors who visited during his last hours commented that most people aren't surrounded by this kind of love as they slip away towards death.

Certainly there is a large and deeply felt absence here in this parish. To quote Brent again: "The voice of St. David's died. Gordon’s voice was heard in worship, in the pages of The Gospel, in his strength of spirit, and in the dignity with which he lived his life. That voice is now silent here, but singing the praises of God in a place where there is no suffering or pain."

At the reception after the service we will hear many stories from the life of this multi-faceted and magnificent man. We will learn that he was a lifelong devotee of railroading, he was at various times a gymnast, a radio announcer, a licensed pilot, a soldier, an electrical engineer, a computer expert, a pioneer designer of the internet and a handyman who could do just about anything. Gordon knew everything about computers and would answer any question. The only trouble was, after talking to Gordon you always needed just a little more ram or another few megabytes or gigabytes.

Louise and Gordon loved children and before the accident they would offer assistance to parents by taking care of the kids for a weekend or a few days. And kids loved them and responded to them. When the parents returned, Gordon and Louise would remark on how well-behaved the kids were--and you'd wonder whose kids they were talking about.

We who remember Gordon before the accident know that his great delight was in doing all that he could to make life pleasant and bright for his beloved Louise. And then there was that terrible day in March of 1989.

When Gordon returned to St. David's in his wheelchair, though diminished in size, he grew in stature. He never complained, rather, he inspired us all. He resumed his place in the choir he loved so much. He served on the vestry. He read the Scriptures from the very center of the church. He published our monthly newsletter. After the accident Gordon moved even more into the center of our parish life.

And so did Louise, for she continued on as our liturgist and devoted parish helper, but now she was constrained by the tremendous responsibility of caring for Gordon. So Louise and Gordon inspired us in new ways from their place at the very center of life in this parish.

Many people came to their assistance, and were in turn inspired and helped by them. Parishioners went over to help. There were the attendants and the choir. Their circle of friends grew to include the wonderful medical staff at the VA hospital where Gordon was a patient so many times.

Then there was that incredible day sixteen years ago when Gordon discovered a daughter he had never met. When that daughter and her husband came to San Diego to visit, there was a public ceremony of adoption right here in this parish.

Gordon and Louise accepted Tinker as their daughter and Barry as their son-in-law. The lives of both couples were immeasurably and permanently enriched by this relationship and they have been even further blessed by the four children since born to Tinker and Barry.

When Gordon died, the VA presented Louise with a flag because Gordon had been a soldier. When Tinker opened the box, this young woman who had been an army wife, realized the flag was not properly folded, so we went to the Marine Corps Recruit Depot to have the Marines fold it the right way. Louise decided that Tinker should receive the flag.

So six Marines from the color guard folded the flag properly--as at a military funeral--and presented the flag to Tinker. And upon leaving the premises they rendered a proper salute to the departed soldier, to his wife and daughter.

Tinker, that flag is yours. Keep it and treasure it, for it is a reminder of your father at a stage in his life when he was young and vigorous, when he endured the rigors of basic training and lived the army life with which you and Barry are so familiar. And Arielle, Caleb, Adrianna and Alexis--remember that your grandfather was at one time a young man whose energy was at least the equal of your own.

Really Gordon's life is best summed up in his signature hymn: The
Exultet, the Easter Proclamation. Each year on the night before Easter at the service of the Great Vigil, Gordon sang right here in this church that most ancient and beautiful Christian hymn. It is a hymn that summarizes all we believe about the core of our faith: that Christ crucified, was raised from the dead and that we who are baptized into his death are joined also in his resurrection. The root meaning of Exultet is to exult. That's our Easter faith. That's the way Gordon sang it and that's the way Gordon lived it.

You see Gordon, the skeptic, the doubter, the careful scientist had come to faith by resolving in his own mind the deepest questions of science and faith and he had also accepted that faith in his heart and at the very center of his soul.

Gordon sang the Exultet every year, but he lived it every day. This year he had again prepared to sing it at the Great Vigil of Easter, but was too sick to come to church, so he called our home that night and sang it beautifully over the phone for Carol and Marie. He sang it and he lived it.

So, what does it say, this song which was Gordon's song and is actually the signature hymn for the entire human race? It begins when the church is dark and the paschal candle is brought in signifying the light of Christ, This light is then spread to the smaller candles, representing all of us who receive our light from the light of Christ. Did Gordon, confined to a wheelchair as a quadriplegic, understand darkness and the night of the soul? Oh yes, he did! Did he understand the light of Christ and did he extend it to others? Oh yes, he did!

Just remember or imagine for a moment that man with less than 30% lung capacity, in his wheelchair singing with full voice and great joy the opening words of that ancient hymn:

"Rejoice, heavenly powers! Sing, choirs of angels!
Exult, all creation around God's throne!
Jesus Christ, our King, is risen!
Sound the trumpet of salvation!"

Remember this man, who lived for 19 years in the darkness of quadriplegia singing this:

"Rejoice, O earth, in shining splendor,
radiant in the brightness of your King!
Christ has conquered! Glory fills you!
Darkness vanishes for ever!"

And the hymn goes on, bidding us to do what Gordon did with his life among us:

"Rejoice, O Mother Church! Exult in glory!
The risen Savior shines upon you!
Let this place resound with joy,
echoing the mighty song of all God's people!"

On the morning he died, Gordon refused any further treatment, knowing it was fruitless. He told Louise, "I've decided to bail." A paraphrase of the words of Jesus on the Cross: "It is finished." When he was anointed and heard the prayers for the dying, he was still able to respond, in imitation of the one who said: "Father, into your hands, I commend my spirit."

And then came the transition from life into the long night of death…but here's what the Exultet says about the finality of death:

"This is the night
when Jesus Christ broke the chains of death
and rose triumphant from the grave."

Gordon lived out the Exultet every day. His example and his inspiration to us was his Easter faith. His legacy to us is to be found in the final words of that great song, his song, our song.

"May the Morning Star which never sets
find this flame still burning:
Christ, that Morning Star,
who came back from the dead,
and shed his peaceful light on all humankind,
your Son, who lives and reigns for ever and ever.
Amen." And for Gordon. Alleluia, Alleluia.

(The text of the Exultet used in this homily is from the longer version, cited in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exultet)

Sermon St. David's 2 Pentecost, June 10, 2007 Gal 1: 11-24 WPMahedy

Jesus raises the young man to life (Lk 7:11-17), exercising the power of God, over even death itself. In the first reading (1 Kings 17:17-24) we hear the Elijah implores God to restore life to a young man who had just died. God responded. We learn that the author of life fully intends that death shall not have the final word. In this morning's second reading, Paul testifies that he proclaims what he has seen through a personal appearance of the risen Christ. Like the original disciples who had seen the risen Lord, Paul also has first hand knowledge of God's power over death. Paul now knows God's final intention for the world; he understands the decisive event which points humanity in a new direction as children of adoption towards the newness of life. He has become an apostle, a messenger of this good news to the world.

Paul explains to the Galatians that he received his mission first hand from the Lord and he exercises his mission independently and in no way is he subordinate to the Jerusalem apostles. And yet, he also tells us, and we know from other passages, that he had checked out his message with the original apostles. We know that Paul was a part of the community which itself decided on how the mission to the non Jewish world,--the mission to the gentiles--was to be exercised. He did not operate outside the church, but he was an equal and independent force within the church. Paul once persecuted the church and now he is an apostle of the Lord. He states that those who witnessed this change in him now "glorified God" because of him. He the messenger of God's new life in Christ also embodies and exemplifies what he preaches.

With Paul, we go immediately to the heart and center of the Christian mission. Let me reflect on this mission as embodied in Paul from a personal perspective. In the second year of my four seminary years of theology and scripture study, I was so captivated by Paul and by this mission, that I volunteered for the missions in Japan. At the time I was a member of the Roman Catholic Order of St. Augustine.

A couple of years after I was ordained, while I was happily teaching in a small New England college, the Order sent me where I had asked to go.

I lasted in Japan only about a year because I experienced extreme culture shock. Most of the Americans, Canadians, Europeans and Latin Americans who were there experienced to varying degrees the same thing. About half had to return home within the first few years, but some endured for many years and some spent the rest of their lives there. Though for me the mission experience was very brief, it was both formative and normative for the rest of my life.

When I joined the Episcopal Church, I was impressed with its formal and complete name, i.e. the "Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America."

But does our branch of the Church still live up to its name? Are we really a missionary society? Or, have we now become merely "the Episcopal Church?" Episcopos is the NT Greek word for "overseer." Oversight of the community is only one of the many gifts mentioned in Paul's letters--it being no more important than any of the others. Are we now known simply as the church that has bishops? Our very public and now pervasive squabbles are all about who should be ordained as overseers. We have taken an office which in the New Testament has only a secondary significance and elevated it into the decisive and defining component of who we are. That's the way the general public sees us. Whatever the case, we are no longer recognized by others, nor perhaps even by ourselves, as primarily a missionary society.

Paul and his contemporaries in the first generations of our faith were above all missionaries. They took seriously the Lord's command to preach the Gospel to all nations. Of course the pastoral care of those already in the church must be met. Paul himself cared for his people. He wrote his letters to them. But he and they were immersed in the mission to those still outside. They stood against the ruthless and brutal Roman Empire and gave testimony by their lives and by their words that Jesus Christ and not Caesar is Lord. To be a missionary to the Roman Empire was dangerous business. Their vision of reality, their way of life was at odds with the Empire. They refused ultimate allegiance to Caesar and his minions. The Christian mission to the Roman Empire was a costly one, it was seeded with the blood of thousands of martyrs, men and women who died for their faith.

Like Paul, those early Christians were a "resurrection people," aware the God's power over death would triumph even over the Empire. Like Paul, they were members of a community of people. They were the body of Christ.

