ThisWeeksSermon on the 2d Sunday After Pentecost, May 25, 2008

“A quiet heart & whatever the moment brings”
The 2d Sunday After Pentecost, May 25, 2008

"A quiet heart.

As ready for death
as a man is ready for sleep
after a good day’s work.
That’s what I want."

[Audio version link is to the right. This week it begins with the gospel reading.]

May I speak only the truth, and may only the truth be heard by you. In the name of God our Creator, our Redeemer, and our Sanctifier. Amen.

THE PSALM: MY VERSION
I really really like that short, four-verse psalm that we chanted this morning.
So short.
Yet so beautiful.
Here’s the part I like best, my interpretation, you understand:
I want to cultivate a quiet heart.
Like the heart of a baby content in its mother's arms.
Better yet, I want to cultivate a quiet heart.
Like the heart of baby content in her grandfather’s arms.
(Please note that I just returned , last night, very late, after spending a couple of days
with almost six-month-old Amelia Jane.)

WHAT, ME WORRY?
I want you to know that I’m loving my life right now.
Happy about my life right now, in the present.
And I also want to share with you that I’m really not worrying very much at all about the future, although some would say I should.
Looking ahead at my future, my old age, looking ahead at a potential retirement, well, it scares me, actually.
The idea of being tired, re-tired.
I don’t have any definite plans.
Don’t know how I’ll survive, really.
I don’t want to think about it.
There’s a little bit of money that my dad left me.
It’s invested somehow.
My financial adviser tries to talk with me about it.
My eyes glaze over.
My hands cover my ears.
I’m hoping not to need that money, hoping to keep working until I drop.
I’ve told my children that when I can no longer support myself
in the manner to which I’ve become accustomed, I’ll move into my RV, and park it in some cheap trailer park where it’s warm.
That’s the whole, entire extent
of my long-range financial plan.
Scale down.
Maybe get a job bagging groceries at big grocery store
or flipping burgers.
I don’t know.
I also told my children not to expect much of an inheritance., if any.
You see, I don’t feel particularly responsible for planning for their financial futures either.
My fantasy is that I will have thoughtfully
used up all that I have by he time I breathe my last breath.
My fantasy is that I’ll spend my last ten dollars on a double-martini in a fancy bar, finish the drink, and then keel over, with all the money well spent.
I anticipate your disapproval.
Seems irresponsible to a lot of people, I expect, and I guess it is.
But I’m totally unable to worry much at all about money.
Can’t help myself.
This attitude is hard-wired into me, I think.
Jennifer and José got me to take the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator yesterday.
It’s a questionnaire designed to identify certain psychological differences, using the theories of Carl Jung.
I’m labeled ENFJ, which means, among other things, that I’m apt to neglect myself
and my own needs
for the needs of others, not worrying about accumulating a stash of cash for the future.
What I prefer to worry about, seriously, is what I will do to avoid retirement for the rest of my life, and stay as physically and mentally well as possible, for as long as possible.
I worry about what I will do, how I will work, for the rest of my life.

WHAT DID JESUS SAY?
Jesus said we should care for the poor.
He advised that we turn the other cheek.
He said the chief thing is love.
And in this morning’s reading, he said something more.
He said we should not worry about clothing
or food or drink.
He said you can’t worship two gods at once;
you can’t worship both God and Money.
If you decide for God, he said, you don’t have to worry about the other stuff.
There’s far more to life.
Check out the birds, he said.
They live day-by-day, they live in the moment.
The ten best-dressed men and women in the U.S.
look shabby alongside wildflowers in the field.
Jesus said that what he was trying to do
was get his followers to relax, get them to not be so preoccupied with getting, so they could focus on what’s really important:
God.
Fill your life with the reality of God, he said.
Don’t get all worked up about what may
or may not happen tomorrow.
God will be with you to help deal
with whatever comes along.
Cultivate a quiet heart.
Give your entire attention to what God is doing in the moment.

