AUDIOVERSION: http://www.episcopalmarlboro.org/Uploads/20071125ThisWeeksSermon.mov
(Unfortunately, there are a few "skips" in the recording. Don't know why, yet.)
“A reading from the Book of Chinook.”
Feast of Christ the King, November 25, 2007
As most of you already know…
I grew up in the Pacific Northwest…
in Seattle.
I spent many summers with my grandmother.
She lived on what is called “Hood Canal”…
a long…
narrow…
fjordlike inlet of Puget Sound.
It’s a little community that looks across the salty water toward the Olympic Mountain range…
snow-capped…
even in summer.
Salmon-fishing was a big deal there.
Still is.
Not commercial fishing…
but fishing for sport…
and for huge banquets.
There are about as many different kinds of salmon in those waters as there are varieties of fir trees in the State of Washington.
Cherry salmon…
Chump salmon…
Pink salmon…
Sockeyes, Steelheads, Humpbacks, and Silvers…
King salmon…
Coho salmon…
Chinook salmon.
They’re spectacularly beautiful…
streamlined…
determined animals.
Salmon are ana’-dro-mous…
a word that means they’re born in fresh water…
yet they live out their lives in the salty oceans.
Finally…
they return to their fresh-water origins…
to give birth…
and then…
almost always…
to die.
A few years ago…
during a visit to Seattle…
I remember seeing salmon working their way up a fish ladder…
working their way up from their salty world into a fresh-water world.
I stood right next to them…
with just a sheet of glass between me and them…
watching them as they obediently worked their way up…
step by step…
toward their eventual demise.
Holy salmon!
David James Duncan…
in a little book called God Laughs and Plays
writes about salmon.
He thinks that salmon should be considered “holy.”
He calls wild salmon…
“divine gifts created in an unending Beginning, a product less of evolution than of divine love.”
He compares the “holiness” of salmon with the kind of urgency and zeal associated with Old Testament prophets.
He writes about asking a friend…
a friend who’s Roman Catholic…
he writes about asking a friend if the friend might be well enough connected in Rome to get these innovative views on salmon’s holiness published in some obscure corner of the Bible.
The books of the Bible could read like this…
he suggested:
Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Samuel, 1st and 2nd Kings, Coho.
Or maybe Nahum, Habakkuk, Humpback, Zephaniah.
Or Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Song of Salmon!
His friend suggested that they’d already missed the deadline for submitting new writings for the biblical canon.
If Rome can saint new saints…
David James Duncan suggested…
they ought to be able to add a book to the Bible.
David offered to write it for nothing.
He promised to be inspired.
He offered to wear a crimson beanie while writing it.
“Think of it…
he said…
a Book of Chinook in the Holy Bible!
Salmon as a metaphor for the sacrifice of Christ
David James Duncan is a huge fan of the gospels.
He suggests that when young salmon feed their bodies to kingfishers and otters and eagles…
and their larger oceangoing bodies to seals…
sea lions…
and orca whales…
and when they feed their other magnificent…
sexually driven…
returned-to-the-fresh-water bodies to bears and Indian tribes and sport fishers and fly fishers…
and when they feed even their spawned-out bodies to sword ferns…
and salmon berries and cedar trees…
and mosses and wild flowers…
they have served us…
from one end of their lives to the other…
as a kind of living gospel themselves.
When a salmon’s nitrogen-rich body feeds trees and flowers…
it is…
literally…
“considering the lilies of the field.”
When its flesh feeds even the most intractable salmon haters among us…
they are literally “loving their enemies and doing good to those who hate them.”
All species of salmon have forever climbed our rivers like the heroes of a wondrous Sunday sermon…
nailing their shining bodies to lonely beds of gravel…
not for anything they stand to gain…
just for that tiny silver offspring…
and so 300 salmon-eating species of flora and fauna might live and thrive.
It’s the story of Jesus
In some ways…
it’s the story of Jesus…
arriving from the “fresh-water” amniotic world of his mother’s womb.
It’s the story of Jesus…
living out his life in a salty ocean of friendships and confrontations…
threats and betrayal…
spiritual awakening and self-sacrifice.
It’s the story of Jesus…
loving his enemies and doing good to those who hated him…
working his way from our salty world…
fish ladder step by step…
toward the fresh water from which he came…
until he was eventually nailed to a cross…
patiently…
without complaining.
It’s the story of Jesus…
serving us from one end of his life to the other…
until his eventual demise…
accepting his fate…
a living gospel.
They mocked him.
They labeled him “the king of the Jews.”
And then he returned from the salty brine of this world to the Warmth and Oneness and Truth and Meaning from which he came.
He did it all not for anything he stood to gain.
It’s how we’re called to live out our lives as well.
Prayer
Let us pray.
Eternal God…
the Great Mystery that is outside everything and yet at the same time inside….
keep alive in each one of us the search for a faith that is real…
a faith that helps us to live happier lives…
a faith that gives us a fuller meaning to life and the events of life.
Bring us to know the goodness that flows from the heart of the universe…
and may we be expanded in heart and soul by that goodness.
This is our prayer.
Amen.