But like Paul, they were strong and independent and they were thoroughly innovative. For them, the mission came first and they organized the church according to the needs of the mission. Defined only by the common mission, different churches had different structures. Some had single overseer bishops, some had other forms of leadership. The notion of "clergy" was foreign to them. They did whatever it took to proclaim and live the Gospel of God's love in the teeth of a ruthless and brutal culture.

Nor did they wait till they got it all together before they went out on the mission. Paul publicly disagreed with Peter. Paul and Barnabas had a conflict that led to them taking separate missionary journeys. There were conflicts and questions, but they resolved these issues as they went along. They played it by ear and got on with the mission. And it worked

In that context let us now examine the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America. It is true enough that we have our foreign missionaries, people like the Clearys and the Hardisons. True enough, we do mission work in our own parishes. The Vietnamese and the African congregations in our own diocese are examples. It is also true that there is much domestic mission work going on among some of our people. People here at St. David's are involved in many projects that fall within the ambit of mission.

But where is the zip, the zeal, the drive, the spiritual depth, the constant focus on the presence of God that is the sine qua non of all mission work? Where are the serious conversations among ourselves and with other Christians of other branches of the Church about how to exercise our common mission?

I read some of the stuff that comes out from the national church--and from those who have seceded from the national church. I get emails from the diocese about clergy stuff. I get the latest on the Windsor report and hear about what happened at this or that conference. But who cares? Where's the beef? Where's the sense of mission? This program, that program, or program-sized parish, or clergy wellness or tactics of congregational development. Can you imagine "wellness conference" in the church of apostles and martyrs? Perhaps in the Colosseum as they waited for the lions.

It seems to me we are spending all our efforts on trying to resolve the "Episcopal" part of our church. We are trying to figure out who can or can't be ordained a bishop. Or whether bishops from other provinces can come into the American church or what the House of Bishops will do or the Lambeth Conference of bishops, or the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Presiding Bishop. Other denominations are as bad. Look at all the time and energy spent in Roman Catholicism over the role of the Bishop of Rome. Look at the synodical battles of Protestant groups. Perhaps we at least, should try to surmount this nonsense and remember that the entire Church is supposed to be always and everywhere a foreign and domestic missionary society.

What has all this got to do with real life in the real world. Only this--don't take all the "churchy" episcopal stuff too seriously. Take only the mission seriously. Paul and the very first Christians were personal witnesses to the risen Lord and we are not. But, as John's Gospel says, "blessed are they who have not seen and yet have believed." That's us. We do not face the Roman Empire, but we are confronted by the various empires of our present world, empires that focus almost exclusively on the autonomous individual self; empires that beguile us into believing that comfort and pleasure and the satisfaction of all our wants are the reason for being.

Our Christian ancestors resisted the empire, but too often we do not resist. We are instead immersed and subverted and seduced and co-opted Perhaps the reason the church is so self-focused is that its members worship at the altar of the Imperial Self, that most tyrannical of all rulers. God, as the readings today remind us is the author and giver and restorer of all life. Paul, in this reading as always calls us to mission.

Our mission, like that of our ancient ancestors is in the world and to the world. Our mission requires an overarching sense of community, but it requires as well that we be strong and independent operators in the world. It is a mission that requires time spent in prayer and study. It requires regular Sunday worship. It requires self-giving and attention to others. It is a mission of love, compassion, and sometimes of personal witness, a mission exercised on the run, at home, at work, in the markets and classrooms and shops and businesses.

It is a mission given equally to all of us in baptism, young and old, men and women. It has nothing to do with being ordained or not ordained. Herein lies the reason that all church offices or structures--like all ethnic, racial or national boundaries are insignificant. All creation, the vast expanse of interstellar space, the entire cosmos results from an outpouring of the love that exists within the Trinitarian heart of God. The exuberant and abundant love among Father, Son and Holy Spirit is given, donated to all creation. This is a direct, immediate and personal gift of God to each individual. Just as the persons of the Trinity are co-equal, so the gift is given to human persons as co-equals in the presence of God and to each other.

The word "missionary" comes from a Latin word which means "to send." We are sent by God into this world. But the prior sending takes place when the Father sends the Son into the World to become flesh among us, to live and die as one of us and to overturn the powers of sin, suffering and death. The Father and the Son send the Spirit among us to accomplish in us what was done in Christ. For this reason scripture says that we are "partakers of the divine nature" because we are children of adoption and co-heirs with Christ. Our first response is to give back that abundant love of God directly to God and then to each other and to everyone we encounter. That is our mission and it is a direct response to God's own mission.

So this morning let us renew our commitment to this fundamental mission. Let us resolve not to be distracted from it by anything in the world or any issue in the church. Let us praise God in our Eucharistic prayer, for "whenever we eat this bread and drink this cup we show forth the death of the Lord until he comes." Indeed in the breaking of the bread we again recognize the risen Lord. So unto God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit be all honor praise and thanks. Amen.

Sermon St. David's 2 Advent Dec. 10, 2006 Luke 3: 1-6 WPMahedy

"Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God."

John was preaching repentance. He was announcing the final outcome of God's plan for the world. John told his hearers that in God's own time, the mountains and hills we humans create will be made low; our crooked paths will be made straight and our rough ways smooth.

John was calling people to turn away from everything that stands in the way of God's work. He told them to turn away from the crooked paths and rough ways of sin. Fulfillment of the promise lies the future, but we are to repent now in preparation for the age to come. We are to prepare for the coming of the Lord--not just at Christmas but at the end of time. We are to prepare now for the final judgment.

The New Testament word for repentance is metanoia. It means a change of mind. It means acquiring a new attitude. It means turning our thinking toward God. Because thinking, believing and acting are really inseparable, repentance means not only to have God-centered thinking but to act upon it--to act upon our renewed thinking. We are always in need of repentance because we are always walking along crooked paths and rough ways.

John used the majestic language of Isaiah in his call to repentance. But there is a very earthy word used often in the Old Testament which can be used to elucidate the steps by which we repent. That word is dung. Let me explicate. In the Italian city of Siena stands Europe's greatest medieval square, the Campo. This is the place where a centuries old rivalry takes place each year. It is a horse race like no other. It is the famous Palio. It is the working out of an ancient enmity between the city's districts which are called contrade.

A person is born into a contrada and remains in it for life. Each contrada is centered around a parish church. If a person marries someone from outside the district, one of the spouses makes the terrible sacrifice of leaving the contrada and parish of birth. After the annual race, people from the winning contrada wear their colors for months. The men walk around for weeks with pacifiers in their mouths signifying a new birth. These customs have endured for centuries.

One of the more colorful traditions of the Palio is bringing the contrada's horse into the church before the race and blessing it. If the horse should happen to leave a residue on the floor, this is not picked up until the race is over. And the horse droppings are festooned with flowers.

Even though garlands of flowers may surround the smelly substance and rest upon it, and even though it sits on the church floor in the presence of the reserved sacrament, it remains nothing more than horse dung. And so it is with our sin, with our evasions and denials.

There is a well-known colloquial expression which calls manure a holy item. At first glance, the placing of flowers around horse droppings might seem to signify its holiness but the flowers really disguise the manure. They deny its reality. This resembles ever so much the way we deny our own sin.

It is quite human to produce fecal material in both the physical and the spiritual sense. With running water and flush toilets it is quite easy to dispose of the former, but we place flowers around the latter and tend not to remove it at all. We say such things as: "This is just the way I am," Or my anger is righteous, my dalliances are explainable, my greed is unavoidable, my pride is just honesty about myself--and so on. We place flowers of self-deception around our own spiritual mess and tend to leave it there for a lifetime.

The first step toward repentance, toward metnaoia is to remove the flowers from our own spiritual dung When we can see it for what it is, then we can roll up our sleeves, grab a shovel and begin to remove it. Recognizing it is the first stage of repentance, and removing it is the second. This is a lifetime job. Holiness resides not in the aforementioned substance which lies on the floor of our own temple. Holiness is first to recognize it for what it really is and then to haul it away. As long as we surround it with flowers of self deception we can never get started. So repentance begins with a clear vision about ourselves. A spiritual sense of smell helps as well.

Repentance waxes and wanes in our lives. Sometimes the pile gets very large, but sometimes we manage to haul some of it away. Repentance and unrepentance have consequences in the world. We can see this easily. Individuals in a group can either act as a mob or work for good. Whole societies do the same. Germany in the 1930s and '40s was totally unrepentant and set towards evil. Germany today is not. South Africa was mired in apartheid, but has come to a kind of national repentance. Other parts of the world have never repented of genocide.

Narcissism, injustice and violence are all contagious and infectious. Groups of people and even whole societies can be drawn into the bottomless cesspools they create. Sin always affects others. That is why metanoia/repentance spills over and affects others. It changes societies.

We Americans have heaped tons of flowers around our own national dung. We become steadily more greedy, materialistic, narcissistic and coarse, piling up for ourselves a huge pile of dung, disguising it with wreaths of what we pretend is individual freedom. The garland of self-interest renders us insensitive to the needs of others.

And now we condone the destruction of human rights and we fight a pointless and endless war in the name of good against evil--all the while avoiding the stench by placing upon it the idolatrous wreath of self-righteous morality and a perversion of the Christian religion.

Prepare the way of the Lord! Only God can finally purge the global human temple of the dung that accumulates. Complete cleansing will take place only with coming, not of the infant Jesus, but of the risen Lord at the end of the age. We cannot bring about the final outcome of God's plan. It is not we who fill in the valleys or make low the mountains and hills or make the crooked ways straight. It is God who does this. We can only prepare the way of the Lord. But we can and must prepare the way of the Lord by rolling up our sleeves, grabbing our shovels and hauling away as much of the mess as we can.

