See What Love . . .

Preached on April 22, 2012

St. Mark’s Episcopal Church

Easter 3B: 1 John 3:1-7

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My fondest memories of the Presbyterian Church of my childhood center on baptism.  I remember the pastor holding the newly baptized infant in his arms and walking down the center of the aisle of the church. As he walked he would say, “See what love the Father has for the child that we should be called children of God. And so we are.”[1]  In that moment, looking at this new creation, it was impossible not to believe those words.  It didn’t matter if the baby was crying or laughing, sleeping or drooling, it was so obvious that God loved that child.

A couple of days ago, I was blessed by the opportunity to hold in my arms the newest member of St. Mark’s – Samuel Wade Najem born on Wednesday, April 18^th.  At 9 pounds, 8 ounces and 23 inches I could look into his face and hear those words again and again, “See what love the Father has for the child.”  God’s love poured out, God’s abundant grace shared with the world, shared with baby Samuel.

But as I drove home from the hospital, I began to wonder, “When do we lose that certainty?”  I know God’s love of Samuel is true. I know it is true of his brothers, David and Joseph, of Neena and Leela, of Patrick, of Addison, of Peyton, of every child gathered here this morning. 

At some point along our life’s journey, we are all taught and most of us learn that it is better to give than to receive. And while this adage has important practical implications and is, in many situations, very good advice, I wonder if in accepting it, we have lost sight of an ancillary truth: that those who do not experience what it is to be loved unconditionally, impair their own capacity for loving others completely.  In other words, our ability to give love and to give love to others out of an abundance of love becomes incapacitated by our rejection of or our inability to believe in God’s unconditional love for us.

As infants, it is easy to see the love a parent has for a child – the baby depends on the parents for everything. And, when that love is tragically absent, the family often becomes the focus of the news cycle as stories of neglect and abandonment garner attention.  But as we mature, our parents – as loving as they may be – are not God and are, therefore, not capable of perfect love. We experience times of disappointment and we begin to adapt, learning early on to make attempts at “earning” love.  What I’m trying to describe here is not some pathological condition but rather a way in which I’ve been exploring the challenge we face as adults to accept the fact -  the capital ‘T’ Truth - that God loves us unconditionally.

By the time most of us reach adulthood, we have come to learn what sorts of behaviors lead to positive reward.  Our culture adds to the lessons of childhood teaching us that we must work hard to get ahead – in other words, that hard work pays off – that we can earn approval from others – that we can earn love? And perhaps the passage from the first letter of John doesn’t help either. For immediately after reminding us of God's love for us, comes this:

“Everyone who commits sin is guilty of lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. You know that he [Jesus] was revealed to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who abides in him sins; no one who sins has either seen him or known him. Little children, let no one deceive you. Everyone who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous.”[2]

Tempting as it may be to read into this that doing the right thing or things means God will love us – that is, that we can and must earn God’s love – what the author seems to be saying is actually the opposite: that those who fully accept God’s love – God’s abundant gift of grace - will no longer sin, God’s love will change them.  “Beloved, we are God’s children now.”[3] Accept the Good News.

But some of us, even those who dedicate our life-work to a journey of faithfulness, cannot feel God within us, and we feel frustrated. Does any of this ring true for you: You pray for hours each day and then continue to lash out at those around you; you seek out spiritual masters – in the form of therapists, self-help books, yogis, or nutritionists – and try to make that person into God; you develop a spiritual practice, a discipline, but stay at arm’s length from where that practice might lead you, remaining disconnected from the spirit within and around you. So what hope can we find? Where might we regain this capacity to accept God’s loving embrace?

The answer, I believe, lies in the children around us.  It is no mistake that Scripture is filled with images of God as parent and of God’s people as children.  We need to be like children in order to fully accept God’s loving embrace. Children understand – and more importantly, accept – love as part of the way things are and the way things ought to be. A list of quotes attributed to children has been floating around the internet for several years now. The sentiments they express are quite valuable to us grown-ups. Here is just a selection:

·        Rebecca (age 8): “When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn’t bend over and paint her toenails anymore. So my grandfather does it for her all the time, even when his hands go arthritis too. That’s love.”

