Church of the Epiphany

I actually thought yesterday was the end of the world so I didn’t bother preparing a sermon…

Guess they’ll have to recalculate.

‘I am the way.’ ‘Show us the way, asks Thomas.’  ‘We don’t know where you’re going.’  We know that the early Christians were called the ‘way’ as we talked about last week.  What did Jesus mean?  Now the ‘way’ in Jewish thought was the path of righteousness.  Jesus may have been referring to the path through the wilderness to the new Jerusalem that Isaiah speaks of. 

Of course that wilderness path is the path to the cross.

In many ways our salvation in Christ is already a reality.  He has conquered sin and death on the cross and all who believe in him will not perish but have everlasting life.  But all of us know from experience that our walk with God is just that—it is a walk, it is a journey, it is a way. 

To follow Christ is to walk with him on the way.  It is to walk with him to the presence of his Father.  One of the things we have lost is the whole concept of pilgrimage.  Muslims go to Mecca, Jews go to Jerusalem.  We go to the mall.

To walk with Christ is to follow the rabbi who is going to the Father.  The path is narrow, the path is difficult, but the path makes us new people. 

Peter’s whole emphasis in his letter is the new people.  The people of the new birth and the new way.

I mentioned before the paradoxes in 1 Peter.  A paradox is two things that appear contradictory but that are at the same time true.  The Trinity, for example, is a paradox…

Peter calls his church the diaspora or the exiles.  These are loaded terms.

To be dispersed after being conquered is to find yourself without a home—like the experience of a refugee.  This was the history of Israel and what Peter’s community in a sense looks like, a group of irrelevant, persecuted Christians with no home.  But the paradox is this:

Once you were not a people,

but now you are God’s people;

once you had not received mercy,

but now you have received mercy.

I use 1 Peter 2 when I teach my New Testament class to undergrads.  I ask them to apply the passage to give me a working theology of the church.  Peter speaks in glowing terms of the church:

Christ is the Living Stone—you are living stones.  And then this description:

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

He also refers to the church as the ‘Zion’ of the people of God’s expectations—the fulfillment of prophecy.

I won’t go through the whole of this passage but I will look at this one verse which has much to see.  But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

What is a chosen race? This is an interesting way to describe the church.  Humans get in trouble when we put too much into ethnic pride or ethnic superiority.  History is replete with terrible examples of this kind of thing.

However, to be a Christian is to be purchased by Christ and brought into a new family. Baptismal water is thicker than blood if you want to put it that way.  All of the richness that we experience in a human family is a foretaste of a spiritual reality that we have as the body of Christ.  The Eastern Orthodox have a wonderful tradition of crowning a couple that is getting married.  This is to point people to see the human family as an icon of life in the kingdom of heaven.  The family is seen as a ‘micro church.’

The church is the elect of God—chosen before the foundation of the world as Paul puts it.  We are the chosen ones, not because of anything we have done, but because of God’s mercy in Christ. 

What is a royal priesthood?  We are good ‘ol Americans that militate against anything that has to do with a ruling King.  We have no concept of royalty.  There are no royal families in our midst.

Any talk of royalty in Scripture would cause the reader to remember David and Solomon.  You don’t become royal you are graced with royal blood.  You inherit it.  In the Christian sense, we are adopted into a royal family because of our relationship to Jesus—the son of David and Son of God.  We, then, by extension have ‘royal’ privilege.  In Christ we are kings and queens in the Kingdom of Heaven.

What does he mean by ‘priesthood?’  The priest in the Old Testament was the one who had special access to God.  He was allowed to go into the holiest of holies in the Temple to offer sacrifice and into the Shekinah of God—the presence and glory of God.

For us, Christ is the presence of God and we are the Temple of God.  Christ is the Shekinah and we are allowed, as the book of Hebrews says, to boldly approach the throne of God through him. 

Luther called this the ‘priesthood of all believers.’  Every Christian has access to God anytime, anywhere.