Repentance, metanoia is a personal individual act. It is both a command and a promise given to each one of us. Prepare the way of the Lord! The mountains and hills and valleys and crooked paths of our lives are all included within the vast sweep of God's plan. We as individuals will personally see the salvation of God. What is spoken to all the peoples of the earth is addressed to each one of us.

But repentance is also a word spoken publicly to all the world's people--to the entire human race. Especially to the so-called "people of the book" who supposedly take Isaiah seriously: It is spoken to Jews and Christians and Muslims. The call to repentance is both a promise and a warning. It echoes down the ages to Sunnis and Shiites, to insurgents and suicide bombers and to armed militias, to Hezbollah and Hamas and Al Qaeda, to the Knesset and Likud, to all invaders and occupiers of nations and to all who kill the innocent with cluster bombs or rockets or i.e.d's, or through massive military operations among civilians. It is a word spoken to generals and soldiers and politicians and leaders and citizens of all nations including our own.

It is a word spoken from the distant past to the peoples of the book in Iraq, Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Egypt Jordan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, to the nations of Europe and to the British. It is a word spoken to us, the people of the most powerful nation the earth has ever seen.

Repentance is a new way of thinking. It is the first glimpse of the salvation of God. It is a call to re-orient our attitudes. It is a vision of the way things really are. It is a call to action. It is a demand that we remove the flowers from our spiritual dung. It is a command for us to pick up our shovels and get to work.

Hear again the words of Isaiah and John the Baptist.

"Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God."

On Labor Day Sunday, I usually depart from the norms for a homily and try to reflect from a Christian perspective on the workplace. We are, after all, called to live as Christians at work as well as at home and at church.

Most of my ordained ministry has been spent, not in parishes, but in other settings: school teacher, the military, the university campus, federal employee, health care clinician, administrator, non-profit employee. Though retired, I remain fascinated by work environments and still occasionally work for the VA. When I go into any kind of establishment or conduct business dealings on the phone, whenever possible, I do informal surveys of workplace conditions. I listen to and try to learn from everyone.

I am sorry to report this year that workplace conditions continue to get worse across the board. Though each workplace is different and some of them have excellent conditions, pay and benefits, sadly the larger trends are in the other direction. Recent statistics tell part of the story that many people experience daily. This past week we learned that:

"The median hourly wage for American workers dropped 2 percent between 2003 and the end of last year, after factoring in inflation. The drop has been especially notable because productivity, the amount that an average worker produces in an hour, has risen steadily over the same period.

At the end of 2005, wages and salaries made up the lowest share of the nation's gross domestic product since the government began recording the data in 1947, though a slight surge in wages took place since December. At the same time, corporate profits climbed to their highest share since the 1960's. UBS, the investment bank, recently described the current period as "the golden era of profitability."

For the 91 million households with working people under 65, the median income dropped, by half a percent, or $275. Incomes for the under 65 crowd were hurt by a decline in wages and salaries among full time working men for the second year in a row, and among full time working women for the third straight year. In all, median income for the under 65 group was $2,000 lower in 2005 than in 2001, when the last recession bottomed out. Those of us over 65 did better because of Social Security income. Real wages have been stagnant since 1973.

The Union Tribune reported on Wednesday that the 64[ercemt of households whose annual income is below $60,000 live in the bottom two tiers of a "stagnant hour-glass shaped" San Diego economy. Lots of high paying job, lots more of low paying jobs and a diminishing middle.

This correlates with what I am finding in my conversations with working people. The name of the game today seems to be simply "pay as close to minimum wage as you can, get as much work out of people as you can, pay as little in benefits and pensions as you can. Whenever possible, outsource, downsize and lay off."

As an employee at a large department store said last Wednesday: "sorry for the delay, but to have only one person at the register during a sale just isn't right." No it isn't right, but that's the way things are done nowadays--and at all levels.

Though our various workplaces are different and distinct, they are not unrelated to, or exempt from, the larger trends in our culture. The relentless pursuit of the absolute bottom line, the “in your face” arrogance and corruption of political and economic leaders, the inexorable downward pull of materialism and cynicism have cheapened, trivialized and coarsened American life--and this is all related to what we do at work.

Everything is up for sale--including spirituality which is now sold as a means to increased efficiency and profitability. Spirituality (whatever that means) has been called the "latest mega-trend."

Everything is a commodity, including personal relationships. We are encouraged to see ourselves primarily as consumers and everything is individualized, privatized and sold to us. The shopping mall has become the new spiritual center of life.

What has this got to do with a Sunday sermon? Well, it describes the kind of situation the Old Testament prophets spent most of their time speaking out against. It is contrary to the teaching of Jesus. It is a mockery of the Christian ideal found throughout the New Testament. We are called by our risen Lord into community with God, with each other and with all of humanity. We are not exempt from that call of God in our workplace.

Money, profitability, efficiency and the pursuit of things are now obsessions bordering on idolatry. We are like the ancient Israelites in our worship of the golden calf. We need to remember that the laws of the marketplace are not the laws of physics. The force of gravity is not a matter of human choice, but the organization of the economic culture is.

So, what do we do about it? Most working people are trapped themselves and have very few options--but there is always something we can do. Jesus spoke in three different ways to three different types of people. He spoke intimately with his disciples. He spoke with compassion to the ordinary people. But he spoke scathingly to the leaders, excoriating them for hypocrisy and oppression. Where on that scale do we fit?

What can we do to change things? We have to start at the level of personal relationships. The first step is to recognize that those we meet in any setting, even in the briefest commercial transactions, are real people. Whenever people meet, our faith tells us that the encounter is potentially a sacred event. If even a small percentage of people realized this and acted upon it, our society would be transformed. Some already do operate this way, but not nearly enough.

Fortunately we encounter some clerks, teachers, government employees, bank personnel, insurance company reps, medical people who give evidence of treating us like real human persons. These people are the biblical leaven in the workplace and we need more of them. We need to make a conscious effort on a daily basis to be ourselves among these blessed people.

Though the culture of the market, the office, the shop, where we work might be almost devoid of the human touch, we are able to bring real humanity in with us. We must acquire a foundational Christian mode of thinking and acting. We must realize we are called by God into community. The eternal, Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, has made a common life with us through Jesus. All human community flows from this fundamental biblical truth. We are called to be "partakers of the divine nature." (2 Peter 1:4) We also know that "we are children of God, and if children, then heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ" (Rom 8:16). We are, through Christ, children of the Father by "adoption." (Eph 1:5; Rom 8: 15, 23, 9:4)

This is the great Christian reality. If we are conscious of this in all human transactions, especially at work, we transform our environment. When we see each customer, clerk or client as a fellow child of God and act as if it were, then that encounter, while still a business venture, is no longer purely functional and utilitarian, but truly a sacred act.

In a culture where business transactions are increasingly constrained by computer-like speed and efficiency, taking the time and making the effort to engage another person as fully human and worthy of our love are decisive Christian steps—and this is directly contradictory to the overarching trend of our culture. So there is my simple suggestion for beginning to change your part of the workplace. You can also do this not only as an employee, but as a customer or client as well. Everyone in a human transaction can make a difference. That is your "homework." Practice constantly to acquire "that mind in you that was in Christ Jesus." (Phil 2:5)

Do we have any models available as a guideline? I think we do. Too often the church extrapolates and brings the agenda of the surrounding culture into the church. Seldom does it work the other way. I suggest that we reverse the direction and take a church model out into the workplace. What church model? One very close at hand: St. David's.

Though I am ordained a priest, I spend most of my time in this parish as simply a member of the congregation. During Bren's recent medical leave I was asked to help out. I did so, but not in doing pastoral visits. Jim Kellett arranged for the pastoral calls with assistance from Maryanne and Jack. I was the acting office administrator, a kind of "office gofer" for our Rector's Warden. As such I got to observe very closely St. David's as workplace. I observed the office staff and the volunteers and got involved with some of the construction issues Volunteer work is still work and St. David's is a place where lots of work goes on.

St David's is a workplace in which the Christian life is truly carried out well. There is a loving collaboration and a gentle ongoing conversation. Problems that arise are quickly resolved through honest communication. It is a terrific workplace. Of course, you can't transpose a church situation completely into a secular context, but you can use it as a model and an ideal, incorporating as much as you can in your own work environment.

So, having observed this workplace closely for the past four months, I hold it up for your consideration as a model and I consider you good people as exemplars par excellence. Of course, I shouldn't name names, but I will name one who has become a role model for me. Our Rector's Warden Melinda Murdock, is a peerless administrator, who truly has raised that function to the level of a magnificent spiritual gift.

So let us go forth from this place into the world of home, family, neighborhood and work, mindful that we are called by God to enter as creatures and children of adoption into the very ambit of the common life of God. And to God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit be all honor and glory now and forever. Amen.

St David's: Easter 2006: Mark 16:1-8 W.P. Mahedy

The young man sitting in the empty tomb of Jesus told the women not to be alarmed, for Jesus had been raised from the dead and was on his way to Galilee. They were to tell Peter and the disciples that the risen Jesus was going there ahead of them and they would see him there. Did these consoling words comfort the women? Of course not, the Gospel tells us that they were seized with terror and amazement. They were afraid.

And why would they not be afraid? Their whole world had just been turned upside down. Life had been forever changed. Their fundamental understanding of life and death had been irrevocably altered. They were quite literally living in an entirely new dimension. The promises to Israel had been fulfilled in a way that was incomprehensible. Israel had been delivered from the tyranny of its Roman oppressors and the corruption of its own leadership. Yes, Jesus had truly been the Messiah, the promised one, but the magnitude and extent of their deliverance was beyond comprehension. It was only later, after these first fearful moments had past that the full truth would become clear to the followers of Jesus.

