Connecting Lips and Lives (Aug 24 2014)

Homily:  Yr A Proper 21, Aug 24 2014, St. Albans

Readings:  Exodus 1.8-2.10; Ps 124; Rom 12.1-8; Mt 16.13-20

Connecting Lips and Lives

Who do you say I am?

There are two ways of answering Jesus’ question:  The first is with our lips and the second is with our lives. 

On Sundays, here at St. Albans, here this morning, we answer with our lips.  We sing songs that proclaim Jesus as Messiah and Emmanuel.  We confess our faith in the words of the creed, stating that Jesus is God’s only Son, our Lord.  In our prayers and our reflections we proclaim Jesus as the Son of God, God Incarnate, the second person of the Trinity.  In a whole variety of ways on a Sunday morning, our lips answer, as Peter’s did, that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God.

And then, in about 45 minutes from now, we will leave this place, and we’ll go out and do our stuff and work our jobs and live our lives, and when we do that, we will answer the question once more, this time with our lives and our everyday actions.

Who do you say I am?

Now it’s important that we answer with our lips, which I suppose is why Jesus asks the question of his disciples.  Naming things, articulating what we think, understanding by putting things into words, these are all important for us.  Proclaiming what we believe in words helps to shape us and make us who we are.  It’s connected with what Paul is urging the Romans to do in the letter we read this morning when he encourages them to “be transformed by the renewing of your minds.”

But, as is often said, actions speak louder than words.  An example?  Suppose you were to ask me “who are you?” and I was to answer, “I am a father.”  Then suppose you were to watch me for the rest of the week.  You might expect, based on my answer, that I would love my children, spend time with them, care for them, enjoy their presence and so on.  But what if you observed that I actually spent little time with my kids, I avoided them as much as possible, I spoke harshly to them when I couldn’t avoid them, and I always seemed to be unhappy when they were around.  You might, after observing me for that week, think that there was a disconnect, a disconnect between the way I answered the question “who am I?” with my lips and the way I answered it with my life, a disconnect between what I profess and my everyday actions.

When Jesus asks us “Who do you say I am?” is there a similar disconnect that happens between the way we answer with our lips and the way we answer with the everyday actions of our lives?

Because when we get right down to it, the question that Jesus asks is not a question about doctrine.  Jesus doesn’t want to know if we’ve got the creed memorized, or if we can put him into the right theological category.  The question he asks is more about discipleship than doctrine.  When he asks Peter and the others, ‘who do you say I am?’ he could just as easily have asked, “So why are you guys following me anyway?” 

Because though the question is, on the one hand, a question about Jesus’ identity, it is also, perhaps even more importantly, a question about our identity.  Who am I?  I am a follower of Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.  And if that’s how I answer with my lips, then the next question is whether that is also the answer I give with my life, or whether there is a disconnect between my lips and my life.

For most of us, myself included, there is often a disconnect.  And part of the problem, and here I’ll speak for myself, is that often we don’t know or we forget what it is we’re actually saying.  Our church language becomes a sort of specialized discourse that we use and repeat often on Sunday mornings, but we don’t use much during the rest of the week.  We say Jesus Christ, and subconsciously we think of it as a first and a last name, forgetting that Christ is a title, the Greek equivalent of Messiah, which means God’s anointed one.  We proclaim Jesus as Son of God, but what does that actually mean to us?  Has our repetition of the phrase turned it into a cliché, devoid of any meaning which could translate into meaningful action in our lives?

When I was in seminary about eight years ago, I was told the story of a Muslim student who attended a course in a Catholic University in order to learn more about Christianity.  One day, he asked his professor if he could attend the weekly Eucharist held at the university, and of course the professor invited him along.  The Muslim student was very attentive throughout the liturgy and considered deeply all that was said and done.

After the service, the Muslim student went up to his Professor and said to him, “Professor, that was a beautiful liturgy, but there is one thing that I have difficulty understanding.  You Christians believe in the Incarnation, that in the person of Jesus, God became human, and so Jesus is both fully human and fully divine, one with God, the creator of heaven and earth.  Have I got that right?

“Yes, that is correct,” replied the Christian Professor, a bit hastily, “but I can see how you might have difficulty understanding that, since Islam regards Jesus as a prophet.”

“What you have said about Islam is true,” said the student, “but though a belief in Jesus as the incarnate Son of God is not my faith, that’s not what I’m having difficulty understanding.  Let me go on.  You Christians also believe that Jesus is really present amongst you when you gather in worship and especially in the Sacrament of the Eucharist and that he enters into you when you take Communion.”