WHAT JESUS MEANT ABOUT WEALTH
When Jesus was talking about money, sometimes he was speaking to peasants, who probably didn’t have enough to eat.
But at other times, he was speaking to collaborators with the Roman Empire, people who were able to accumulate piles of wealth for themselves.
What’s interesting is that the message fit both groups, the very rich, and the very poor.
Don’t worry about money, Jesus said.

WHAT JESUS MEANT FOR US TO “DO”
Jesus actually did not suggest that we stop eating, stop dressing ourselves and our children.
What he did suggest was that we stop worrying about those things.
Jesus pointed to a different way of living, paying attention to natural wonders, the beauty of what’s around us.
Think about the universe.
Think about how life is choreographed, rain and sun and dirt coming together to make a flower, earth and water and breath coming together to make a baby.

MAYBE I’M JUST LUCKY
My inability to plan for a secure and comfy retirement is clearly a shortcoming, at least in terms of my responsibility
to those who may have to care for me some day, and in terms of the values of our culture.
But I wonder if maybe it isn’t actually a blessing of sorts, a blessing in disguise.
For me, this inherent not worrying about Money
just comes naturally.
And there’s a certain freedom that comes with that.
What I prefer to worry about, seriously, is what I will do with the rest of my life.

WHAT I HOPE FOR
What I want is to cultivate a quiet heart, like the heart of a baby content in her grandfather’s arms.
What I want is to give myself up
to whatever the moment brings.
What I want is for my living of life
to flow from the core of my being.
I know I’m going to die.
And I hope it will be with nothing left to hold onto.
No resistance when the time comes.


A quiet heart.
As ready for death
as a man is ready for sleep
after a good day’s work.
That’s what I want.

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
Saturday, May 24, 2008

ThisWeeksSermon on Trinity Sunday,May 18, 2007

“A glimpse of a God that transcends maleness”
Trinity Sunday, May 18, 2008
May I speak only the truth, and may only the truth be heard by you. In the name of God our Creator, our Redeemer, and our Sanctifier. Amen.

Many of you know that a couple of weeks ago I was in Florida.
Flew from Stewart Airport to Orlando, then drove over to St. Petersburg.
I was visiting Fr. Hal Steup.
Hal had been our Canterbury Club chaplain, chaplain to Episcopal students at the University of Washington.
He’s well into his 80s now, not doing so well physically, but sharp as a tack, otherwise.
He’s been on our church mailing list
for more than a year now, and he’s been reading my sermons, every one of them, I think.
Believe me, I gulped when I found that out.
You see, he’s a scholar.
Holds two degrees beyond college.
And he’s reading my stuff.
I was shocked to find out, however, that he’s given my sermons
the Fr. Hal “seal of approval”, all but one of them, that is.
The sermon he did not approve
was the sermon I preached here last year
on this Sunday, Trinity Sunday.
He spent some time with me during our visit, explaining the importance, the significance, of the Doctrine of the Trinity, you know, the doctrine stating that God is one being, existing simultaneously, and eternally, as a mutual indwelling of three so-called “persons.”
Three persons in one God, all three distinct, but one indivisible divine essence.
I must admit that my eyes glazed over
as he was talking about it.
Your eyes probably also did, just now, as I rattled off that Trinitarian definition.
I know, that for many, there’s something quite profound, and helpful, in that doctrine.
But personally, I don’t find it particularly informative to my own spiritual journey, my journey with the One God I have seen in Jesus, the One God whose spirit lives within us and among us.

