Multiplication of Love

By the Rev. Dr. Paul S. Nancarrow

This sermon is based on Matthew 14:13-21
Listen to an audio version of this sermon here

Our Gospel reading this morning tells the story of one of the best-known of all Jesus’ miracles: it’s a story often called “The Miracle of the Multiplication of the Loaves,” and it’s a story that is told, in one form or another, in all four Gospels — Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all have their own versions of this miracle story — Mark and Matthew even have two versions apiece. It’s one of those stories from the Gospel we know so well, we might be tempted to think we know it all.

But there are some interesting interpretive questions we can raise about this miracle story. If we pay really close attention to the text and the context, we can do some very interesting things by asking “Just who does this miracle?” and “Just what sort of miracle is it?”

Here's the scene: Jesus and his disciples, after a long period of teaching and preaching to big crowds, are attempting to withdraw into a quiet place, so they can pray and meditate and recharge their batteries. So they get into a boat and push out into Lake Galilee to look for a quiet spot; but the crowd sees them going, and they rush around the shore on foot and get there ahead of the boat; so that when Jesus and the disciples arrive, the crowd is already there. And Jesus has compassion on them, and he heals their sick, and he teaches them all day long.

And at the end of the day, when everyone is tired and hungry, the disciples come to Jesus and say, “It’s getting late, and we’re out in the middle of nowhere, and we haven’t got any food; it’s time to send the crowd away, so that they can walk back to those villages they passed through and buy some bread or some falafel or something.” The disciples are genuinely concerned about the crowd, they really don’t want the people to become weak with hunger or exhausted with long walking. But the disciple’s concern only goes so deep; they apparently don’t stop to think that sending the crowd on a long walk home when it’s getting dark will create hardships of its own. And the disciples are probably also thinking about themselves, at least as much or more than their thinking about the crowd: they’re tired, they’re hungry, they’d just as soon not be doing crowd-control anymore, they want to settle down for some quiet time of their own with Jesus. But Jesus’ care for the crowd goes deeper than that: “They don’t need to go away,” Jesus says; “this is a good place for them to be, where I can teach them and heal them and show them God’s love. You give them something to eat.”

Now, at this point I imagine the disciples are just about having kittens. They’re thinking: What? Us feed all those people? With what? They say to Jesus, “All we have are five little loaves of bread and a couple of small dried fish. You want us to feed all these people with this?” The mere thought of having to do so much with so little is kind of terrifying.

But Jesus says, “Bring your food here to me.” And the disciples have to give up their five loaves and two fish. Even though it clearly won’t be enough, and even though it will leave the disciples themselves without food, they have to be willing to give to Jesus even what little they have. And Jesus takes it, and blesses it, and breaks it — and then Jesus gives it back to the disciples to give to the crowd. And it’s when that happens, it’s while the disciples are distributing bread and fish to the crowd, that they realize something remarkable is going on: no matter how much they give, they are not running out; even though there isn’t enough food, everybody is getting something, and nobody is getting left out. The miracle happens not so much when Jesus breaks the bread, but when the disciples are sharing the bread. From one point of view, the miracle in the story is not so much that Jesus feeds five thousand people, but the miracle is that Jesus empowers the disciples to feed five thousand people. If we ask “Who does this miracle?”, it isn’t just Jesus, but Jesus and the disciples.

And that in turn raises the question “What sort of miracle is this?” One interpretation is that it is a physical, supernatural miracle, in which the Law of Conservation of Matter and Energy is superseded, and the bread and the fish physically multiply.

But there is another interpretation of this story, which has been in circulation in the church for nearly two hundred years, that suggests a miracle of a different sort. Historians say that it was common practice in Jesus' day for anyone who was going away from home for more that a couple of hours to pack some little bit of food with them: some bread or some lentils or some salted fish, carried in a little pouch on their belt. In those days people got around mostly by walking; so if you left home to run a bunch of errands or go to the next village to visit someone, you couldn’t be sure just when you’d get home again; it might be well after mealtime, you might get pretty hungry. And there weren’t fast food joints in strip malls on every other corner on the roads of Galilee; so if you weren’t sure you’d be home at mealtime, you couldn’t be sure you could buy food anywhere at mealtime, either. If you were going to leave home for a while, it was just prudent to take some food with you. So it is likely that everyone in that crowd had some food; but they were all afraid that if they took out their food, other people would want it, and they’d be forced to share it, and then there wouldn’t be enough left for them. It was the peoples’ own fear and greed that kept them hiding and hoarding their food for themselves. But when the crowd sees the disciples beginning to distribute five loaves and two fish that everyone knows won’t be enough, when they see the disciples being willing to do at least that much, they are all moved by this generosity, and they are all inspired to bring out their food and share it too. In this reading, the disciples keep passing out food and never running out, because everyone else is passing out food, too.

If we read the story this way, what happens is not so much a physical miracle as it is a moral miracle. It is a miracle of the heart rather than a miracle of matter and energy. It’s not just a miracle of multiplication of loaves, but a miracle of multiplication of love. Who does this miracle, and what sort of miracle is it? — Jesus and the disciples and the crowd do this miracle together, and it is a miracle of compassion and sharing and creating right-relationships and love.

And what makes that miracle Good News is that that is precisely the sort of miracle we can do with Jesus, and Jesus can do with us, too. The Spirit of Christ can inspire us, like the disciples, like the crowd, so that we bring forth what little we have — even when it is clear that what we have is not enough — and when we share what we have in the Name of Christ, then God’s grace will make it enough, God’s grace will make us enough, so that together we may do the gracious, compassionate, loving will of God.

