MEMORIES & THE BEGINNING OF MEANING

I suppose The Unforgettable Fire remains, for all intents and purposes, my "first" U2 album. That is, not at all the first one I heard or the first one that excited me about U2's fresh, varied, hard-to-categorize sound, but the one I first remember playing endlessly. The one to first sink into my bones, as the spinning of it on the turntable or in the cassette deck built and sustained - in my bedroom or in my car - an entire aural environment, an ambience all it's own (thank you, producers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois). Yes, the tape deck in the car. That was significant. The album was released on October 1, 1984, and just under a month later, in the fall of my junior year of high school, I turned 16, allowing me to drive at all hours on my own. For the teenage driver in the 1980s, and for boys, especially, the tape deck and the ability to rule over what blared from it, was, without question, as important as the car itself. And let's be clear: the 1977 Audi Fox I drove, with it's 4-speed manual transmission connecting a ferocious 83 horsepower to the pavement had very little going for it in the sexy or speedy departments. So, I upgraded the tape deck and speakers and added an equalizer, recorded The Unforgettable Fire - like so many others - from vinyl onto a TDK SA-90 medium-quality, blank cassette tape, and played the hell out of it. For nearly the next five years.

Surely the April 1985 concert experience described in the previous post also accounts for the place-of-pride in my memory that The Unforgettable Fire holds. For one thing, there was a short burn-time from first hearing the record in October to catching that first, in-person glimpse of U2 live just over seven months later. The intervals would have been pretty minimal between first hearing the songs, eagerly sharing them with each other, the announcement of the tour, the purchase of tickets, and the making of plans (the trip was out-of-town and overnight, after all), with constant anticipation throughout. While, on one hand, the days surely passed incredibly slow for a bunch of 16-year-olds in the midst of the headiest days of high school drama and angst, they also would have been days of truly enjoying - together - our favorite new music - and not just the latest U2, either. While preparing a sermon for my homiletics class in seminary, I believe in 2007, the appointed scripture brought to mind a scene from that same fall of 1984: an impromptu tag football game on a cold, overcast November Sunday after lunch, as a bunch of us waited to get on the bus home. We'd spent the weekend on retreat at Young Life's Windy Gap camp in the mountains of North Carolina, just a bunch of high-schoolers curious about how we were supposed to be better followers of Jesus amidst the turmoil and questions and dilemmas of our young lives . . . but mostly just to be together, away from home, goofing off (up to and including 'romantically'), and forgetting school for awhile. And what really, really stood out for me as I remembered that moment? What held the scene together in my mind's eye? R.E.M.'s Harborcoat blaring from the cassette deck on someone's boom box: "A handshake is worthy, if it's all that you've got."

All that's to say, I suppose, that our music was very important to us in those days. Our memories are closely and powerfully associated with the music. Each of us in the middle-class American suburbs could easily speak of a "soundtrack to our lives:" the best memories almost always come with a song or album attached.

So, my first U2 show was focused on this funky album named after an art exhibit about the 1945 atomic bomb attacks on Japan . . . this funky album with it's purple cover and fuzzy, mystic photos of the band hanging around castle ruins in Athlone, Ireland . . . this funky album with its mystic ambience. No wonder I remember these songs so fondly, even if only one or two stand out as all time favorites. Heck, it was my first big rock'n'roll show of any kind. First overnight trip with friends and no parents. First time cheering and singing at the top of my lungs with around 12,000 others. First time seeing campaigners for Greenpeace and Amnesty International in the hallways outside the arena. Hmmm . . . what was that all about? Environmentalism? Human rights? I was intrigued and could begin to see the connections with the themes in certain U2 songs (Pride, with Martin King it's focus, being the most obvious) and the increasingly clear religious, social, and 'political' commitments this band sang about, talked about, tried to live out . . . yes, the human commitments U2 was bringing to light in a variety of ways.

More in my next post on specific songs from The Unforgettable Fire and the meaning they came to have for this fan and seeker - of the cool, of the musically inventive and moving, of the truthful, and sure . . . of the holy.

To paraphrase the Beatles, "It was 30 years ago today. God and Paul McGuinness told the band to play!"