Why then, have Christian priests?  Christian pastors and priests do not mediate Christ to people.  We are here to remind all of us of the sacredness of going into the presence of God.  The liturgy does not go against the priesthood of all believers—it reminds of what the priesthood of all believers looks like.  As protestants we rightly remember the supremacy of the Scripture and the access that we all have to the Scripture—Peter says to long for the spiritual milk which in part is the Scripture.  But through the liturgy and the Sacraments all that is in Scripture comes to life.  What if all you ever did was read about food and never actually ate it?  What if you only read about kissing your spouse but never actually kissed them?  What if you only read about climbing the 14ner and never actually climbed it?

What if you only read about the priesthood of all believers but never saw the reverence and seriousness of entering into the presence of God?  What if you only read about God and never actually experienced him? 

What is a ‘holy nation?’

Of course Peter’s readers would have as their guide the people of Israel, God’s chosen people.  Israel was a theocracy ruled by Torah.  Is this what Peter is getting at?  Is this what we want?  Do we want America to be a theocracy?  Should the ‘holy nation’ be a geographical reality?

I mentioned the Muslim scholar that said the Koran never envisions Islam as a minority and the New Testament never envisions the church as anything but a minority. 

So what is a holy nation?

This is what we are called to be.  It is more important to be a part of the Church (the body of Christ in all times and all places) than the part of a particular nation of land.  Thank God we live in this land, but we are not defined by the stars and stripes but by the cross.

What does it mean to be holy?  In the biblical sense, it is to be set apart for special use.  Anglicans understand that certain things are set aside for special use.  Like the chalice.  We could use any ‘ol cup for the Sacrament but we choose to use something that is set apart and something we care for in a special way.

So it is for the body of Christ.  We are a like a chalice offered to the world.  We present God to the world.  We re-present Christ.  We are brought out of the darkness of this world into his marvelous light.  Then we show the way to others.

The way the truth and the life—this is what Jesus is.  We are to show him to the world.

There is this church I know of that is not perfect but has represented Christ.  This church:

1. Bought a special wheelchair for a little girl with cerebral palsy whose life has been wracked by pain and countless surgeries.
2. Thrived when their demographics changed from all white to a large percentage of blacks.
3. Sent care packages to shut ins every Christmas.
4. Covered the cost to bury a 2 year old girl whose parents couldn’t afford even a burial.
5. Walk together in the midst of many different points of view politically.
6. Welcomes little children who do little children things during worship.
7. Has a leadership the majority of whom receive no pay.
8. Eats together, prays together, and studies together.

There is a scene at the end of Indiana Jones and the Last crusade.  Indiana Jones is on a quest for the Holy Grail—the Cup of Christ used in the Last Supper.  He makes it into the last of many obstacles and finds a room full of chalices guarded by a thousand year old knight.  Most of the chalices are ornate and covered in jewels and gold.  The knight tells Dr. Jones to pick a chalice and drink from it, if it does not kill him, it is the Holy Grail.  One of the bad guys already chose unwisely.

Indiana Jones looks at the room of chalices and finds one that is wooden and simple.  He says, ‘this is the cup of a carpenter,’ and lo and behold it is the correct one.

I look at this congregation which I just described.  And I say ‘this is the cup of the carpenter.’

This is the community of the way the tru

¹ Blessed is the one
who does not walk in step with the wicked
or stand in the way that sinners take
or sit in the company of mockers,
² but whose delight is in the law of the LORD,
and who meditates on his law day and night.
³ That person is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither…

You can’t read this story without marveling at Jesus’ willingness to ignore the propriety of the culture in those days.  What is he doing in Samaria in the first place? A Jew didn’t associate with Samaritans because Samaritans were half Assyrian conqueror and half Jewish.  Secondly, they worshiped on Mt. Gerazim rather than in Jerusalem.  They were unclean because of their mixed blood and mixed religious practice.  Not only that, it was unthinkable for a Jewish man to openly talk to a Samaritan woman.  A single Jewish man wasn’t supposed to talk to any woman, much less a Samaritan.  Not only was it bad enough that he talked to a Samaritan woman, she was a loose Samaritan woman at that.  Or at least she was perceived that way.  Remember Deuteronomy 24:1 allowed men to divorce their wives ‘if they did not please them.’  She may have been unjustly divorced the first time (or the first two times) and thought, hey, what is there to lose now?  I’ve already come this far, there is no redemption for me.

