Sermons

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Several years ago I attended a lecture given by the philosopher Daniel Dennett. Dennett, who focuses on the philosophical implications of evolutionary biology and cognitive science, was promoting his new book, titled Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. Dennett is considered a part of the contemporary movement known as “the new atheism” along with the likes of Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and the late Christopher Hitchens. You’ve likely seen (or perhaps even read) some of this group’s more popular books, The God Delusion and God Is Not Good being the most famous.

Anyway, in his lecture, Dennett presented an example from biology as an analogy for humanity’s religious impulse. Apparently, ants are susceptible to a kind of brain parasite called the lancet fluke. The fluke burrows its way into the ant’s brain and gives its host an irrational compulsion to climb up to the top of a blade of grass. As the ant approaches the top, having been strangely compelled to climb toward the sun, it is unceremoniously consumed by a passing cow, and the lancet fluke finds its final host as the ant is digested.

This, Dennett claimed, is like religion. He goes further than saying that religion is a beneficial evolutionary adaptation, a function of socio-biology. That idea’s been around a long time, and it can even be reconciled with a faith perspective (that is, a believer could hold this view and still be a believer) if approached with more reflection than is possible within the scope of a seven minute sermon. Dennett actually claims something far more radical than this. He claims that religion is a detriment to evolutionary fitness, that it’s like a parasite that makes us ascend to wherever we have convinced ourselves we’ll find God—up the blade of grass to the sun—only to be swallowed up: perhaps a fitting punishment for falling prey to such an insidious delusion.

As people of faith, we will, no doubt, disagree with Dennett’s assessment. Even so, I think it’s important that we recognize that his estimation of religion is by no means his alone. There are smart people out there who have given a lot of thought to the nature of faith and have determined that religious faith is inherently harmful. The new atheists have been successful in selling their books, Bill Maher’s controversial anti-Christian propaganda piece Religulous is the one of the highest grossing documentary film of all time despite being far less thoughtful or internally consistent as other critiques of religion, and according to Pew Research the proportion of atheists (not agnostics, atheists) in the U.S. Nearly doubled, from 1.6% to 3.1% between 2007 and 2014. That’s the most recent data I could find this week in preparing this sermon. Who knows how things stand now, but if we’re following the trends set by other Western nations it’s likely larger.

“For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing,” says St. Paul, “but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” We must recognize that that which gives our lives meaning is reckoned foolish by much of the world, and that the proper response to this reality is not to feel threatened. Most of us would like to be considered intelligent, but to what lengths will we go to be reckoned wise by the world’s standards, especially when our faith may be considered by some to be a handicap?

I had a couple of friends in college who ended up working at the National Institutes of Health, so I followed with some interest when a few years ago there was a bit of a flap over President Obama’s appointment of Francis Collins as director of the NIH. The problem, as it turned out, was Collins’ public affirmation of his Christian faith. He is by no means a radical or a fundamentalist, just your run-of-the-mill committed Christian person, but, as an article in the New York Times put it “many scientists regard outspoken religious commitment as a sign of mild dementia”. Now, I suspect the article was probably a bit hyperbolic, but there is at least a significant part of the population who cannot see a committed Christian as being potentially intelligent enough to be a leader in the scientific field. There are plenty of great scientific minds out there who would take issue with this assessment, but there you have it. It seems to me that the charge of anti-intellectualism which many (myself included) sometimes throw in the direction of fundamentalist Christians and Muslims can just as easily be used against those who thoughtlessly and uncritically reject religious claims without endeavoring to appreciate the rationale used by circumspect believers in reaching their own conclusions, but then, I do have a vested interest in that proposition.