Yes, thirty years ago tonight, more or less around the moment I'm writing, U2 was wrapping up their show at The Omni in Atlanta, Georgia  - on the 5th leg of their Unforgettable Fire tour - with a blazing, raucous version of their signature anthem "Gloria" - composed, incidentally, in the form of a canticle ("little song") like those used in Morning or Evening Prayer in the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer . . . and then, to bring us down softly and send us on our way with a new song on our hearts, there was "40."

I waited patiently for the Lord.
He inclined and heard my cry.
He brought me up out of the pit,
Out of the miry clay.

I will sing, sing a new song.
I will sing, sing a new song.
How long to sing this song?
How long, how long, how long...
To sing this song?

As the band left the stage, one by one, the audience of 12,000 or so continued to sing the chorus in which they'd already joined: "How long to sing this song? How long, how long, how long...To sing this song?" Then the house lights came up. Some kept singing, even as they filed out of their seats and into the corridors of the basketball arena. What I remember most vividly, though, of the whole night - my first U2 show, at the impressionable age of 16.5 - is that the singing of "40" continued, erupting sporadically from pockets of exhilarated teenage and college-age fans: as hundreds of us surged into the MARTA station entrance; as the station attendants simply held up the metal boxes from the turnstile machines to catch the coins and tokens we tossed; as we stood on the platform waiting on the next train; indeed as we clambered onto the train and surged off toward the northern Atlanta suburbs to find our cars - or even our parents - waiting to ferry us home.

We kept bursting into song: "How long to sing this song? How long, how long, how long...To sing this song?"

I've never ever experienced anything quite like it. I had been introduced to the liturgy - the worshipful atmosphere and ethos of a U2 concert - and been a witness to how that ethos was carried right out of the room, like a torch carries the light from the fireplace out into the darkest of nights . . . held up, held onto, for as long as we concertgoers could manage.

Nearly 10 years later I'd made a new friend during my time as a grad student at UGA in Athens. Jeff had grown up in the Atlanta suburbs, like me developing a keen interest in history, culture, and politics. Equally important at that moment, though, he also loved good rock-n-roll that had a point of view, a story to tell. Indeed he'd become skilled enough on the guitar to be a part of a true garage-band, the dream of every male GenXer teen. Come to find out Jeff was at that 1985 show, as well . . . and what did he remember first and foremost? Singing "40" in the MARTA station, of course. Are you convinced, yet, that for those present, April 29, 1985 at The Omni was pretty special moment?

What else do I remember about that show? Oddly, perhaps - given how it marks the "official" beginning of the significant impact U2's music would have on my emotional, spiritual, and even intellectual development - I'm short on memories of the music itself, save for the almost haunting atmospherics the band created, much like on the Unforgettable Fire album itself. Now that, thanks to the stupendous Internets, a quick search pulls up the set list, I'm actually quite frustrated I don't remember more. For instance, this show was almost certainly the only time I've heard U2 play live their wonderful early songs "11 O'Clock Tick Tock," "Seconds," and "Two Hearts Beat As One." They simply stopped playing these songs live after 1985. . . and there you go. I'm missing out on those memories.

For a little help, tonight I called my friend Greg, who trekked with me and several other high-schoolers from 2.5 hours away for the show - and asked what he remembered about it. The key moment for him was the song "Bad," a lament for victims of drug (esp. heroin) addiction that the members of the band knew in their native Dublin, Ireland. Though he likely would have heard it a few times already, from spinning the vinyl edition of 1984's album "The Unforgettable Fire," Greg said that the version at the show solidified the song in his mind as U2's best. Ultimately, even with 30 years gone by, he can't think of a better song, by anyone, ever. Indeed, he recently convinced his youngest son to do a 5th-grade poetry essay on "Bad." Talk about hard-core GenX parenting...

Aside from the magical ending described above, I remember . . . Bono's bringing up a very lucky duck from the front row to join him onstage and play guitar for "Knockin' On Heaven's Door." There was some discussion about the chords required, some assurance that the fan could handle it, and off they went. All of us garage-band/artistic-rocker wannabees were floored...and jealous.