It is significant that she comes at noon.  No one came to a well at noon.  Noon was the heat of the day.  Noon was a time to be inside resting. The community of women would come first thing or when it was cooler.  This woman came because she did not want to be seen.  For shame and cultural propriety.  5 times married. Jesus went out of his way to ignore the religious and cultural barriers to offer her living water.  The woman was probably confused at first and may have even thought Jesus was looking for a date.  A well was a common place to meet people.  Don’t forget Jacob himself found his wife at this very well.  And when Jesus asked about her husband, and she said, ‘I have no husband,’ she may have been giving him an invitation.  But that was not Jesus intent.  He broke all rules of the religiously correct to reach into this woman’s world and heal her.  His intent was to change her life—to bring her freedom.

Jacob’s well was an important place.  It was the well that Jacob gave to his son Joseph.  It represented the calling of Israel for Jacob’s name was changed to Israel.  It was a tie to holy and ancient past.  It was a well that had been there as a reminder of God’s care for his people.  It was almost like a shrine of God’s pouring out of the waters of his blessing.  What does Jesus offer immediately to this woman?  Living water, water that when you drink it, you never thirst again.

A few reflections.  First, where is Samaria to you? What part of the world, the country, what part of the city?  Why is that place or that people off limits to you?

In a meeting the other day I was reminded of an acronym saying that works well in our neighborhood: NIMBY

What is NIMBY?

Not in my backyard!

Often we know where ‘Samaria’ is not so much by where we would or wouldn’t go, but what we want around us.  Or do not want around us.  Some NIMBY’s are valid but many just reveal the sinfulness of our hearts.

Little Italy or China town or mini Juarez are a nice place to visit, but when the neighborhood becomes 12% or more of a certain kind of people then, well it’s time to move on.

Lent is a great time to visit your own Samaria’s and NIMBY’s and then ask yourself what the Lord would do with your NIMBY.  He went far to search for this woman.  He leaves the 99 to find the one lost sheep—what about you?  Remember your baptismal vows:

Will you proclaim by word and example the Good

News of God in Christ?

I will, with God’s help.

Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving

your neighbor as yourself?

I will, with God’s help.

Will you strive for justice and peace among all

people, and respect the dignity of every human

being?

I will, with God’s help.

Will you do these things?  I think the baptismal vows are more important than our HOA rules don’t you?

Where is Samaria for you?  Your NIMBY?

Second, what is your version of living water?

Look at the wonderful contrast between Nicodemus and this Samaritan woman.  Though neither of them wanted to be seen, Nicodemus comes at night and the woman by day.  This is a contrast that John wishes to underscore.

Also, both throw some distracting theological questions Jesus’ way, but one walks away confused and the other walks away changed.  One does not drink the living water (yet) and the other leaves behind the earthly water for the heavenly.  ‘Come and see the one who told me everything I have ever done.’  Paraphrase, come and see the one who knows everything about me, but loves me anyway!

It is instructive that the educated theologian walks away scratching his head and the Samaritan sinner walks away with perfect clarity.

The broken understand their brokenness the satisfied do not.

What for you is living water?  Is it Christ or is it something else?

Entertainment?  Comfort?  Retirement?  Money?

Are you your own living water?

A self-help book from the 1980s says it well.  What You Think of Me is None of My Business.

We took that title seriously didn’t we?

You remember Whitney Houston’s song The Greatest Love of All? You know what the greatest love of all is? ‘Learning to love yourself, it is the greatest love of all.’

We shouldn’t feel bad about ourselves of course, but a couple of decades of ‘me,’ shows us the fruit of our thinking.

Interestingly, the woman at the well repents simply by walking away from her lifestyle and towards Jesus.  She doesn’t call herself a ‘worm’ or call attention to her grief over her sin.  She simply walks in a different direction.