What it all comes down to, as far as I can tell, is the limited nature of the world’s definition of knowledge. In the study of epistemology—that is, the study of how we know what we know—the prevailing consensus is that reason and observation are the only two means available to the human mind for acquiring knowledge. With the exception of those who believe theological truths can be proved by either of these means or a combination of them (an argument I’d be willing to entertain but which has yet to be presented to me in a convincing manner) most Christians will protest that truths about God can be known just as fully by other means, namely by faith. I wrote a rather dense newsletter article about this several months ago to which I would refer you, but now it should suffice to say that I believe faith is not merely a set of propositions to which we give our assent for the heck of it, but is itself a tool used for acquiring knowledge (that it serves an epistemic function parallel to reason and observation). Paul calls this means of knowledge a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles. In our context, faith can be a stumbling block to the logician and folly to the scientist, “but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks (to logicians and scientists and the simple alike), Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”

I said earlier that we cannot be threatened by the growing derision with which our faith is held. We cannot be threatened by the Daniel Dennetts and Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens of the world (and I surely hope none of us feels threatened by the Bill Maher’s of the world) because we know that we are justified by the true power and wisdom of God. We are promised that though we may not be wise by their standards, our folly, our absolutely silly insistence that we can know that which we cannot see, will shame the wisdom of the wise.

So, let’s revel in our folly. Let’s be fools for Christ. Instead of being threatened by those the world sees as wise, let’s embrace the fact that what we are can seem to be nuts. Let’s get over the self-consciousness, the embarrassment we can feel when our commitment to Christ is seen as a bit odd in some of the circles in which we run. Embrace that oddness. Christ never said the Christian path would be respectable; he said it was the way of life and joy and peace. I don’t know about you, but I’ll take life and joy and peace over respectability any day.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

I’ve read a great deal in the news and heard a lot on the radio lately about our national conversation regarding unity amidst the radically divergent worldviews which led to a controversial election and its aftermath. One thing I keep hearing is that the peaceful transfer of power is an inviolable attribute of the American system, and I’m always surprised that nobody seems to have heard about the election of 1860 and the unpleasantness that followed it. Anyway a quick look at my facebook feed would cause one to doubt that a national conversation about unity is taking place. It’s hard to avoid awkward situations in which somebody assumes everybody else agrees with them regarding the issues du’jour when that’s anything but the case.

Friday I had one of those moments from which I was quite literally incapable of extricating myself. I was donating blood and somebody decided that it was a great idea to project the inauguration on the screens of the parish hall in which the blood drive was taking place (I think this stands as an excellent argument against erecting screens and installing sound equipment anywhere on a church campus, but that’s another matter entirely). Anyway, there was one volunteer at this drive who was clearly into it. She applauded at various points. My phlebotomist was clearly on the other side of the political divide, and despite his maintaining a professional affect, I could tell he was getting a bit irritated. Meanwhile, I was having plasma and saline pumped back into my body. I was thus saved by focusing on the weird taste in my throat and tingling lips that the procedure always causes me instead of on the air of political division in the room.

I’m always reminded during moments like this of both the church’s unique potential (indeed, our unique responsibility) to bring about unity in the face of division as well as our historic inability to do so. We are today in the midst of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity while we are, at the same time, in the 500th anniversary year of the Protestant Reformation which, as necessary as it may have been insofar as it responded to real abuses and breaches of trust within the Body of Christ, nevertheless broke that Body apart so severely that Western Christendom remains in a state of schism. I’ve been asked before why we don’t celebrate Reformation Sunday, like some churches within Protestantism. It’s not because the Reformation was unnecessary. I remain ambivalent about that. It’s because that which breaks the people of God apart, the spirit of division is Satan himself and the forces which keep us apart are satanic. I know that’s a name and a concept I don’t ordinarily trot out. Maybe it’s because the stakes are so high in this era seemingly defined by division. Or, maybe it’s because Annie and I just rented and watched the new Ouija movie the other night (which I jokingly told her I was going to make required viewing for the Confirmation class which I’m starting in a few weeks). In any event, creating and encouraging division is quite literally diabolical.