Through Jesus not only Israel, but the entire world had entered into and experienced the first glimmer of a new creation which is the ultimate goal of the entire cosmos. In the confusion of the first Easter appearances, the disciples could not comprehend the full extent of what had happened. The Spirit would clarify at Pentecost, and then they would begin to understand. The magnitude of what happened still startles us after two thousand years. For not only is he the true Paschal Lamb, who was sacrificed for us, not only has he taken away the sin of the world. But by his death he has destroyed death, and by his rising to life again he has won for us everlasting life.

But there is even more, for the passage from Isaiah we have just read is literally true: "he will swallow up death forever." As Peter told his hearers: "He is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead." He is, as Paul would later say: "The first fruits of those raised from the dead." And as Paul would also write of the risen Christ: "Creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God." He is the "Firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him."

Today we celebrate this, he bedrock foundation of our faith. Easter is the primordial, and in a sense, the only Christian feast. All else is subordinate to Easter. The risen Christ is Lord of all. He has the power over sin and suffering and even over life and death. It is the risen Christ to whom we turn in times of terrible distress. It is he who stands in our midst as our rector struggles with cancer. He is with us as we face our own failing health. He alone offers us hope in a world of mindless violence, unending wars and spreading poverty and now the threat of preemptive tactical nuclear attacks. It is he who will judge the rulers of this world. It is He who will bind up the wounds of the world and reconcile all things to God through his death and resurrection. It is He who will greet us at the first moment of our entrance into eternity. It is He who is the guarantor that we too shall rise from the dead with him.

All this is implied and understood in that most ancient of Christian greetings. When one follower of Jesus encountered another, the truth was first proclaimed: "Christ is risen." And the response was "The Lord is risen indeed." So, let us shout it out: Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed. And to this risen Lord be all power, might, dominion and majesty now and forever. Amen

Sermon St. David's, Jan 15, 2006. John 1:43--51. W.P. Mahedy

The Reading John 1:43-51

43 The next day Jesus decided to leave for Galilee. Finding Philip, he said to him, "Follow me." 44 Philip, like Andrew and Peter, was from the town of Bethsaida. 45 Philip found Nathanael and told him, "We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote--Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph."
46 "Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?" Nathanael asked. "Come and see," said Philip. 47 When Jesus saw Nathanael approaching, he said of him, "Here is a true Israelite, in whom there is no deceit. 48 "How do you know me?" Nathanael asked. Jesus answered, "I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you." 49 Then Nathanael declared, "Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the King of Israel." 50 Jesus said, "You believe because I told you I saw you under the fig tree. You shall see greater things than that." 51 He then added, "I tell you the truth, you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man."

Reflection on the Reading

So Nathaniel is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit, no guile. The dictionary defines guile: insidious cunning; duplicity; artful deception. Deceit is: concealment or distortion of the truth for the purpose of misleading.

Why does Jesus refer to Nathaniel as an Israelite and why is it important that he is without guile? This is a profound issue and still relevant today. The word used in John's Gospel for deceit or guile is dolos It is the same word used in the Greek translation of the Old Testament in use at the time of Jesus in which Isaac describes the treachery of his son Jacob. Jacob disguised himself as his older twin, Esau, and fraudulently obtained both the birthright and the blessing promised by God. Isaac tells Esau: "Your brother came with guile, with deceit, with dolos, and took your blessing." God's blessing, obtained by fraud, was passed to the world through a deceiver. Jacob even received a new name: Israel. This became the name of the peopl. As the New Testament people of God, we are also descendants of this deceiver.

There is a huge theological problem here, one that greatly perplexed the early church. Since so much of the Old Testament is taken up with the prophets castigating Israel for their hypocrisy and self deception, the lies and deceit which always precede acts of injustice and wrongdoing, how is it that the people bear the name of the greatest deceiver in their history?

Jesus himself spent a good bit of time castigating religious leaders for their deceptions, lies and hypocrisy. In a faith which abhors lying, guile and deception, how explain the lie which underlies the very foundation of Israel? No less a mind than St. Augustine came to an impasse. He copped out by saying: "it's not a lie, but a mystery." Well, yes, it is a mystery, but it remains a lie, dolos, guile, deceit.

So when Jesus sees Nathaniel, he calls him by the name borne by their people: He calls him an Israelite, and then states that in this Israelite there is no guile. To this Israelite with no guile, the promise is given of what he and the entire new people of Israel will see. This time around there is to be no guile. The new people cannot be founded upon dolos, deceit, but upon the honesty and guilelessness personified by Jesus and exemplified by Nathaniel.

Real guile does not mean necessary "tactical statements," such as: "My mommy isn't in now," rather than "my mommy doesn't want to talk to you." Or how you respond when asked: "Dear, does my new outfit make me look fat?" Or, when the boss comes in and says: "Okay, here's the new plan of how we are going to do things around here. What do you think?" Not guile, tact.

Guile is distortion of the truth for the purpose of misleading. Some examples you may have heard: "We don't meet the specs on this product, but we tell our customers that we do." Or "It's very difficult for anyone to actually collect on this policy we're selling, but we tell the clients how easy it is." Or, "We do not tolerate torture." Or, "we do not conduct surveillance without a warrant." Or "I never take bribes, I have never even smoked marijuana." Or, "I never had sex with that woman." Or "We didn't manipulate the California energy markets." Or, "San Diego's city pension fund is sound. Or "We invaded because they were developing nuclear weapons."

Pervasive deceit renders civil society impossible. The Church should be in a very real sense the sacramental sign to the world of the transcendent honesty of the One who is Truth itself. The Church must be guileless. But how does it get there?

Following the lead of Augustine for whom this was a major problem, we begin first by looking within ourselves. His simple prayer "O God, let me know myself, let me know you." (Sol 2.1.1) If we go this way into the deepest part of our soul, we begin to discover who we really are. God's light shines within our cracks and crevices. We begin to see our flaws and sins as well as our bright spots. But as Augustine writes in his own autobiography, this should not be disheartening, but rather the occasion to discern the glimmering of God's grace. Within our own inner darkness, the brightness of divine light becomes clear. There is deceit within us, but we see it and allow it to be transformed in the light of grace. Here Augustine simply follows Paul, who was confronted with his own "sting of the flesh." When Paul asked God to remove it, the answer came: "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness" (2 Cor 12:9). Only then was Paul able to boast of his own weakness. Augustine is open about his own sinfulness and weakness in his most famous work The Confessions. For Augustine, as for Paul, the self is not the center. God is.

Deception and guile result from our desire to present ourselves to others in ways that are not true. We want others to think well of us, to do our bidding. We want to enhance ourselves at the expense of others. Sin begins with pride and immediately becomes deceit. Before we can deceive others, we must first deceive ourselves. Guile is first practiced on oneself. The paradox that troubled Augustine is resolved when we discover that God can allow the promise to be passed through a deceiver only if God redeems and transforms deceit into honesty. Like Nathaniel we are to be people in whom no guile is found. This is possible only through God's grace and our honest response. Here is the bedrock of Christian life. It begins within ourselves.

As we open ourselves to God's invitation in prayer and honesty, we discover the truth of Augustine's prayer where he says: "You were more inward to me than my inmost parts and higher than my highest reach." (Conf, 3, 6.11) Yes, God is both more intimate to us than we are to ourselves and at the same time further beyond us than even the cosmos itself. When we grasp this, we begin the outward movement towards others, arising now from the deepest wellsprings within us. We can see that God has formed a bond with each of us even in the depth of our dishonesty and sin. God now calls us out of ourselves into community--a common bond with others who are also mired in deceit and sinfulness. From this most profound moment of grace, we are called out into the world to form a common life with all we meet. As the guileless Nathaniel saw Jesus and recognized him as the Son of God, receiving the promise of what is to come, so we too are able to invite others, to come and see.

Augustine uncovered the root of his own sin when he pondered why it was, as a troublemaking adolescent, that he joined with a gang of other young thugs and stole some pears from a neighbor's orchard. They didn't want the pears; they didn't eat them--they actually threw them to some pigs. An adolescent prank, yes, but why? He pretended to want the pears when he really didn't. He realized in retrospect that he did it because he wanted companionship, the friendship of the other pear thieves.

He saw that the desire for companionship and friendship can lead us into sin as well as into grace. Genesis describes the man and the woman in the garden as companions in both in deceit and in sin. It never changes. Mutual deceit destroys the soul, ruins families, renders commerce impossible and collapses nations, i.e. USSR

So we are surrounded by deceit and mired in guile. This is not particularly new. Near the turn of the 20th Century, Congress was owned by and operated for the big three: the railroads, the steel industry and Standard Oil. Corruption was pervasive. The wars in Cuba and the Philippines at that time involved at least as much deceit as did Vietnam and Iraq.

What is new and troubling, however, is the communication transformation wrought by 24/7 television and the pervasiveness of the internet. Theater has always been influential. The ancient Greeks knew this. In Shakespeare’s Hamlet: "The play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king." But as news and entertainment become indistinguishable from each other and are purveyed by mass media on a global scale, a new element has been added. The internet is great but it invites identity theft. Chat rooms allow for and sometimes necessitate disguise and the use of false personas. Predators lurk on the internet and some subterfuge is necessary. The media are now not just the message, but a large slice of life itself.

So the Church must become that place where guile is transformed, where deceit is redeemed. Our transparency must be that of Nathaniel as we recognize Jesus and then invite others to come and see. This parish is about to open a new mission center. We are planning a renewal weekend. We must realize there are no shortcuts to the inner search I have described. No programs, no models will do this for us. There must be a full commitment to a personal and corporate search for God that is without guile. This takes place both in the depths of our own hearts and in our life together.