She knows her own brokenness and chooses to walk towards Jesus.  This is repentance.  It takes the realization that we are sinners but it really isn’t that complicated. Just walk in the direction of Christ.  And away from our own selfishness.

A reflection from Fr. Albert Holz is instructive.  His book is on his pilgrimage around the holy sites of Europe.  He writes of a church in Toledo Spain that is interesting.  It is the monastery church San Juan de los Reyes.  This part of Spain was under Turkish rule for 360 years.  Toledo was one site where Christians were sold into slavery.  In the plaza around the church, ‘High up on an outside wall, hanging in neat rows…are ankle chains taken off Christian slaves freed from the [Turks] by the victorious Spaniards in 1492.  I stare at these grisly reminders of slavery, and try to hear the story they tell of slaves being set free from captivity and returning joyfully to their homes and families.  It strikes me that the side of a church is a perfect place to display the broken chains of Christians who were once held captive.  Our God is, after all, in the business of breaking chains.  We believe that the Word became flesh, suffered, died, and rose again to free us from the chains of sin and death.’

The Samaritan woman was set free.  Do you need to be set free?

Define this proverb: “A man is known by his friends.”

I have a fundamental assumption.  This is an assumption that goes for just about everything—church life, home life, school life, family life.  When we put ourselves in the Lord’s presence, when you put yourself in the Lord’s presence—change occurs—and it is the kind of change that leads to the kind of life that Jesus describes.  It doesn’t happen overnight, and it doesn’t occur in isolation. But gradually qualities seen in the Sermon on the Mount occur.

The lives of the great men and women of faith attest to this:  the early Christian martyrs, Benedict, Francis, Teresa of Avila, Julian of Norwich, Mother Teresa.  Their time with the Lord changed them, from the inside out.

But what is also true is that transformation that occurs leads to something—it leads to outward action.  I see this also as Jesus teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, one foot in the Kingdom, one foot firmly planted on the earth.

Our tendency as Americans is to see the life of faith as something private.  From the cowboy on the frontier praying on the top of the mountain to the woman in the bookstore reading about spirituality we would rather leave faith to the private individual.

The problem is, that is not Jesus’ vision at all for the people of God.

Our own John Wesley said, ‘If we keep the Christian religion from being seen we make it ofno effect,’ and ‘to turn Christianity into a solitary religion is to destroy it.’  And Deitrich Bonheoffer says, ‘Flight into the invisible is a denial of the call.’  As much as we would like to hide our faith or only see it as something we do invisibly at church, Jesus has other ideas.

Jesus has two simple images for the people of God, be salt and light.  Salt and light.  Salt purifies, cleanses and provides taste.  Light is something that is to be seen to show the way.

Notice Jesus says ‘you are the salt of the earth,’ not ‘you must be the salt.’  As Bonhoeffer says, ‘It is not for the disciples to decide whether they will be the salt of the earth, for they are so whether they like it or not, they have been made salt by the call they have received…Once again it is not: ‘you are to be the light,’ they are already the light because Christ has called them, they are a light which is seen of men, they cannot be otherwise, and if they were it would be a sign that they had not been called.’

Bad news for Episcopalians.  Now you noticed I have gone quite awhile without saying the ‘E’ word.  Maybe I’ll avoid it altogether and give us a picture of what salt and light can be.

Jesus images of salt and light imply that the people of God are encountered in the culture in intimate ways.  You cannot provide light for the path or preservation for food—without there being a direct encounter with darkness and food.

A nun in China asked Thomas Merton why Catholics there were not evangelizing more and why they were not trying to convince Buddhists and Hindus of the truth of Christianity and Merton replied, “What we are asked to do at present is not so much to speak of Christ as to let him live in us so that people may find him by feeling how he lives in us.”

You can’t have ‘saltiness’ if no one has a ‘taste’ of what you are about.  We can’t be salt and light if we do not see ourselves as salt and light.  St. John Chrysostom says, ‘You are accountable not only for your own life but also for that of the entire world.’

What does that mean?  This is not something that is easily defined.  We know it is not the legalism of the Pharisees, we know it is not selling out to culture so much that we are indistinguishable.