And some of that miracle is happening right here, right now, in this Eucharist. In this celebration of the Holy Communion, each one of us brings some little thing of what we have, and when we share it in the Name of Christ, God’s grace makes it enough to nourish us in the Body and Blood of Christ, to nourish us to be the Body of Christ for the world. We bring a voice to sing, a little bit of bread and wine carried up to the altar, a pledge check or a gift in support of the church given in the offering, a prayer or a thanksgiving or an intercession for someone we know and care about who’s in need of help, a heart and a mind and a spirit yearning to know God’s love — we bring what little we have, and we give it to Jesus, and on this altar Jesus takes it and blesses it and breaks it and gives it back to us, so that we can turn and give it again to those around us — and together Jesus and we and the world make the miracle, so that the hungry can be fed, and the suffering can be comforted, and the oppressed can be set free, and the lonely can be welcomed, and the angry can be reconciled, and the lost can be found, and the joyous can redouble their joy.

That is the miracle of the multiplication of love narrated in our Gospel today. That is the miracle of the multiplication of love we can live in Christ’s Name every day. Amen.

Who will separate us from the love of Christ?

Romans 8:26-39
The Rev. Shelby Ochs Owen at Trinity Church
July 24, 2011

The apostle Paul has a rhetorical “hay day” with the book of Romans.  Paul, a scholar, a Pharisee, and an apostle often argues amazingly complex theological defenses throughout his letter to the Romans.  Paul uses ancient Greco-Roman rhetorical techniques in his discourse.  For many of us who are not trained in techniques of legal argument or debate, or rhetoric, many of Paul’s words leave our minds in a tangle, with us asking, “REALLY, Paul? Are you serious?”  Kathy Grieb, former seminary professor of mine and author, gives many of us hope as she suggests that Paul’s clever and complex discourse is all based on a great story, the narrative of what God has done in Christ.  If you were to read the entire book of Romans you might see how he weaves the salvation story throughout his argument for the righteousness of God.  For Paul, the righteousness of God is understood primarily as seen in the faithfulness of Jesus, in his willing obedience to suffer death on a cross.#  Today’s passage can best be understood in that context of the faithfulness of Jesus.

Today’s reading from Romans is one of the most hopeful passages in Scripture!  (It is no wonder that this passage is often selected for funerals)  “If God is for us, who is against us?”  Could it be that the answer is that it just does not matter who or what is against us if God is for us?  If God is for us, then we have the Ultimate Being watching our back!  We have Jesus Christ in our court at all times!  And because Jesus was and is faithful we can trust in his goodness towards us.  “He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not also give us everything else?”  “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?...No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.”

The story behind these powerful words is the story of Paul himself.   Of the seven difficulties he lists, he himself has personally experienced six of them!  If you read the Book of Acts you will see that Paul, in his zeal to tell the story of Jesus, the story of salvation to those in his path, was stoned, dragged out of cities, imprisoned, ridiculed, maligned and scoffed at, attacked by crowds, beaten, stripped of clothing, arrested, and shipwrecked. He most likely perceived that he would eventually be martyred as well.  So how, if he had these difficult experiences, how could he be so sure God had his back, that God was in his court? Well, if we read more about his life, we can see that with each event, God was very present, encouraging and supporting and loving Paul.  Somehow through it all, Paul knew in the depths of his being that God loved him as God loved all the world and would see him through, that NOTHING would separate him from the love of Christ.   Paul’s confidence and trust were in the love of God even while he knew suffering was real.  Paul was not one to let his head float in the clouds; he was a realist.  But Paul understood that the reality of suffering and sin and death were subject to a greater reality, the reality of the love of Christ.

In what may have been his last letter, the aging Paul writes God’s story as it relates to his own story. This is no newby to the faith!   He has not only endured hardship but he has experienced the amazing love of God. The Christians in Rome to whom he writes are a very particular group of people who have very real problems.  They have their own story.  Paul’s own faithfulness points to Christ’s faithfulness. Paul helps point the Christians in Rome in the direction of the faithfulness of Christ.

Recently I was at the beach with 14 members of my family.  One day several had already gone down to the beach ahead of me.  I knew they would have set up a beige tent somewhere on the beach.  As soon as I got to the beach I saw the beige tent and started walking toward it. As I was walking toward that tent I happened to glance over in the other direction and noticed someone at another beige tent waving me down.  My sister.  Bringing me in.  I wondered when I would have discovered I was with the wrong group of people if she hadn’t waved her arms so wildly and pointed the way for me.

I think Paul was pointing the way to the Romans, bringing them into a stronger faith, helping them realize that whatever hardships they were enduring, God was still on their side, that God really was for them, that he had their backs, that God really was in their court and could be trusted. And Paul had a certain authority about sharing his faith story precisely because he had endured so much.  To hear from any who suffer and reflect the love of Christ makes most of us sit up and take notice.  When any of us go to Haiti or Honduras or anywhere else in the world where there is extreme poverty and we hear from the local folks how great God is, we sit up and take notice; when we hear from guests at noon day lunch how God is getting them through, we sit up and take notice; when a brother suffering an addiction turns to God and shares his story of healing, or when a friend knows she is dying and she looks us square in the eye to tell us her faith is still strong, we sit up and take notice. Perhaps our own suffering has greater purpose than we have imagined?