As Augustine tells us, there is not only a community of sin, but also one of grace. Christian spiritual life consists essentially of our common life together. We cannot discover God at a profound personal level and remain mired within ourselves--we are impelled outwards. As a parish we cannot be a "mission center" if we are not first a community transparent in grace. If we are so transformed others will come to us to discover what about us makes us different.

Scripture tells us that we are "partakers of the divine nature." (2 Peter 1:4). We are called as "adopted children" to enter with Christ in some way into the totally transparent common life within the Trinity, to share in some way within the mutual love of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Then at last "we shall know even as we are known." Augustine goes so far as to say that within our inmost parts there is a glimpse and faint awareness that our inner selves are configured to the Trinity. (On the Trinity,7.6.12)

So let our lives be this prayer: "O God, Let me know myself, let me know you--for you are more inward to me than my inmost parts and higher than my highest reach--and so to you, Father, Son and Holy Spirit be all honor and glory now and forever. Amen."

The Hurricane: A Reflection. St. David's Church. 9/4/05 W. P. Mahedy

Clearly it would be remiss on the part of any preacher on this Sunday not to reflect upon what has happened during the past week. The terrible, tragic event unfolding in the Gulf has ripped aside long held assumptions and beliefs about ourselves. Hurricane Katrina and our response to it will be with us for years and it is very likely to be the major event of our time. We will never be the same again--nor should we. When the veneer of civilization is ripped away, when people are placed in horrible situations, we see more clearly what emerges from the human spirit: despair, hope, heroism, criminality, steadfastness, resilience. Ordinary people rise to incredible heights of courage and persistence–and a few descend into thuggery. You have seen it unfold before you this past week. You have also seen the levels of response. You have watched people overcome all odds just to get the job done. You have seen how political leaders act in a crisis. You have also seen how they evade accountability. All this will continue to unfold before your very eyes, for this is only the beginning.

Remember too that the preparation for and the responses to Hurricane Katrina are inseparable from the way we normally do business. Society consists of many threads woven into a single fabric. People like the medical personnel whose commitment to their patients in the face of hunger and dehydration led them to give each other i-v solutions so they could keep on working: people like that live all around us. There are people like that in our congregation this morning. Some in New Orleans took from stores the necessities to save their lives, a few others descended into criminal looting--but how does this differ from society at large? The executives of Enron and the like, as well as some elected officials are looters as well.

The federal government's refusal to fund adequately the strengthening of New Orleans' levees is not unlike San Diego's unwillingness to pay for adequate fire protection. The incredible bureaucratic tangles that impeded the delivery of aid are not unlike or separate from the bureaucratic snafues encountered in trying to get insurance companies to pay claims or to surmount the obstacle of getting past the choices in a telephone tree.

Nor is the past week unconnected to the ongoing health care crisis in this country. Recently the governor of Tennessee removed 200,000 poor people from Medicaid in order to save on costs. National priorities are also in question, as the Senate plans to consider eliminating the estate tax, an act which would both reduce federal coffers and remove incentives for the wealthy to make charitable contributions, thus removing vast amounts of funding for the next disaster.

Most difficult to face perhaps is the fact that the plight of the poor, largely black population of New Orleans and the plight of the Mississippi poor is really a reflection of the way our economic system actually works. Though we are unwilling to admit it, economic self interest drives the social engine. The result has been increasingly great financial gain for a few, economic stagnation for many and impoverishment for multitudes with an ever diminishing safety net for those who need it. Again many threads of a single fabric. The window is now open so we can see a great truth about ourselves. Perhaps the door is also open for great change.

All this is not just a human problem with political and economic consequences. It is a profound moral and religious event as well. Cities, states and religious congregations across the country are being asked to respond with help and financial assistance and some already have. We will be asked by our bishop to help, and so we should. But this cannot be the end of it. As our nation undergoes profound soul searching, the Christian community must reflect upon our life together in terms of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Let us begin with the central affirmation of our faith: "Jesus is Lord." Remember too that if Jesus is Lord, then Caesar is not. If Jesus is Lord then the self is not.

Last month Harper's Magazine published an article by Bill McKibben, entitled "The Christian Paradox: How a faithful nation gets Jesus wrong." His thesis is simple: If roughly 85% of Americans claim some form of Christian faith, how can we in our economic life depart so far from the biblical commands to love our neighbor as ourselves, to love those that hate us, to give justice to widows, orphans and the oppressed, to feed the hungry and clothe the naked? How can we forget the beatitudes so completely in our public life? How can we go so far in the opposite direction?

McKibben points out that three out of four Americans believe the Bible teaches: "God helps those who help themselves." Actually this bit of wisdom is not found in Scripture. It goes against everything we know of Scripture. It comes from Aesop's Fables and entered American life through Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanack in 1736. It is this kind of thinking, not Scripture, that underlies and supports the economic and political institutions in which we live and work. We may try to live our personal lives as Christians--and we might be able to pull it off at church, in small groups, with family, friends and neighbors, but when we leave these small groups, we enter a world of totalitarian consumerism, relentless materialism, narcissistic individualism, unbridled greed and the fascination with power.

There is afoot a total surrender to the dreams of efficiency and productivity now measured in computer time and not in the more human scale of an earlier era. Here Jesus is not Lord. Here the market forces have ascended the throne of Caesar and are worshiped as avidly as was any ancient emperor god. This American idolatry was proven to be patently false on the Gulf Coast this past week.

The statement, "Jesus is Lord," got the early Christians in much trouble during the first three centuries of our history. For them it was not just a statement they made or a song they sang, but it was a real commitment to an alternate way of life. If Jesus is Lord, then Caesar is not. If Jesus is Lord, then the self is not. If Jesus is Lord, then the political and economic systems upon which Caesar depends are not worthy of ultimate allegiance. Our early ancestors in the faith marched to a different drummer and that was the reason they were considered such a threat to the Roman authorities. In the aftermath of the events of this past week, American Christians must reexamine what we really believe. We must recommit ourselves to living out the biblical faith, not just in words, but in action.

The New Testament itself provides the antidote to the notion that God helps those who help themselves. Consider this passage from Acts 2: 44-46.

"All who believed were together and had all things in common; 45 they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. 46 Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, 47 praising God and having the goodwill of all the people."

This is what Scripture holds up for us as the model of our life together. Ben Franklin's aphorism may be sadly true in the way the world works much of the time, but that is precisely the problem. When most of our activity is driven by that belief, then we ultimately come to the point we reached last week in New Orleans.

The ongoing response to the needs of the hurricane victims is a national, even an international problem. The political and economic dimensions of this or any situation cannot be separated from the religious and moral assumptions upon which human activity is based. As we remember the images of heroic response by the Coast Guard crews and the medical personnel, as we watch again the pictures of ordinary people caring for each other under unspeakable conditions in the Superdome and the Convention Center, let us remember that this is what Scripture calls us to. This must be our ideal always and in all situations. We must attempt to live this way in the ordinary affairs of daily life. But we cannot do this as individuals alone. We must strive to embed these beliefs in the economic and political systems that provide our social sustenance.

From a Christian perspective, we could be at the threshold of real repentance and renewal. We should allow for and even cultivate a sense of unease about what has happened and what will take place in the future. We may now shed our illusions of omnipotent national efficiency. We can react to the offers of assistance from nations around the world--even some we don’t much like--with a touch of humility, abandoning our bellicose and grandiose national posture. We can relinquish our dreams of empire and national preemption. We can see too that illusions, lies and deception work no better in internal crises than they do on the international scene. They are no more effective in peace than they are in war. This is a wake up call. It is a call for repentance and renewal. It can be the beginning of a new life together. Americans can look to the second verse of "America The Beautiful:" America, America, God mend thine every flaw. Confirm thy soul in self-control, thy liberty in law."

This requires both individual and collective response. We must commit ourselves, not just to helping the hurricane survivors (we must do that), but also to functioning as real Christians individually at work and in our neighborhoods. We must resolve to live not according to Aesop and Ben Franklin but according to the Gospel. Every one of us can make a difference all the way from small things like smiling and thanking a supermarket checkout person to leadership in business and corporations. At work any of us can do our best to assure that customers and fellow employees are treated like people and not like mere consumers or units of production. New ways of seeing, believing and acting are now open to us during this period of national soul searching.

The Church too might benefit from such a time. Perhaps we can look afresh at our little enclaves of the self-righteous and the smug: liberals and conservatives alike. Even this is possible with the grace of God.

Perhaps this parish too can use the coming months to discover whether we really want to live the Gospel with real commitment, for we must decide whether the mission center will be really that or just another parish hall. How deep are we willing to go ourselves? So where do we go from here as a nation and within the global community? Where do we go from here as a church and as a parish? How will this change us as individuals? We shall find out in the months to come. With a firm reliance on God's grace, with prayerful reflection and with a renewed commitment we must embody within ourselves what was expressed in that first and greatest Christian Hymn, which Paul either discovered or wrote himself. We must have

"that mind in us which was in Christ Jesus. who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death--even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." Amen. (Phil 2: 5-11)

The story of the killing of Stephen, the first Christian to die for his faith, has a lesson for us in a time when religion is distorted and misused for political purposes.

The Death of Stephen: Reflection on April 17, 2005; Acts 6:1-9, 7:2a, 51-60; W.P. Mahedy

We learn from the Gospel reading today (Jn 10:1-19) that Jesus is not only the shepherd of the sheep, but the gate through which the sheep enter as well. Jesus has come that we might have life and have it abundantly. That is the point Stephen was making in his speech to the Sanhedrin. They didn't like what he said and so they killed him. A little background.

Stephen was among seven chosen to work with the Greek speaking, bicultural Jews from the different nations who were living in Jerusalem. It was probably about a year after the death and resurrection of Jesus and the disciples had not left Jerusalem, so the Gentile mission had not yet begun. The authorities who killed Jesus expected his followers would disband and eventually end up in other messianic movements as had been the case so many times before.