It means being salt and light—to the extent that the world changes because of the people of God.  In 1969 Malcolm Muggeridge, a British journalist went to Calcutta to do a documentary on Mother Teresa.  This was before he was a Christian—he had been the editor of a satirical magazine.  At first Mother Teresa refused but changed her mind saying ‘Let us do something beautiful for God’ (The first time she had used that term); so, they began filming. Leadership magazine says, “When they began filming, something strange happened.  Even though there was not enough light in the hospice for filming, the finished film was bathed in a particularly beautiful soft light.  [Muggeridge saw it as the love of God surrounding the process]  Later, he wrote a book about Mother Teresa and eventually became a Christian.”

To be salt and light is to have love for those around us, to the extent that we feel accountable for the whole world.

It is like the words of Isaac of Ninevah:

“Let yourself be persecuted, but do not persecute others.

Be crucified, but do not crucify others.

Se slandered, but do not slander others.

Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep: such is the sign of purity.

Suffer with the sick.

Be afflicted with sinners.

Exult with those who repent.

Be the friend of all, but in your spirit remain alone.

Be a partaker of the sufferings of all, but keep your body distant from all.

Rebuke no one, revile no one, not even those who live very wickedly.

Spread your cloak over those who fall into sin, each and every one, and shield them.

Salt and light: Those who are salt and light feel accountable for others, in the words of Wesley, ‘We should follow after love, and desire to spend and be spent for our brothers [and sisters].’

But I can’t live that way.  I don’t have time to be salt and light.  And what’s in it for me?  Why should I care about ‘them.’

Jean Vanier, founder of L’Arche communities, tells this story:

“I know a man who lives in Paris.  His wife has Alzheimer’s.  He was an important businessman—his life filled with busyness.  But he said that when his wife fell sick, ‘I just couldn’t put her in an institution, so I kept her.  I fed her.  I bathed her.’  I went to Paris to visit them [says Vanier] and this businessman who had been very busy all his life said, ‘I have changed.  I have become more human.’  I got a letter from him recently.  He said that in the middle of the night his wife woke him up.  She came out of the fog for a moment, and she said, ‘Darling, I just want to say thank you for all you’re doing for me.’  Then she fell back into the fog.  He told me, ‘I wept and wept.’

Sometimes Christ calls us to love people who cannot love us in return.  They live in the fog of mental illness, disabilities, poverty, or spiritual blindness.  We may only receive fleeting glimpses of gratitude.  But just as Jesus has loved us in the midst of our spiritual confusion, so we continue to love others as they walk through a deep fog.”

Salt and light: The people of God are accountable not just for our own lives but also for the whole world.

Jeremiah 29:1-13

Amitai Etzioni, a professor of international studies at George Washington University writes this about an interaction he had with an audience about our current economic downturn:

‘When I asked an audience, “Do you really need a flat-screen TV? An inflatable Santa Claus? Plastic pink flamingos on your front lawn?”  they chuckled with agreement.  However, when I added, “A 4G phone?”  the room went awfully silent.  The bigger question is: will Americans learn to live with—better yet—find—some new sources of contentment, in the austerity many millions will face for years to come, or will they continue to be sharply disappointed that they have to make do with less?”  Later he writes, “There is no way on earth Americans over the next decade will continue to experience the kind of increases in income, and hence standards of living, we have seen since WWII.  The question is if they will respond in anger—or benefit, by dedicating themselves, once their basic needs are met, to spending more time with each other, their children, in social activities and cultural pursuits.’

This is a secular author writing for CNN.  He hopes that, because of the economic downturn, people will discover what Psychologist Abraham Maslow put forth—that once a human being meets his or her needs of the body—he or she would then learn to fulfill the needs of the soul and the spirit.  This takes looking to God and looking to others.

The problem is, we have so long been looking to ourselves.  We in the Western world have for decades been living at an economic and technological level unprecedented in the history of the world.  We have become spoiled, mobile, restless, and uncommitted.  Spoiled, mobile, restless and uncommitted.  We have become consumers not only of goods and services but also of relationships and locations. Joan Chittister writes, “Every store window holds a better bargain.  Every relationship promises a more satisfying partnership.  Every new place and new person and new possibility tempts me to try again, to try over, to try once more to find the perfect place or at least the place perfectly suited to me.”

