Sunday, August 28, 2011

Losing Self, Finding Self


Losing Self, Finding Self, by the Rev. Dr. Paul S. Nancarrow

This sermon is based on Matthew 16:21-28
An audio version of this sermon is available here.

Poor Peter. Sometimes being a disciple is so confusing.

In last week’s Gospel story, Peter was the first ever to recognize and say out loud that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God; and because of that, Jesus told Peter that he was blessed by God and had faith that would be the rock on which Jesus would build his entire church.

Then, in today’s story, Jesus begins to explain to his disciples what being the Messiah, the Son of the living God will mean: he must go to Jerusalem, and confront the chief priests and the Roman government, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again. And when Peter hears this, he takes Jesus aside, privately, and says to him “You shouldn’t say things like that; God forbid that you should die; you shouldn’t disappoint your disciples with such a downer of a message.” But Jesus turns and says to Peter “You’re talking like the enemy; you’re thinking in human terms, not divine terms; you’re a stumbling-block in my way” — and he calls all the disciples together and tells them “If you want to be my follower, you have to learn to deny yourself; the more you try to save your life the more you’ll lose it, but the more you lose your life for me the more you’ll save it.”

So one moment Peter is the Rock, and the next moment he’s a stumbling-block; one moment Peter’s faith is the foundation of the church, the next moment he is the enemy of Jesus’ mission. I can just imagine Peter saying “What’d I do? Was it something I said? What did I do wrong?”

Part of the problem here is that Peter is clinging to Jesus. Peter has just recognized Jesus as the Messiah, and Peter, like most Jews of his day, has some definite ideas of what the Messiah should be. The Messiah should come to vindicate God’s people. The Messiah should bring judgment to God’s enemies and reward to God’s righteous. The Messiah should reign forever in a kingdom of peace and justice, of right relationships in mutual well-being, a kingdom that would never ever ever fade away. Peter has definite expectations of what Jesus’ being Messiah should mean.

But it’s not just Peter’s expectations of Jesus that are at stake — Peter’s expectations for Peter are also on the line. If Jesus is the Messiah and Peter is the Rock, the Messiah’s right-hand-man, then what happens to Jesus will happen to Peter, too. If Peter’s image of Jesus is threatened, then Peter’s image of himself-with-Jesus is threatened. And Peter doesn’t want to think about what his life would be like if Jesus weren’t there: Peter has found in Jesus a teacher, a master, a healer, a friend; Peter has found that his life is more with Jesus in it than it ever had been before; Peter has come to trust that Jesus loves him, and he loves Jesus too, and that friendship, that compassion, that love makes Peter more himself than he ever could be just on his own. If Jesus dies, if Jesus isn’t going to be there anymore, then Peter will lose that self he has become. And that loss frightens Peter, losing himself like that scares Peter — and so Peter wants to cling to Jesus as hard as he can, so that he can cling to himself as hard as he can, and never have to fear losing the joy and security and love he’s come to know in being Jesus’ disciple.

There’s just one problem with that: Peter clings so hard to what is, he is not able to open up to what is yet to be. Peter clings so hard to his expectations for Jesus as a conquering Messiah, he’s not able to see the greater-than-expected promise in Jesus dying and rising again to transform all of life. Peter clings so hard to his image of himself as Jesus’ right-hand-man, he’s not able to imagine the even greater self, the apostle and preacher and teacher and healer, Jesus is inviting him to become. Peter will not let his expectations die, so he cannot be open to the greater possibilities for him God wants to bring to life.

And I think that is what Jesus is getting at when he gathers the rest of the disciples and talks about saving and losing life. The word we translate “life” here can also be translated “self” — and in that translation I think the saying makes even more sense. Jesus says “If you try to hold on to your self, you will lose your self; but if you can let go of the self you think you are now, you can discover in God an even greater self you can yet become.” Jesus’ call in the Gospel today is to be willing to let our expectations of ourselves as we are now die, so that we can be open to the new possibilities for us God wants to bring to life.