What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will 105 degree heat (I sure hope not!)?   Will failure, disappointment, tremendous mistakes, disease, unemployment, divorce, depression, or aging separate us from the love of Christ?  We all have a story; we have our great gifts and our deep sorrows, our successes and our failures, we all triumph in some way and we all sin; we all have joys and we all suffer.  We are all in the midst of our story right now.  When we come up for communion or receive it in our pew, we are saying to God, “YES! With open hands and open heart  I want your divine story to continue in me and to live knowing you indeed have my back, that you are always in my court, that your love for me will never fail. And with that sure confidence we may go out into the world as God’s faithful instruments, trusting in a God who can be trusted!  

Who or what will separate us from the love of Christ?  Absolutely nothing.

Weeds, Wheat, and Which is Which

By the Rev. Dr. Paul S. Nancarrow

This sermon is based on Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
An audio version of this sermon is available here.

If we were to take the basic message of Jesus’ parable in our Gospel reading today and squeeze it into one sentence, it might come out saying something like this: “You’ve got to take the bad with the good.” Jesus’ image of a field where wheat and weeds are all growing together is an image of a world in which good things and bad things, good events and bad events, good people and bad people, are all tangled up together, and in a very basic way you just can’t get one without the other. The parable of the weeds in the wheat is a down-to-earth way of saying “You’ve got to take the bad with the good.”

Of course, if that’s all the parable says, it’s understandable if our first reaction is, “Well, duh!” We don’t need a parable to tell us that. We already know that there are good people and not-so-good-people and downright evil people in the world; any casual glance at the television news or cursory scan of today’s newspaper will tell us that. We already know that our lives encompass good memories and bad memories, that we’ve made smart decisions and stupid decisions, that each and every one of us have done things that have led to creativity and accomplishment and success for ourselves and for others and we’ve done things that have turned out to be hurtful and damaging and destructive to ourselves and to others. We don’t need a parable to tell us we have to take the bad with the good; we have our noses rubbed in it every day.

And yet perhaps we do need to be told that — or at least reminded of it from time to time. Because we human beings have a pervasive tendency to want to take the good in life, and to shuffle the bad off to someplace else. We only want half of the equation. It makes me think of a Peanuts cartoon I saw years ago: Charlie Brown and Lucy are talking together, and Charlie Brown says something about life having its ups and downs, and Lucy goes off into a tirade: “Why!? Why does life have to have ups and downs? Why can’t I just have ups? Why can’t I just go from an up to an even upper up?” Lucy carries on until Charlie Brown just puts his head down and says, “Good grief!” We tend not to want the bads with the goods; we want goods, and then we want even gooder goods.

In that respect we’re kind of like the farm workers in the parable. When they see the weeds growing along with the wheat, they immediately want to go out and pull up all the weeds. They want the field for the wheat alone; they want just the good stuff, without any of the wasteful, futile, unproductive stuff they know is out there.

But the householder in the parable knows better. “No,” he tells the farmworkers, “you can’t go pull up the weeds; because if you do, you’ll end up damaging the wheat, too.” And there are a couple of reasons why the householder says that. First, wheat is a kind of domesticated grass, and grasses grow with extensive, delicate, complex root systems: grasses have lots of little roots that spread out and intertwine with other roots and rhyzomes around them. If the farmhands were to go pull up the weeds, chances are they’d damage the root systems of the wheat plants, too. They might want to do good, but they’d wind up unintentionally doing harm. And to make matters more complicated, there are some weeds that look an awful lot like wheat as long as the plants are still young and growing — you can’t tell which is weed and which is wheat until the plants have reached their full maturity and have become everything they’re going to become. If the farmhands were to go out and pull up the young plants now, chances are they’d end up pulling up some weeds and pulling up some wheat and letting some wheat grow and letting some weeds grow — and the net result might be worse for the field than it was in the first place. There just isn’t any way to separate the weeds from the wheat without doing some unintended damage along the way; the good and the bad are too deeply intertwined to have one without the other. So the householder says, “Let them both grow up together; let each plant become what it can become; don’t try to judge them too quickly; and in the harvest, in the end, when everything is complete, then we can tell which is which.”

And that, it seems to me, is the real wisdom of the parable, that’s the thing we do need a parable to tell us. It’s not just the platitude that you have to take the bad with the good; but the message is that sometimes you can’t tell in advance what will turn out to be bad and what will turn out to be good, and therefore you shouldn’t rush to judgment between them. Our first tendency is to be like the farmhands; but the parable tells us that God is like the householder, God is merciful and patient, God always allows things and people and events to grow to the fullness of all they can be before God judges them fruitful or futile — and the parable invites us to be godly in that way, too.

And the really remarkable grace in that invitation is the way it encourages us to discover that some things we thought had been weeds really turn out to be wheat — how some of the events and experiences we go through seem difficult or damaging or disappointing at the time, and yet grow in us into bearing the seeds of of wisdom and compassion and love. When I served a congregation in Michigan I knew a family who had a child with Down’s syndrome. They already had a little girl and a little boy, about 5 years old and 3-1/2 years old — just about Maggie and Aidan’s ages when we knew them. And their first two kids were active and energetic and busy — and quite enough of a handful to take care of as they were. And both parents had jobs, and worked long hours to make ends meet, and shuffled their work hours around so that they could share more equally in caring for the kids and didn’t have to farm them out to childcare very often. And money was kind of tight in their household. And then they got the news from the amniocentesis that their third child would be born with Down’s syndrome — and while they couldn’t predict in advance how severe his mental disability would be, the doctor had to be honest with the family that he would never be “normal” like their other children. Well of course the news was devastating to them. Their family life was full — sometimes even tense — as it was; how could they possibly add a special-needs child and have any hope of making it work? It was not an easy thing for them. It meant extra childcare and extra medical bills and special equipment around the house; it meant having to do some things twice as slowly with their new baby as they had done with their other kids; it meant teaching their older children that their baby brother required special attention and care, even from them — and it all took its toll, it all added its measure of anxiety and frustration to the lives that they had known.