The proclamation that Jesus had risen from the dead and was Lord of all was intolerable to them. They had arrested and flogged the Christian leaders, but they had killed no one yet. So Stephen, faithful to his mission to the bi-cultural, Greek speaking Jews, had been preaching in a synagogue which had members from different nations. It was these people who found the message more than they could bear, so they grabbed him and dragged him before the Sanhedrin. Stephen then preached to the leaders of his people. When he finished, they were so enraged they formed a lynch mob, threw him in a pit and killed him by stoning--without even going through the legal requirement of clearing his execution with the Roman governor.

Stephen's sermon and his murder were decisive moments in Christian history. His martyrdom began the exodus of Greek speaking Christians from Jerusalem, taking them to different places where they spread the Gospel. Present at Stephen's death was Saul of Tarsus, who became Paul the apostle with his mission to the Gentiles. James, the brother of John, was killed shortly afterwards and the original twelve apostles then began their own missionary journeys. Stephen's death pushed the Church out into the world.

Why was Stephen so controversial that he was killed? If you read the long section of Acts which is left out of the reading, you will see that Stephen makes the case that neither the land of Israel nor the Temple are absolutely necessary for the fulfillment of God's plan. He shows that the leaders of the people had always rejected God's word. These leaders to whom he was now speaking were "a stiff--necked people...who always resist the Holy Spirit." They had finally "betrayed and murdered the Righeous One sent by God."

Why did the Roman empire, which so readily tolerated all kinds of religions without any problem, consider the followers of Jesus so dangerous? There is a direct line--a trajectory--from the crucifixion of Jesus, to the killing of Stephen and then James, to the persecution begun by Nero and continued by Trajan at the end of the century, to the sporadic persecutions of the 2nd century, to the systematic efforts by Decius and Diocletian to exterminate Christians in the 3rd and early 4th centuries. You can see why the Sanhedrin wanted Stephen dead, but why did Rome also try to wipe out the Christians? They knew that if Jesus is Lord, then Caesar is not.

Jesus, the Good Shepherd, the gate through the sheep enter the sheepfold, is also Israel's Messiah and King--and precisely because of Israel's status within the purposes of God, Israel's king was always supposed to be the world's true king. "His dominion shall be from one sea to the other; from the River to the ends of the earth" (Ps. 72.8). "The root of Jesse shall rise to rule the nations; in him shall the nations hope" (Isa. 11.10, cited Rom. 15.12).(N.T. Wright).

But this Messiah-King-Shepherd achieves his goal by failing to achieve anything. He is executed on a cross--the cross being a symbol of Rome's absolute power over life and death. With the resurrection of Jesus, the cross became a symbol, not of Rome's power, but of the Lordship of Christ. The early Christians subverted the meaning of the cross and they also subverted and ultimately converted the empire. They came not to rule, but to be in love and service to others as was Jesus their Lord. In this way Jesus is Lord and Caesar is not.

By the time Stephen was killed, the cult of Caesar was not simply one new religion among many in the Roman world, but it had become the dominant cult in the Empire, and was the means whereby the Romans managed to control and govern the huge areas that came under their sway. Who needs armies when they have worship? (Wright, ibid). Early Christians obeyed civil law but they reserved their ultimate allegiance to God. They did not accept the empire's basic assumptions. They were truly different. For Jesus is Lord and Caesar is not.

Jesus was crucified because his Kingship demanded an entire new way of being in the world. Stephen's speech to the Sanhedrin made this perfectly clear. There was simply no room in the Roman empire for these people. They were persecuted until the 4th century when the Church was freed by a Christian emperor--but then the Church itself began to acquire the trappings of secular empire. Christians are no longer a threat to the world's empires because they have been co-opted by them. The words and example of Stephen call to us across 2000 years, reminding us of who we are supposed to be.

What is the current empire? What are its ideologies and belief systems? Well, it's many things. Nation--states--ours being the most powerful--are the present inheritors of ancient Rome--at least in part. But the increasingly ruthless and dehumanizing global market seems to be superceding even nations. In fact, as global economic interests come to buy and control more of national political systems, the two merge into a system that rivals ancient Rome in its power to dominate.

The ideology that blinds us to the menace we face and that makes us complacent is to be found within ourselves. We have come to believe in individual self-fulfillment as the supreme good. We now believe in the "imperial self." It is this which enables the materialism, consumerism and greed which feed the new empire. Each individual, supposedly free in a political and economic sense, now makes choices which supposedly express and embody the self--but which really destroy the personal spiritual center and create a vast "spiritual wasteland." In this respect, we may be worse off than were our spiritual ancestors in ancient Rome who had a clear sense of community.

Our new bishop alluded to this in his talk to the clergy last Tuesday when he said that we have a mission to the postmodern world--a world increasingly hostile to our message. We need to think about this, especially here as we prepare for next month's meeting to chart new courses for our parish. The Lordship of Christ is still incompatible with the Lordship of Caesar. The first step in dethroning Caesar must always be to see clearly what is going on. We live here and now in 2005. We are citizens. We participate in civic and economic life. We are limited in what we can do, but we do have some choices. We must first think like Christians before we can act like Christians. We are not isolated atomistic selves, striving only for our own good, we are members of the human community.

We must remember that any product is only a product--despite what the advertising suggests. Any government, including our own, is only a government. It is not a religious entity nor is it a font of wisdom and truth. Any flag is only a flag, not a religious symbol. The dollar, the euro, the pound are means of monetary exchange, not the means of salvation. Nor are our individual selves worthy of enthronement as objects of worship.

Remember Hans Christian Anderson's story of the emperor's new clothes. The emperor loved fine clothes and was hoodwinked by a couple of swindlers who promised to make him some beautiful new clothes, so fine that they would be invisible to all who were not smart and competent. As the two pretended to weave these new garments, courtiers were sent in to report on the progress. No one saw anything, but they could not admit this for fear of being considered stupid. So they reported back that the garments were beautiful. When it came time for the parade to allow the emperor to show off his new clothes, the emperor couldn't see them either, but he couldn't admit this. It took a small child to speak the truth: "the emperor has no clothes." Then everyone saw the truth about the emperor.

So our first requirement is to see the almost complete nudity of the various emperors who dominate our lives. If we first see they have no clothes, we can then begin to think and act differently in small ways. Our own imperial self is perhaps the most troublesome emperor we face. But if we face up to our own lack of adornment, we are open to being clothed truly with the garment of our baptism. For this we need prayer, bible study, reflection, worship.

I learned a great lesson in truth-seeing and truth-telling in connection with the fall of the Communist embodiment of empire. I visited Russia in 1988 and again 1989 to work with the Russian veterans of the Afghan war. We were not tourists and many of us were veterans ourselves, so we formed a real community with the former soldiers and with our interpreters, many of whom were college students. They told us the truth about their war and about what they and their families had suffered under the Communist regime. They no longer believed in their empire. The authorities did not like them hanging around with us and on several occasions security guards wanted to block us, but the young Russians simply disobeyed and once even pushed the guards away. Their new understanding of the truth empowered them to act. I watched a courageous young journalist tell ABC international TV news the truth about the war in Afghanistan.

Seeing the truth enabled the Russians to deepen their spiritual lives. Many of them told us they no longer believed in Marx and Lenin but in God, the real God--and this was anathema to the regime. I had a long discussion on faith with an interpreter in Leningrad and left her my Bible and Prayer Book. On Easter Sunday, 1989, in Moscow I celebrated Eucharist for the American delegation and some Russians. I instructed and gave communion to a young Russian who had not been in Church since his baptism as an infant. The Lordship of Caesar was shown to be a mirage and the Lordship of Christ began to emerge in a new way.

I remember an evening when we sat together and sang Russian and American songs. They sang with us "We Shall Overcome," and in that context the song acquired a new meaning. On our final day in Moscow, they invited us to twist the empire's tail by marching with them in their sacred May Day parade. They snuck us into the parade in their veterans' contingent, so we American veterans who had engaged in actual combat with Communism marched under Communist banners, mocking with our Russian friends their very evil regime. During the parade a young woman stood on the sidelines with an anti-communist banner. The police chased her away, but she too no longer believed and was willing to act.

The next year in the May Day parade a Russian priest marched carrying a paper mache cross and when he passed the reviewing stand he was heard to say: "Christ is risen." So the Lordship of Christ was publicly proclaimed in the regime's most cherished ritual. During that same year, the final confrontation occurred. Tanks surrounded the Russian White House in Moscow and threatened those who had revolted with death. But they would not yield. Olga, who had been an interpreter with us told me by phone what happened. She said that a Russian priest was taken into the White House and baptized some people who thought they would not live till the next day. She also related with great pride how "our boys," meaning the Russian veterans who had become our friends, went up and talked to the soldiers, telling them about the government's lies, and asking them not to fire on their fellow citizens They didn't and the regime fell. I learned a lot from these courageous young Russians. Through them I saw again the emptiness and ultimate deception of worldly empires and how the Lordship of Christ arises from the very heart of evil.

Our situation is very different. But as arrogance, avarice, militarism, individualism, greed and hubris continue to run amok, we see the emergence of some new branches on the tree of evil and of empire. John Paul II, who suffered under Communism and helped to bring it down, had nothing good to say about the capitalist empire with its rampant individualism and materialism. He saw it as much a threat to human values as was Communism. And so it is. It is simply another form of the cult of Caesar--and we must become as much a threat to the empire as were our early ancestors in the faith--for Jesus is Lord and Caesar is not.

When Stephen was dragged out to his death, he "saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God." With Stephen let us ascribe only to God all power and honor, might and dominion. Let us praise him alone now and forever. Amen.