And if we can do that, if we can let go, if we can be willing to lose the selves we think we are, it is amazing what new selves we can become in Christ. I think of the woman I knew who said she had to give up thinking of herself as a hopeless drunk before she could discover a new self as someone in healthy recovery. Or the man whose heart attack made him question the go-go-go, push-push-push, always giving 110% executive he’d always been, and start looking for a new identity as someone who took the time to enjoy the people and the life around him. Or the teenager who went on a high school mission trip and had a profound experience that opened up a whole new way of seeing service to others as a personal career path. Or the family that gave up its high-spending consumer lifestyle to find a new way of living more simply and more genuinely with the earth and with their neighbors and with each other. Or the man who had a religious conversion experience — who never told me exactly what the experience was, but only said it made him feel like a new creation — and who went from just going to church as a matter of habit to really trying to live a Christlike life. Over the years so many people have shared with me stories of how they have been called to give up their self-expectations, how they’ve been put on the line of losing their old selves, and so have found a new self, a new life, living the way of love revealed in Jesus.

Jesus said “If you try to save your self, you will lose your self; but if you lose your self in me, you will find a greater self than you had ever imagined.” Let it be our prayer today that, as we offer ourselves to Christ in this Eucharist, we may each and all grow into the new life Christ offers us. Amen.

Sunday, August 21, 2011

Defiant Love



Exodus 1:8-2:10
August 21, 2011


“Then a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph.”


The Hebrew people have met a huge bump in the road. Here they are in Egypt and the last we heard about them back in Genesis, they were doing very, very well. They had thrived in Egypt under the ruler who had known Joseph. But time has moved on, new generations of people have been born and as Exodus begins a new king sits on the throne, a king who sees the Hebrew people radically differently, a king who did not know Joseph.


What the new king sees is a powerful people, a people who are strong and numerous and mighty. And he feels threatened by their presence. The king is worried that these Hebrew people will rise up against him, fight against him and run away from Egypt. And the new king moves into action the same way so many rulers before and after him have moved. He actively seeks to oppress these people in an effort to subdue them, to let them know who’s boss. Threatened and fearful, the king’s anxiety level increases dramatically which causes him to treat the Hebrew people ruthlessly, unjustly and disdainfully. And for a moment we wonder what will become of them.


Enter the women. When the king sends out word to the midwives Shiphrah and Puah that all baby boys born to the Hebrew women are to be killed, the midwives do not do what the king of Egypt commands them to do and let the boys live, knowing it might cost them their lives. These midwives in their radical devotion to God and maternal instincts seem to show no fear toward the king and use their power to bring forth life. On the other hand the king shows a deep fear of the Hebrews rebelling against him and tries to use his power for death. As the story moves along we see a Hebrew mother who chooses life for her son and a sister who chooses life for her brother as she places him in a basket among the reeds on the Nile. Soon after, Pharoah’s daughter sees this Hebrew baby and has compassion for him. What the king is determined to make bitter, these women make sweet. What the king is determined to divide, the women unify. It is as if there is a silent conspiracy of women, women who all in the face of great danger and at great risk, choose to defy the king, the deadly force, and choose life. And what is behind that choice of life is a defiant love, a divine love.


I remember a friend of mine telling me of a time when he, his wife and very young children were driving down the road in their car; the children were in the back seat. At some point, early in the journey no doubt, the son whined to his father about his sister, “She’s looking out my window!” The young boy had no idea at the time that his statement was so representative of the human condition. What the young boy saw was something rightfully his, his window being invaded and he felt threatened by it. He was already locking into the self-serving life!


The Hebrews’ liberation story is in direct conflict with our story of individual consumerism. The Exodus narrative commands us to switch stories if we have not already, to consider where we see oppression and act upon it, to alleviate suffering, to be bearers of God’s liberating power in the world. That we as individuals and as groups of people can be so easily threatened when we don’t get all that we think we are due often exposes a vulnerability within and a tendency to want to crush the threat, even if by passive means, which can lead to denigrating, oppressing and devaluing people. When we oppress or devalue others we cut ourselves off from our maker and fail to see God’s image in ourselves and in one another. Our world becomes smaller as we cut off life. This text from Exodus is calling us to see those in our midst who are hurting, who are oppressed, who are devalued, to see them the way the women in our story saw and make a way to give life in the midst of oppression, to use our power for good. Just as God acts through the courageous women of this story, God calls each and every one of us to be agents of social transformation, to bear light, to bring freedom and justice to those who have no voice.