But after a time they began to find something else happening with them as well. They found that, because they had to pay extra attention to their third child, they were developing the habit of paying extra attention to each other as well. They found that, because it took longer to do things with their third child, they were slowing down, not rushing around so much, taking longer to do things, and to enjoy things, with each other as well. They found that their third child laughed more easily and hugged more often, and they all began to learn to laugh more and to hug more from him. Over time, they found that their third child, their “problem” child, their “disabled” child, was teaching them, was bringing them a gift of patience and wisdom and compassion and love, a gift they never would have known without him. What had seemed like weeds growing in the field of their family life turned out to be the finest wheat, the bread of a communion that went deeper than anything they’d ever known.

The parable of our Gospel today tells us that in our life the good and the bad, the difficult and the joyful, the seemingly futile and the ultimately fruitful, are very deeply intertwined, and it takes mercy and patience and compassionate judgment to let things grow to their rightful harvest. And the promise of the Gospel today is that, with the mercy and the patience and the grace that come from God, even some of the weediest parts of our lives can grow into the wheat of saving and redeeming love.

That’s the love that Jesus shows for us; and that’s the love we all can share in Jesus. Amen.

God in the Midst

By the Rev. Dr. Paul S. Nancarrow

This sermon is based on Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67 , Romans 7:15-25a , and Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30
An audio version of this sermon is available here.

Our readings from Scripture this morning are all over the place. We’ve got: a historical narrative from a highly patriarchal culture about negotiating for a wife, an almost frighteningly incisive depiction of a psyche divided against itself, and comfortable words from Jesus — comfortable words that are prefaced by some pretty harsh criticism. All over the place. What in the world could tie these three readings together?

Well, I think what ties these readings together is God in the world. Each of these passages, each in its own peculiar way, speaks to us of how the changing, confusing, conflicting details of our lives can be held together by recognizing God with us in the midst of things.

The servant sent out by his master Abraham to find a wife for Isaac is anxious about managing all the conflicting details of his task — until he prays that God will show him through a simple act of kindness, something so simple as a woman offering water to his camels, that she is the one God has chosen to be Isaac’s wife. When Rebekah shows him that kindness, he knows she is the one, and he is able to move from anxiety to action, he is able to make the bridal offer, because through prayer he has recognized God with him in the midst of ordinary things.

That same presence of God in the midst of things is what saves Paul in his struggle with the self divided against itself. Paul describes in this passage a classic psychological dilemma: on the one hand he knows what is good and loves what is good and wants to do what is good; on the other hand when he tries to do what is good, something evil turns out instead. There is a power in his members that is at war with the guidance of his mind, he says; there are appetites and desires and impulses that pull him this way and that, and the welter of all these different drives is beyond his ability to bring into one single coordinated purpose in life. It sounds to me like what Buddhists call “the monkey mind,” the tendency of our attention to jump around from one thing to the next, always picking up shiny objects but never settling down into the centeredness of compassion. “Wretched man that I am!” Paul exclaims from the tug of his conflicted impulses, “Who will rescue me from this body of death?” “Thanks be to God,” he says, “through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Paul realizes release from the distraction of many desires comes from recognizing God with us in Jesus in the midst of the multiplicity of life.

What that means is spelled out in more detail in our Gospel, in the contrast Jesus makes between the way of life John the Baptist taught, and the way of life Jesus himself teaches.  John came fasting, teaching a way of asceticism, teaching that the way to get close to God is to get away from the world. The people recognized John’s way — fasting and withdrawing from the world were standard religious practices — but they also thought John’s way was too hard, too inconvenient, too extreme: he’s crazy, they said, he’s got a demon, he’s too much for us. Jesus, on the other hand, taught a different way: Jesus taught a way of engaging with the world in order to recognize God’s presence in the world. Instead of fasting, Jesus ate and drank; instead of withdrawing to a wilderness riverbank, Jesus sat at table with tax collectors and sinners and Pharisees and ordinary folk; instead of trying to get away from the world in order to get close to God, Jesus enacted the reign of God right there within the world. The people didn’t understand that: they accused Jesus of being a glutton and a drunkard; they thought Jesus enjoyed food and drink and people just to gratify his own desires, just for his monkey mind; they did not realize that Jesus enjoyed food and drink and people because he always recognized in them the goodness and the wisdom and the presence of God. Jesus’ way of spiritual growth was to recognize God in the midst of things, and to love God in the things and to love the things in God.

That is the yoke of Jesus that is easy. That is the burden of Jesus that is light. That is the rest Jesus promises for our souls. All the many appetites are resolved into one love when we see all things in God; and we are released from the restlessness of distracted desires, released from the jumpiness of the monkey mind, released from the anxiety of not knowing if we can make the right choices and accomplish our tasks, released to be centered and focused, at the still point of the turning world, souls from which actions can come forth with purpose and integrity and grace. “Come to me,” Jesus says, “and learn from me to get close to God in the midst of the world.”

And getting close to God in the midst of the world is a spiritual practice, a meditative technique, that we can actually learn and develop. Years ago I was introduced to a book by Avery Brooke called How to Meditate Without Leaving the World. In that book she described a very simple yet very powerful practice for doing spiritual meditation with material objects: a candle, a leaf, a cloud, a shoe, a vista from a mountaintop, a photograph of someone you love, just about any object you can think of. In this meditation you focus your attention on your object and ask four questions: “What is this thing? What does it mean? What is God saying to me through it? How will I respond to God?” That’s it — four simple questions. Yet focusing the attention on one object and opening the imagination with questions has a wonderful way of quieting the monkey mind and giving rest to our souls as we recognize God with us in the midst of things.

