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.