Currently there
are excerpts from the sermons preached on: November 1st and September 27th
Excerpts from Fr.
Hank’s sermon on November 1, 2009 – All Saints Sunday
On this All Saints Day, as we remember not just
the great saints of the church but also the saints in our own lives, we remember those we love who have died. That remembrance
comes with sorrow, a sorrow that seldom goes completely away. The loss remains, and so does the sorrow. But grief can and
does change when the initial unbearable sense of loss, (when it seems that we can only see death in the midst of life),
is replaced by a sorrow we can bear; when we can see life in the midst of death. It is then that we may experience
“resurrection” on a personal level. The gospel story of the raising of Lazarus, (John 11:21-43), exemplifies the
thorny issues involved in that process.
One of the blocks to that healing transformation
has been, and still is, (in some circles at least), the teaching that God is both all powerful and all loving. It was
that oxymoronic belief, I suggest, that was the basis for Martha and Mary’s hostile reaction to Jesus when he did arrive,
and their certainty that, had Jesus been present sooner, Lazarus would not have died.
Mary and Martha were deep in shock at the loss
of their brother Lazarus. Their grief and pain was expressed in anger when they berated Jesus for “letting” their
brother die. “Lord”, they both accuse, “if you had been here,
[our] brother would not have died.” They knew that Jesus loved Lazarus, and also believed that as the Messiah, He, like
God, could, (because of that love), have used His power to save their brother from his inevitable death. Not to do so was,
in their minds, a denial of his love of both them and their brother.
When one sees death as a failure of God to love
“enough”, two things happen. The transfiguring process of “resurrection” is derailed by anger, resentment
and bitterness; and the notion of God’s Love of his creation becomes nothing but an empty and meaningless platitude.
The classic, (and appalling), response to the question of why God lets such things happen; i.e. that “God has ‘reasons’
beyond our comprehending”, serves only to drive the wedge deeper between the grieving individual and any possibility
of experiencing God’s love, and therefore, resurrection.
Even if God were to possess “supernatural
powers” with which She could radically alter the course of nature, His “unconditional love” of all persons
precludes any possibility of their use. If God is the “ground of all being”, as Paul Tillich suggests, then God
is, indeed, powerful; but because she is also unconditionally loving, God cannot
abuse that power by arbitrarily, and “willy-nilly”, jettisoning the laws of the very “being”, (or
nature), of which He is the ground. God cannot break her own rules by changing the course of nature, (of which death and mortality
are a component), and be all-loving at the same time. A loving God, by definition, cannot “play favorites”; cannot
intercede here, but not there; cannot “include” some and “exclude” others.
Only when one recognizes and affirms that with
God, Love always trumps Power, is the way cleared to embrace, and be embraced by, her unconditional love and respect
for all persons, and the grief he profoundly experiences for all individuals, families, and peoples rudely “rent asunder”
by the harsh realities of existence. While we can empathize with Mary and Martha
when, not wanting to let Lazarus go, they strike out at Jesus and all but blamed him for their brother’s death, it is
critical to understand that if they do not move beyond that misinterpretation of God’s love/power relationship, it is
they who will not be “let go”; it is they who will be shackled by the chains of their brother’s death.
Resurrection always involves an ultimate “letting
go”, (painful as it may be), of our illusions of God’s, (and our own), power and control over the world about
us. Resurrection is the “unbinding” of our limited perceptions of the relationship between God’s love and
power. When Lazarus emerges from the tomb, Jesus commands Martha, Mary, and each of us, to “unbind him and let him go”. If not “loosed”, the shackles of death will keep each of us from moving
forward to find life, our life, in all of its abundance, in the midst of death.
Sermon from September 27th
(Based on Numbers 11:4--29; and Mark 9:38-50)
The first part of our passage from Mark echoes the story in Numbers, where Joshua wants Moses to chastise Eldad &
Medad for prophesying in the camp, implying that they were not part
of the “inner circle”. In both stories it is clear that what is important is the message, not the medium through
which it travels. Prophesy is prophesy is prophesy; Healing is healing is healing,
regardless of the pedigree or connections of the healer.
In Mark, the disciples want to stop a “non-disciple” who, apparently successfully, was casting out demons
in the name of Jesus. After all, he was not one of “them”…not part of the inner circle. He was acting differently
from what they considered to be the norm.
Jesus’ response was to rebuke his disciples for their blind, unbending exclusiveness, and made it clear that he
and his disciples were not some sort of little clique, working in a corner of life, and fenced off from the world. God’s
actions, he was teaching his disciples, are not limited to the forms with which his disciples were familiar.
What Jesus was teaching his disciples, and each of us, is the importance of inclusion. It
is critical that we not fence ourselves off from others who have different ways of finding God. When we do so, we drastically
limit our vision by seeing life only from the perspective of our own group, culture, or denomination.
Such intolerance, as Jesus seemed to understand, often arises out of perceived threats to one’s illusion of having
some sort of “inner circle” status. There is no place in the kingdom
for an “inner circle”; a “privileged few”…in fact, such a concept is anathema to God’s
kingdom and fullness of life.
No one seeking to do God’s
work of love, compassion, and ministry to others, can be an “outsider”.
All those who journey with us are to be welcomed and included fully. The teachings of Jesus repeatedly rebuke us when
we turn against others because they are different, or see things differently. Over and over again, the life lived by Jesus
and the way he taught his disciples remind us of the critical importance of inclusion and the egregious sin of exclusion.
Jesus does make a distinction, however, regarding not belief or faith position; but action. “Whoever causes one
of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he
were thrown into the sea”. I suggest that “sin”, in this context,
is the teaching of intolerance and exclusiveness; the preaching that only those who believe in a certain way, and see things
from a certain perspective, are “worthy” of the Kingdom.
From this perspective, the above quote from Mark might be paraphrased to read: “Whoever teaches one who believes
in me that God is exclusive and that God’s grace and love is limited; it would be better to drown with a millstone around
his neck”. In other words, exclusion and the Kingdom are diametrically opposed concepts.
This, I think, gives clarity to the phrase quoted in Mark, “He who is for us, cannot be against us”. If one is inclusive, truly loving, and affirms the dignity and worth of “every
human being”; that person is “for” God, and cannot, whatever else he or she may profess, be otherwise.
Peace,
Fr. Hank+
