A Time to Dream

“A Time to Dream”, A Sermon preached by The Rev. Canon Dr. C. Denise Yarbrough on Sunday, December 11, 2011 at NPEM, New York

When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, then were we like those who dream.
Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy. (Psalm 126)

“The dreamers are the saviors of the world.” So writes spiritual author James Allen in his book entitled, As A Man Thinketh. Dreaming is Advent work. As we prepare for the coming of God into our hearts, as we prepare in the wilderness a highway for our God we are invited to dream, to reach for the stars, to envision a whole new world, a new creation. This is after all, what the biblical writers are talking about when they talk of the second coming of Christ. This is what the waiting and expectation of Advent is all about.

Dreams are funny things. Fantastic and uncontrolled, often weird, always uninhibited, dreams carry a power many of us would like to discount if only we could. The Bible consistently maintains that God speaks to humans through their dreams, and the insights of depth psychology, particularly Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung confirm that dreams connect human beings with a dimension and realm of reality with which we are often out of touch in our waking lives. Carl Jung believes that when we dream, many of the images that come to us are part of what he called the collective unconscious, that is, they come not only from our own personal life experiences, but actually originate in the collective memory and experience of all of humanity. Archetype is his word for the fundamental images that speak to all human beings throughout history and that actually connect humans to the divine realm. There are a number of archetypal images that appear in human dreams and a Jungian analysis of a dream would include reference to those archetypes and what they mean, not only for the individual but for the individual in his or her social context. The spiritual realm where God resides becomes available to us when we dream, when our unconscious is able to tap into the stream of energy flowing from God without the filter of our conscious inhibitions and fears.

Then there are those waking dreams, those flights of imagination and creativity that have spurred humankind on, that have led peoples and civilizations into new and exciting futures. Where would the world be without the dreamers? Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, the Wright brothers, Beethoven, Mozart, Michaelangelo…all the composers, sculptors, poets, prophets, sages, scientists, politicians throughout history whose genius and creativity turned the world around. James Allen describes these people as “the architects of heaven, the makers of the after-world. The world is beautiful because they have lived; without them laboring humanity would perish.”

The prophet Isaiah was a dreamer of this sort. In Isaiah 61 he speaks to a people returning from exile, a people returning to a home that has been ravaged and destroyed, that is in ruins. The Israelites returned to Jerusalem after their exile in Babylon but their homes, their temple, their city had been destroyed. The prophet speaks words of vision to them, he paints a picture of a future in which their city will be rebuilt, their temple restored and the righteousness decreed in their covenant with Yahweh will be seen by all nations, for whom they will be a guiding light. To an oppressed people these were visions of hope and glory that must have been hard to believe, even though they were welcome pictures of what might be, of the future that could be theirs.

John the Baptist was another of these visionary dreamers who point the way to the future that God is making for God’s people. The author of John’s gospel tells us that he was sent to “testify to the light” – the light of God that was to come after him. His words were words not only of repentance, calling people to turn around and live their lives differently, but they were also words of hope. Dreamers always talk like that – they have hope even in the face of hopelessness and despair. I think of all those years that Nelson Mandela languished in prison, never losing sight of the dream that someday apartheid would end in South Africa. I think of all those rebuilding lives in the Joplin, Mississippi, or Japan or Turkey, after this year’s spate of natural disasters. Those who can see a future in the midst of rubble and destruction are the ones infused with the dreams of God. Today we are paying tribute to the first responders in our community – police, ambulance, firefighters, EMTs - those who rush to the scene of disaster and mayhem and immediately begin to live the dream that out of the pain and chaos of accident, crime, disease or disaster, new life and new creation can indeed emerge. First responders are their own special kind of dreamers without whom our communities could not weather the travails of human life.

Those who dream dreams are those who cling to hope, even when the facts before them suggest that their hope is futile. Those who dream dreams are willing to try something new, to take risks, to experiment and be unconventional. They are willing to be ridiculed and laughed at, derided and put down, because they are tuned into a different frequency from the rest of the world –they are tuned into what God is doing to make the new creation that God so wants for the world and so they act accordingly. Without the dreamers, humankind would still be living in caves.

In our world today we desperately need dreamers. We need those who are willing to say that violence and war are not the answer to aggression and terrorism, that preferencing the wealthy over the poor and the middle class is not the way to bolster the economy and put millions of unemployed back to work, those who say that all people in our nation are deserving of quality health care, education and safe neighborhoods. We need the dreamers to help us find environmentally sustainable ways to live on this earth. It is the dreamers of history who have always been especially attuned to the whispers of the Holy Spirit. The dreamers of the world are those who understand the old adage that declares insanity to be doing things the same way and expecting a different result.

Being one who dreams also means being someone who does not fall prey to cynicism. Jesus reminded us that to enter the kingdom of heaven one needs to approach it like a child. The childlike ability to be open to the twists and turns of imagination and fantasy is an important quality to nurture as part of a mature spirituality. The story we celebrate in two weeks is not a story of a God who cares much about how things have always been done. God is always calling us forward to new things, a new creation, a brighter vision.

Being a dreamer is important for all of us who are people of faith, even if we are not called to invent the next light bulb, or discover the cure for cancer, or find the secret to achieving peace in the Middle East and even when we don’t actually live in exile or find ourselves imprisoned. To live abundantly as Christ calls us to do requires that we be willing to dream. When we’re stuck in a rut, or weighed down by life’s travails, it is the ability to dream that will connect us with God and impel us into a brighter future. Whether we’re struggling to find a job in this tough economy, or trying to work through problems in a marriage or with a child, or fighting a chronic illness, it is the ability to envision a different future, a brighter future and to believe deep down in the reality of that dream that keeps us going and enables us to endure and thrive.

Dreaming is an important part of congregational life too. Vibrant and healthy churches are communities that dare to dream, to take risks, go out on a limb, to reach out to their world in new ways. Nothing that is alive and thriving fails to dream. Dreaming is crucial for staying connected with God, and with the ever moving Holy Spirit that enlivens us for doing God’s will in our world. The visions of the prophet Isaiah could only be achieved when the Israelites took hold of the dream and worked to make it a reality. We need the dreamers of the world to tell us their visions, and then we all need to jump at those visions and work to make them reality.

“Rejoice always, pray without ceasing…do not quench the spirit” writes Paul to the church of Thessalonica. He urges them to stay attuned to God’s spirit as that spirit informs and enlivens their daily lives. Do not quench the spirit. Those are good words to remember in this holy season as we approach the festive celebration of the birth of God into the world.

“To desire is to obtain; to aspire is to achieve….Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become. Your Vision is the promise of what you shall one day be; your Ideal is the prophecy of what you shall at last unveil. The greatest achievement was at first and for a time a dream. The oak sleeps in the acorn; the bird waits in the egg; and in the highest vision of the soul a waking angel stirs. Dreams are the seedlings of reality.” (James Allen, As A Man Thinketh)

Dreams are the seedlings of reality. Advent is a time of waiting and a time for dreaming, a time for envisioning a new future that is within our grasp. As the psalmist says, “then were we like those who dream. Then was our mouth filled with laughter and our tongues with shouts of joy.” In these last two weeks of Advent 2011 what dreams will we dream? What new reality will we envision for ourselves, our families, this church community and our nation as we enter a new year together? Advent is the season for dreamers, it is a time to dream. Between now and Christmas, on these long, cold winter nights, I wish you sweet dreams.

Amen.

Comfort in Exile

“Comfort in Exile,” a Sermon preached by The Rev. Canon Dr. C. Denise Yarbrough on Sunday, December 4, 2011 at St. John’s Church, Sodus, New York

Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, her penalty is paid…(Isaiah 40:1-2)

4John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.(Mark 1:4)

Finley Peter Dunne, American journalist and author of the early 20th century is credited with coining the phrase about journalism that it entails “comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable.” Between the words of the Prophet Isaiah and the words of John the Baptist, our lectionary texts this week do a very good job of comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable. Thanks to Handel’s Messiah, many Christians are familiar with the section of Isaiah’s text that we heard today. And every year on this Second Sunday of Advent we encounter wild and wooly John the Baptist, appearing in the wilderness offering his baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, clothed in camel’s hair and munching on his locusts and wild honey. During this Advent season of waiting and expectation, of longing for the coming of God’s reign in our world, we are offered the tender words of the prophet as a soothing reminder to God’s people that despite all the vagaries and travails of human life, “the word of our God stands forever.” They are words of hope and comfort to a world aching for the inbreaking of God. And we are exhorted by John the Baptist to re-order our life priorities in order to “prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.”

It is a well known fact that many people find this holiday season emotionally and psychologically difficult. People who are living with serious illness, those who have lost loved ones in the past year or who continue to grieve a significant loss, those who are experiencing crises in their intimate relationships, those who suffer from addiction all find this season of forced merriment and celebration hard to take. In the tough economic times in which we live, those families enduring prolonged periods of unemployment face a season of overspending and consumerism that only serves to intensify their economic distress as they struggle to put food on the table and pay the rent while everyone and everything around them screams “spend, spend, spend!” CNN reported a poll this week which indicated that 35% of Americans dread the holiday season because they dislike the social imperative to have to be nice and cheerful for the entire month even when they don’t feel like it and most especially those for whom life is very difficult, sad or stressful.