“Yes that’s true,” acknowledged the Professor, “and that must certainly be difficult for you to understand, it may even seem ridiculous to you”

“No that’s not it,” said the Muslim student, shaking his head.  “I understand your belief in the presence of Christ in worship and in the Eucharist even though it is not my faith.  What I have difficulty understanding is this:  If you believe that Jesus is God, and that He is present in your worship and in the Eucharist, then how is it that once you have received him in such an intimate way that you are not completely overwhelmed and collapse to the ground in awe and wonder?

How indeed!

Do we realize what we’re saying when we confess Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of the Living God?  When we answer the question “Who do you say I am?” with these words?

I am not saying that we’re always going to understand, or even that we’re ever going to understand fully in this life.  And I certainly don’t expect that when we answer with our lives that we’re always going to get it right either.  After all, even Peter, who has been faithfully following Jesus, and who gives the right answer in today’s gospel, well, we’ll see in next Sunday’s gospel that even Peter doesn’t really know what he’s saying and gets it terribly wrong next week. 

But even though we won’t always get things right, when we are asked “Who do you say I am,” the answer we give, with our lips and especially with our lives, matters.  In fact, it can change the world.  Just ask Shiphrah and Puah.

Who’s that you say?  Shiphrah and Puah are the midwives in today’s Old Testament reading from the book of Exodus.  It is the story of the birth of Moses.  But before that can happen, we need to hear the story of Shiphrah and Puah.  We don’t know much about them, but we know that these two women feared God.  That is, they understood who God was with all the awe and reverence and wonder and respect that that understanding entails.  And because they knew who God was, when Pharoah, with all his earthly prestige and power orders Shiphrah and Puah to kill any Hebrew boys that are born, they refuse to do it, in a courageous act of civil disobedience that ultimately changed history, although the midwives had no way of knowing it at the time.  One of the boys that is allowed to live as a result of their actions is Moses, who goes on to confront Pharoah and liberate the Hebrew slaves.  But it all starts with two women who knew who God was, and proclaimed it in their lives by being willing to say no to an act of injustice.

Jesus asks, “who do you say I am?”  How we answer matters.

Amen.

Because our answer matters, in our Open Space today, I’d encourage you to do two things.  The first is to answer the question for yourself, in your own words, in words that you understand, in as few words or as many as you like.  Who is Jesus for you?

Then, once you’ve put that into words, reflect a little on how well the answer you’ve given with your lips connects with the answer you give in the everyday actions of your life.

Wrestling in the Dark (August 3 2014)

Homily:  Yr A Proper 18, August 3 2014, St. Albans

Readings:  Gen 32.22-31; Ps 17.1-7,16; Rom 9.1-5; Mt 14.13-21

Wrestling in the dark.

Barbara Brown Taylor is a wonderful preacher and one of my favourite authors.  Her most recent book is called Learning to Walk in the Dark and it is about the spirituality of darkness.  Now that might be a new concept to some of us.  We’re used to thinking of God as light, as the light that overcomes the darkness, the light in whom there is no darkness.  And I don’t know about you but I kind of like God as light.  God as light brings enlightenment, God as light brings us comfort, God as light helps us to not be afraid of the terrors of the night.

But, as Taylor says, if you pay close attention to the Bible, you soon start to notice that God does some of God’s best work in the dark.  When God wants to make a covenant with Abraham, he instructs Abraham to a lay a series of sacrificed animals on the ground.  Then God comes in the dark of the night as a smoking firepot which sets the animals ablaze.  The Passover and the Exodus from Egypt happen at night.  When God gives the law to Moses, Moses is called up into the dense dark cloud that rests on Mount Sinai.  Moses stays forty days and forty nights and there, inside that dark cloud he sees God face to face.  When Jesus hangs on the cross, Matthew tells us that a great darkness covered the whole land from noon to three o’clock.

Jacob, whose story we’ve been hearing in our Old Testament readings for the past month, Jacob encounters God twice.  Both encounters are at night.  The first encounter we heard about several weeks ago, when Jacob has the vision of a ladder that reaches up to heaven.  The second meeting is the one we just heard about in today’s Old Testament reading.  God comes to Jacob in the dark, and he attacks him.  Maybe that’s why we like God as light so much – the God who comes to us in the dark seems dangerous and unpredictable.