THEOLOGY: I LOVE IT!
I love talking about God.
I keep a list of synonyms for the word God.
My list is up to 48 names now.
Here are a few of my favorites:
God the Beginning That Has No End
God the Infinite Mystical Center of all Things
God the Holy Presence
God the Nothing that is the Cause of Everything
The Source of all that is and all that shall be
The Source of every breath
The Source of life and hope
The Source of inspiration and courage
God the Caring Presence Within Us, Around Us, and Among Us
God the Mother and Father of us all

WHAT DO YOU THINK GOD LOOKS LIKE?
I have some pictures here to show the boys and girls from our Sunday school.
The idea is to talk a little bit with them about what God might look like to them, and for all of us to think a little bit about it ourselves.
As far as I’m concerned, there are no “wrong” answers.
Here I have pictures a mountain and a flower and a tree. Who created the flowers and the mountains and the trees? God the Creator.
Have you ever looked up into the sky at night and wondered if God might be there? Do you ever think you see God at night in the sky? In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And God saw that it was good.
The Bible is full of stories written by many people. We can learn lots and lots about what those people thought God was like by reading from the Bible.
Could God be like an old man with a long beard? A famous Italian painter thought so. This was Michaelangelo’s idea of what “God the Father” looks like.
I think the spirit of God lives in our own fathers, and our own mothers, and even in little babies, and inside us. The Spirit of God is invisible, but it’s here, swirling around everything, and even inside our own hearts.
And finally, what’s this a picture of?
Holy Communion a way that we believe we touch God, and even taste God. We understand that sharing bread and wine is a powerful way to be with God, right here, and right now. Jesus asked us to do this, over and over, to “bring him back.”
OUR OWN IDEAS
We all have our own ideas about God.
There are lots of ways to think about God.
God who made everything.
God who wants us to be all that we can be.
God who mysteriously gets inside all of us.
And your ideas are just as good as mine!

BIBLICAL WAYS TO THINK ABOUT GOD
Ideas of God are based
not only on what we’ve been told about God, but our ideas of God are influenced
by the experiences that have shaped us, by science and the culture in which we live.
Likewise, the language about God
that we inherited from our Jewish ancestors
and from our church Fathers, language about God, was also based on the experiences that shaped those writers in their cultures.
Ancient ideas about God
are a reflection of the patriarchal cultures
in which the language was crafted.
Every once in awhile, however, we get a glimpse of a god that transcends maleness.
In Isaiah, for example, God comforts us like a nursing mother comforts her child.
Jesus said he wished to gather up the people of Jerusalem, like a mother hen gathers up her chicks.
In Proverbs, God gives birth to Wisdom
before even creating the universe.
And Wisdom is a feminine noun.
Genesis says that humans were created “in the image of God.”
Male and female, not just male.
The writer’s concept logically suggests that human beings
(male and female)
would therefore reflect a God who carries both masculine and feminine characteristics.

DAR WILLIAMS SINGS
Dar Williams, was born in 1967 and grew up in Mount Kisco.
She’s been writing songs and singing since 1990.
She specializes in what can be described as “folk-pop.”
She sings at folk festivals around the country, and right now she’s living and performing
just across the river in Beacon.
One year ago she did two concerts up in Woodstock.
One of the songs she did there
was a “classic” of hers:
“When I Was a Boy” is the song’s title.
Now I want you to know that Dar Williams is a gorgeous, very feminine, heterosexual woman.
But in the song, she sings about her own childhood experiences, as a “tomboy.”
She learned to fight.
She scared the pants off her mom
when she climbed anything
she could find to climb up onto.
She says she survived
because she knew all the tricks that boys knew.
Grass-stained shirt and dusty knees.
She was just a kid on a bike, sometimes even topless on her bike!
In this song, “When I Was a Boy”, she sings about gender roles, and how they limit boys, and how they limit girls—
who then become men and women
who are also limited.
She finishes the song by telling the man she’s with, about the “other” life she lived, when she was a boy, a “tom” boy.
She says the man she’s with is the top gun now, that she’s lost and he’s won.
But he says, in the song, “Oh no, no, can’t you see, when I was a “girl”, my mom and I, we always talked, and I picked flowers everywhere that I walked, and I could always cry.
Now, he says, even when I’m alone, I seldom cry.
And I have lost some kindness, but I was a girl too, and you were just like me, and I was just like you.”