This week at Trinity, many have been God’s agents of justice and love. One member has been writing her congressmen and even the President to express concerns about justice; your rector has been planning a 9/11 Commemoration service, which will include praying for all of us to be peacemakers; one member has begun organizing a fundraiser for our friends at a church in Honduras when he saw the need and heard that they would like to replace their dirt floor with a tile floor but lack the funds; just this week parishioners and friends from the community served over 150 meals to friends in our midst who cannot afford lunch right now; many parishioners in their work as teachers, nurses or just plain people reached out to the hurting to sweeten that which was bitter, to unify that which was divided and to lift up those who have been torn down.


It is a dangerous thing to allow ourselves to be God’s loving hands in the world. He won’t give us all the answers, sometimes He won’t let us even see the results, sometimes we don’t get a pat on the back, worse yet sometimes we suffer because we love! He requires a radical devotion for us to be his agents for love and justice in this world. And we do it because even though it seems mad at times, it is through the giving of ourselves that we become fully human. It is in giving of ourselves that we become our true selves. Jesus knew and understood this fully. He reached out to the loved and the unloved but seemed to have had a special eye for those who had no power, no voice and was willing to give his very life for all that we might all be redeemed through that love. Look and see and do what Jesus did..love!


Hadewijch of Antwerp, 13th c. poet and mystic:


The madness of love
is a blessed fate;
and if we understood this
we would seek no other:
it brings into unity
what was divided,
and this is the truth:
bitterness it makes sweet,
it makes the stranger a neighbor,
and what was lowly it raises on high.


Love is madness? Maybe. Love anyway. With every act of love, God’s salvation is at hand.


Amen.

Sunday, August 7, 2011

God on the Waters


By the Rev. Dr. Paul S. Nancarrow

This sermon is based on Matthew 14:22-33
An audio version of this sermon can be found here

Our Gospel reading this morning follows immediately upon the Gospel we read last week: after feeding more than 5000 people starting with only five loaves and two fish, Jesus sends the crowd away, sends the disciples in the boat across the Lake of Galilee, and goes up by himself on the mountain to pray all night long. And in the darkness a storm comes up, the disciples’ boat is blown off course, and just before dawn Jesus comes to them, walking on the water. It’s a remarkable display of supernatural power — but for that very reason it also raises some interpretive questions. In a way, this miracle is very uncharacteristic of Jesus: most of Jesus’ miracles are very personal, very one-on-one, very much about making contact with someone, as when Jesus heals a person, or frees them from bondage to an unclean spirit, or enlightens their mind with divine wisdom. Most of Jesus’ miracles are gestures we can recognize as bringing the love of God to bear in an immediate way in a person’s concrete life. But this miracle seems different: walking on water seems more impersonal, more supernatural, less about making contact with someone than about showing off sheer power — this miracle seems more like a magic trick than a sign from God. And that’s why it’s important for us modern readers to know that this gesture of walking in the waters does in fact have a very specific biblical meaning.