There was a time I had a difficult decision to make. And the more I thought about this decision the more difficult it became: I could visualize all these possible choices before me, and I could visualize all these possible consequences that could follow from the choices — and some of those consequences were not very pretty. It was like my monkey mind was jumping around from one thought to the next; I wanted to do what was good but I didn’t know how; and my restless anxiety about my decision just got worse and worse and worse. At one point I just set it all aside and went for a walk. I ended up in a field, and there was an oak tree growing right in the middle of the field, and as I looked at that oak tree I began to do the four-point meditation with it. As I observed the tree and asked what it meant, I realized that there was a whole lot of the tree I couldn’t see, that for all the branches I saw above ground there was an equal amount of tree below ground, the whole branching root system that supported and sustained the tree. And the invisible part of the tree was just as important as the visible part. What God said to me through that tree was that there was an invisible part of my decision, that for all the branching possibilities that I could visualize there was an equal branching of support and sustaining in the invisible grace of God. No matter what decision I made, God would still be there; even if the choice I made turned out to be really stupid and wrong, God would still say “Okay, you kind of blew that one; let’s try this instead,” and God would still be there. And as I recognized God with me in that meditation on the oak tree, all my anxiety about my decision, all the restlessness of my monkey mind, just sort of faded away, and my soul came to rest, and from that still point I could decide to act with clarity and integrity and compassion. My decision did turn out to have a few unforeseen consequences, but they weren’t so bad as I had feared, and the grace of God got me through them, too. That simple meditation helped me know what to do, it helped rescue me from the distraction of conflicting impulses, it helped bring rest to my soul and let me engage the world — and all because it helped me recognize God with me in the midst of things.

So I commend that meditation practice to you. I invite you to try it sometime — sometime this very weekend. Sometime during this holiday — perhaps later today, perhaps tomorrow, maybe in the early morning, maybe during a picnic, maybe in the middle of fireworks — but sometime in this holiday weekend I want you to try this meditation for yourself. Pick an object, any object at all, and ask about it “What is this thing? What does it mean? What is God saying to me in it? What am I going to do about it?” Let God be with you in the midst of such things, giving your soul rest from the restlessness of distracted desires, helping you to more deeply engage the world.

Jesus says, “Come to me, you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and you will find rest for your souls.” May we answer Jesus’ call, and in Jesus may we come to know God right in the midst of things. Amen.

Beside, Beyond, Within

By the Rev. Dr. Paul S. Nancarrow

This sermon is based on 2 Corinthians 13:11-13
An audio version of this sermon is available here.

“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.”

These words from Paul's second letter to the Corinthians go right to the heart of the doctrine of the Trinity, which we of course are celebrating on this Trinity Sunday. And these words tell us that, at its heart, the doctrine of the Trinity is about love, it's about how we as Christians feel the love and the presence and the being of God as real factors in our experience. At its heart the doctrine of the Trinity tells us that the Christian feeling of God is that God is God with us in three ways: God is beside us, and God is beyond us, and God is within us.

God is beside us, with us in the thick of things, right here in the midst of human life, sharing with us the substance of our hopes and dreams and fears and successes and failures and pains and sorrows and celebrations, sharing the glory and the absurdity of being human in every fiber of human being. God is incarnate, embodied in the real life of the real world. This is the God we encounter in Jesus. This is part of the experience of the Trinity

And God is beyond us, bigger than we are, around us and above us and below us, in whom we live and move and have our being, beyond any name we can name or idea we can think or image we can imagine, who is not limited by any of our limitations. This is God Transcendent, God whom we call Creator, or Father, or Yahweh, or Being — or just plain “God,” which is not really even a name but a title, “God,” because the Transcendent is beyond all names. And this too is part of the experience of the Trinity.

And God is within us, dwelling in our own spirits, empowering us within, transforming us from the inside out, giving us strength and courage and wisdom and compassion and a capacity for love that we know we could never have on our own. God is immanent, the life within our lives — or, as one Islamic Sufi writer put it, God is closer to us than our own arteries. This is the God we call the Holy Spirit. And this too is part of the experience of the Trinity.

God beside us, God beyond us, God within us. God Incarnate, God Transcendent, God Immanent. Three ways of being God, that are all one God. Or, as Paul says, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit that is with us all.”

We know God beside us in the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. “Grace” is a word that means a free gift, an unearned blessing, something that is just given out of the sheer joy of generosity. That’s the kind of love Jesus showed all through his earthly ministry. In all the stories about Jesus, he never rejects anyone who comes to him — in fact, he was notorious for accepting all sorts of people whom the “religiously proper” folks would not accept, tax collectors and prostitutes and lepers and terrorists — he’d even hang out with Pharisees if they were willing to hang out with him. Jesus accepted everyone freely, graciously, for exactly who they were. And Jesus shared the good news with everyone, exactly as each needed to hear it. And Jesus called everyone to repent and believe the good news, exactly as each needed to be called. Jesus met people where they were, side-by-side with them in their real lives.