Then, there was Bono's enthusiastic introduction of his father, Bob Hewson, who was attending his first-ever U2 show in North America that night. As I recounted to my friend Greg Garrett for his book We Get to Carry Each Other: The Gospel According to U2, Bob was not terribly excited to be singled out in this way - a spotlight trained on him as he stood by the soundboard - and he shook his fist in (drunken?) anger at his younger son. Paul, a.k.a. Bono, always the brash, rebellious one in the family, seemed so proud to have his dad in the audience, so eager to please - yet the exchange was an early indicator for us, the fans, of how their tumultuous relationship (Bono's mother having died when he was 14) would be the inspiration for so much good music.

I do have a fleeting memory, as well, of feeling proud and special, as a more/less "local," when Bono introduced "Pride" by talking about Martin King as a son of Atlanta. It would be another five years before I would take up graduate studies in Southern history and the 20th-century civil rights movement, but I was already beginning to be curious about just who this MLKJr. had been, and much of the credit for that curiosity goes not to my textbooks or teachers, but to a rock'n'roll band from Ireland. And then, of course, there were the fans - my friends and me among them - singing "40" out the door and into the night . . . we simply did not want the experience - the envelope of beautifully textured sight and sound that evoked so many emotions and longings in us (ultimately spiritual longings, I would come to believe) - to end.

More soon on the beginning of my days as a U2 fan and concertgoer . . . and what this band and their music have meant to me - to my emotional life, my faith, my sense of politics and people, and more - in the coming days and weeks.

What's your earliest memory of a rock-n-roll (or similar) concert? Why has that memory lasted, do you think? What did that experience have you longing for, long after it was over?

Edwin+

Remembering Martin King

I've waited too late into the evening to start into a post, so just a couple of short notes as this year's MLK, Jr. holiday comes to a quiet close...

• U2, their Unforgettable Fire album (famous for it's song about Martin's martyrdom, another titled "MLK," and still others touching on American culture), and their song "40," from the War album, have been on my mind and heart the last few days thanks to a confluence of things. Last Sunday night U2 won the Golden Globe award for best new song written for a movie in 2013 - or something thereabouts - for "Ordinary Love," written for the Nelson Mandela biopic Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom (note to self: don't forget to go see this movie). It seems the song's now been nominated in a similar category for the Oscar. Kudos to the boys from Dublin for this. Though the song doesn't exactly thrill, and I confess I heard none of the competition, I'm nonetheless thankful for their continuing attention to the project of holding up the life and work of Nelson Mandela, and in particular the way their fame could/should continue to spread the amazing story of 'Madiba' and inspire new generations of folks to extend and defend human rights and pursue reconciliation.
  
  Possibly at the exact time the Golden Globes were being awarded, rather than watching, I - the TV-less priest - was reconnecting ye olde turntable for the first time in over a year and subsequently digging around in the LPs, CDs and DVDs stacked in a corner of the den. My beautiful deluxe, box-set edition of The Unforgettable Fire, with CDs and DVDs, emerged from that treasure hunt, the outtakes CD ending up in the regular rotation later in the week.
  
  As if U2 back in the news (and don't forget there's a new album due within a couple months), and a week of nostalgia for the album that truly led to my love-affair with the lads from Dublin weren't enough, at the end of the week I opened the lectionary to prepare for Sunday's sermon (2nd Sunday after the Epiphany, Year A) and discovered the appointed Psalm was . . . you guessed it: 40. It should come as no surprise then - right? - that my first-ever sermon on that particular Psalm text, and even moreso my first-ever solo singing in a sermon, happened this past Sunday, 18 January. It was a real delight - especially the second time around, when it all came off much smoother - to tell the story of my first U2 show, at Atlanta's OMNI arena on 29 April 1985. To tell the story not so much of hearing "In the Name of Love" sung in Atlanta & dedicated appropriately by Bono - a moving moment in it's own right - but instead to tell how the crowd continued to "sing a new song," to sing over and over the closing chorus of "40" after the lights came up, as we filed out of the OMNI, as we filed into the MARTA station, and yes, even after the train left the station. It was a magical night. I hope I never quite forget the feelings of unity and tranquility, in and with such a huge crowd of rapt listeners / worshippers, that I experienced that night as a 16-year-old. I'm thankful this past week gave me an opportunity to remember it, and the lectionary gave me the perfect opportunity to tell that story for the first time publicly, using it as a springboard for the question: What might it look like for us in the Church to sing a new song, such that the world will see - as it did at the first Epiphany - not so much who we are, as who God is, who Christ is, through us, through our presence and work in the the world.
  