Consider our current reality in light of the situation we see outlined in today’s epistle reading. The Apostle Paul writes to the Christians in Corinth, whose congregation is fraught with controversy and division. The Corinthians were choosing up sides, demanding that their spiritual leader and their ethos be made the norm. “I belong to Paul!” “I belong to Apollos!” “I belong to Cephas!” Why all of this division? If God speaks to us, as we are promised, in a clear, distinct, discernible voice shouldn’t we be able to avoid such divisions in the Church? Should not the same Lord who spoke so clearly to those first disciples beside the Syrian sea, call to us, too, and bring us togather. Were these early Christians in Corinth deaf to the voice of God by their own volition? Are we still?

Well, let’s take a step back, and remember how we got here; first let’s recognize the difference between disagreement and division. It is perfectly normal and acceptable that once I have devoted a great deal of analytic thought and sincere prayer and meditation in the working out of some belief, I have every right to claim that I believe my opinion to be correct. Yet, perhaps, this belief of mine which I now go round purporting as truth may be diametrically opposed to your belief. You have spent just as much time analyzing the ins and outs of the matter, you have spent just as much time in prayer and meditation, and you believe your opinion to be more correct than mine (indeed, you, too, believe that your opinion is quite properly “true”). So far none of this is very controversial.

Sometimes these differences, however, lead to fractures in the church like that we read about in the epistle. For us, though, these fractures are often more insidious. There are certainly arguments taking place in the church today which seem to pose the threat of literal schism, but what I mean to discuss is more the growth of a particular mindset.

There is sometimes a tendency, and this is a tendency to which I am personally disposed, to define our position in the church, first along sectarian and ideological lines, and secondly, and sometimes then only with a great deal of prodding, in terms of our baptism and our shared life with all people through Christ. In other words, we get how we prioritize our connection to Christ’s Church backwards.

That is, we are often quite ready to proclaim that we are active members of Trinity Parish in the Diocese of Ohio, in the Episcopal Church, USA (or that we are progressive Christians or traditional Christians or high-church or low-church). That’s how we define our Christianity, but we fail to first and foremost allow our Christianity to define everything else because we’re uncomfortable with whose company it puts us into. Don’t get me wrong- it is good and proper for one to strongly identify with his or her (lower case ‘c’) church or party within the church; the trick is to do so without falling victim to an ugly form of sectarianism which would claim that a part is greater than the whole (that is, the capital ‘C’ Church).

All of this is to say that our situation is much more like that of the Corinthians than we might like. We cannot, in fact, always expect God to speak to us in easily discernible ways, and this will necessarily lead to some difference among us Christians. We must, nonetheless, struggle to hear the still, small voice of God in our hearts, realizing that others will hear or interpret or act on the same voice in very different ways. Once we think we’ve heard this voice, that is once we believe we have discerned the will of God in our lives, we must also be very careful not to speak as though we know for absolute certain that we have the authority of Almighty God on our side unless we’re willing to stake our lives on it, remembering that these differences exist.

Failing to do so can have dire consequences. For example, so many leaders in history have made the mistake of claiming, and perhaps sincerely believing, that God has sanctioned a war and, indeed, fights on their side. A glance at any history text book will reveal countless examples of such rhetoric suggesting that God fights on both sides of wars- from the Hundred Years War, between the Christian kingdoms of France and England, to today’s Israel-Palestinian conflict. Such actions have led to an increased skepticism about religion and religiosity among countless millions of people to this day. The point is that we must not claim a monopoly on God, even when we believe our cause is righteous.

Let me give a personal example. I might go into confessional mode in the pulpit more than you’re comfortable with, so I apologize, but it’s still good for a priest to put some of his foibles out there so people know they’re not alone. There was some controversy over the National Cathedral Choir’s participation in the inauguration events over the weekend. I could understand the opponents’ misgivings (and I went back and forth about it in my own mind, as often happens for me at that uncomfortable intersection of church and state) but the decision didn’t particularly bother me because whatever the “right” decision in that instance might have been, I believe the decision was made faithfully and prayerfully. The one thing that bothered me personally was that at the pre-inauguration service at St. John’s, Lafayette Square somebody with beliefs well outside the pail of what I happen to believe to be the bounds of Christian orthodoxy and the demands of Christian charity was permitted to preach at a pulpit in an Episcopal Church. Now, the preacher happened to be a Southern Baptist from Dallas, but he could have been a Unitarian Universalist from Boston and I’d have been irritated, so it’s not a conservative/liberal thing. The point is, it elicited in me a feeling of anger and defensiveness. Nobody ever made me the Grand Episcopalian Inquisitor (indeed, there are reasons no such role exists) but there you have it.