Jacob is, it must be said, a pretty unappealing character.  He is a con man, a lying, deceiving trickster who cheats people to get what he wants and then runs away when things get too hot.  Why God has chosen and blessed Jacob is not readily apparent.  First, Jacob tricked Esau out of his birthright.  Then, he tricks his father Isaac in order to get the blessing which is due to Esau.  Esau, understandably, is furious.  He hates Jacob and he resolves to kill him.  When Jacob finds out, he runs away, far away, to Haran, the city of his mother’s family.

Once in Haran, he spends 20 years trading tricks with his uncle Laban, who is a pretty good trickster himself.  They battle over Laban’s daughters, and over years of service and wages, and finally over sheep and goats, but in the end, Jacob prevails.  When he starts to fear Laban’s anger, he sneaks out in the middle of the night and runs away once more, this time with Laban’s daughters Leah and Rachel as his wives and with a huge flock that came originally from Laban’s sheep.

He gets away from Laban, but Jacob still has a problem.  His brother Esau, the one who vowed to kill him, is waiting for him on the other side of the river, and reports say that he has 400 armed men.  Jacob is afraid.  So once more, he pulls out his bag of tricks.

The first thing he does is pray to God for help.  Worth a try don’t you think?  Then Jacob gets more strategic, separating his people and his herds of animals into two companies and sending them off in different directions, thinking that if Esau finds one company and destroys it, at least the other will survive.  Then, he sends his servants on ahead with a large gift of animals for Esau, thinking that he might be able to appease him that way.  And finally, he sends his wives and children on ahead of him.

And with that Jacob is alone, and his bag of tricks is empty, and he is vulnerable and afraid and it is night and it is dark.

And in the darkness, Jacob is attacked, and he wrestles with a man, a man whom Jacob soon realizes is God.  The man cannot prevail against Jacob.  Jacob clings to him and will not let him go.  The man hits Jacob and injures him, dislocating his hip.  But still Jacob will not let him go, and Jacob demands God’s blessing and finally God relents and not only blesses him but gives him a new name:  Israel.

Have you ever wrestled with God in the dark?

I have a friend who very recently found out that her partner was seriously ill, and he was taken to hospital for tests and treatment.  And when that happened she prayed to God and she asked God to heal her partner.  In fact, she was pretty blunt about.  She told God of her faithfulness, and how she had always tried to do follow God and do the right thing, and how now it was time for God to do the right thing and she pretty much demanded that God should heal her partner.  But the next day the doctors spoke to her and told her about the test results, and told her that her partner was dying.  And that night, she grabbed hold of God again, and she wrestled again, and she came to accept that her partner would die, but she wouldn’t let God go and she told him that he had to make sure that her partner didn’t suffer and that he had no pain.  And in the end, she got that blessing.  She spent the next few days by her partner’s side, and though it was hard, she and the hospital staff made sure that he was well looked after and that there was no pain or suffering as he passed.  It was, as these things go, a good death.

God came to my friend in the dark and they wrestled.

Have you ever wrestled with God in the dark?

It’s not something that most of us would ask for, it’s not an experience that we would ever seek out on our own.

But for some people, wrestling with God in the dark can be deeply transformative.

Jacob not only received a permanent limp and a new name, but he was a changed man.  For the first time, rather than try his tricks or run away, he stood his ground and faced his opponent.  He wrestled, and for those of you who have ever tried wrestling, you’ll know that there is a strange sort of intimacy in a wrestling match.

When dawn breaks, Jacob crosses the river, moves back in front of his wives and children, and faces Esau.  He embraces him and the two are reconciled.  And Jacob, now Israel, goes on to be the father of a new nation.  Whatever it was that happened in the dark somehow transformed Jacob and reshaped his character.

As Barbara Brown Taylor notes in her book, this idea of a God who meets us in the dark to challenge us and transform us is a bit unsettling.  It’s a long way from the God of the philosophers that many of us are more comfortable with, the God who sits off at a distance and goes by names such as the “Supreme Being” and the “Unmoved Mover”.  It seems that the God of the Bible, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of Jesus, has the potential to become much more intimately and unpredictably involved in our lives.

I once had a professor in seminary who told us that the best way to assess someone’s spiritual health is not to ask them questions about what they believe or don’t believe but rather to ask the question, “Is your relationship with God passive or dynamic?”

I think he was on to something.  Perhaps it’s a question each one of us should be asking ourselves.

And so, we’ll ask it this way during our open space this morning:  Have you ever wrestled with God?

Amen.