  One more, shorter, MLK-related story tomorrow!

Good Episcopal Church resources for the Advent/Christmas/Epiphany cycle

The Episcopal Diocese of Texas has the financial clout and wherewithal to put out some great Christian formation/education resources for the whole Church. These for Advent/Christmas/Epiphany seem to be short, sweet, to the point. Just the kind of help many of us need to "keep the feast" at home, with our families, in our daily lives- using all the holy wisdom built into the church-year.

Keeping Advent at Home

Prayers for lighting the Advent wreath

Family Advent calendar

What is Epiphany?

More ideas from the Diocese of Texas Christian Education office, both for now and for later in the church-year, are here on Pinterest.

Another good-looking church webpage: membership, baptism, and confirmation

I'm always looking for precise, clear, user-friendly ways to talk to folks about ecclesiology . . . uh . . . er, I mean the nature of the Church and how one is brought into it, how one claims the faith for oneself via the life of the Church, and the meaning of baptism, confirmation, "membership," and such as that. Just came across the website of All Saints, Homewood in Birmingham, Alabama and was impressed by many aspects of their "Become a Member" page (even if I'd use a different title!).

Become a Member � All Saints Episcopal Church

Why Are Fewer People in Church? It’s the Economy, Stupid

There are a gazillion articles and blog posts of late - in the wake of multiple high-class surveys confirming same - on the decline in churchgoing & religious affiliation in the U.S. of A. This one, however, seems fresh and a bit more insightful. Perhaps it's the historian in me, but this demographic / sociological / historical data is pretty compelling. Enjoy!

Why Are Fewer People in Church? It’s the Economy, Stupid | Gestating A Church

Trying to attract the young? Churches should change carefully and wisely | By Andrea Palpant Dilley on Faith & Leadership | Faith & Leadership

Thinking about using my blog more, posting stuff here that seems worth holding onto for my own purposes & sharing for the good of the order. Now, to figure out how to have it automatically repost to Twitter & Facebook...

Trying to attract the young? Churches should change carefully and wisely | By Andrea Palpant Dilley on Faith & Leadership | Faith & Leadership

A sermon for the sixth Sunday of Easter
(Lectionary Year C)
5 May 2013
Church of the Good Shepherd,
Covington, Ga.

Acts 16:9-15 (Lydia & household are converted & baptized by preaching of Paul & co. in Philippi)
Psalm 67
Revelation 21:10,22 - 22:5
Gospel: John 14:23-29 (Farewell Discourse: “my peace I leave with you”)

In this Easter season, this Great 50 Days, we are called as the Church to think about what a life - what OUR lives, transformed by God’s grace, are to now look like. Given how we’ve been touched and moved by the light of the risen Christ, how are we, then, to live? To be more concrete, we might simply say: how are we, transformed by God’s love for us, to turn around and love the world? How are we to share with the world the mercy, compassion, forgiveness, peace, hospitality, solidarity, healing . . . I could go on! . . . how, when, and where are we to share with others these things God in Christ has poured out upon us?

Well, I hope you were listening carefully as we heard the appointed text today from the Acts of the Apostles. It’s a lovely and powerful story about just what can happen when we are willing to do a little bit of reflection on living as a Christians in the world, on our particular gifts to be given, and on what we might expect out there when we give them. Now, I’ve had the pleasure of reading Ellen’s excellent sermon from Good Shepherd Sunday two weeks ago, and I love the alternate title Ellen has given to the book of Acts: The Dangerous Book for Boys and Certain Women. Isn’t that so true?! Well, today’s snippet of the early Church's story is no exception. There is a dramatic vision; a sudden change of plans; another long journey by foot and by boat; an encounter with a rather special woman; and a conversion. Does that sound exciting and enough?!