In Advent, the prophet Isaiah sends us words of comfort and promise, words of hope. G.K. Chesterton once observed that words of hope mean little to those who have never known hopelessness and I imagine that is true. I wonder, however, if there is anyone alive who has not known hopelessness at some point in their life’s journey. We all have emotional aches, places of emptiness and loneliness, places of despair and desolation. Those places of emptiness and desolation become more pronounced in this season of short days and long nights, especially when they contrast so poignantly with the required merriment of the season. Isaiah’s words of hope and comfort, coupled with John the Baptist’s call to reorientation of our life priorities provide a welcome antidote to the false joy of our secular season.

If you’re fortunate enough to be in a place in your life where experiences of despair and emptiness are not paramount, just look at the daily news and you’ll get more than enough to send you there. Sex scandals breaking out at university sports departments and the Republican candidate races, the debt crisis fueling fears among investors and eroding trust in banks, violence erupting in Egypt as elections continue in that country that so recently saw a peaceful revolution, American Airlines goes into bankruptcy, British public workers stage a nation wide strike protesting cuts in pension benefits, the Occupy Wall Street movement continues in the wake of violent clashes with police in various cities, most significantly this week in Los Angeles. Unrest, un-ease, financial worries, polarized politics, violence and war, not to mention the aftermath all over the world from months of natural disasters –earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires that have devastated communities in our country and around the world in this calendar year. We go into this holiday season with more than enough trials and tribulations of human life to keep us grounded in clouds of worry and fear. And into the midst of this world, come the words of Isaiah and John the Baptist.

The prophet known as Second Isaiah was speaking to the ancient Israelites during the time of their exile in Babylon. They had been sent away to Babylon when the first temple in Jerusalem was destroyed and they spent forty years in exile, away from their homeland. Oddly enough, over the decades of exile, many of the exiled Israelites adapted to life in Babylon and were not eager to go back to Jerusalem when the opportunity arose, where they would have to rebuild their temple and their pre-exilic way of life. Some of them had grown comfortable in exile and the rigors of the journey home did not much appeal.

Being comfortable in exile. An interesting paradox. On the one hand the prophet utters words of soothing comfort, and yet at the same time calls the people out of the comfort of their exile into the challenges of going home to Jerusalem, the holy city where they had known God. Jerusalem is a metaphor for that holy place where the reign of God is realized. In Advent we await the coming of God into our world. In a sense we too are called on a journey home, home to the heart of God. Journeying home to the heart of God may or may not be a comfortable trip. At least comfort in the sense of familiarity and ease and predictability. Just look at the imagery Isaiah uses. Valleys being lifted up and mountains brought down does not suggest that the journey will be a stroll. The breath of God withering the grass is also not particularly calming imagery. And yet, the prophet promises that God will “gather the lambs in his arms and carry them at his bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep.”

Advent is a season for we who have become too comfortable in exile to reconsider the promises of our God and muster up the hope required to live as if those promises will be fulfilled. The secular culture in which we live is a place of exile for many of us. As we live through this month of conspicuous consumerism, we know that something is awry. Despite the slick ads on television and the internet, new gadgets and do-dads will not bring the joy and happiness that the gospel of consumerism promises. Yet it is easy to fall prey to the frenzy of the season, to get sucked into the mass marketing blitz and lose touch with promise and hope of Advent.

The prophets Isaiah and John the Baptist call out in the wilderness of our modern lives, reminding us that so long as we remain captive to the values of materialism, success and greed we are in exile. The comforts we take for granted are false comforts, as fleeting as that grass that withers, something many of our brothers and sisters in Joplin, Mississippi, and Turkey, Texas and Japan learned the hard way this year. Going home to God, to the holy city Jerusalem takes us from exile into the promised land. As John the Baptist reminds us, we cannot do that without turning around, turning away from the temptations of our secular culture and back to the covenant with God. Those early Judeans went out to John the Baptist in the wilderness and got immersed in the waters of the Jordan as the first step back to a life lived with and for God.

It’s no wonder that so many people feel depressed during this season. In many ways that is a healthy reaction to the denial that our secular culture shoves down our throats every December. Advent makes much more emotional sense and is more true to human experience. We long for deliverance from war and violence, from poverty and social injustice, from addictions, debt, illness and loneliness. We long for God to come into our world and the only way to help that happen is for us to leave the comfort of our exile and be the hands of God in this world. Our God is a God of comfort. God comforts us in the dark nights of our prayer and in the ear of a friend over coffee. God comforts us in the hand held at the deathbed and the chicken soup delivered when the flu hits. God comforts the victims of disasters in the money sent for relief, the relief workers who rush to bring immediate help and the people dedicated to long term rebuilding.

This Advent, there are many exiles in the world in need of comfort. Relief agencies and charities of all kinds cry out for donations and contributions as the calendar year comes to a close. “Alternative gift catalogues” are widely available, offering us the opportunity to spend our holiday money giving food, animals, microloans, medical and educational tools to people all over the world who live in poverty. I visited Thailand, Laos and Cambodia this past summer and saw firsthand how far the American dollar can go in these developing countries where the things we take for granted here – running water, electricity, public education, quality medical and dental care – are beyond the reach of thousands of people in remote villages mired in poverty. In the midst of the holiday spending orgy, those of us who honor Advent can make a point of making additional donations to organizations that bring comfort to those in need.

Comfort, comfort ye my people says your God. In this season of preparation and waiting, expectation and hope let us live Advent in all its haunting beauty. Let us bring comfort to those we live and work with as we seek comfort in the arms of our loving God. Advent is about hope in the face of despair, light breaking into winter darkness, joy returning to lives marked by sorrow and grief. It is about leaving even the comfort of exile to make our way to God’s promised land. It is about the journey from exile across the desert on a highway paved by God. Advent is one of the most precious gifts we have in this season of gift giving. Let us live into it with gratitude.

Amen.

Waiting for God

“Waiting for God”, A Sermon preached by The Rev. Canon Dr. C. Denise Yarbrough on Sunday, November 27, 2011 at NPEM, New York

35Therefore, keep awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, 36or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. 37And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.”(Mark 13:35-37)


Today begins the liturgical season of Advent, probably my very favorite season of the liturgical year. Advent, these four weeks leading up to the celebration of Christmas is probably one of the times I most feel the disconnect between our modern culture and my Christian faith. As the secular world begins to celebrate Christmas, with decorations and lights, Christmas trees, wreaths and Christmas muzac filling the air, we change the altar colors to blue and sing songs of longing and waiting and expectation, songs that speak of the end of the world and of the coming of God into the world at the end of time. It is the beginning of a new year in the Church and we speak of the end of time. Beginnings and endings are all of a piece in Advent. In these weeks before we celebrate the nativity of Jesus of Nazareth we look forward to the end of the world as we know it, with a mixture of hope and dread.

The passage from Mark’s gospel this morning is known as the “little Apocalypse” with its ominous portents of the end of life as we know it, the sun darkened, the moon failing to give light, stars falling from heaven. In the portion of the gospel that immediately precedes what we heard this morning, Jesus warns his followers of the signs that the end-times are coming. False prophets and false messiahs will arise, wars and rumors of wars will abound, his followers will be handed over to authorities to be persecuted and flogged, parents and children will be set against one another – all manner of bad things will be happening, and those will all be signs of the end-times approaching. But then, he says, after giving us all these signposts to watch for, only God knows when the end will come so all we can do is watch and wait. The tension that the early church was beginning to feel between its belief in an imminent return of Christ and the reality that the time wasn’t arriving as soon as they expected it to is reflected in this gospel text. This gospel writer was already starting to do what later Christian writers and theologians would have to do, which is to accept that God is in control of history and that perhaps, God works in ways that humans cannot predict or fathom. Only God knows how the world will end so we need to quit trying to predict the unpredictable and adopt an attitude of expectant watchfulness.

Advent, contrary to popular belief, is not simply about getting ready for Christmas by shopping, baking, entertaining and indulging in an orgy of consumerism and bacchanalian partying. It is about quiet, watchful waiting. Waiting for God to be born in our hearts, waiting for God’s kingdom to break into our world, waiting for the fulfillment of our highest dreams and aspirations as individuals and communities, dreams of a world marked by peace and justice, a world in which hunger and homelessness and disease do not claim so many human lives.

Waiting is something that we 21st century folk have become unaccustomed to doing. We are increasingly impatient and desirous of instant and immediate gratification. With cellphones and computers, high speed internet access, digital photography, microwaveable dinners and other technological wonders, we no longer have to wait for anything. Waiting is its own form of spiritual discipline and one that has almost been lost in modern life. On the few occasions in life where it is still unavoidable, many of us find it excruciating. Whether it is waiting for a child to be born, or waiting for the results of important medical tests, or waiting at the bedside of a dying loved one, or waiting to hear about an important job offer or professional appointment, we tend to find waiting to be a painful and agonizing process. Yet our forebears in the faith knew well what we have almost forgotten. Waiting is an important and crucial spiritual discipline. Advent invites us to rediscover it.