SOMETHING HAPPENS TO US
Something happens to us as we grow up.
The freedom to be the whole person
that God intends for us to be gets lost.
The pressure to conform
to a narrow range of behavior
is incredibly intense.
Nonetheless, Genesis says that humans were created “in the image of God.”
Male and female.
This text actually suggests that the image of God transcends maleness.
The “seed” of wholeness, is genetically inside us
in the form of the image of God, both male and female.
And that seed will grow like crazy if we nourish it.

MANY WAYS TO THINK AND KNOW
There are many ways to think about God.
There are way more than my 48 different names for God, many ways to know God and
and be faithful to God.

And on Trinity Sunday, we’re invited to talk about it.

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

Trinity Sunday at The Episcopal Church in Marlboro

Family-oriented service on Trinity Sunday this year. Part of my sermon was directed at the kids.

Lots of people in church, including two friends of mine from Saratoga Springs and members of Cindy Lanzetta's extended family. Deacon Tony and Richard are celebrating their anniversary this week. Coffee hour seemed particularly festive!

Click the "play" button to see this week's photos.

jb+

Acolyte Festival 2008 at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine

Reneé Borchert, Abby Borchert, Cameron Owens and I joined with others from the Mid-Hudson Region and bussed our way down to the Cathedral for the Acolyte Festival today. Hundreds of acolytes from around the Diocese gathered for workshops, eucharist, and lunch at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. All in all, a great day!

Photos from the Day of Pentecost

Yes, it was a festive day for us. The Day of Pentecost, and Mother's Day, all rolled into one. The Sunday school hosted coffee hour. Deacon Tony preached.  The church grounds, the church, and the parish hall all are beautiful, and the weather was perfect!

ThisWeeksSermon on the 7th Sunday of Easter, May 4th, 2008

“An invitation to the future”
The 7th Sunday of Easter, April 27, 2008
May I speak only the truth, and may only the truth be heard by you. In the name of God our Creator, our Redeemer, and our Sanctifier. Amen.