You see, Jesus here is acting out in human terms, on a human scale, the traditional biblical image of God’s command over the sea. In ancient Hebrew thought, the sea often symbolized the powers of chaos and destructiveness, and God’s command of the sea signified creativity and wholeness and the order needed for right relationships. So the Creation story in Genesis begins with a watery chaos that is waste and void until God commands the ordered relationships of light and dark, night and day, dry land and ocean. And the Creation poem in Psalm 104 tells how God commanded a law for the sea, and set boundaries it could not pass, so that Creation would not be re-dissolved in chaos. And the Book of Exodus tells of God’s victory at the Red Sea, when God commanded the sea to open up and create a dry path for the Israelites to walk, while the Egyptian army was swamped and overwhelmed. And the Book of Joshua tells how God commanded the waters of the River Jordan to stop flowing so that the Israelites could end their wilderness wandering by walking across the river into the land of promise. And the prophet Isaiah even identifies God as the One “who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters.” Time and again in the First Testament, commanding a way in the chaos of the sea is how God reveals himself to be God — so when Jesus commands the sea and walks a way on the stormy waters, he is revealing that he comes in the power and authority and creativity of God. Walking on the water isn’t  just a magic trick, it isn’t just a gratuitous display of supernatural power — it is a sign that God is present and active and creating and redeeming in the human life and work of Jesus.

And the really fascinating thing about this story is that Jesus not only reveals God’s power when he walks on the water, but he shares God’s power as well. Peter, afraid that he is seeing Jesus’ ghost, calls out to the apparition — in one of those marvelous moments that Peter has, when he blurts something out without stopping to think about it, when he opens his mouth and inserts his foot and pulls out faith — Peter calls out, “Lord, if it really is you, call me to come to you, and I will trust you.” And Jesus calls to Peter, and Peter — in an act of courage and trust far greater than many of us would be able to muster — Peter steps out of the boat and begins to walk across the water toward Jesus. In that moment, the creating and sustaining power of God made manifest in commanding the sea, the creating and sustaining power of God made manifest in Jesus, that same creating and sustaining power of God is made manifest in Peter. Peter, with all his flaws and all his foibles; Peter, with all his human shortcomings and all his human accomplishments; Peter becomes the outward and visible sign of the inward and spiritual creating grace of God.

To be sure, Peter has his moment of doubt and fear, his confidence wavers, and he begins to sink, until Jesus takes him by the hand and lifts him up. But as long as Peter is focused on Jesus, as long as Peter puts even his fear and his doubt and the powers of chaos in the larger context of trusting in Jesus, then Peter walks on the water, then Peter shares in Jesus’ sharing in the creating and sustaining power of God.

And that, I think, is the real point of this whole miracle story. It’s not just that Jesus does something remarkable, but that Jesus empowers Peter to do something remarkable. And that makes this entire Gospel story one big invitation to disciples — an invitation to us — to be like Peter: it’s an invitation to    us to remember that, as flawed and foibled as we are, we can focus our vision on Jesus, we can put our trust in the creating and sustaining power of God revealed in Jesus, and therefore we can step out of the boat, we can step out in faith. This story is an invitation to us to let God’s creating and sustaining power be revealed in us, so that we can stand firm in the midst of storm and confusion, so that we can be strong against the powers of chaos and destructiveness, so that we can bring forth the new possibilities, the new right-relationships, the new hope, the new love, the new life, that God wants to bring forth in us. This Gospel is not just a story of a miracle of Jesus; it’s a promise of a miracle of God empowering creating grace in us.

And when God’s miracle of creating grace is in us, then we can be empowered to make a way in the chaos in all sorts of situations. We can be empowered to make a way to forgive each other and heal old hurts and reconcile relationships, just as God forgives and heals and reconciles us. We can be empowered to make a way to care for the environment, to work for the well-being of the forests and the mountains and the rivers and the sky, just as God cares for all creation. We can be empowered to make a way to bring forth all our best gifts, all our best abilities, all our capacity for love and joy and generosity and creativity — we can be empowered to grow into the whole people God wants us to be, just as we pray Derek will grow as we baptize him here today. We can be empowered to make a way to go forth into the world — into our community and our state and our nation and all the nations — we can be empowered to go forth even in the midst of credit downgrades and governmental gridlock and societal confusion everywhere — we can be empowered to go forth into the world to speak and vote and make economic decisions and use our influence and act and to make ways that build up peace and bring about justice and promote the common good of every human being as a child of God. In this miracle story God promises to empower us, so that we, with Jesus, can act out in human terms, on a human scale, God’s own creating and redeeming work for the world.

All we have to do is get out of the boat.