The Rich Man and the Poor Man: A Reflection based on Luke: 16: 19-31

The parable stands on its own. Its meaning is perfectly clear. Nothing is said about how the rich man gained his wealth. That is irrelevant to the story. His sin consists entirely in that he gave Lazarus nothing and allowed him to starve. His failure to assist the poor man lands him in Hades where his status as a child of Abraham means nothing. There is no way this story can be “spiritualized” or mitigated in any way. Its meaning is crystal clear. In the first century where great opulence for the few was contrasted with desperate poverty for the multitudes, the story must have been thoroughly offensive to the leaders of the people who were acquiring considerable wealth and ignoring the poor. It is no less clear and no less offensive today than when it was first uttered. Jesus excludes such people from the kingdom.

While first century Jews were able to understand the parable and ground it in the biblical teaching about justice and the obligations of wealth, we seem to have lost that capacity. We no longer hear and understand the voices of Israel’s prophets and we are unable to apply scripture to our economic life. Our individualistic "me and God" version of our faith hides from us the fact that our entire global economic system is geared to one end–the making of vast amounts of money. This results in tremendous wealth for a great many people, but increasing misery for vast numbers of our fellow humans.

In the early 21st Century we are literally living out this parable of Jesus, but we have to ask the question: on which side of the parable’s dividing line do we stand. Are we with Lazarus in the bosom of Abraham or are we on the other side of the eternal divide?

It has been proved beyond doubt that our economic system is rooted in a Calvinistic version of Christianity. But the concern of early Calvinists for living a common life before God has long since eroded and we are now in what Max Weber called an "iron cage." We are left with only a pseudo religious language that justifies our acquisitiveness, but with no real rooting in religious faith. Weber wrote: “In the field of its highest development, in the United States, the pursuit of wealth, stripped of its religious and ethical meaning, tends to become associated with purely mundane passions, which often actually give it the character of sport.” Max Weber died in 1920 and we are now much further along the road.

The struggle over Wal-Mart is only a symptom of a global process gone mad. The issue is touched only lightly in the present political campaign, but no political leader anywhere in the world dares to really deal with it.

Before he died in the year 1600, the great Anglican theologian Richard Hooker said that he thought the Reformation had gone too far in the direction of individualism. In the 17th Century, Descartes gave individualism a new dimension by relating everything real to the his own clear and distinct ideas. By the middle of the 20th Century, Descartes’ "I think therefore I am," had become a Freudian "I feel therefore I am." By the end of the century, consumerism and the commodification of everything has led us to the bumper sticker conclusion that "I shop therefore I am."
As the 20th century neared its end, the industrial side of capitalism gave way to the financial and the name of the game became moving vast amounts of money in and out with huge profits for a few and impoverishment of the multitudes. So the parable in today's Gospel has no less significance than when Jesus first told it. Even worse, we are now living out on a global scale that which Jesus condemned.

Most of us feel trapped by these large systems, so why bring this issue up at all? Well, none of it had to be this way. Individualism didn't have to run rampant. For centuries there were correctives, but people allowed them to erode. We didn't have to give our own feelings priority over every other consideration, but we did. We didn't have to define ourselves primarily as consumers, nor did we have to allow everything to become a commodity, but those were the choices along the way that we decided to take. None of this is set in stone. Things are reversible. The future is always open ended. But the direction of the future depends upon us. Twenty-first century capitalism does not have to embody almost completely the life style and the choices of the rich man in the parable, but it now does. What do we do about it? How do we take this parable seriously in our lives?

Well, begin with small things. Is shaving a few pennies off the cost of everything of primary importance? Do we really need to feed these huge corporate gluttons every time we go shopping for something? And we need to ask how we encourage our politicians to feed our narcissism and greed? Yes, there is a huge con-game going on and we are being "had," but we are willing victims, consenting at every step of the way. So the first step is recognition, the second is action.

While still working in a large health care system, it was clear that cost-cutting measures were conflicting with the needs of patients. I asked a colleague what we should do about it. I will never forget her answer. One word: "Resist." She was right, at every step of the way, resist and make patient care the first priority. Our resistance made a difference. So, in your work place, resist to the fullest extent possible the intrusions of those dressed in the purple finery of today’s parable and act in behalf of Lazarus.

It is not possible to do this unless we understand the full extent of how profoundly authentic religious language has been eroded and replaced by a market-driven drivel that even Calvin wouldn’t recognize. Scripture reading, meditation, reading theology, thinking critically: all these are crucial first steps in seeing through the distortions and deceptions that surround us today.

There is another reason for bringing this up today. History shows that human nature remains pretty much the same. That’s the reason Scripture is always true and always relevant. But there are moments of ebb and flow in human affairs. There are times when various types of evil are turned loose in the world and reach epidemic proportions. At other times a sense of the common good prevails and the monsters are held in check at least for awhile. Some serious observers believe that our current global economic system is leading us towards upheavals of catastrophic proportions. I believe this is true and I believe disastrous consequences will be felt both at home and abroad. The rise of global terrorism and the mass migrations of people are not unrelated to the economic system.
Now is the time to wake up. Now is the time to recognize that this is not just a political or economic issue, but a religious problem of the first magnitude.

The most serious distortion of religious and moral discourse now lies in the economic arena. A shallow "me-and Jesus" blessing on the relentless pursuit of money and the market mentality that trumps everything else has no connection with the Christian Gospel. Today’s parable should bring us up short and remind us that there are insuperable obstacles to the kingdom of God. When you read today’s parable in conjunction with the judgement scene in Matthew 25, you understand that Jesus attaches eternal consequences to the kind of behavior condemned therein.

We are called upon to have a certain set of attitudes within us that extend into all dimensions of our lives, including the economic. We are called upon to "have that mind in us which was also in Christ Jesus, who, though he was by nature God, emptied himself, taking on the form of a slave becoming obedient unto death even the death of the cross." We are called upon to transform our lives in accordance with his, "for God has given him the name that is above every name and at the name of Jesus every knee should bow...and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father." Amen. (Phil 2: 5-11)

(Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Ch 5)

She was tough. She was gutsy--absolutely without fear. But she was depressed. She was shattered in ways she'd never been before. Even when her brother had died, it had been nothing like this. She knew she could never again be whole. Her life had been destroyed and she would not recover. She had sat at his feet and listened. She had been among his closest friends. She had seen Simon Peter and James and John and the others come to understand slowly who he was. She had watched the crowds fascinated by him. She had seen them come to belief. But her hopes and dreams had ebbed out of her and were mingled with his blood on the ground. Now she had nothing left.

Some thought he was the Messiah. So did she. But she believed there was more to him than that. She had seen him forgive sins, something only God could do, and she believed that somehow he had that power. She heard him tell the leaders of her people that he and the Father were one. That's why they decided to kill him, but she believed that he was right. Certainly being with the Master was somehow like being with God. If that is blasphemy, so be it. Let them kill her too. But they hadn't killed her or his mother or the other Mary or John. They let them stand near the cross while they taunted and tortured him.

She had seen crucifixions before. The Romans did it all the time. But she had never realized how horrible and brutal and monstrously evil they were. But that's the way life is. It's brutal and short and evil and then it's over. And we keep on waiting for a Messiah who will get the Romans off our backs, and they keep killing anyone who might be a leader. But Jesus had been different. His power was of another kind. And yet they had killed him too.

So, she'd come to the tomb--for one last visit. But the stone had been taken away. She ran to find Simon and the disciple Jesus loved the best. And they came and went in and they saw the cloths and returned home. But she couldn't leave just yet. What's this? Good Lord, two angels. "Why was she weeping?" Well, because they've taken his body away and she didn't know where they put it. Remarkable--angels--but so what. Angels appeared to other people too. A lot of good angels had done for the people of Israel. Enough of these angels. Where is he? Where did they put him? Now all of a sudden there's a man who wants to know why she's crying and who she's looking for. He must be the gardener. Maybe he knows. "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him and I will take him away."

And then it happened. Her life came back to her. She was healed. Her hopes and dreams were changed forever. And my God, the world had changed. One simple word turned everything upside down. He called her by her name: "Mary," and she recognized him. It was Jesus, the Lord, and had risen from the dead. "My teacher," she said and ran to him.

But he told her not to hold him for he was about to return his Father and her Father, his God and her God. But she was to go and tell the others what she had seen and heard and where he was going.

So she did what he told her to do. She turned as she cried and she began to laugh and she ran--for she was young and strong and fearless. She had been changed forever. And the news she had would change the world forever. She had seen him and he had called her by name.

No, she couldn't hold on to him. No one could contain him. The tight-knit little group of family and friends and disciples was gone forever. Now he belonged to all his people. Now he belonged to the world. For he was risen and he was Lord of all the world. And he had sent her to tell his friends that she had seen him. He had sent her on a mission that would change the world and that would alter forever the meaning of life and death.

So she ran away from the tomb, for it was empty, and she ran past the other graves, but they held no terrors, for they would someday be empty too. And she ran past Golgotha, that place of the skull, that place of brutality and evil and terror and death, the place where he had died, and she had died too. It was still there, but it had changed. Its power was gone, it had been defeated.

She ran past the Temple. Yes, it was still there too, but somehow it wasn't there at all. The real Temple, had been destroyed, but had already been rebuilt.

So she ran and she cried and she laughed and she ran on faster and faster. She couldn't see into the future. She couldn't see the horrors that were to come: the destruction of her own people, the persecutions of the disciples, plagues and diseases, religious wars, death camps, world wars, countless lesser wars, terrorism, massive destruction, and the billions of broken hearts and shattered lives and tragic deathbeds which were to come. She didn't have to see into the future, for now she knew the future. She had seen the future. It was Jesus, and he was risen from the dead. She had glimpsed the face of God.