I’ve always thought of myself as being a bit different from most people, maybe even a little odd.
(I expect that doesn’t come as a surprise to most of you.)
Growing up with two athletic brothers, in a totally sports-minded family, I’m the one who played right field.
That’s where I learned to pray, pray that a ball would not come my way.
I’ve always argued about everything.
If my mother asked me to do something, I’d argue with her about it, first.
Then I’d do it.
My brother, Jack, was just the opposite.
He’d agree to do anything.
Might not ever do it.
But he’d agree to do it.
I’ve always been critical of whatever was considered conventional, always taking the other side.
When I was a young parent, I started a rap group for fathers.
There were half a dozen of us who met once a week to talk about fatherhood and relationship issues.
We hired a professional therapist to facilitate the group.
In that group, the therapist labeled my behavior for me.
I was not particularly thankful for that.
She called my problem an “oppositional disorder.”
It was my protesting, my rebelliousness, my general criticism and contrariness that she identified as dysfunctional.
That was me.
Still is, to a great extent.
I’d rather be on the edge than be in the middle.
Being a nonconformist comes naturally to me!
And I’m thinking that in some ways, being a nonconformist is what all of us are called to be as Jesus-followers in the world today.
THE CONCLUSION OF OUR STORIES OF JESUS
Seems like just yesterday it was Advent.
The liturgical calendar has taken us very quickly, faster than usual, from the birth of the baby in December, and recognition that that infant would somehow be the messiah, the chosen one, to the entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem, and certain death just weeks later, and then the recognition that Jesus’ death wasn’t the end after all, but instead was a new beginning.
And now we’re up to the Feast of the Ascension.
It was celebrated by the church on Thursday.
Marking the 40th day after Easter, the feast observes the story of Christ’s return to the God above the sky through a miracle of a cosmic ascension.
The point of this feast day is not about a miracle.
Actually, the point is that it’s the start of a time when we begin to shift our thinking.
The Christ has returned to its source, and we now begin to shift our thinking to an awareness that God is present with us in a different way.
It’s a new beginning, where any dream will do.
God present within us, providing the energy and the life that will lead us into new territory, an energy for coping with unexpected challenges, an energy, possibly, for living as nonconformists in the world, a new beginning where any dream will do.
ELISABETH KUBLER-ROSS.
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross.
She was a pioneer in the field of caring for the terminally ill.
She had this to say:
“Our concern must be to live while we are alive, to release our inner selves from the spiritual death that comes with living behind a facade….”
The facade she was talking about is a facade of conformity to society’s definitions of who we ought to be and how we ought to act.
PAUL ENDORSED NONCONFORMITY
One of the most dangerous verses in all the Bible just might be the one in Romans 12 where Paul writes:
Be not conformed to this world: but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God.
Paul was suggesting to people in the church they do whatever feels really natural to them, really honest to them, really True to them.
It’s not an accidental nonconformity that Paul was talking about, like when you show up at a formal occasion wearing jeans and a t-shirt, or when you accidentally drive the wrong way down a one-way street.
It’s not my so-called “oppositional disorder” that Paul was talking about.
It’s intentional nonconformity that he was talking about.
It’s nonconformity that results from an inner transformation.
In a culture such as ours, in which conformity is so highly valued, it’s nonconformity that’s very likely to get you into trouble!
In theological circles, nonconformity will likely result in heresy.
But I suggest that Paul commended nonconformity, commended dissent, and even commended heresy in the face of what the world values and approves of.
CONFORMING TO SCRIPTURE?
I think that most people read the bible to confirm their own convictions.
I certainly do.
In spite of the fact that people in the Bible have usually been people on the margins of society…
the Bible is used most of the time to preserve the status quo, rather than to challenge or change it.
The objections to Jesus that led to his execution were that he was stirring things up.
Nonetheless, conformity rather than nonconformity has generally been the greater characteristic of Christians.
So-called “godly conduct” is really just whatever the people of God say it is at any given time.
You don’t have to look back very far in history to list the horrors of war, and slavery, and treatment of women and other minorities, all of which were thought to be “Godly conduct”, then.
The faith heroes of the Bible, however, including Jesus of course, are generally ones whose faithfulness did not conform, put them on the outside of the prevailing culture, looking in.
THE GOOD NEWS: YET TO BE EXPERIENCED?
Jesus central message, you know, was that the Kingdom of God was “at hand”, in the air, just around the corner.
But he got it wrong, wrong at least in terms of what his listeners would have understood.
The “kingdom” they were expecting didn’t come.
Still hasn’t.
But here’s an idea.
Let me suggest that the good news that Jesus announced may never come.
The whole point may be that the kingdom will always be just a bit beyond us, just out of reach, leading us, as Christ leads us, in the story of the ascension of Christ into heaven.
Billy Graham once said this at the beginning of a sermon.
He was visibly suffering from Parkinson’s disease at the time.
Here’s what he said:
“I know I am going to die, but I’m not worried. Are you?”
At the heart of Billy Graham’s style of preaching always was an invitation, an invitation to the future, an invitation to new opportunity, an invitation to an unknown land where the spirit of God will move us, move us to try what we’ve maybe never tried before.
You don’t have to conform to the expectations of this world.
Instead, fix your attention on God.
It can change you from the inside out.
It can provide a new beginning, where any dream will do.
I’d like you to listen with me to Michael Crawford singing the final song from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, “Any Dream Will Do.”
I printed the words for you.
They’re in your service booklet.
ANY DREAM WILL DO
I closed my eyes, drew back the curtain
To see for certain what I thought I knew
Far far away, someone was weeping
But the world was sleeping
Any dream will do

I wore my coat, with golden lining
Bright colors shining, wonderful and new
And in the east, the dawn was breaking
And the world was waking
Any dream will do

A crash of drums, a flash of light
My golden coat flew out of sight
The colors faded into darkness
I was left alone
May I return to the beginning
The light is dimming, and the dream is too
The world and I, we are still waiting
Still hesitating
Any dream will do