And we experience the grace of Jesus side-by-side with us in our real lives, too. Years ago I used to vacation in the summers in a small town in Northern Michigan, and just outside of town there was a waterfall that was a favorite place of mine. It was just a small stream, but it had carved a series of cascades and pools deep into the rock face of a hill, and it was great fun to climb up that waterfall to see all the cascades. One time I was climbing, and I decided to go straight up a rocky part that I usually detoured around, and as I was climbing the rock I remembered that I’m not really a very experienced rock climber, and I didn’t really have any idea what I was doing — and I panicked. I froze. I could not move, because I was certain that if I moved even one handhold, I would fall straight down that waterfall, go bouncing down each cascade, until I landed in a sodden bloody heap at the bottom. I was that scared. And I stayed there, pinned to that rock for what felt like an awfully long time, until I began to pray. I prayed that Jesus would be there with me, right beside me, and show me the way down. I prayed with my imagination that Jesus put his hand right on top of my hand, and with his hand guided me to the next handhold. I prayed with my imagination that Jesus took hold of my foot and guided it to the next toehold. And bit by it, feeling Jesus side-by-side with me, I got down off that rock. And that waterfall is still one of my favorite places. Sometimes we can experience the presence of Jesus so vividly that we know God is beside us, with us in the thick of things, sharing the very human details of our very human lives. That’s part of how we experience Trinity.

We know God beyond us in the love of God. The Greek word Paul uses for “love” here is agapē, and in the Greek translation of the First Testament that Paul was trained in — remember that Paul was trained as a Pharisee before he became a Christian, and that meant he knew his Greek Bible very very well — in the Greek Bible the word  agapē was used pretty specifically for a kind of love that is full of affection, but beyond affection is also an intentional choice to will what is good for the other, and to stay faithful in that goodwill no matter what. Agapē-love is the kind of love God has for Creation in our story from Genesis today, when God sees what is created and feels affection for it and says “It is good,” when God blesses the creatures and tells them to be fruitful and multiply and implies a covenant with them: “I will be your God and you will be my creatures and this is how the Universe will work, and I will be faithful to this Universe.” The  agapē-love of God is what surrounds us and sustains us and holds us in being, it is God’s goodwill for us before and behind and through all things.

And we experience that all-encompassing, creating, goodwill love in our lives, too. I know so many people who tell me they feel God’s presence in nature, in a forest, on a mountaintop, under a starry night sky, on the golf course — for me, I often feel God’s presence when I’m pedaling my bicycle out in the Valley. And people who share this kind of experience with me tell me that what they feel in nature is such goodness, beauty and awe and wonder and delight and a deep-down foundational sense that, as Genesis says, it is very good. Think for a moment of some time you have felt the goodness of creation, and have recognized that as a reflection of the goodness of the One who creates it. That’s also part of how we experience Trinity.

We know God within us in the communion of the Holy Spirit. Now “communion” is a very special word: we use it all the time in church, but when you try to define it, it gets slippery. “Communion” means to be united, but not in such a way that you lose your own identity: you are one with God, but you are also still your human self. In the Hindu philosophy of Vedanta they call it “non-duality”; not singularity, but not duality either. Communion is to be who you are, but be who you are along with God.

One of the most moving stories anyone ever shared with me about their experience of communion with the Holy Spirit came from someone who had bouts of depression all through her adult life. There was one time, she told me, when it was particularly bad, when it felt like all the color, all the energy, all the joy, all the meaning had just drained out of her life; she felt empty and hopeless; her meditation, her church, her friends, all seemed insipid and pointless; and she found herself one night sitting alone in an empty dark room, seriously doubting she had the strength even to stay alive. And in that darkness, she said, she heard a voice — and the strange thing was she could tell the voice was coming from inside her. She knew it was a voice in her imagination, she knew it wasn’t coming from outside; and in her imagination it was as if she could hear it literally inside her body, echoing off her ribs, vibrating in the muscle of her heart. And in her own intonation and inflection the voice said to her “You know you are strong enough for this. You know you are strong enough to get through this.” That’s all it was. No light, no vision, no miracle. No sudden cure for her depression, no instant sense of wholeness and well-being. But in that moment she knew, without question, that God the Holy Spirit was with her, and from within her own struggling psyche was giving her strength to grow and to heal and to become well again. We experience the communion of the Holy Spirit when from within our own selves God brings forth strength and courage and wisdom and compassion that are more than we could manage on our own. We experience the communion of the Holy Spirit when we feel the power of God within us helping us to become our true selves. That’s also part of how we experience Trinity.

In all these ways, the doctrine of the Trinity is really all about love, all about putting into words the specific Christian experience of how God loves. God beside us, God beyond us, God within us; God Incarnate, God Transcendent, God Immanent; the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit. May that grace and that love and that communion of the Triune God be with us all evermore.

Breathing the Spirit

By the Rev. Dr. Paul S. Nancarrow

This sermon is based on the lectionary readings for Pentecost.
An audio version of the sermon is available here.

Today we are celebrating the Feast of Pentecost, the Fiftieth Day after Easter, the Sabbath of sabbaths after a week of weeks of dwelling in the Paschal Mystery. Today is both the final day of Easter and a holy day in its own right, the first day of a new season marking Christ’s continuing mission in the Church. Today we celebrate the Feast of Pentecost.

The centerpiece of our Pentecost celebration is of course the coming of the Holy Spirit, as Luke narrates in our reading today from the Book of Acts. It is to celebrate the appearance of the Spirit as flames of fire above the apostles’ heads that we dress the church in red today. It is because the Spirit made the apostles so enthusiastic for the Gospel that the bystanders thought they were drunk, that we let our own joy well up in us and open us up to the enthusiastic Spirit as well.

But Luke’s story of the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost is not the only story the New Testament tells of disciples receiving spiritual empowerment and presence for their life and mission in Christ. Another story, and a very different story, is told by John, and we read that story as our Gospel passage on this Pentecost Day.