But now, 48 hours after the fact, I have to ask myself “to what end am I letting this bother me so much?” Were I the rector of St. John’s, Lafayette Square I wouldn’t have made the decision, and if (God forbid) I were the bishop of Washington, there might be an uncomfortable conversation happening tomorrow. But I’m not, and there’s exactly one reason why it’s still be bothering me so much. I don’t want to be in the Body of Christ along with that Baptist preacher from Texas. I think I’m better or something; my Episcopalian chauvinism is showing.

That, my friends, is my sin. It’s the power of the evil one saying, you don’t need that member, tear it off. He was baptized by Apollos while I belong to Cephas. And the worst thing about it, is that even when I start to pray about it, even when I set out to make the most self-abnegating sorts of prayers about it, I keep coming back to what I want out of it. Lord change his heart. No, Lord, change my heart, so I can put up with such foolishness. Is that second one any better?

It seems to me that the best thing we can do when we see the seeds of division have been sewn between ourselves and a brother or sister – whether it’s because of a different view of some religious claim or politics or just conflicting personalities – is to maintain a holy silence, to listen for what God might be saying to us in the quietness of our hearts. One of the things I love about our Taizé service here every month is that it includes a period of silence. You’ll read in my February newsletter column that I find silent, contemplative prayer especially necessary at this point in my life precisely because I find it to be so challenging. It’s important, because it has nothing to do with me trying to change God’s mind or make somebody else more like me or even my trying to understand somebody else (which itself has just a twinge of selfishness, because it assumes that I need to be able to understand them). Maybe whatever needs to happen in that relationship is better known to God than it is to me, and I just need to be quiet.

There’s a story I like about a Fourth Century church leader named Theophilus. Theophilus was an Archbishop in Alexandria when he had a dispute in his Diocese and traveled to the desert to seek the sage advice of the hermit Abba Pambo. Upon reaching Abba Pambo’s hermitage, the Archbishop was greeted warmly by the brethren, yet Abba Pambo said nothing. The other monks left, leaving Theophilus and Pambo alone, and still Abba Pambo said nothing. After a long while, the Archbishop broke the silence: “Father, say something to me that I might be edified.” Abba Pambo replied “If you are not edified by my silence, you will not be edified by my speech.” Theophilus needed more than sage advice. He needed to quiet down and open himself up to what God was trying to tell him.

And, if we glean nothing else from silent contemplation, even if we are not yet ready or able to hear the still, small voice of God, we can find a greater comfort. We can take comfort that despite our inability to comprehend the mind of God, God still knows us completely. And then, even when we cannot understand why our divisions remain unhealed, we can rest in the heart of the one who knows no division and find in that place the perfect Communion which for all our pettiness and petulance and peevishness cannot permit the dividing walls we’ve constructed to stand. May that spiritual communion then become manifest in our words, in our actions, in our relationships that all our divisions may cease and that Christ may be all in all.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

“Come and see.” This is the invitation Christ gives to his first disciples in today’s Gospel reading, and I suspect these disciples were surprised by his answer to their apparently banal question. It seems a rather dull, ordinary kind of question they ask: where are you staying? It’s the sort of question we might use to initiate a polite conversation. It’s a dull question to which we might expect an equally dull answer. Were I asked “where are you staying?” I’d have to respond “next door in the rectory” and we might have a brief, rather dull conversation about it, but that would probably be the end of it.