Holly Whitcomb, author of a book about the spiritual gift of waiting puts it this way:

Waiting presents an enormous challenge. We are impatient, I-can-fix-it kind of people… but not all situations can be fixed. We assume that everything in life can be made better by taking action, but sometimes it just isn’t so. … Yet waiting is an enormous opportunity if we regard it as a wise teacher. Waiting offers us a great deal when we choose to learn.
Waiting is an important guest to honor in the guest house of our humanity. If we consciously allow waiting to be our teacher, we can accommodate waiting more peacefully. If we welcome waiting as a spiritual discipline, waiting will present its spiritual gifts and some of our richest spiritual opportunities if we are conscious enough and courageous enough to name them and live into them.
Bingo halls and casinos often post the sign, ‘You must be present to win.’ In order to convert the inescapable lessons of waiting into deliberate spiritual gifts, we too, have to be present; we need to pay attention. (Seven Gifts of Waiting)

A famous preacher once noted, “Advent begins in the dark.” Advent is all about waiting in the dark, and that is something we humans find very hard to do, despite the fact that it happens a lot in the course of a human life. The author of Mark’s gospel exhorts us to keep awake, to be constantly on edge, to be ready for whatever God may do, but it’s hard to do that when the waiting seems endless. Sometimes waiting can be exciting, like waiting for the birth of a child. You may know the general time period that the birth will happen but you never know exactly when, and those last few weeks and days can seem endless as with every twinge you wonder, “Is this it?” Waiting for death is a remarkably similar process. Often doctors and nurses can tell a family that a patient is actively dying, but never can anyone predict exactly when the moment will come. The vigil at a bedside is full of the kind of agonized expectancy that our Advent texts speak of and it is excruciatingly difficult for we humans to let go and let God control the process, even though that is what we say we want to have happen.

Waiting is tough. Active, expectant watchful waiting is even tougher. Its too easy for us to lose heart when the waiting seems endless, to give up and go to sleep or to become not fully present by filling our lives with activity and busyness, noise and distraction so that we don’t have to contemplate the very thing for which we are waiting. Our Buddhist brothers and sisters understand well what Jesus is saying in today’s gospel text, as their spiritual practice is fully focused on becoming “awakened ones” which is what the term “Buddha” means.

Advent is the liturgical way our church reminds us to live our lives in an attitude of expectant, alert watchfulness. The kind of waiting that we are called to in Advent requires us to pay attention to our world, to keep an eye out for God, by paying attention to the signs and wonders around us that hint at God’s presence in our world and God’s inbreaking into our existence. Jesus reminds us to look at the world around us for signs of God’s work in that world, to be alert to discern the hand of God working through the chaos of human existence. It’s tempting to dull our senses with busyness or apathy, but in Advent we are called to live life on the edge, to be poised to move with God, to respond when God breaks into our world in whatever way God does in this time and place.

Advent is all about expectant, watchful, hopeful waiting. This kind of waiting is actually the hallmark of the spiritual life. It requires discipline and trust in God in the face of struggles and agonies that may seem unendurable. Advent is our liturgical reminder that much of our life of faith is comprised of waiting. While we wait we remain alert, awake and hopeful. We don’t tune out or give up. Our Advent observance reminds us that we must remain active and involved and committed to the furtherance of the reign of God. We are called to be part of the process of bringing God’s kingdom into our world.

During Advent we are reminded to live our lives like people on the verge of some exciting discovery, like an expectant mother in that excruciating 9th month. When there is nothing to do but wait we are forced to center ourselves, to be present in the moment and to give up our need to control the events and processes of our lives. When we are waiting for something to happen, we have no choice but to surrender to God, to let go and empty ourselves and allow things to unfold in their own mysterious way. “O Come O Come Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel, who waits in lonely exile here, until the Son of God appear.” Waiting can feel like a lonely exile until we remember the promise of God with us. Advent invites us to focus on the new beginning embedded in every ending, the ending inherent in every new beginning and to relish the waiting that is an integral part of the birthing of God’s kingdom in our lives and our world. In those lonely waiting times let us pray the Advent hymn, “Rejoice, rejoice, Emmanuel shall come to thee O Israel.”

Amen.

Obedience to Love

“Obedience to Love”, A Sermon preached by The Rev. Canon Dr. C. Denise Yarbrough on Sunday, November 20, 2011 at Grace Church, Lyons, NY

Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; 35for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.”(Matt. 25:34-36)


Some statistics for our consideration: Hunger in the US – in 2010 14.5 percent, or 17.2 million households in the United States were “food insecure” meaning that they experience hunger and inadequate food supply at some point in every month. Of those households with children in the home, 9.8% were “food insecure.” With more than 2.3 million people behind bars, the United States leads the world in both the number and percentage of residents it incarcerates, leaving far-more-populous China a distant second, according to a study by the nonpartisan Pew Center on the States. In 2007, nearly 50 million Americans did not have health insurance, while another 25 million were underinsured. (Source: Commonwealth Fund Biennial Health Insurance Survey 2007) The total annual premium for a typical family health insurance plan offered by employers was $12,680 in 2008. (Source: Kaiser/HRET Survey of Employer-Sponsored Health Benefits, 2008) Even after health care reform, millions of Americans are un-or-underinsured, meaning that the high quality medical care otherwise available in our country is beyond the reach of the poor and most vulnerable. On November 8, Russell Pearce, Arizona Senator who was responsible for a draconian immigration law in Arizona lost his seat in a recall election which was motivated in no small measure by reaction against his inhospitable stance with respect to immigrants in Arizona.
In the midst of these statistics, the Gospel comes to us this morning as a living Word of God with something pretty clear to say about the world in which we live out our faith today. As we end our liturgical year with another of Matthew’s parables of judgment, Jesus describes God’s judgment upon humankind using the famous parable of the separation of the sheep and the goats. This is a parable that has troubled many thinking Christians over the centuries for a variety of reasons. Theologically, it seems to suggest that “salvation” is something that we can earn, a concept that is anathema to Protestant theologians in particular. The mantra among such theologians is we are saved by grace alone through faith alone. It is not anything that we do that brings our salvation, it is entirely up to God. This parable of the sheep and goats seems to contradict that theological position. It seems to suggest that if we do the acts of mercy that Jesus names in the parable, we’ll be judged among the righteous. What ever happened to salvation by grace?
This is one of those theological mind games that demonstrates the extent to which theological positions need to be based on more than one isolated quotation from scripture. It is in considering the scriptural texts as a whole that we evaluate any given portion and from that full consideration develop our theology. And if there is one issue on which both the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Testament are clear, it is that our duty as children of God is to care for those that Jesus calls the “least of these” in today’s parable. The poor, the homeless, the outcast, the prisoner, all of those on the margins of society are to be the focus of our loving attention. That we serve Christ when we serve those he calls “the least of these” suggests that we cannot truly claim to believe in him nor to be disciples of his if we do not act on those claims in a real way. And today’s parable also suggests that we must care for those “least” amongst us because it is the right thing to do, not because we want to earn our own salvation. Those who were judged righteous in the parable were not even aware that they were serving Christ when they did what they believed to be right. Their hearts had been so transformed in the love of God, that they automatically did what God expects, because God who is love truly lived within them.
The duty to serve the poor, the outcast, the homeless and oppressed is universally required of people of faith in all of the world’s religions. In every major tradition, parables and sayings like the parable of the sheep and the goats abound. In the Hadith of Islam, interpretations of Qu’ranic verses, it is written, “On the day of judgment God Most High will say, "Son of Adam, I was sick and you did not visit Me." He will reply, "My Lord, how could I visit Thee when Thou art the Lord of the Universe!" He will say, "Did you not know that My servant so-and-so was ill and yet you did not visit him? Did you not know that if you had visited him you soon would have found Me with him?"” In the writings of the Tao, is the following:
Relieve people in distress as speedily as you must release a fish from a dry rill [lest he die]. Deliver people from danger as quickly as you must free a sparrow from a tight noose. Be compassionate to orphans and relieve widows. Respect the old and help the poor. Taoism. Tract of the Quiet Way
In the Buddhist tradition is a story about a man who gave water to a wandering pilgrim who showed up at his door, even though it meant that he and his family would go thirsty. The sacred writings of Hinduism also have many stories extolling acts of charity and kindness to the poor and downtrodden.
Given the overwhelming weight of the wisdom of sages from every religious tradition, it is abundantly clear that God Most High expects that we will care for those who are less fortunate than we are because it is simply the right thing to do. If we claim with our lips to love God, then we have no choice but to behave in charitable and loving ways to our fellow human beings. “Salvation” is something more than getting to heaven when we die. It is very much about what kind of a world we create while we live. God saves freely and through God’s abundant grace, but God judges us based upon our real world actions during our lifetimes.
This parable of judgment in Christian terms offers images of separation from God for those who did not render loving service to “the least of these.” Whether or not you believe in heaven and hell in the medieval, Dante’s Inferno kind of imagery, the notion that one can choose to put oneself outside of the embrace of our all loving God is also a universal religious belief. While not all religions speak of salvation in the way Christians do, and indeed, other world religions do not focus on the concept of “being saved” in the way some Christians do, all world religions share the fundamental concept that people’s actions in this life affect what happens to them in the next. In East Asian religions – Hinduism and Buddhism – the concept of karma suggests that what you do in this life has consequences that extend beyond this life. If you are a good and loving and generous and charitable person, you build up good karma, and go to a better place in the next life, whereas if you do bad things to other people bad consequences will follow you into the next life.
Our Abrahamic religious cousins, Muslims and Jews, also share the fundamental belief that one must care for those who are called the “least of these” by Jesus. Muslims believe that upon death the soul appears before God for judgment and that all the deeds one has done in one’s life will be weighed in balance and God, who is merciful, will judge accordingly. Since Muslims do not share our concept of salvation by faith through grace, they die with somewhat less assurance of the good outcome, but I have heard many of my Muslim friends declare with faith and trust that they know God to be merciful and compassionate and they rest their faith in that. And one of the five pillars of Islam is zakat, charitable giving, the requirement to give 2.5% of one’s savings to charity every year.
The universality of this command to care for those Jesus calls the “least of these” is underscored in the gospel text itself – “all the nations will be gathered” is a very universal image and one that suggests that ultimately God is far more concerned with how we do love in this world than with what we profess to believe about God. As our nation enters a national election year very soon, we people of faith do well to keep in mind this measuring rod of God’s judgment in light of the statistics about hunger, health care deprivation, imprisonment, immigration struggles and other issue of human rights and social justice that are part of our modern life. God doesn’t care what people say they believe or how they worship God or even if they worship God. God commands that we serve the poor, the sick, the imprisoned, the hungry, the outcast. God cares for the 99% that the Occupy Wall St. folks are purporting to represent.
God cares about how the needs of those least of these are met by our society. And God will judge those who have the power in society to address the needs of those people, based upon whether or not they do feed the hungry, visit the imprisoned, heal the sick, house the homeless. It does matter to God what we do in this world especially with and for those on the bottom rung of our society. A Nicaraguan peasant Christian engaged in a gospel dialogue astutely summarizes what the gospel demands of us and it is not easy because it does require that we confront the systems in our culture that produce the statistics we recited earlier: “Obedience to love. Obedience to love is very revolutionary, because it commands us to disobey everything else.” (The Gospal in Solentiname, Ernesto Cardinal, 1978, p. 18)

Amen.