A crash of drums, a flash of light
My golden coat flew out of sight
The colors faded into darkness
I was left alone

May I return to the beginning
The light is dimming, and the dream is too
The world and I, we are still waiting
Still hesitating
Any dream will do

Give me my coloured coat,
my amazing coloured coat!!
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

ThisWeeksSermon on the 6th Sunday of Easter, April 27, 2008

“Keep moving toward the Light”
The 6th Sunday of Easter, April 27, 2008
May I speak only the truth, and may only the truth be heard by you. In the name of God our Creator, our Redeemer, and our Sanctifier. Amen.

Elizabeth Gilbert is author of a book that was on the New York Times best-seller list for more than a year.
The book is called Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India, and Indonesia.
In it, she described a year-long journey around the world, a journey she took alone.
Her objective was to visit three places where she could examine three aspects of her own nature, each set against the backdrop of a culture that has traditionally done one of the three things very well.
In Italy, she studied the art of pleasure.
She learned to speak Italian and gained what she calls “the 23 happiest pounds of her life.”
In India, it was for the art of devotion.
That’s where, with the help of a native guru and a surprisingly wise Texan, she embarked on four months of austere spiritual exploration.
Finally, in Indonesia, she sought her ultimate goal, what she calls “balance”, exploring how to somehow build a life of equilibrium between worldly enjoyment
on one hand, and Divine Transcendence, on the other.
In Indonesia, she became a pupil of an elderly, ninth-generation medicine man.
Elizabeth Gilbert has this to say about religious belief:
"I think you have every right to cherry-pick when it comes to moving your spirit and finding peace in God.
I think you are free to search for any metaphor whatsoever which will take you across the worldly divide whenever you need to be transported or comforted….
You take whatever works from wherever you can find it, and you keep moving toward the light."
Traditional Christianity is the antithesis of Elizabeth Gilbert’s approach.
Traditional Christianity is about doctrine and dogma and believing certain things.
RELIGION IN AMERICA
The least religious state in America is Oregon.
The most religious is Mississippi.
It’s Oregon, not Mississippi, that reflects the emerging trend in America.
There’s cynicism about institutional religion.
For many, there’s little desire to affiliate with any particular religion or denomination.
And moving from one denomination to another is no longer uncommon.
Nationally, 16% claim no religious affiliation at all.
“Unaffiliated” is the fastest growing religious segment of American society.
However, of that group, fewer than 2 percent define themselves as atheists.
About half of the unaffiliated say that “faith is at least somewhat important” to them.
“Spiritual-but-not-religious” is he catch phrase of a generation or more in the western world.
People say it to me all the time when they find out for the first time that I’m a parish priest.
“Oh, I don’t go to church, but I’m very spiritual.”
Americans seems to be exploring their own spirituality, incorporating religion only when it makes sense to them.
Jesus does remain an inspiration for many.
But it’s definitely the independent and self-reliant Jesus.
That’s the Jesus who resonates for the unaffiliated, the Jesus we saw when religious people tried to pin him down.
“Which commandment is most important?,” the religion experts asked.
Jesus’ response of course was to love God and neighbor with everything you’ve got.
His answers were brilliant on such occasions.
He sidestepped the religion experts every time.
He positioned himself as spiritual, but not religious.
And this vision of Jesus obviously resonates strongly for a lot of people out there.
SPEAKING TO THE UNAFFILIATED
That growing group of “spiritual-but-not-religious”…
those are the ones that we want to reach…
the ones I particularly want to reach…
the ones who challenge us to offer an experience of a real, sacred presence of God that’s not necessarily dependent on doctrine or dogma or tradition or even scripture, that doesn’t contradict what we know about biology and geology and human sexuality and astronomy, those are the ones who challenge us to offer an experience of a real, sacred presence that comes from deep inside.
The people in that growing group of unaffiliated “spiritual-but-not-religious” were my parents.
Now they’re my brothers.
They are my children, and maybe your children.