Jerry Brooks
Feast of Christ the King, November 25, 2007
“A reading from the Book of Chinook.”
Feast of Christ the King, November 25, 2007
As most of you already know…
I grew up in the Pacific Northwest…
in Seattle.
I spent many summers with my grandmother.
She lived on what is called “Hood Canal”…
a long…
narrow…
fjordlike inlet of Puget Sound.
It’s a little community that looks across the salty water toward the Olympic Mountain range…
snow-capped…
even in summer.
Salmon-fishing was a big deal there.
Still is.
Not commercial fishing…
but fishing for sport…
and for huge banquets.
There are about as many different kinds of salmon in those waters as there are varieties of fir trees in the State of Washington.
Cherry salmon…
Chump salmon…
Pink salmon…
Sockeyes, Steelheads, Humpbacks, and Silvers…
King salmon…
Coho salmon…
Chinook salmon.
They’re spectacularly beautiful…
streamlined…
determined animals.
Salmon are ana’-dro-mous…
a word that means they’re born in fresh water…
yet they live out their lives in the salty oceans.
Finally…
they return to their fresh-water origins…
to give birth…
and then…
almost always…
to die.
A few years ago…
during a visit to Seattle…
I remember seeing salmon working their way up a fish ladder…
working their way up from their salty world into a fresh-water world.
I stood right next to them…
with just a sheet of glass between me and them…
watching them as they obediently worked their way up…
step by step…
toward their eventual demise.
Holy salmon!
David James Duncan…
in a little book called God Laughs and Plays
writes about salmon.
He thinks that salmon should be considered “holy.”
He calls wild salmon…
“divine gifts created in an unending Beginning, a product less of evolution than of divine love.”
He compares the “holiness” of salmon with the kind of urgency and zeal associated with Old Testament prophets.
He writes about asking a friend…
a friend who’s Roman Catholic…
he writes about asking a friend if the friend might be well enough connected in Rome to get these innovative views on salmon’s holiness published in some obscure corner of the Bible.
The books of the Bible could read like this…
he suggested:
Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Samuel, 1st and 2nd Kings, Coho.
Or maybe Nahum, Habakkuk, Humpback, Zephaniah.
Or Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Song of Salmon!
His friend suggested that they’d already missed the deadline for submitting new writings for the biblical canon.
If Rome can saint new saints…
David James Duncan suggested…
they ought to be able to add a book to the Bible.
David offered to write it for nothing.
He promised to be inspired.
He offered to wear a crimson beanie while writing it.
“Think of it…
he said…
a Book of Chinook in the Holy Bible!
Salmon as a metaphor for the sacrifice of Christ
David James Duncan is a huge fan of the gospels.
He suggests that when young salmon feed their bodies to kingfishers and otters and eagles…
and their larger oceangoing bodies to seals…
sea lions…
and orca whales…
and when they feed their other magnificent…
sexually driven…
returned-to-the-fresh-water bodies to bears and Indian tribes and sport fishers and fly fishers…
and when they feed even their spawned-out bodies to sword ferns…
and salmon berries and cedar trees…
and mosses and wild flowers…
they have served us…
from one end of their lives to the other…
as a kind of living gospel themselves.
When a salmon’s nitrogen-rich body feeds trees and flowers…
it is…
literally…
“considering the lilies of the field.”
When its flesh feeds even the most intractable salmon haters among us…
they are literally “loving their enemies and doing good to those who hate them.”
All species of salmon have forever climbed our rivers like the heroes of a wondrous Sunday sermon…
nailing their shining bodies to lonely beds of gravel…
not for anything they stand to gain…
just for that tiny silver offspring…
and so 300 salmon-eating species of flora and fauna might live and thrive.
It’s the story of Jesus
In some ways…
it’s the story of Jesus…
arriving from the “fresh-water” amniotic world of his mother’s womb.
It’s the story of Jesus…
living out his life in a salty ocean of friendships and confrontations…
threats and betrayal…
spiritual awakening and self-sacrifice.
It’s the story of Jesus…
loving his enemies and doing good to those who hated him…
working his way from our salty world…
fish ladder step by step…
toward the fresh water from which he came…
until he was eventually nailed to a cross…
patiently…
without complaining.
It’s the story of Jesus…
serving us from one end of his life to the other…
until his eventual demise…
accepting his fate…
a living gospel.
They mocked him.
They labeled him “the king of the Jews.”
And then he returned from the salty brine of this world to the Warmth and Oneness and Truth and Meaning from which he came.
He did it all not for anything he stood to gain.
It’s how we’re called to live out our lives as well.
Prayer
Let us pray.
Eternal God…
the Great Mystery that is outside everything and yet at the same time inside….
keep alive in each one of us the search for a faith that is real…
a faith that helps us to live happier lives…
a faith that gives us a fuller meaning to life and the events of life.
Bring us to know the goodness that flows from the heart of the universe…
and may we be expanded in heart and soul by that goodness.
This is our prayer.
Amen.
Jerry Brooks
Feast of Christ the King, November 25, 2007
1 comment:
well done, my friend. Keep these coming. JW
Post a Comment