The antidote comes from our Benedictine topic this morning.  I have listed it as conflict, but it really a way to address conflict and consumers—it is the concept of ‘stability.’  A monk or nun in the Benedictine tradition makes a vow to a community and a place—a vow of stability.  No matter what, that monk or nun will live and die in that community.  It is a vow, as Chittister says, ‘designed to still the wandering heart.’

Our time is an unstable time that calls for not only the monastery but also the church to be a place of stability—where people are committed to Christ and one another come what may.

Jeremiah wrote in a time that was even more unstable.  Jeremiah is writing this portion of his book to the exiles from Jerusalem who were carried away by Nebuchadnezzer of Babylon.  The Temple was destroyed and the walls of Jerusalem razed.  Many of the people were taken to Babylon, away from their home and away from their place of worship—Jerusalem.  In contrast to the false prophets, who said that the exile would only last a couple of years—Jeremiah says, no, it will be 70 years, almost two generations.  What to do with the next 70 years?  Lead a rebellion?  Pray for the destruction of Babylon?  Don’t pay taxes?  Be a burr in the saddle of Nebuchadnezzer?  No.  Jeremiah writes:

This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon:  “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce.  Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease.  Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.”

Basically, settle, raise families, seek the peace and prosperity of the city—and—pray for Babylon, ‘because if it prospers, you too will prosper.’

Have a bunch of kids and pray for your enemies.  Seek the welfare of those who destroyed your Temple, your city and your home.

Basically Jeremiah says, ‘Commit to this place, you’re going to be here awhile.’

Commit to this place, you’re going to be here for awhile.  This is something we have difficulty doing.  We are always looking for other options.  This job, this new relationship, this new place.  There is Disney-like magic to be found if we just spend more time looking.  I remember encountering someone who wanted to be baptized.  He had married 7 times and had gone from Buddhism to Jehovah’s Witness, to Christianity.

Maybe we are not that extreme but we have learned to flit about until we rest on that ever fragrant rose.

But—every Rose has its thorn.

Benedict, while he was all about hospitality, made sure that his communities understood—someone can be a guest for awhile, but eventually they will have to start living by the same rules as everyone else.  In fact, guests were given three days to observe the community before they were then required to work and pray like everyone else—whether they felt a vocation or not.  This is why he said, ‘Do not grant to the monastic life an easy entry.’

It is the hospitality of Benedict that is attractive but the stability that makes one a monk.  Similarly, God puts an attraction in our hearts for himself and for the church, but it is the commitment to Christ and his church that makes Christians.

We stress welcome and hospitality, love, and Christian fellowship, and so we should,  but living the vows of our baptism, day in and day out—that is the stability piece that is missing in so many lives.  It takes a curious and longing heart to ‘sign up,’ but it takes perseverance and the grace of God to really make a difference in our lives.

Those who received Jeremiah’s letter must have thought, ‘pray for who?’ ‘pray for blessings for our enemies?’ ‘for 70 years?’  ‘Commit to this place, you’re going to be here awhile,’ was all Jeremiah could say.

But we would rather cut and run.

In our culture people grow weary of jobs, people, spouses, cities and the easiest thing to do is simply remove ourselves from the problem. ‘Get a new one.’ Is the phrase we use the most, whether it is a spouse or a new house.  [don’t get me wrong, I am not referring to poisonous relationships or poisonous situations]

One of the powers of stability in community is the realization that only Christ binds us together, we are flawed and we are difficult to be with.  This is true in marriage, family and church.  In the Christian community it is Jesus and only Jesus that makes us brothers and sisters.  Therefore, the first step in stability, after we have accepted the beliefs and ways of the Christian faith, is to become disillusioned and disappointed.  We want to have ideals for Christian community, but the sooner we can kill the idealism of Christian community the better.  I want to read to you from Dietrich Bonheoffer’s Life Together.  Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran pastor and theologian who was killed under Hitler’s regime.  He says,

“Just as surely as God desires to lead us to a knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship, so surely we must be overwhelmed by a great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and, if we are fortunate, with ourselves. By sheer grace, God will not permit us to live even for a brief period in a dream world…Only that fellowship which faces such disillusionment, with all its unhappy and ugly aspects, begins to be what it should be in God’s sight…the sooner this shock of disillusionment comes to an individual and to a community the better for both…The one who loves his dream of Christian community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the Christian community, even though his or her personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial.”