Risky Business

“Risky Business”, A Sermon preached by The Rev. Canon Dr. C. Denise Yarbrough on Sunday, November 13, 2011 at Grace Church, Lyons New York


For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. (Matt. 25:29)

If ever there was a biblical saying that could appear to justify giving tax breaks to the rich and taking welfare benefits from the poor, those closing lines of today’s gospel parable of the talents seems tailor made for the occasion! One might argue that when the Wall Street bankers who brought down the economy got their year end, seven figure bonuses even in the years when the government was bailing out their institutions, that this parable was coming to life in the 21st century! Given Jesus’ frequent teachings and preachings on the potential dangers of money, particularly its ability to corrupt the soul, it seems absurd that he would tell a parable in which he appears to conclude that those who are wealthy deserve to get more wealth while those who are poor somehow deserve to lose yet more. What on earth are we to make of this parable?

The parable of the talents is a tough one to swallow and it takes a fair amount of thinking to make any sense of it at all. This parable comes late in Matthew’s gospel and is part of a series of parables that Jesus tells about God’s judgment on humankind. Using a story about the various ways a group of slaves invested money entrusted to them by their master, this parable invites us to think not only about how we handle money and material resources given to us by God, but also how we use all the gifts God has given us for the furtherance of God’s mission. This parable is about judgment and accountability and calls us to be conscious of how we live out our faith in the mundane aspects of our daily lives. On one level the parable forces us to face the reality that we are accountable to God for how we live our life, for what we do in this life with all that we have been given. On another level the parable calls us to be mindful of the nature of our relationship with God and to reflect upon just how much we truly trust God to provide what we need in this life.

This is a stewardship parable and not just in its teaching about money. It calls us to think about how we manage the abundant resources that God has given us. Jesus reminds us that we all have a responsibility to make the most of what we have. In the story, one slave got five talents, another got two and another got one, each “according to his ability.” God gives gifts differently to different people, but all receive some gifts and all are called to make the most of that which has been given. While the vehicle for the story is money, the parable really invites us to think not only about our financial resources but about all the gifts we have received from God, tangible and intangible. One message of the story is pretty clear: take what God has given you and make more of it. Be responsible with the gifts you’ve been given so that you can offer back to the donor (i.e. GOD) more than was originally given you. Remember that what you have that you are investing is not really yours, but remains, in fact, the possession of the master who will expect a good return when the time for accounting comes.

On a deeper level, this parable talks about stewardship, not just of money, but of our entire lives. This parable suggests that God has given to each of us gifts, abilities, and talents that are unique to us. God expects, indeed, demands, that we make the most of those gifts, talents and abilities for the furtherance of God’s kingdom. When the master in the parable excoriates the slave who hid his one talent, he is very harsh – “you wicked and lazy slave” he cries out. Given that the guy didn’t lose the money, he did after all, safeguard it so it would not be lost or stolen, that seems a harsh and severe judgment, don’t you think? Is the guy wicked because he wouldn’t go out and take a risk and try to grow the money? Wasn’t he just a prudent and risk-averse investor, someone who preferred safety to risk, who just wanted to hedge his bets? This guy only had one talent – what if he had risked it and lost it? What was the sin here that brought about such a strong reaction from the master?

The so called “wicked” slave seems to have made two fundamental mistakes in dealing with the talent he was given. First, he insulted the master when questioned about his failure to invest the money and make it grow. He flat out told the guy that he didn’t trust him, that he considered him “a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow and gathering where you did not scatter seed.” Now it is no surprise that the master didn’t take kindly to that kind of insolence. If the master in the story is God, then what we have here is a person telling God, “I don’t trust you to deal fairly with me or to manage the resources of the world fairly, so I decided to play it safe and give you back what is yours.” This is not a recipe for an intimate and trusting relationship! Lack of trust is a big issue in any relationship, as much in the relationship we each have with God as in any human relationship that we pursue. Stewardship, it turns out, has a lot to do with trust. Trust that God will provide for our needs, trust that we can take risks with the gifts we have been given and God will be there when we do so.

The second mistake the “wicked” slave made was being afraid to take a risk. He was so afraid of losing the one talent he had that he merely hid it rather than working with it to make more of it. His risk averse strategy preserved the “talent” but didn’t multiply it or spread it around so that there would be more of it. Indeed, in order to keep it safe he had to hide it. How often do we hide the talents we have been given so as not to have to do the work that using them entails? And how likely is it that our talents will grow and increase if we hide them away from sight? Jesus seems pretty clear as he tells this story that risk taking is an important part of our relationship with God and is crucial to being able to make the most of the gifts God has given us.

Jesus calls us all to be risk takers, to live out our lives of faith in daring and shrewd and active ways. A life of faith is a life dedicated to moving out in the world, taking the resources God has given us and multiplying them for the good of all God’s people. The commandments to love God and love our neighbors as ourselves suggest that our duty as people of God has something to do with using our “talents” to do love in the world. Doing love always involves significant risk and abundant trust, as anyone who has ever loved another person can attest. Nothing that is worth doing is risk free – any successful entrepreneur will tell you that. Jesus doesn’t expect us all to be able to do the same kinds of things – we each get different gifts and therefore different results are expected, but results are expected from all. Our fear of taking risks is directly proportional to our trust in God. If we really trust God, we are more able to take the risks that will grow our talents for the good of everyone.

All of us have taken a risk this morning. We have come to the feast of Life itself. We have put ourselves in the way of an overpowering Spirit, so that even if we are here only out of force of habit, or because we to see our friends, or because it feels safe and peaceful, not at all risky and dangerous, we are at risk of being caught up and filled with a life-changing, life-giving call to freedom and servanthood in the name of Christ. We have taken the risk of hearing the Word of God proclaimed and broken open, we have taken the risk of opening ourselves to the power of prayer in community, we have risked meeting the Risen Christ up close and personal at the communion table this morning. Putting ourselves in the way of God is risky business because God has been known to do wild and wooly things with people God calls to life in Christ!

Finally, lets think about what this parable means for Grace Church as a faith community. You have tremendous gifts and talents here –people with the gift of compassion and mercy who naturally reach out to those in need, those who have the gift of managing financial resources, those with gifts of music and singing, those with spiritual gifts of prayer, outreach, hospitality and teaching children. When God gave all of those gifts to this community, God expected you would take risks and multiply the gifts many-fold in ministry to God’s world. Each of us individually is called to make the most of our gifts and we are called as a church body to pool our resources and collectively take risks for the kingdom. If we take that call seriously, amazing results will follow.

That troubling last line of the parable may reasonably be interpreted to mean that those with a wealth of trust in God and the concomitant willingness to take risks for faith are those who will receive more – more trust, more love, more courage to keep on taking risks. From those who have not, that is those who lack that radical trust, even more will be taken away. If we do not trust God, we will not be able to take the risks that will lead to abundant life and fruitful ministry. Stewardship is about generosity and being truly generous is risky business. Being truly generous takes immense trust. To all those who have, more will be given and they will have an abundance. May we all be risk-takers for the kingdom of God, growing in an abundance of trust and love in the God who sends us into the world to do the mission of reconciliation, healing, justice, freedom and peace.

The Baptismal Life

“The Baptismal Life”, A Sermon preached by The Rev. Canon Dr. C. Denise Yarbrough on Sunday October 30, 2011 at NPEM, New York

Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, 2“The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; 3therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach. (Matt. 23:1-3)

Jon Huntsman this week called his rival Mitt Romney “a perfectly lubricated weather vane” and rival Herman Cain “the flavor of the week.” As the Republican candidates for president continue to duke it out in their debates and in public attacks between debates the rest of us are treated to a never ending barrage of hyperbole, charicaturization by the candidates of each other, and reductionist exaggeration as they vie to make the other person appear ridiculous or evil or stupid or whatever else they are up to. And this behavior isn’t limited to the political arena. We all know the extent to which religious people, leaders and lay, love to lob verbal volleys at people on the other side of the theological or spiritual continuum. As the Occupy Wall Street movement continues its activities, religious groups on all sides of the theological spectrum have become involved with the protesters. Some religious conservatives have criticized the faith-based support of Occupy Wall Street calling it a “60’s style, leftist effort to redistribute wealth.” The Family Research Council urged its members to pray that God would prevent what it called “these radical organizers from stirring revolution.” It seems an inescapable fact of human nature and the functioning of human communities, that we are incapable of disagreeing with one another, particularly when the issues strike close to the heart, without devolving to invective, hyperbole and heated rhetoric.