“Where are you staying” has a plain meaning, and this might have been the level on which Andrew and the Beloved Disciple were asking it. The question can also be taken to be asking something much more profound, though.
You see, the word translated as “staying” in the diciples’ question is found elsewhere in John’s Gospel, though our modern translations choose different English words at different points. Most relevant to the passage in question are two such verses in John.
First, John 14:10:

“Do you not believe,” Jesus asks his disciples, “that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells (stays) in me does his works.”

Whether Jesus dwells in his own home, or a friend’s place, or the Holiday Inn isn’t the point. The important thing is that Jesus dwells (stays) with his Father and the Father dwells in him.
Then, from earlier in the first chapter of John, a verse which will probably be familiar to you:

“And the Word became flesh and lived [or stayed, or dwelt] among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.” (1:14)

While Jesus, being the Eternal Word of God, lived on high he has come to stay among us. So, the question, “where are you staying?” in fact gets to the heart of Jesus’ identity. The question leaves an opening for Jesus to disclose the uniqueness of his relationship to God the Father, the union between God and humanity which were mysteriously held together in his very person through the hypostatic union.

Now, Jesus could have answered the disciples’ question with a theological treatise. “I am God from God,” he could have said, “Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten not made, of one being with the Father. Through me all things were made.” I suppose the first four centuries of church history, in which the Fathers endlessly debated how to define Jesus’ identity, would have been much simpler, if significantly duller, if Jesus had made it this plain.
This, however, was not his answer. Instead, he responded to the disciples’ question with an invitation: come and see. The theological reflection of the Church is very important, but the starting point is a great deal less cerebral. It is simply to keep one’s eyes open for the presence of God with us; to follow where he will lead us, and to behold his glory- “the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth”.

We must have eyes to see, as it were, but where is it that we—who do not have the benefit the disciples had of seeing Jesus during his earthly life—where do we look for the Son of the Most High? I go back to one of my favorite prayers for the answer. It’s a prayer that is traditionally said after the Eucharist, and it goes like this:

“Blessed, praised, worshipped, hallowed, and adored be our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ—on his throne of glory in heaven, in the most precious sacrament of the altar, and in the hearts of his faithful people.”

Christ has indeed ascended into heaven, and he has not yet returned. But he is still spiritually present in our hearts and he is still truly present in the Sacrifice of the Mass. So long as we have the eyes to see, so long as we are open to being in the presence of God, we may still see him in this Church, in ourselves, and in our brothers and sisters in Christ. And it is in moments when our perception of the presence of God with us is most clear, fleeting as these moments may be, that we gain strength and renewal and move toward maturity in the faith.

There’s a catch, though. When in the Gospels people “come and see”, when they get a glimpse of the God who had come among them, they cannot stay in God’s presence by themselves forever. Rather, they are sent out to make the same invitation Christ made to them. Andrew and the other disciple stayed with Jesus that day, the Gospel tells us, but then they left and Andrew found his brother Simon and brought him to Jesus.

Later in the chapter, Jesus calls Philip to follow him and Philip goes straightaway to his friend Nathanael. Nathanael questions Philip’s wisdom in following this Jesus and shows a bit of xenophobia, asking “can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip’s response is direct. “Come and see.” Likewise, in the fourth chapter of John, a woman that Jesus meets at a well is convinced that he is the Messiah, and she goes into a village and proclaims to all the people, “come and see a man who has told me everything I have ever done!”

All of this is to suggest that the proper response to recognizing Jesus as Lord, to seeing him, is to go out and invite others into God’s presence. This doesn’t mean being overbearing or manipulative or obnoxious. It does, however, mean that we have an obligation to represent Christ to the world by our words and our deeds, and (when appropriate) to simply and lovingly extend the invitation to “come and see”. This is why one of the postcommunion prayers in the prayerbook asks God “to send us out to do the work [He has] given us to do, to love and serve [Him] as faithful witnesses of Christ our Lord.” And whenever we are tired or perplexed or hungry for spiritual nourishment, we come back again into presence of God who dwells in the sacrament and in the assembly of His people that we may once again “go in peace to love and serve the Lord.”

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.