So she ran for all of us and she ran to all of us. She ran past all the graves that would ever be dug. She ran past all the calvaries and places of destruction and temples and idolatries that the world would ever construct. And her shattered life, her broken heart was only the first of the billions He would heal.

The sin and suffering and the death of Calvary were not final for Jesus. Nor were they final for her, nor need they be final for anyone. He had shattered sin, overturned suffering and destroyed death. She had seen Jesus. He was risen and he was alive. And she was alive, really alive. She was bursting with the news that would burst open the world.

So she ran and then she found them in their sadness and in their despair. And through them she found us also in our time where we are mired in sin and fear and hopelessness. She found them and us broken and shattered and sitting in the shadow of death.

Her mission was complete, for now she could say what she knew. She could tell who it was that called her--and sent her on her way. Her task was finished, for now Jesus himself would call each of us by name--for he was alive. He was risen from the dead.

So then Mary Magdalene took her place at the center of history. She announced to the disciples and to all the world and to us:

"I have seen the Lord."

Because this is July 4, we will reflect this morning on patriotism and our Christian faith. Sometimes the two are mistakenly viewed as equivalent to each other, but they are not.

Scripture tells us that civil authority is established by God (Rom 13). We are told to obey civil authority. And Jesus, famously tells us to "render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's." (Lk 20:19-26). Early Christians paid their taxes and as commanded by the Lord, they obeyed civil authority, but they did not speak highly of it. In fact the Book of Revelation describes the civil authority of the time as follows: "And I saw a beast rising out of the sea, having ten horns and seven heads; and on its horns were ten diadems, and on its heads were blasphemous names" (Rev. 13: 1).

They also had a statement that was considered by Roman authorities to be not only unpatriotic, but downright dangerous, subversive, and unacceptable. The early Christians said that "Jesus is Lord." This was intolerable to Roman authorities because if Jesus is Lord, then Caesar is not. And this is still the heart of the matter. Jesus is Lord, Caesar is not.

Patriotism is simply the love of one's tribe, or city or state or nation. It is legitimate and necessary for any society to survive. As Americans we have every right to rejoice in our form of government, our way of life and in our historic role in the world, Truly the song has it right "America the Beautiful." We celebrate as Americans, but we also remember who is Lord.

Jesus deeply loved his people, but he placed loyalty to himself above allegiance to family and nation. By placing himself above the Temple, Jesus relativized the significance of even that most sacred of places. Because "the Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us", the entire earth and all its people have been raised to a new dignity and status. We must never forget this even on July 4th.

When I reported to duty as a chaplain with an infantry unit in Vietnam I met the chaplain I was replacing as he was getting out of his jeep. He was carrying an M-16 rifle, had a pistol strapped onto his belt and a bandolier of ammunition around his shoulder. His first words to me: "you had better get a .30 caliber on this jeep, because this is a hot a.o," I replied that if I had wanted to be a grunt, I would have joined the infantry.

When I met the battalion doctor, he told me that this chaplain had caused a lot of harm to the soldiers by encouraging them to kill for religious reasons. The troops, former acolytes and Sunday school students, knew about the prohibition of killing. They had learned the beatitudes and "love your neighbor", and "turn the other cheek." So they knew that "Kill a Commie for Christ" made no sense. When asked the same question, the only answer I ever gave was: "You may kill others because they are trying to kill you." This is an act of simple, elemental self defense. There is a huge moral and religious difference between these two answers.

In my years of work with veterans after the war, I found that many had a rage against religion because they believed their Christian faith had endorsed and encouraged what happened in combat. Without any theological training they knew that one can sometimes perform an act that is the "lesser of two evils." such as killing enemy soldiers in combat. But they had been scandalized in the biblical sense by a version of Christianity that said this killing was God's own work. As a result of this confusion, thousands of them lost their faith. As one former Marine put it: "When I went to Vietnam I believed in Jesus Christ and John Wayne, and in Vietnam both went down the tubes." This is a great metaphor for what scholars call "American civil religion." One writer called it "muscular Christianity." It is a hybrid form of superpatriotism undergirded by the misuse of Old Testament Scripture. It is not authentic patriotism. It is a caricature of biblical faith. Not only is it still with us today, but it now threatens to engulf us.

This is an old problem. When the Emperor Constantine freed the Church from persecution in the 4th Century, he soon made it the established religion. From that moment on Christians began to use the power of the state for religious reasons, sometimes fighting crusades and wars in the name of Christ. This is a long standing aberration which continues to plague us. The immediate roots of American civil religion can be traced to John Calvin who established the city of Geneva as a theocracy in the 16th Century. English Calvinists were convinced that they could establish the biblical "city on the hill" in England. For eleven years they ran the country as a fierce and ruthless theocracy. They exported their ideas to New England and set the tone for all subsequent American history.

In 1630, in Boston, John Winthrop gave the speech that still resounds "[We] must consider that we shall be as a City set upon a Hill, the [eyes] of all people are [upon] us." In that moment the myth was born: America was to be a chosen people among the nations of the earth. It was to be a moral example to the rest of the world. The corollary was also implied by Winthrop: the rest of the world must keep its eyes upon us and follow our lead, for "the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies, when he shall make us a praise and glory..."

The Lord's people, the colonists, believed they could depend on the God of Israel even in the face of overpowering odds. God is the true leader on whom the small settlement on the edge of a fearful wilderness was to rely. Their enemies were His enemies; their friends, His friends. From that day to this, whenever Americans have taken up the sword and gone into battle, they have carried with them their primal myth of origin.

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the myth was thoroughly secularized, divorced from whatever connection with biblical religion it may have had originally. Though the notion of God and humankind's relationship to God has been largely lost in the public culture, the myth of a chosen people and a city on the hill remains unabated.

Every tribe, people, and nation has some sort of civil religion. What distinguishes the American version from others is its dependence on the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures for its language and concepts. Though the United States owes its cultural origins as much to the philosophy, laws, and ideas of ancient Greece and Rome as it does to biblical religion, we have never acknowledged this fact. We prefer to express our self-understanding in terms of the traditional biblical faiths. Civil religion in America seems to resemble biblical religion, but in fact it is very different. The most significant areas of divergence between the two faiths lie in their respective notions of God.

Civil religion creates in America "a nation with the soul of a church." The nation is convinced that transcendent goals lie at the heart of its own political processes. It inverts religion and constructs a model of God based on its own policy. Our political categories--law, justice, democracy, sovereignty--take on the characteristics of ultimate reality. The trouble with this is "when we relate American politics to God's sovereignty we also relate God's sovereignty to American politics."
Civil religion is, of course, a form of idolatry. It is a thinly disguised worship of the state. It always lurks below the surface in American life, but in times of war it becomes particularly virulent. Never more so than at the present time, when we imagine that we, completely innocent and shrouded in virtue are engaged in the climactic battle against evil. Certainly terrorists and suicide bombers are evildoers. But our faith teaches us that we are all evildoers. We all need redemption from the evil that lurks in our hearts and causes us all to do evil things.

The problem with idolatrous civil religion is that it masks from the people, not only the evil performed by the state, but the evil that lies in their own hearts. Ancient peoples with their national gods, also had a host of other gods running lose: the god of war, the goddess of love, tricksters and thinly disguised gods of the self. That’s still a problem, especially when the god of war is in the ascendancy. As anyone who has ever been in a combat zone knows, lust is never far from violence and corruption abounds. Violence, rampant sex and pervasive corruption characterize a military theater during a time of war. Lying and deception also abound.

In our era of instant communication and virtual reality, all these gods are once again on the march, not just in the war zone, but in the entire culture. Corruption, lust, sex and violence, greed, corruption, war-profiteering, lies, deceptions and denials are all on the march with little opposition today. The false god at the top has turned lose all the minions of idolatry and they now surround us.

When the President of the United States dares to paraphrase John's Gospel, by saying that the United States is the light that shines in the darkness and the darkness shall not overcome it, then we have fallen into blasphemy as well. The "muscular god," of our civil religion, John Wayne has blended with Jesus Christ and we seem not to know the difference. Religious conservatives seem to endorse this view, though the national evangelical association is now waking up to the problem. Religious liberals, having little theology left, seem not to recognize it either. As did the beast described in Revelation, this Beast too has "blasphemous names inscribed on its heads."

Both genuine biblical faith and authentic patriotism, real love of country would find this condition intolerable, but political leaders are insensitive to it and church leaders are otherwise occupied, especially at this moment in the Episcopal Church are we totally self-focused. But we need not look to our inept leadership, for we must find within ourselves, the grace of God to withstand this idolatry and blasphemy. As early Christians loved their lands and places, so should we, but as they proclaimed that Jesus is Lord and Caesar is not, so must we.

So today, we will quite rightly with genuine love of our country sing with power and enthusiasm "America the Beautiful," but we shall also sing from the heart that "Jesus is Lord," and we shall ascribe to Him alone all power, dominion and glory, for He reigns over all of us in unity with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

Endnotes

Regarding the quotes: both are from Out of the Night. The footnotes read as follows:

ANation with the soul of a church@

The term "nation with the soul of a church" was coined by G.K. Chesterton. The term is also used by Sydney E. Mead as a title: Chesterton. The term is also used by Sydney E. Mead as a title: "The Nation with the Soul of a Church," first published in Church History, vol.36, no.3, and reprinted in Richey, American Civil Religion.
Richey, Russell, and Jones, Donald G. American Civil Religion. New York: Harper and Row, 1974.

The second passage in quotes right after that one is:@

"when we relate American politics to God's sovereignty we also relate God's sovereignty to American politics."

Its source is also:

Herbert Richardson, "Civil Religion in Theological Perspective," in Richey, Russell, and Jones, Donald G. American Civil Religion. New York: Harper and Row, 1974.