Our reading from Matthew’s gospel this morning is an example of just this kind of rhetoric, as we hear Jesus railing against the Pharisees and scribes. This section of Matthew’s gospel has been problematic in the long history of Christian anti-Judaism as it has been used, incorrectly, to foster contempt for the Pharisees, who, over time, have come in the minds of most everyday Christians to be equated with people of the Jewish faith. In fact, when Matthew’s gospel was written, in the late first century, probably between 75-85 CE, after the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, the early followers of Jesus, the Jewish Christians in Matthew’s church, were one of a number of sects of Judaism and all were desperately trying to salvage their religious tradition and find a way to move it forward in the wake of the destruction of the temple. The followers of Jesus were Jews and they were embroiled in intra-religious controversies with other sects or denominations of 1st century Judaism. The rhetoric and invective could get pretty heated, as religious disputes tend to do. We in the Anglican Communion know something about this as we have endured years of arguing and dispute over issues of human sexuality and not much of that argument has been particularly respectful or friendly.

What scholars understand about the Pharisees suggests that they were the first century Jewish version of most of us in this room. They were traditional, religious Jews, they were educated and comfortably employed members of their society. Not necessarily rich, but well off enough to have time for education and religious training. They were the ones who preserved what is known as the Oral Torah, a whole strand of Torah interpretation that had been handed down for centuries by oral transmission, while they were also skilled at interpretation of the written Torah. They were very much invested in preserving Judaism after the destruction of the temple and in finding ways to continue their religious tradition and its practices in a world that had changed radically. After the temple was destroyed, Judaism could have simply died out and vanished from the face of history. That it did not is testament to the faithfulness and perseverance of groups like the Pharisees. Like many of us modern, mainline Christians who are trying desperately to determine how to keep our religious traditions alive and relevant in a new age which has seen precipitous decline in church participation and attendance, the Pharisees wanted to make sure that their tradition continued into the future as a viable and authentic tradition.

Given that context what do we do with this gospel passage? Matthew’s Jesus is pretty emphatic in his criticism of those who say one thing and do another when it comes to religious practice and piety. There is no escaping the clear directive to “walk the walk, don’t just talk the talk.” Indeed, as I read this scree against the Pharisees, it reminded me of much that I hear from people who have either fallen away from church or from those atheist/agnostic/”spiritual but not religious” young people who say that it is the hypocrisy of so many church goers that turns them off of institutionalized religion. So the strong message about being sincere and humble in one’s religious practice certainly survives the test of time. Religious play-acting was a source of contempt in the first century Jewish Christian world and continues to be a factor in turning people away from religion in our 21st century world. So as we strive to be faithful Christians in our contemporary context, we have to think hard about how we be disciples and apostles in a way that is genuine and authentic and spiritually grounded. And it is just as easy for us to fall into either an excess of piety, or, more likely, a detached and compartmentalized way of living our lives that puts our religious self out on Sunday morning and then a whole different self out in the world of Monday to Saturday.

In the diatribe against the Pharisees, Jesus accuses them of burdening people with way too much religious rules and regulations, so much so that the religion becomes an impediment to spiritual growth and sustenance. My guess is that in our modern Christian context, we do the opposite. We make it so easy to be a Christian, demanding so little of people in the hopes of enticing them to come to church or to stay once they’ve entered the threshold, that we give them spiritual pablum when they need solid food. And we’ve got good solid food to offer, food that sustains the human soul through all the joys and tribulations of the earthly journey.

Today we will baptize Anthony James M______ at St. Mark’s. At every baptism we all renew our own baptismal covenant. That baptismal covenant contains the richest spiritual solid food any of us ever needs. That covenant is how we promise to walk the walk with Jesus, not just talk the talk. And while most of us can say it almost by rote, we must guard against simply “going through the motions” when we do a baptism in church (or on the designated Sundays in the year when we all renew that covenant whether or not we have a baptism) If all of us lived into that baptismal covenant every day of our lives we would go a long way towards eliminating accusations of religious hypocrisy that are often justifiably hurled at us. The baptismal covenant is a blueprint for how we are to live our lives with God. We renounce evil and Satan, we turn to Jesus as Lord and Savior, we promise to repent and return to God when we fall short of the glory of God, we promise to work for justice and peace and to respect the dignity of every human being. The covenant calls us to participate in regular spiritual disciplines – being faithful in the Christian fellowship, the breaking of bread and the prayers – and it lays out our duties to the world we are called to serve.

Jesus tells the crowd and his disciples that they must be servants of one another and cultivate humility, something our contemporary world does not equip us well to do. The humble do not get ahead in our highly competitive society. In many respects, the baptismal covenant offers us a way out of the competitive, win/lose ethos of our society, and extends us an invitation to a life that is far more gracious, generous and healing than that of our secular society. Jesus calls us to a posture of humility and service, which is not servility and does not mean we become doormats for others to stomp on. The baptismal covenant says it well – “respect the dignity of every human being.” That simple line sums up much of what Jesus gets at in his “those who exalt themselves will be humbled and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” We don’t have to agree with someone to respect their dignity. And we can dignify someone even as we engage in debate and discourse with them, the more so if we treat them with dignity. Jesus did it even in the midst of his tongue lashing in today’s reading, as he instructed the crowd and disciples to listen to the Pharisees and scribes because they sit on Moses seat and are wise.

We live in a complex and disturbing world and our religious tradition with its spiritual wisdom and practices offers us a way to navigate that world with serenity, generosity and peace. Our baptismal covenant is our spiritual “to do list” and not all of it is easy. Studying our scriptures and religious tradition so we can hear the living word of God in our contemporary day, living in community with others even when they drive us crazy, attend church on Sundays and holy days to participate in the sacred mystery of the Eucharist, engage in a regular discipline of prayer and self-examination, serve the poor and needy in our neighborhoods and the larger world, renounce the forces of evil that are always at work in our world and do it all with a profound respect for the dignity of every human being. Gandhi is famous for observing that Christianity is a great religion and would be more so if its followers actually followed the teachings of their Jesus. Like those Pharisees and scribes, all of us at some time or other somehow fail to walk the walk as we talk the talk, but we’ve always got our gracious God waiting for us to repent, that is to turn around and come back and try again. Today in many Protestant denominations our Christian brothers and sisters are honoring Reformation Sunday. So in the spirit of Reformation Sunday I will close with one of Martin Luther’s foundational instructions to all Christians as they struggle to live their faith with integrity. “Remember your baptism.” Amen.

Transitional Living

“Transitional Living”, A Sermon preached by the Rev. Canon Dr. C. Denise Yarbrough on Sunday, October 23, 2011 at NPEM, New York

4The Lord said to him, “This is the land of which I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, saying, ‘I will give it to your descendants’; I have let you see it with your eyes, but you shall not cross over there.” (Deuteronomy 34:4)

37He said to him, “’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38This is the greatest and first commandment. 39And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” (Matt. 22:27-29)

We live in a world that seems perpetually to be in the midst of cataclysmic transition. From natural disasters like the flooding that devastated parts of our own country earlier this summer, and hit Thailand this week, and earthquakes that shook parts of the eastern seaboard several weeks ago, and tornadoes that devastated southern towns in the early months of the summer and fires that raged in Texas, nature seems to be rearranging the natural landscape with alarming frequency. Then world politics continues its tumultuous trajectory as the Arab Spring gives way to the Occupy Wall Street movement, and as despotic leaders are toppled one by one in the wake of the grass roots movements towards democracy in various troubled places throughout the world. This past week saw the death of a particularly hated and despotic leader, as Moammar Gadhafi was finally gunned down by rebel forces in Libya, the result of which was much jubilation as yet another tyrannical leader met a violent end. I never rejoice in the death of a human being, even as I may breathe a sigh of relief when a cruel and despotic leader like Gadhafi finally falls from power. Gadhafi ruled for 40+ years in Libya and that country is now in the throes of the transition anxiety and chaos that often comes along when there is a change in power, particularly one as violent and contentious as this one was.

Today we read in our biblical text of the death of another Middle Eastern leader who’s tenure lasted 40 years, and what a different story it is. The reading from Deuteronomy chronicles the death of Moses, who is also eulogized as the greatest prophet Israel had ever seen. “1He was unequaled for all the signs and wonders that the Lord sent him to perform in the land of Egypt, against Pharaoh and all his servants and his entire land, 12and for all the mighty deeds and all the terrifying displays of power that Moses performed in the sight of all Israel.” While the story of the death of Gadhafi is full of violence, bloodshed, retribution and revenge, the story of Moses’ death is poignant, dignified and ultimately peaceful, even though we learn that Moses was not permitted to enter the Promised Land with his flock.

How sad it seems that Moses, who worked so diligently and faithfully leading the Israelites across the Red Sea out of Egypt into freedom, who wandered with them for 40 years in the wilderness, who saw God face to face on Mt. Sinai and received the Ten Commandments, who argued and bartered and negotiated with God on behalf of his people, even when they were mumbling and murmuring and complaining against him, how sad that he never sees the Promised Land. He gets right to the brink and then dies. It doesn’t seem fair somehow, that after all that work and all that faithfulness in the midst of harsh conditions and complaining constituents, after years of eating manna and the occasional quail and having to contend with the capriciousness of his followers, Moses doesn’t get to reap the rewards of the wilderness wanderings.