Many people say ‘I hate churches because they are filled with hypocrites.’  That is the case.  ‘I loved that church , but someone gave me a dirty look’.  Yup.  ‘They are so judgmental.’  ‘They don’t practice what they preach. They are too conservative.  They are too liberal.’

That’s not to excuse bad behavior in church, we have the Bible and the Prayer Book as our written ‘rules’ that remind us that Christ is the center of our lives and we should look that way but the sooner we can kill the idealism the sooner we can begin to live in solid, Christian community.

It didn’t take long for Sarah to realize that prince charming I am not.  But, now armed with that knowledge, our ‘community’ is deeper and more real at home.

Similarly, the sooner we realize that the people around us in this place will disappoint us and disillusion us, the sooner we can love them in Christ.  As Bonheoffer says, we are not looking for a social experience or a ‘wishful idea of religious fellowship,’ but a community of brothers and sisters, all of which are sinners saved in Christ, by Christ, for Christ and because of Christ.  The running and striving and rushing and restlessness is put aside when we have real, Christ-centered community.  Stability.  A people and a place for God to do his work in our lives and in the lives of others.

Esther de Waal puts it well, “Instead of this bewildering and exhausting rushing from one thing to another…stability means accepting this particular community, this place and these people, this and no other, as the way to God…Everyone needs to feel at home, to feel earthed…Without roots we can neither discover where we belong, nor can we grow.  Without stability we cannot confront the basic questions of life.  Without stability we cannot know our true selves.”

Joan Chittister says, “Stability, the willingness to grow where I am, ironically, is the ground of conversion, the willingness to be changed.  With these people, in this place, at this time I dedicate myself to rebirth and growth and maturity.”

There is no perfect community—there is only Christ centered community with sinners on every side striving to be what we ought to be.

You know the Hindu concept of Karma?  One definition goes like this:  Karma is “A consequence or “fruit of action” (karmaphala) or “after effect” (uttaraphala), which sooner or later returns upon the doer. What we sow, we shall reap in this or future lives. Selfish, hateful acts (papakarma or kukarma) will bring suffering. Benevolent actions (punyakarma or sukarma) will bring loving reactions.

Karma is a neutral, self-perpetuating law of the inner cosmos, much as gravity is an impersonal law of the outer cosmos. In fact, it has been said that gravity is a small, external expression of the greater law of karma.”

Now, Christians and Jews don’t believe in reincarnation but the concept of sowing and reaping we find in Scripture itself.  Among some of Jesus’ contemporaries there was a basic assumption: if you are blessed in this life it must be because of something you have done.  Riches were a sign of God’s blessings and suffering of his displeasure.  You remember the disciples asking about a blind man that Jesus was about to heal:  ‘Who sinned, this man or his parents that made him blind?’

Which is why Jesus’ parable today would have challenged many of his listeners’ assumptions.  Reaping and sowing seems to have gone in reverse.  Even the whole idea of a Rich man in hell would have caused some to raise their eyebrows.

The point of the parable is straightforward—show compassion in this life for in the Kingdom there is a great reversal.  Being poor does not automatically make one righteous, but the soil of a poor person’s heart is often more hospitable to God.  Conversely, those who are rich—their hearts are less hospitable to God and less hospitable to others.

In life the rich man ate from a bountiful table—not even aware that Lazarus was begging nearby with dogs licking his sores.  Conversely, in the Kingdom, Lazarus eats at Abraham’s table unaware of the rich man’s plight.