·        Billy (age 4): “When someone loves you, the way they way your name is different. You just know that your name is safe in their mouth.”

·        Karl (age 5): “Love is when a girl puts on perfume and a boy puts on shaving cologne and they go out and smell each other.”

·        Danny (age 7): “Love is when my mummy makes coffee for my daddy and she takes a sip before giving it to him, to make sure the taste is OK.”

·        Emily (age 8): “Love is when you kiss all the time. Then when you get tired of kissing, you still want to be together and you talk more.”

·        Bobby (age 7): “Love is what’s in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen.”

·        Tommy (age 6): “Love is like a little old woman and a little old man who are still friends even after they know each other so well.”

·        Cindy (age 8): “During my piano recital, I was on a stage and I was scared. I looked at all the people watching me and saw my daddy waving and smiling. He was the only one doing that. I wasn’t scared anymore.”

·        Mary Ann (age 4): “Love is when your puppy licks your face even after you left him alone all day.”

·        Jessica (age 8): “You really shouldn’t say ‘I love you’ unless you mean it. But if you mean it, you should say it a lot. People forget.”[4]

For those of you who entered the sanctuary through the doors behind you, you walked past the baptismal font. Some of you may even have stopped and dipped your fingers into the bowl, reminding yourself of your baptism. The placement of the font at the entrance to the church serves as a reminder of the grace and love of God through Jesus Christ, reminds us that while we may come from a variety of places – physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually – when we gather here to worship we do so as a part of Christ’s body.

I encourage you to walk past the font whenever you come to worship here – dip your fingers into the water, even splash around a bit if you’d like.  And when you do, remember your baptism and remember these words, “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.”[5]  We should say it a lot because, as Jessica reminds us, people forget.

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[1] Paraphrase of 1 John 3:1.

[2] 1 John 3:4-7 (NRSV).

[3] 1 John 3:2a (NRSV).

[4] B.A. Robinson, Compiler, “Love as perceived by some children 4 to 8 years of age,” Religious Tolerance: Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance, (first published here,  February 2009), accessed online on April 21, 2012.

[5] 1 John 3:1 (NRSV).

Nothing Can Stop Jesus

Preached at
St. Mark’s Episcopal Church
Easter 2B:  John 20:19-31

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Since the beginning of the Scientific Revolution our world has become more and more invested in concrete, reliable facts. “Prove it to me!” has become an unspoken mantra in the modern world. Nearly a decade ago, scientists completed the Human Genome Project and it seemed as if there was no limit to what we could know and understand. Certainly, we had come much closer to a complete understanding of ourselves – and once we’ve completely understood ourselves, how long would it be before we completely understood our planet, and, for that matter, the entire universe!  Prove it – and it’s real!

It is not a huge leap to shift from this euphoric excitement about the power of scientific knowledge to its ancillary – our reticence to accept as real those things which we cannot see or which we cannot explain. So, for many of us, belief in God has become, on the one hand, a slightly embarrassing characteristic which we try not to share too openly with colleagues or classmates for fear that might find us quaint or uninformed or, on the other hand, a painful moment of realization when we first hear ourselves say, in one form or another, “dear God, help my unbelief!”  The expression “doubting Thomas” is, ironically, not perceived in our culture as a compliment; and yet, in light of our scientific worldview most of us find ourselves thrust into that very role. Show me the evidence! Let’s see some hard facts. In the absence of tangible evidence – a pie-chart or a graph, at the very least – how can I possibly be expected to believe?

Clergy are not exempt from this anxiety.  My own bookshelf reveals my ongoing consideration of the issue:  Sam Harris’ The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason; Huston Smith’s Why Religion Matters: The Fate of the Human Spirit in an Age of Disbelief; Michael Shermer’s How We Believe: Science, Skepticism, and the Search for God; A. N. Wilson’s God’s Funeral; and Loyal Rue’s Religion is not about God: How Spiritual Traditions Nurture our Biological Nature and What to Expect when they Fail. For an awful lot of us religious folk – people like you and like me – the doubt of Thomas which we heard about in this morning’s gospel seems very real indeed. And yet here we are.  In God’s Funeral, Wilson writes, it is “remarkable that the intelligent human mind, knowing all it knows about the arguments against God’s existence, should continue to practice religious observances; to be led, on some instinctual level, to punctuate the day with allah akhbar, with O God make speed to save us, with Glory be to the Father.” [1] And yet, here we are.