Moses’ story is powerful because it resonates so fully with the realities of all of our earthly lives. The life each of us lives on this earth for however long it lasts, is a transitional moment in the long span of history. We are each called into being by our loving God and given our vocations and callings by God. We enter into covenant with God at baptism and then spend the rest of our days living into that covenant, being faithful even when we can’t seem to see the end results we thought were awaiting us for all our efforts. And like Moses, all that we do while we wander our earthly wilderness is preparation for a future that seems always just beyond our reach. We raise our children and grandchildren to carry on after we are gone, and we try to be good stewards of our resources so that they will be there for the benefit of those who will come after us. If we are being true to our call from God, we make decisions in our lifetime that will bear fruit not only for us but for those who will follow us. Jesus summarizes God’s commandments in the simple maxim – Love God and Love your neighbor as yourself. Loving neighbor as self assumes that we will act for the benefit of others, not for our own self interest and greed.

That many people in power in our culture, both in politics and in corporate life, here and abroad do not understand this biblical wisdom about the transitional nature of earthly life is obvious. The Occupy Wall Street movement has spread not only across our country but also overseas as people take to the streets to protest political and economic leadership that has preferenced the present day comforts of the elite and wealthy at the expense of the poor and the middle class. Thousands are protesting as our modern day expectations of life in the Promised Land are dashed by corporate greed, government bailouts, political posturing and stalemates, and an ever widening gap between the wealthy and everyone else. Our biblical texts are unequivocally clear that God expects us to live in such a way as to protect the common good, to create a world in which all are fed, all are safe, and where the resources which God has made available to all of God’s children are distributed fairly among all of God’s children. Loving neighbor means caring about the welfare of the neighbor, whether that neighbor looks like you or not. In our modern day, the whole world in all its diversity are our neighbors and we are called to the kind of faithfulness and integrity that Moses exhibited as he endured years of hardship and challenge in the wilderness.

Moses and Jesus model for us how we are to live in this world and serve it in God’s name. Both of them understood what it is to live in a world that is perpetually in transition. Everything is always changing, nothing ever stays the same and the spiritual life is about finding God in the midst of all the uncertainties and upheavals of earthly life. Moses received the covenant on Mt. Sinai and Jesus continued that covenant in his life and ministry and in the sacred mystery he established in his name on the night before he died. God demanded of Moses and of Jesus and his followers that we live our lives in this world, this transitional, always changing world, on the basis of the commandments to love – love God and love neighbor. And loving neighbor carries with it some pretty concrete expectations about respecting human dignity, feeding the poor, housing the homeless and being a voice for the voiceless.

Yes, it seems unfair that Moses worked so hard and so faithfully and yet was never permitted to enter the Promised Land. Perhaps that is because for Moses the wilderness was his Promised Land. Certainly the biblical story indicates that when Joshua and the Israelites entered Canaan life was far from rosy there. War, violence, conflict and more struggles followed them into that Promised Land a place which turned out to be just as transitional as the wilderness had been. Moses served God and the Israelites faithfully and enjoyed the privilege of his intimate relationship with God during his entire ministry with them. God rewarded him with a vision of what the future might look like, but he was not destined to be part of that future vision. His role was to shepherd the Israelites during that wilderness time, which had its own set of challenges and its own peculiar rewards.

We have a lot in common with Moses. Everything we do in the course of our lives as faithful Christians, we do in the midst of difficult, challenging and sometimes overwhelming present realities often unable to see how what we are doing will work out in the end. Whether our challenges come in the form of raising children, or coping with physical illness or disability in ourselves or our loved ones, or working in our towns, villages, cities and neighborhoods to try to address pressing issues like hunger or homelessness or lack of medical care, or violence, or addiction, or any of the many social problems that beset our society, we may often feel as though we are making little difference. We may get frustrated when we don’t seem to arrive at some hoped for destination as quickly as we’d like to. Most of life is actually an exercise in transitional living, as we juggle present realities in the hopes of a better future. It’s important to have a vision of that hoped for future, but equally important to cultivate Moses’ ability to live in the present moment, doing what is right and good for that moment. Loving God and loving neighbor is how we stay centered and grounded in the midst of the perpetual transitions and changes of earthly life. No matter what else changes in life, and virtually everything does, what does not change, ever, is the love of God for us and our obligation to live into that love in concrete ways by pouring that love back out into our world. As the psalmist prayed to God, so we pray – “Lord you have been our dwelling place in all generations….Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, and prosper for us the work of our hands – O prosper the work of our hands.” (Psalm 90)

Going with the Holy Presence

“Going with the Holy Presence”, A Sermon preached by The Rev. Canon Dr. C. Denise Yarbrough on Sunday, October 16, 2011 at NPEM, New York

“God said, ‘My presence will go with you and I will give you rest.’ And Moses said to God, ‘If your presence will not go, do not carry us up from here. For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people, unless you go with us? In this way, we shall be distinct, I and your people, from every people on the face of the earth.’” (Exodus 33:15-16)

Give therefore to the emporer the things that are the emporer’s and to God the things that are God’s. (Matt. 22:21)

As part of my work as interreligious officer for the diocese of Rochester, I am engaged in ongoing dialogue with the Hindu community. We meet once a month at the Hindu temple for dialogue and it always proves to be a rich and spiritually stretching experience. As we have deepened our connections with one another, we frequently continue our dialogue throughout the month through e-mail correspondence. Early this week, one of my Hindu colleagues sent around an article from the Huffington Post religion blog, which reported on a recent study of young people and their reasons for giving up on church. The article reported the results of a study done by the Barna research group, which found that young people view churches as “judgmental, overprotective, exclusive and unfriendly towards doubters.” They also were disillusioned with the ongoing battles between some churches and the discoveries of science.

In my response to my Hindu friend, who basically wondered why Christian youth are falling away at such a rate, I pointed out that the type of Christianity that the young people in that study were reacting against is the more fundamentalist variety and that those of us on the dialogue group represent a more liberal and progressive type of Christianity that might not be guilty of quite the degree of judgmentalism, overprotectiveness and the like as our fundamentalist brethren. I opined that the real problem for us mainline Christians, who also find our ranks devoid of young people and young adults, is the intense secularization of our contemporary culture.

The sad truth is that for many of the “20/30 somethings” of today, religion is simply irrelevant. Our culture, while in many ways one that pays lip service to religion and religious belief, is really radically secular and the younger generation has grown up with little or no understanding of the need to nurture and nourish their souls. In our world of highly sophisticated technology and the global interconnectedness that the technology allows, we have lost our reverence for the human soul and our ability as a culture to admit of the presence of something outside ourselves, something sacred and divine at work in the world. What I have come to understand in my work of interreligious dialogue is that we Christians who take our faith seriously, who believe in God and in the spiritual life and the presence of the holy as part of the created order, have more in common with our interreligious neighbors – with religious Muslims, Hindus, Jews, Buddhists – than we do with those who profess no religious faith or are only nominally Christian.

In the context of these ongoing dialogues with my interreligious colleagues I found that today’s lectionary provided interesting material for reflection on this conundrum we religious folk face as we live our lives of faith in a deeply secular culture. In the reading from Exodus, Moses is engaged in quite an argument with God, following the incident where the Israelites built and worshipped a Golden Calf, which enraged God no end, and Moses is trying to talk God down, and plead for God to be present with him, Moses, as he continues his job of leading the Israelites through the wilderness. He also boldly asks God to be visibly present to the Israelites as well, so that they will not lose heart or faith, recognizing that in the midst of their struggles in the wilderness they really need to have some visible reminder that God is truly present with them as they proceed towards the Promised Land. Life in the wilderness is tough and the Israelites easily lose patience. You may remember that in the stories of the wilderness wanderings, God is present with the Israelites in the form of a cloud by day and pillar of fire by night. Human beings have always needed something they could grab on to to reassure them of the presence of God in their midst, to somehow mark them as belonging to God.

Then in the gospel story, Jesus has his famous encounter with Pharisees and Herodians who want to entrap him into saying something that will get him in trouble with the authorities. The question they ask about paying taxes and his response about giving to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s has often been interpreted in terms of how Christians should conduct their financial lives. Yes, we should pay our taxes, but we must also pay our tithe and be faithful stewards of our resources. But Jesus points to something more than money and how we use it. In his statement about giving to the emperor what is the emperor’s and to God what is God’s, he touches on the very issue that infuses the struggles we people of faith have as we live in a solidly secular culture. All of us struggle to conduct our lives according to the expectations of our surrounding culture – our nation, city, neighborhood, our civic duties, our family responsibilities, our job demands. But we also have religious duties and expectations – we entered into a covenant at baptism and the responsibilities of that covenant lay claim to our lives as well. And as both the Exodus text and the gospel remind us, our religious life is not simply about following a set of rules to stay on the good side of a divine judge. It is, at its core, about relationship between the human being and the divine presence we call God.

Relationships call for more than merely going through the motions. A deep relationship requires vulnerability and trust and a willingness to make oneself open to the other in a genuine and authentic way. Moses argues with God because he and God are in a loving and respectful relationship. Moses calls God up short to be the best God can be, as he talks God down from his anger at the Israelites, but he also demands of God that God be present, be really there for him and his people as they struggle in the wilderness. Moses is privileged to see God face to face when he goes up to Mt. Sinai and receives the revelation of the Ten Commandments, and he returns from that encounter with his face shining from the glory of God. But God also protects him as he passes him by in this particular encounter because no human being can grasp the whole of God and live as a human being, and so God protects Moses in the cleft of the rock, by putting his hand out to shield Moses and allowing him to see only the back of the divine presence, which is enough divinity for Moses.