Abraham tells the rich man, “Son, (by the way, he speaks the way the father spoke to the older son in the parable of the prodigal son) remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony.”

The great reversal—something that would have made Jesus’ hearers scratch their heads—a sowing and reaping turned on its head.

Jesus is not saying that doing good things across your lifetime will outweigh bad.  What Jesus is dealing with is the condition of the rich man.  He has is a condition of the heart—a condition of the soul.  A condition of hospitality or a spirit that is inhospitable.

In case you haven’t guessed, today’s Benedictine principle is ‘hospitality.’  The Rule of Benedict, of course, deals with those who are received in the monastery.  He says:

“Any guest…should be received just as we would receive Christ himself…Guests should always be treated with respectful deference.  Those attending them both on arrival and departure should show this by a bow of the head or even a full prostration on the grounds which will leave no doubt that it is indeed Christ who is received and venerated in them…The greatest care should be taken to give a warm reception to the poor and to pilgrims, because it is in them above all others that Christ is welcomed.” (Rule Chapter 53)

Great principles from Benedict—the stranger is someone who ought to be reverenced by a bow or prostration. Ultimate respect.

Jesus is saying in his parable that the one who lies in the street may soon be a prince in the kingdom of heaven—carried by the angels themselves!  Therefore, welcome the poor.

Kathleen Norris, a Benedictine lay person (called an oblate), wrote that the ‘heart of Christianity is hospitality.’  Someone read her words wrote to her and said, ‘no you should have said that the Center of the Christian Church is fear.’

Why would someone say such a thing?

Now I haven’t heard a ‘fire and brimstone’ sermon for decades, though I hear they are still being preached somewhere in America.  But I know that even folks who are interested in coming to church find the whole thing scary.   There is a language to learn and a culture to engage.

People hope to find among us a spirit of hospitality.  That spirit of hospitality we cannot fake.  Those who have it in the church also have it outside the church.

Sometimes we feel inadequate, but as Joan Chittister says, ‘[we are] to pour ourselves out for the other, to give ourselves away, to provide the staples of life, both material and spiritual for one another.  The question is not whether what we have to give is sufficient for the situation or not.  The question is simply whether or not we have anything to give.  That’s what hospitality is all about. Not abundance and not totality.  Just sharing. Real sharing.’

Ask yourself—who is welcome in our church?  Who is not?  Why not?  Who is welcome at your table?  Who is not?  Why not?

Of course how you answer the question shows a condition of the heart.  It says something about how you view others.

But it should also say something about how you view your church.  Is it a refuge for the lost?  Or, is it just any other public place?

And of course it says something about how hospitable our hearts are when we reject others and keep them from our own table.

To love the stranger is not just Christian duty, it is to bring richness to our own lives.

Chittister again says,

“we must continue to beg the stranger to come into our lives because in the stranger may come the only honesty and insight we can get into our plastic worlds…to become whole ourselves we must learn to let the other in, if for no other reason than to stretch or own vision, to take responsibility for the world by giving to it out of our own abundance, to make the world safe by guarding its people ourselves.”

We are less when our hearts are inhospitable…Catherine Doherty said, “every human face is an icon of Christ, discovered by a prayerful person.

In Christ there is no Karma.  We are not received by Christ for our merit.  Neither do we receive (or refuse to receive) others based on merit.  What we receive, we freely give.

I repeat again Benedict’s words:

“Any guest…should be received just as we would receive Christ himself…Guests should always be treated with respectful deference.  Those attending them both on arrival and departure should show this by a bow of the head or even a full prostration on the grounds which will leave no doubt that it is indeed Christ who is received and venerated in them.”

I close with the words of Thomas Ken:

“O God, make the door of this house wide enough to receive all who need human love and fellowship; narrow enough to shut out all envy pride and strife, Make its threshold smooth enough to be no stumbling block to children nor straying feet, but rugged and strong enough to turn back the tempter’s power. God make the door of this house the gateway to thine eternal kingdom.
AMEN.”

Thomas Ken (1637-1711)

Inscription on St. Stephen’s Church: Walbrook, London