In John’s story, the Spirit comes on the evening of Easter Day, the first day of the Resurrection, not the fiftieth. In John’s story, the Spirit comes when the disciples are huddled together in a locked room, the doors shut because they are afraid, their minds and their hearts confused because just that morning Mary Magdalene had told them she had seen the Lord, he was risen — but they haven’t seen him yet, and they know only too well what the Temple authorities and the Roman soldiers will do to them if they should venture out now in Jesus’ name. So there they are, locked in the room, huddled in fear, when Jesus suddenly stands among them, Jesus suddenly reveals this New Life to them, Jesus says to them “Peace be with you” — and then Jesus breathes on them, and he says “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” In John’s story the Holy Spirit comes when Jesus sends forth his disciples even as the Father has sent him.

There are a couple of things I really like about John’s Holy Spirit story. It’s not as exciting as Luke’s, to be sure; and I do like a good, exciting Spirit story. But there are some things about John’s way of telling this that really make me stop and think.

One of the things that makes me stop and think is the imagery of how Jesus communicates the Spirit to his disciples: by breathing it to them. Luke uses grand and impressive and powerful imagery of wind and fire; John uses the much more personal and intimate imagery of breath. But being personal and intimate doesn’t make the breath-image any less powerful; in fact, John’s use of the image is primordially, even cosmically, powerful. That’s because John has composed this scene of Jesus breathing the Spirit into his disciples consciously and intentionally as an echo of the story of the original creation of humankind in the second chapter of the Book of Genesis. You all know the story: how God scoops up a handful of mud — red mud, the original Hebrew says — and God shapes the mud into a little human figure, a little manikin, and then God breathes into its nostrils the breath of life, and the manikin becomes a living, breathing human being. That breath of God is the source of life, and poetry throughout the Hebrew scripture speaks of how God’s breath breathes life into all creation, into the entire cosmos. It’s there in our Psalm today, when we sing “you send forth your spirit — or, you breathe forth your breath — and they are created, and so you renew the face of the earth.” It is that life-giving, earth-renewing breath of God that Jesus is sharing with his disciples when he breathes on them and says “Receive the Holy Spirit.” In this story John shows Jesus not just giving his disciples a spiritual boost, but re-enacting the very act of creation itself; John shows Jesus beginning the re-creating and renewing of the whole entire world by sharing a New Life, a Holy Breath, with his living, breathing, sent-out disciples.

And the gift of holy breath, the gift of new life, has an immediate effect on the disciples. Jesus tells them that this re-created holy life brings with it the power of forgiveness, the power to move beyond old hurts and old fears and old mistakes and old failures — the power to move beyond all that and to reconstruct relationships that show forth justice and peace and compassion and reconciliation and love. Now think about that for a moment: these are guys who are locked in a room because they are afraid — they are completely trapped in their fears and their sadness and their uncertainties and their doubts. But when Jesus gives them holy breath, when Jesus gives them new life, they are set free from all that, they come alive again, they come more alive than they’ve ever been before, and they are ready to be sent on their mission to share Jesus’ new life with everyone they can reach. When Jesus breathes on them he brings them to life, and to greater life, in the ancient and eternal creative power of God the Holy Spirit.

And here’s the important part: The promise of the Spirit is for us, too; the promise that Jesus will breathe new life into us, the promise that Jesus will empower us with the creative energy of resurrection living — that promise is not just an old story about somebody else a long time ago; that promise is real and true and right in front of us today. And that promise is one of the most important spiritual truths in all of our religion. In a time when more and more people are saying they want something spiritual in their lives, something personal and experiential and inward, it’s important for us Episcopalians to be able to show that the outward and formal and institutional dimensions of our religion really do lead to spiritual experiences. Of course we have formal credal teachings about Jesus and about the Holy Spirit — that’s what today is all about — but those formal credal teachings are all for the purpose of guiding our hearts and our minds and our spirits into experiencing the living presence of the living God, they are all for the purpose of experiencing our own life-activities being activated by divine Spirit, as Paul writes in the Epistle today. We teach about Jesus giving the Spirit to the disciples, because we want to experience Jesus giving the Spirit to us, too. That's one of the most important ways our religion is spiritual.

So think about that for a minute. Where in your life do you feel a hunger for this Holy Spirit? Is there a part of your soul that feels like it is huddled away in a locked room? Is there a place in your psyche that seems trapped in old fears or old hurts or old brokenness? Is there something for which you want to forgive or be forgiven, a relationship you long to renew and reconcile and restore? Is there some part of your life that seems to have gone dead inside but wants to come back to life? Is there a way you want to be sent to share in Christ’s mission? How would you receive the Holy Spirit if it were offered to you right now?

Because that is what is offered to us in this liturgy today. Imagine that Jesus is standing in front of you now — Jesus is present here in Word and Sacrament, so he can be with us in imagination as well. Imagine that Jesus stands before you and says “Receive the Holy Spirit” and breathes on you. How do you respond? Can you picture yourself receiving this breath, this gift, this life? Can you picture some part of you that’s been locked away opening up and taking the air? Can you feel your breathing getting deeper and your heartbeat getting stronger? Can you imagine new energy, new creativity, coming on you like wind and fire — and can you see yourself wanting to share that energy with someone else? Imagine Jesus standing before you now and breathing the Spirit into you — how do you imagine yourself receiving it?