Both Moses and Jesus know God intimately. And the Ancient Israelites who followed Moses, and the disciples who followed Jesus saw in each of them and through each of them the light of the Holy One. Jesus was not referring only to how we use our money in this famous line about giving to the emperor what is the emperor’s. Our love, our passion, our creativity, our generativity, all that makes us human belongs to God. To give to God what is God’s is to give ourselves up to that sacred presence, to acknowledge the holy in the midst of the profane world in which we live, and to allow the reality of that sacred presence to guide how we live in this world. It’s not just about where we go when we die, its much more about how we live while we’re here. And its not just about private, personal matters, but also about how we give to the emperor what is the emperor’s, i.e. how do we honor the secular world of which we are a part and contribute our financial and human resources to it while also living as citizens of the kingdom of God? How do we vote in an election year? What causes do we support with our lips and lives and money? Where do we experience God in the midst of all that we do in our daily lives?

The divine presence is always with us, but like Moses and the Israelites, we sometimes despair of feeling that presence. And like the Pharisees, we can get too caught up in the rules and regulations of both the secular world and the institutional church and lose sight of the divine presence we are meant to be serving and then its no wonder our young people decide that the institutional church has nothing of value to offer them. If they felt the divine presence when they entered our churches, we wouldn’t have to come up with strategies to lure them in and we wouldn’t have to engage in elaborate feats of entertainment and gimmicks to keep them here. We celebrate a sacred mystery every week at the altar, a ritual that brings the divine presence right into our midst on any given Sunday.

Our world is infused with the presence of the Holy One. Depth psychologist Carl Jung had a sign over his door that read, “Bidden or unbidden, God is present.” God is present in the beauty of our natural world, on deathbeds and sickbeds in hospitals and nursing homes, in preschool classrooms and university lecture halls, in the faces of our loved ones and the faces of people who drive us crazy, in the laughter of children and the wise counsel of the elderly. As people who wander the wilderness of earthly life in covenant with the God of Moses and Jesus, may we live in such a way that all who observe our way of being in the world know that we live always in the presence of the holy. May we witness to that sacred dimension in everything we do. When we truly “render to God what is God’s” we will “be distinct, I and your people, from every people on the face of the earth.” And we just might reconnect our younger generation with the wisdom of the ages while we’re at it. Amen.

Many Dwelling Places with God

“Many Dwelling Places with God”, A Sermon preached by The Rev. Dr. C. Denise Yarbrough on Sunday, April 20, 2008 at Trinity Episcopal Church, Seneca Falls, NY

²In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?... ⁶Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. (John 14:2,6)

In the novel by Chaim Potok, entitled The Book of Lights, a young rabbi from Brooklyn, on leave from his post in Korea during the Korean war, travels for the first time in Japan. One afternoon he stands with a Jewish friend before what is perhaps a Shinto shrine or perhaps a Buddhist shrine, the characters are not sure which. The author describes the scene as one in which the altar of the shrine is lit by the soft light of a tall lamp. Sunlight streams in the door. The two young men are watching with rapt attention a man standing before the altar, his hands pressed together before him, his eyes closed. He is rocking slightly. He seems to be engaged in what these two young Jewish men would call prayer. The rabbi turns to his companion and asks:

“Do you think our God is listening to him, John?”

“I don’t know, chappy. I never thought of it.”

“Neither did I until now. If He’s not listening, why not? If He is listening, then- well what are we all about, John?” (Chaim Potok, The Book of Lights: New York: Ballantine Books, 1981, pp.261-262)

This scene captures a religious dilemma that occurs in the life of almost any sincere religious person of whatever religious tradition at some point in their faith journey. Whether Christian or Jew or Muslim, a faithful person who lives in the religiously pluralistic world of this 21^st century must ask that question – do you think our God is listening to him? Or, in other words, do we worship the same God as this person? Does God love those who are not of my religious persuasion just as God loves me and my kin? Does God listen to their prayers too?

Anyone who has studied world history even cursorily knows that throughout the ages, humankind has found itself embroiled in conflicts of all kinds, from doctrinal arguments to all out war and persecution, on the basis of perceived differences in religious belief. In fact, it is this sad history of institutional religion’s propensity for either fomenting, or at least aggravating human conflict, that fuels much of the intensity among those who call themselves atheists. In the past couple of years, a number of books have been published by avowed atheists, most of which are polemical attacks on institutional religion, laying at the feet of religious institutions all the violence and war of human history. In our current day, the news media bombard us with various reports of the activities or threats posed by religious extremists of all stripes around the world. And of course our own Christian history is replete with occasions on which Christians have slaughtered other Christians over differences of opinion on matters theological.

Is our God listening to those we call “others?” For those who seek to find an answer to that question in the Bible, the verse we heard this morning from John’s gospel is quite often lifted up as proof positive that the answer to the question should be “no.” “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Those words of Jesus, uttered on the night before his crucifixion to his gathered disciples, have repeatedly been put forward as the final word on the place and validity of religions other than Christianity. Where interreligious relations is concerned John 14:6 is what some would call a “clobber passage.” It is a passage of the Bible most often used to beat others down and to lift Christians up to a place of superiority and supremacy vis-à-vis other world religions. Far too many Christians have taken that verse as proof positive that they will “be saved” or “go to heaven” while all those millions of people in the world who are not Christian will simply be out in the eternal cold and darkness.

There might have been a time in our nation’s history when we Christians could be comfortable with that triumphalistic approach to our religion, when the only religious diversity we had to contend with was the presence of Catholics in our neighborhood. But in our religiously pluralistic society, where Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, Hindus, Buddhists and myriad other world religions are our neighbors and colleagues, we have to wrestle with passages like John 14:6 so as to find an interpretation that is consonant with the entire Biblical witness about the nature and character of God, and that enables us to live as hospitable world citizens in a religiously diverse universe. The temptation to use verses like John 14:6 as clubs with which to beat others into submission and to give ourselves a sense of security and superiority is strong and one to which Christians have too often permitted themselves to fall, forgetting when they do so that no one verse of the Bible “says it all” as far as our faith or any other is concerned. Jesus’ own life and ministry bears witness to an inclusive, loving God whose “house” contains many dwelling places, not just a room for Christians.

I spend a significant portion of my professional time engaged in interreligious dialogue, as the Ecumenical and Interreligious Officer for the Diocese of Rochester. As I encounter people of many world religious traditions I am constantly reminded that God is broader and wider than I could ever have imagined, and those people of other world religious traditions have things to teach me about God that enhance and enrich my own Christian experience of God. I find that I have to reconcile the seemingly exclusive claims of my Christian tradition with the reality that I experience of deep religious and spiritual truth and insight present in all the religions of the world, even those that are most unlike my own Christianity. Having attended worship in mosques, synagogues, Buddhist and Hindu temples, Sikh Gurdwaras and Jain temples, I have experienced such a strong sense of the holy and transcendant in those holy places that I have had to open my mind and heart to the truth of God as found and experienced in those disparate traditions, as surely as God is mediated in my own.

As is the case with much of our Bible, passages like John 14:6 have to be examined in light of the context in which they were written. John’s gospel was written at a time when the nascent Christian community was beginning to realize that it was not likely to remain as a branch of Judaism but was going to become something different and go a separate path. Tensions were high between those early Jewish Christians and their Jewish brothers and sisters, and differences of opinion about the role and place of Gentiles in the faith community, as well as how and to what degree the Torah would continue to be the source of religious practice and teaching were extreme. The author of John’s gospel writes to this community in conflict presenting his understanding of who Jesus was for his disciples and why following him mattered to those who knew him. This gospel more than the synoptics, provides a window into the conflicted and insecure early community of faith as it tried to find its way amid the various forms of Judaism that were extant in first century Rome and in the face of the pagan religions of the Roman Empire. The author was directing nervous and edgy people back to something they knew and understood as spiritual truth in order to center and ground them in their own path.

The author of the gospel presents a scene in which the disciples are with Jesus on the last night of his life and are treated to a long and very confusing discourse by him in which he attempts to give them advice and comfort as he prepares to go to the cross. The scene presents confused and frightened disciples trying desperately to figure out what is about to happen to Jesus and then to them. When Jesus talks metaphorically – “in my father’s house there are many dwelling places – I go to prepare a place for you” Thomas responds very concretely – “Where are you going? How will we know the way?” Then Jesus responds “I am the way, the truth and the life.” He is offering words of comfort to his closest friends, trying to reassure them by suggesting that they follow the way they have learned with him. Notice that he is not talking doctrine or dogma. He is talking about a way of life, an orientation of heart and soul that he knows will enable them to maintain their connection with God. He directs them to focus on their relationship with him as the way to remain connected to God. His metaphor itself even allows for the existence of other ways, other paths, other truths – the “many dwelling places” of the Father’s house itself is an image of plurality and diversity. Yet for these particular people, Jesus is the Way.