They are my friends outside the church, and probably yours as well.
They are the members of our parish whom we only see here now and then.
They’re the folks I’m especially interested in…
most of whom sincerely describe themselves as being spiritual…
but for whom our traditional words and our traditional songs do not necessarily resonate, those for whom our ancient holy writings, and the traditional theology and doctrines, do not necessarily resonate.
With busy lives…
they feel no pressing need of church.
It’s hard for them to see what church has to offer them that makes any sense.
They’re genuinely confused about what to teach their children in this modern age about the Bible…
about Jesus.
They’re not attracted to our Sunday school…
they think it may offer little beyond a fast track to fundamentalism.
(They’re wrong about that. At least here.)
A LEAKY TITANIC
In some ways…
the traditional church is a little bit like the leaky Titanic.
Clergy and loyal laity are busy rearranging the deck chairs on the ship…
developing new liturgies…
incorporating new technologies into their presentations…
embracing modern marketing techniques.
Loyal clergy and loyal laity are the string quartet on the deck of that great ship…
heroically playing our hearts out as the ship begins to list to starboard.
IS IT A BAD THING?
There just may be some good news to all this, however.
In some ways I think it may be a wakeup call…
a healthy sign of a general rejection of outdated ways of thinking about God…
outdated ways of experiencing God.
I think it may well be a precursor to educating church people about the new insights born of modern science and biblical scholarship.
I think it may actually be a precursor to a Renaissance of sorts, a religious renewal.
THE GOSPEL THIS MORNING
The words in this morning’s gospel are supposed to represent a farewell speech by Jesus to his disciples.
But the tale actually came together long after Jesus’ death.
The words were not directed at Jesus’ disciples at all.
They couldn’t have been.
They were directed at the next generation of followers…
the Christian community some time after Jesus’ death.
It was the era of a Christian community without the physical presence of Jesus.
For this new generation…
the writer provided some really cool, and very sophisticated theology.
The writer suggested that the spirit of God lives within us!
All we have to do is recognize it!
It’s so simple!
THE CHURCH HAS MADE SUCH SIMPLICITY ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE
Two thousand years of theology and dogma and tradition have made this kind of simplicity of a spiritual life almost impossible.
Modern civilization has made life so complicated…
that probably such a simple way of life is only possible in a convent or monastery.
But somehow we need to get past the theological clutter…
get past the trivialities…
get past the pre-Darwinian ideas.
I SEE A YEARNING
Everywhere I look…
I see a spiritual yearning.
I see a leftover belief in God…
or at least an open-mindedness toward the idea of a Divinity.
I see a perception that Christianity’s record is pretty poor…
and its resistance to modern ideas and science deplorable.
I see a certainty that Christianity is not the only answer…
and that all faiths are expressions of our human search for God and meaning.
I see a general skepticism about the literal truth of Christianity’s foundation stories…
and I see a general skepticism of the claim that the bible is the inerrant word of God.
I see a distrust of religious language.
I see a broad indifference to the church’s obsession with sin and sex.
These things I see are all good news, I think.
The future of the Christian faith does not require that we hold tightly to yesterday's formulas.
It does, however, require that we be willing to step beyond the patterns of the past in order to embrace new insights.
This, I think, has something to do with what Elizabeth Gilbert calls her “balance”, exploring how to somehow build a life of equilibrium between the realities of the world in which we live, on one hand, and the Divine Transcendence, on the other.
The writer of John’s gospel put it this way this morning:
He said that the spirit of God lives within us!
I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.
All we have to do is recognize it!
Take whatever works from wherever you can find it, and keep moving toward the light."
That’s the bottom line for Elizabeth Gilbert, and for me.
Jerry Brooks

"Spring cleaning" at The Episcopal Church

Several of us spent a few hours today in the sun raking and weeding and planting and pruning. Had a great lunch as well. Take a look.