The Feast of Pentecost is the celebration of the coming of the Holy Spirit to the Church. And whether we think of that coming in images like Luke’s or images like John’s, the meaning for our spiritual experience is the same: the Spirit empowers us to be like Jesus, the Spirit empowers us to be filled with life and creativity and joy and love that comes from God, the Spirit empowers us to be sent out to share this life with all the world. That is what we celebrate today; that is what the Spirit inspires us to live every day. Amen.

Cast ALL your anxiety!

1Peter  4:12-14,5:6-11
June 5, 2011 at Trinity Church
The Rev. Shelby Ochs Owen

Cast all your anxiety on God because he cares for you.

I am wondering how many of us are at perfect peace this moment?  Who has not had a worry, not a care, not a concern, not any anxiety since you woke up this morning? Well, if you have experienced any state of anxiety, whether it be a minor flickering or a major physical wave of worry, you are in excellent company.  In our epistle reading from 1 Peter we can infer that the community to whom Peter was writing is experiencing a great deal of distress and anxiety.  Peter’s letter was sent from Rome to five Roman provinces of Asia Minor.  It is probable that these faith communities were despised and rejected by their own families as this Christian faith was considered a “foreign” religion, which caused suspicions and threatened the Roman way of life.

The passage for today begins, “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that is taking place among you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you.  But rejoice insofar as you are sharing Christ’s sufferings, so that you may also be glad and shout for joy when his glory is revealed.” So although we may not know specifically what the fiery ordeal has been for the Petrine communities, Peter is saying followers of Christ should not be at all surprised when life takes a difficult turn, when we are suffering or hurting.  And he actually urges his people to rejoice knowing that they are sharing in Christ’s suffering, that the suffering won’t last and that eventually they will share in Christ’s glory.

Peter then encourages the community how to move forward in their suffering, in their difficulties: humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you. Discipline yourselves, keep alert.  This is such practical help.  Again as is so often the case in Scripture, humility before God is the starting place. When all else fails, when life is going awry, when all seems lost and wrong, to be humble before God, essentially to remember just how big God is. And then, Peter reminds his audience to cast their cares, their anxieties on God.  In his wisdom Peter presumes they will have anxieties, they will have worries and thoughts that cause fear, a sense of foreboding, situations that disquiet their minds and hearts. Here perhaps Peter echoes Jesus’ exhortation to the disciples that they not worry about their lives and another abundant scriptural echo of “do not fear.”

What are we worrying about?  Where is our anxiety?  I am reminded of the bumper sticker that reads, “If you’re not outraged, then you are not paying attention!”  If we are not full of anxiety, not full of that sense of foreboding is it just that we are not paying attention?  I don’t think that is what Peter is suggesting at all.  Perhaps if we are not full of anxiety, we have chosen to give it all to God.  I am sure you know some folks, maybe you are one yourself, who just keeps a certain peace or calmness about him or her.  Perhaps that peace is the result not of the absence of stress or suffering but of casting worry on God, of drawing near to God’s peace through prayer.  As life goes forward and as we follow Christ, we will face situations that cause us worry. Difficulties are part of the life of faith.  We will still struggle when we find the lump that shouldn’t be there, we will struggle when we learn that our friend has betrayed us or when we ourselves have gone against our conscience; we will still struggle when we think our job is in jeopardy or when entire countries or communities like Haiti or Japan or Joplin, MO suffer due to catastrophic events.  We get anxious when we think about the things that could go wrong with our families, with our work, with our travels, with our health, with our finances, with our schooling. All of the “What-if’s” in our lives can stir up all kinds of trouble with our mental health, our sleep, even our physical state.  Sometimes we even hear people brag about being worriers.  But Peter tells us worry is not something to hold onto, not something to dwell on, not something to engage with; we are to give our worry, our undue burden to God because he cares for us.  

When we can actually cast our care, our anxiety, our worry on God then we can be more fully present IN the present which is what he asks of us.  To cast our care on God is not to live in denial but to wake up to the reality of what is at work in our lives, and to let God do his work in us and through us-to put things in their proper balance.  And Peter tells us that we can give this all to God because he cares for us. God wants the best for us and wants to carry our burdens for us.  Mark Twain said, “I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.”  How many times over the course of a day do we worry about things that will never happen or that later we realize were not worth worrying about?

In nine days 23 adults and teenagers from Trinity will leave to go on a mission trip to Honduras.  If we compiled a list of our combined worries, I wonder what it might contain? Maybe we will be worried that we will get sick, that the plane or the bus will be late or worse, worried that our money or passports will get lost or stolen, worried our roommate will snore or worse, they we will snore, worried that our not knowing the language will keep us at a distance from the Hondurans, worried that we will get separated from the group, worried that the heat will make us grumpy, worried that the adults will get on our nerves?  I think you get the drift.  There is GREAT potential for worry and anxiety on a major trip.  But Peter would tell us, Don’t worry! Give it all to God. Yes, give it ALL to God.  And what might we expect if we are actually able to give our worry to God?  We can expect a deep peace that offers peace to those around us, we can expect flexibility, we can expect to be more available to God and to others – more fully present to others such as our fellow travelers and the folks that we will encounter along the way, we can expect joy, we can expect to see God’s face in the faces of those we meet. And we can expect to laugh. A lot.

You don’t have to go to Honduras to experience similar temptations for worry and to experience similar outcomes in giving that worry to God in your life. As we cast our cares on God in all aspects of our lives we can expect that God will make himself known in all kinds of ways.  Worry is a waste of God’s precious resources – you and me. And we matter to God. So let us humble ourselves, let us turn it all over to the one who created us and who sustains and who redeems us so that then we may be available to God and to one another.  God is big enough to handle all our cares, all our anxiety, all our worry.

Amen