I spent this past week in Chicago at the National Workshop on Christian Unity where I heard a sermon by a Methodist bishop who is Chinese and converted to Christianity from Buddhism in his teens. He told us how fervent he was in his new religion after his conversion, so much so that when his father died, he refused to participate in the family religious rituals and funeral for his father because they were Buddhist, and he believed that as a Christian he had to reject those practices and rituals. He said that as his faith matured he came to understand that Jesus never asked his disciples to reject another religious path in order to follow him. He simply asked them to follow him, to live out in the world his love commandment. The Christian Way to which Jesus invites us is not a matter of rejecting and denouncing other ways – it is rather embracing Jesus as the Way that we know to reach the heart of God. This bishop told us that years later he returned to China and went to the place of his father’s burial and performed Buddhist rituals for his father because he had come to understand that his faith in Jesus compelled him to honor his father in that authentic way and doing so did not undermine his Christian commitment. When Jesus said to Thomas, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me” he was offering words of assurance and comfort to his frightened friends, not pronouncing judgment on millions of people in the world who may be destined for those other dwelling places in his father’s house.

Is our God listening to him? According to Jesus the answer is yes. And “our God’ listens to us when we follow the way that we have learned as disciples of the Risen Christ. The good news is that “our God” is a god of “both/and” not “either/or” and has love and compassion enough for all of those in the many dwelling places in the house of God. Amen.

Hidden Arrow in the Quiver of God

“Hidden Arrow in the Quiver of God”, A Sermon preached by The Rev. Canon Dr. C. Denise Yarbrough, on Sunday, January 16, 2011 at Church of the Ascension, Rochester, New York

The Lord called me before I was born, while I was in my mother’s womb he named me. ²He made my mouth like a sharp sword, in the shadow of his hand he hid me; he made me a polished arrow, in his quiver he hid me away. (Isaiah 49:1-2)

Two contemporary films are garnering a lot of attention at the moment. One, Black Swan, described by Christian Century as a psychological thriller, nominated for four Golden Globe awards, and the other, The King’s Speech, nominated for seven Golden Globe awards, dramatizing the struggle of King George the VI of England to overcome a serious speech impediment when he ascended to the throne of England just before the start of World War 2. In Black Swan we watch as the main character disintegrates emotionally, psychologically and spiritually as she prepares to perform the lead role of the Swan Queen in the ballet Swan Lake in the New York City Ballet Company. The climax of the film is an eerie and disturbing portrayal of her debut performance in that acclaimed role, during which she completely unravels internally even as we are led to believe that she executes a stunning performance. In The King’s Speech, the climax of the film comes as we watch King George the VI give a national radio broadcast over the BBC to his subjects announcing that Britain is at war with Germany as World War 2 gets under way. The audience is on the edge of its seats as the King carefully and fluidly articulates his speech without a sign of the stammer that so humiliated him at the start of his reign as king.

Both of these films offer us some fodder for reflection about the gifts that God instills in human beings and the reason God creates us with those gifts. Our reading from the prophet Isaiah brings a Biblical perspective to this reflection. As we continue into the season of Epiphany, leaving behind the season of Christmas which was marked by a frenzy of gift giving and receiving, we are invited to reflect now upon how we use the gifts we have been given by God as we respond to the call to live out our baptismal covenant. The season of Epiphany is the time in the liturgical year when we hear a lot of the call stories in the Bible, like the call of Andrew and Peter in today’s reading from the gospel of John. Being called by God ordinarily involves using gifts God has given us to serve the world in God’s name. And much as we’d like to think that offering our gifts to the world will bring us happiness, or satisfaction, or a sense of accomplishment, Isaiah reminds us that often, responding to God’s call and offering our gifts to the world yields pain, loneliness, frustration and sometimes even results in conflict or rejection. And moreover, offering our gifts is hard work requiring tenacity and faithfulness, often in the face of opposition and hurdles.

The reading from Isaiah is one of three Suffering Servant Songs contained in the book of Isaiah, which scholars believe is actually a compilation of three different prophetic voices, dating from three different periods in Israel’s history. The Second Servant Song that we heard today, dates from just after the Babylonian exile, as the Israelites have returned to Jerusalem and are faced with the enormous task of rebuilding their lives and their culture in their ancient homeland, with the Temple that King Solomon built in ruins and their community scattered and greatly diminished in size. The prophet has been called by God to speak to the remnant of Israel and to call them back to their covenant life with Yahweh, to renew their commitment to their vocation to be a chosen people living according to the principles of justice and righteousness laid down in the Torah and the covenant from Sinai. They are also called to rebuild the Temple and the religious life that went with it. The prophet complains bitterly to God about the difficulties he has had getting his people to listen to him. Apparently, much that he has tried to say to them to get them back on the right path has fallen on deaf ears. “Listen to me” he cries, like a child in a schoolyard. Interestingly his plea “Listen to me” is addressed to the whole world, as if he is despairing of ever getting Israel to listen to him so he’s moving out to a larger potential audience. And sure enough God directs him to move his ministry of proclamation out to the whole world and not to direct it simply to the Israelite community. God calls Israel to become a light to the nations, to be a beacon to the entire world, and calls the prophet to focus his energy on that larger world rather than the small remnant of his own people. God declares that salvation is offered to everyone not just the remnant of the Israelite community.

We can tell from what the prophet writes that he’s had a very hard time living out his prophetic call. He has been ignored, despised, been the slave of rulers. “I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity” he says to God. He’s exhausted, discouraged, fed up and yet he also affirms that he has felt God’s presence with him throughout his unsuccessful ministry and in the midst of his despair God has been his strength. He veers back and forth between praising and thanking God and professing his own faithfulness to the call he has from God, and venting his immense frustration and discouragement with how things have not gone well. And yet God assures him that he is called to be a light to the nations and to move out and do even more with the gifts God has given him, rather than focus in on his own little community.

Responding to God’s call is never easy, whether it’s the call each of us apprehends in our own individual journeys or the call that we understand ourselves to have as a religious community or parish church. Today as Ascension conducts its Annual Meeting you will be looking at how you have lived out your call in the past year and look ahead to how and where God is calling you to use your gifts in the upcoming year. I’m sure there are a number of you who can relate to the prophet’s frustration and discouragement, as you face the reality of tight financial resources and dwindling membership. The Search Committee will be spending a lot of time in the next weeks and months thinking about what a call from God means and trying to evaluate which of the candidates who are offering themselves as potential leaders of this congregation has the gifts and experience to meet the challenges that lie ahead for Ascension. Both the candidates and the Committee are discerning call and evaluating gifts and how they are to be used to further the mission of God in this part of the world.

And there’s the rub. The mission that all our God given gifts support is the mission of God. Each of us is given different gifts, as St. Paul reminds us, but all the gifts pooled in a community are there to further the mission of God in the world. And the mission of God, we are to understand from Scripture, is a mission of justice, righteousness, and making the kingdom or reign of God a reality in our world. Loving God and loving neighbor are the basic fundamentals of that mission, but how each of us individually and each congregation communally is called to contribute to the larger mission of God is the work of discernment and prayer.

The prophet affirms that God instilled certain gifts in him in his mother’s womb, before he was born, so that when he arrived on the scene he would be equipped to carry out some portion of God’s mission in the world. He uses the vivid image of being a polished arrow hidden in the quiver of the Almighty. Imagine the divine archer pulling that hidden arrow from the quiver and shooting it out across the landscape where it lands with precision in the divine bull’s eye at just the moment that God wants it to be present and visible in some part of the world. Ascension was called into being 125 years ago, an arrow in the quiver of God in the Maplewood section of Rochester. What did the divine target look like then and what might it look like now? When you’re shot from the divine bow this time, where will you land?

In the Black Swan story the ballerina possesses a divine gift to dance. What destroys her is that she develops and uses that gift for her own narcissistic purposes, to achieve some idea of perfection to satisfy her own need for approval, love, admiration and fame. She does not dance to delight others with the beauty of her art. She dances to prove something to the world about her and her alone. And in the process of focusing in on herself and her own fame and success, she destroys herself. In The King’s Speech, the character Lionel Logue is a gifted speech therapist. He does not seek fame, or fortune or recognition; he exercises his gift of teaching to help the king overcome a disability thereby serving his country as he heals the king. Logue helps the king find his voice so he can lead his people. Gifts given to us by God are not given so that we might become famous, rich, powerful, respected, or successful. They are given so that we might serve the larger community by offering our gifts for the good of those God shoots us into the world to serve.

We are each of us polished arrows hidden in the quiver of God. Sometimes, when God reaches into the quiver and sends us soaring out into the air, we don’t land where we thought we might, or where we’d prefer to be. Sometimes we fall into brambles, or a bog, or get stuck in a sticky tree trunk. Wherever we land we’re challenged to use the gifts with which we are imbued in such a way as to serve the world in God’s name. And God is clear with the prophet Isaiah that the call is to be a light to the nations, to offer gifts to everyone in the world, not just his own small group. When we’re pulled from the divine quiver and shot from the divine bow, we must be ready to face challenges we didn’t expect and criticism we might not deserve. As our nation observes Martin Luther King Jr. day tomorrow we are reminded that serving God in prophetic witness can be very dangerous business. Some people, some forces in the world are out to break the polished arrows in God’s quiver so they can’t soar to their destination particularly if the success of that divine shot would mean change in the world, or a shift in the balance of earthly power. As King himself said, quoting Theodore Parker, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” The arc of the hidden arrows in God’s quiver bend toward justice as they are sent forth from the divine bow. As you evaluate your ministries and your call in the months and years ahead, consider how your gifts may be offered to this city and neighborhood to further the divine mission of justice and righteousness. When your ministry is challenging and you can’t see clearly how it is all working out, remember the words of the prophet Isiash, “my God has become my strength” and “the Lord who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel…has chosen you.” Amen.