Here we are and the gospel for today tells the story of the disciples gathering in the evening “on that day” – the very same day in which they have discovered the empty tomb and heard of Mary’s encounter with the risen Jesus – “and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.” Until they have seen the physical evidence – the very same mark of the nails in his hands and the hole in his side that Thomas later demands to see and touch – until then, the disciples do not believe. They did not believe when they saw the empty tomb. They did not believe when Mary reported what the Lord said to her. And they were afraid, as afraid as they were on the day Jesus was put to death. Here it is three days since Jesus’ crucifixion and the disciples have barricaded themselves in a room – they have locked the door “for fear of the Jews”! Their fear has paralyzed them and has closed their hearts to the truth. Each of them needed proof, some tangible evidence that Jesus was, in fact, raised from the dead. They needed to see him with their own eyes. And it is into this fear and this disbelief that Jesus comes to reassure them, to restore their faith, and to remind them of the work they have yet to do. Despite the locked door, Jesus entered the room, stood with his disciples, and greeted them: “Peace be with you.” Though the disciples were afraid and wanting to protect themselves, Jesus came in, passing through the locked door, breaking down the physical boundary. No boundaries – not even our doubts - can stop Jesus from being with us. Frederick Buechner writes that the story of Easter, unlike the story of Christmas,

“is not a major production at all, and the minor attractions we have created around it – the bunnies and baskets and bonnets, the dyed eggs – have so little to do with what it’s all about that they neither add much nor subtract much. It’s not really even much of a story when you come right down to it, and that is of course the power of it. It doesn’t have the ring of great drama. It has the ring of truth. If the Gospel writers had wanted to tell it in a way to convince the world that Jesus indeed rose from the dead , they would presumably have done it with all the skill and fanfare they could muster. Here there is no skill, no fanfare. They seem to be telling it simply the way it was. The narrative is as fragmented, shadowy, incomplete as life itself. When it comes to just what happened, there can be no certainty. That something unimaginable happened, there can be no doubt.

The symbol of Easter is the empty tomb. You can’t depict or domesticate emptiness. You can’t make it into pageants and string it with lights. It doesn’t move people to give presents to each other or sing old songs. It ebbs and flows all around us, the Eastertide.”[2]

I give thanks for the lack of skill in telling the story.  I give thanks for the confusion of that first Easter morning. I give thanks that the gospel writers didn’t sit down together and work out all the details to make sure there were no conflicting accounts.  I give thanks for the earthquake that Matthew adds to his account of that day – as if he understood that the story was too ridiculous to believe in the first place.  I give thanks for Thomas who dared utter what the rest of them must have been thinking, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” And I give thanks that this denying, betraying, deceitful and doubting group of disciples was deemed acceptable by Christ.  I give thanks because that gives me just enough hope, just enough faith to believe that you and I might also be acceptable through him, that Jesus will break down the barriers of our doubts and will restore us for the work we have yet to do.  “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

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[1] A. N. Wilson, God’s Funeral, (New York: Norton, 1999), p. 336.

[2] Frederick Buechner, “Easter,” Whistling in the Dark: A Doubter’s Dictionary, (San Francisco: Harper, 1988), 45-6.

Practice Resurrection

Sermon Preached Easter 2012
St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Evanston

The resurrection of Jesus which we celebrate [on this holiest of nights] is a promise which begins to find its fulfillment in the here and now. The promise of the resurrection – as our Easter shouts of Alleluia proclaim – is that our new life in Christ has already begun! In the waters of baptism, “we are buried with Christ in his death” and “by it we share in his resurrection” – already, now, in this moment! This is not just a future hope, a future promise, but a new life today! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!

In Nora Gallagher’s spiritual autobiography, Practicing Resurrection, she reflects on the meaning of resurrection:

“When I think about the resurrection now, I don’t only think about what happened to Jesus. I think about what happened to his disciples. Something happened to them, too . . . it was not only what they saw when they saw Jesus, or how they saw it, but what was set free in them.”[1]

She continues,

“If there is some kind of life after death, what if it’s not a life exclusively for the dead? What if it’s a life available to us all . . . something the living can participate in, too? . . . . What if the resurrection is not about the appearances of Jesus alone but also about what those appearances pointed to, what they asked? And it is finally what we do with [those appearances] that matters – make them into superstitions or use them as stepping stones to new life. We have to practice resurrection.”[2]

Practicing resurrection.  Many are familiar with the expression practice what you preach. By this, I suppose we are being encouraged to live lives of integrity and authenticity, to not engage in behaviors which are contrary to the Gospel we preach. And while we all fall short of this noble goal at least some of the time and still others among us fall short much of the time, we can all agree that it is, both in principle and in practice, a very good idea.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the difference between believing in God and living life rooted in our belief in God. I’m struck by the relative ease with which we say the words “I believe” – so easy, in fact, that I wonder at times if the words have lost their legs. Just now, for example, we have renewed our baptismal vows. The baptismal covenant consists of eight questions. The first three are questions of belief: “Do you believe in God the Father?”, “Do you believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God?”, “Do you believe in the Holy Spirit?” But, the remaining questions take on a completely different tone. They ask us about our intentions and about our actions: “Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers?”, “Will you persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?”, “Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?”, “Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?”, “Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?” Perhaps we could be more economical with our language if we simply asked, “Will you practice what you preach?” Or, “Will you practice that which you say you believe?”  Because in the renewal of baptismal vows, we are promising to give legs to our beliefs; we are promising to make our faith an action verb.

C. S. Lewis in one of his classics, Mere Christianity, says that “[t]he main thing we learn from a serious attempt to practice the Christian virtues. . .” [and, for the sake of argument, I would like to add “practicing resurrection” to that list of virtues?] – [t]he main thing we learn . . . is that we fail.” C. S. Lewis continues,

“If there was any idea that God had set us a sort of exam and that we might get good marks by deserving them, that has to be wiped out. If there was any idea of a sort of bargain – any idea that we could perform our side of the contract and thus put God in our debts so that it was up to Him, in mere justice, to perform His side – that has to be wiped out.”[3]

So, let’s retrace our steps. In the baptismal covenant we are asked to state our beliefs. We are then asked to express our willingness to let those beliefs guide our actions in certain ways – through the prayers, through acts of social justice, and so forth. And now, we read in C. S. Lewis – and, by the way, Paul says the same thing in Scripture –we cannot do the very things we intend to do. And so, despite knowing that it is a good thing to practice what we preach – or to practice what we believe - we all fall short of this noble goal at least some of the time and still others among us fall short much of the time.

And if it were not for the resurrection of Christ, my brothers and sisters, we should all leave here very depressed indeed because one can only fall short of the goal so many times before one must simply give up – exhausted, defeated, and alone. But this is not the final word, my friends. Because there is resurrection and it is here and it is now and it is through the resurrection that we can, in the words of C. S. Lewis, “turn to God and say, ‘You must do this. I can’t.’”[4] We can turn to God and say, “It is too much for me, I cannot do it anymore. I hand it to you.” And God can and God will and God does.

Christ offers his life that we might have life. And in offering his life, he regains his life through the resurrection. And the resurrection of Christ frees us all. Because of the resurrection we are “cleansed from sin and born again” to “continue for ever in the risen life of Jesus Christ our Savior.”

We are freed to practice resurrection - a resurrection that begins to find fulfillment in the here and now – a resurrection that proclaims our new life in Christ has already begun – already, now, in this moment! This is not a future hope, a future promise, but a new life today – a new life firmly rooted in our belief in God! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! Practice resurrection . . . what will be set free in you this night/day?

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[1] Nora Gallagher, Practicing Resurrection: A Memoir of Work, Doubt, Discernment, and Moments of Grace, (Knopf: New York, 2003), p. 206.

[2] Ibid., 207.

[3] C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, (Simon & Schuster: New York, 1980), p. 126.

[4] Ibid., 129.