Basically, today, we’re eavesdropping on a portion of what scholars now call Paul’s Second Missionary Journey, which we believe took place more or less between the years of 49 and 52 (two-digit years sound strange, eh?), so about 15 years after the stunning events at the end of Jesus’s earthly pilgrimage. Paul has left his homeland of Judea as a representative of the early Church, that is, of those Jesus-following Jews known then simply as ‘The Way.’ He has primarily traveled north, up the eastern Mediterranean coast. From there he has moved away from the coast toward the interior of Asia Minor - what we now know as Turkey - picking up Timothy along the way, then headed to the very center of that subcontinent, a locale called Galatia. Now, as best as we can tell, Paul and crew intended to carry the Good News further north into Asia-proper, not west. But all of this changed - abruptly - when Paul woke up from his vision, that vision of a Macedonian man pleading for help. “Immediately,” the text says, they crossed over to Macedonia “being convinced that God had called us to proclaim the good news to them.” Ah! Dangerous Book, indeed. Plans - Paul’s AND OURS - do get up-ended when we’re open to the Spirit’s leading. Our visions - our ‘imaginings,’ if you will - of others, of their particular situations, their predicaments, their challenges, their needs - can lead us to risk a little more of ourselves than is comfortable.

When, do you think, was the last time you found yourself, unexpectedly, perhaps, following a vision or a hope that led you to a new encounter with others? These, my friends, are of the marks of an Easter people, that we are both ready to dream dreams of what COULD be; and that we are ready to sometimes follow those dreams into new encounters with God’s children.

Now, consider also that this sudden decision to go to Macedonia was a far bigger matter than walking down the road a little ways to the next city. It was, in a very real way, going further afield than Paul and co. had ever gone: their little sailing stint from Troas took them, that is, to an entirely...new...continent. Macedonia, you see, lay on the other side, the western side, of the Dardanelles, that narrow little stretch of water that separates, as we’ve understood the geography for centuries, the EAST from the WEST. Paul and his companions on The Way had traveled, for the first time, to the place we now know as EUROPE.

Even though they had not gone very far as the crow flies, they had jumped headfirst into the midst of a whole, new ‘level’ of civilization. Now stay with me, here. To us postmodern North Americans, Europe doesn’t sound very new, does it? Over here, in fact, we commonly refer to it as ‘the old country.’ If only from all that history and English lit we had to take in school, the idea of EUROPE feels familiar, even quaint, out-of-date, somewhat behind the North American curve. But consider the time; imagine the geography; remember that Paul was coming from far, far to the east, really from a tiny, ethnic ghetto of sorts. Know that in this massive empire that dominated the entire Mediterranean region, the prosperous Philippi had special status, status as a Roman colony, a city-state ruled directly from Rome. And since Philippi lay in Macedonia, on the other side of a particular, small body of water - a world away from tiny Judea in so many ways - we now consider Lydia, the leading character of today’s text, the first...Christian...convert...in Europe. Talk about the beginning of a long, long story! . . .

If we are called, above all in Eastertide, my sisters and brothers, to pay attention to the visions we encounter . . . to pay attention to the dreams being dreamed - whether ours personally or those of the Church as a whole - dreams of a world restored to wholeness by the reign, the kingdom, of God . . . are we not also called to consider traveling to new and unfamiliar places, to moving out into the world beyond our familiar environs as we seek to share the Good News, beyond our everyday orbit of home, school, office, grocery store, dance studio, country club, Wal-Mart, and the cozy living rooms of our friends and extended family? Paul & co.’s journey was long, arduous, and far-afield: in taking them to Europe it took them ‘a world away.’ I ask you: when you think of sharing with others the joy of Easter, the good news of God’s love for the world and the wholeness it can bring to people’s lives, what is YOUR Europe? Where is your ‘world away?’

Let me quickly add: this place does not have to be physically very far away. There is plenty of unfamiliar, plenty of strange, plenty of discomforting need for Easter joy right here in Covington, right around us in north Georgia, and spread around our own country, our own part of the globe. And for some of us, even, our ‘world away,’ may not be a place at all, but rather a section of our own hearts that we need to revisit; a chamber that’s been damaged or fallen into disuse, or even that we’ve closed off, over time, out of fear. Maybe that’s where the Gospel journey leads for some of us . . . the full opening-up of our own hearts to the world out there, before we’ve even put one foot in front of another.

Finally, consider the apostles’ encounter with Lydia, that first Christian convert in Europe. We learn some fascinating things about her - about the one most receptive, in the end - to the Good News of the Gospel - in the course of this short passage. We learn that she was probably quite well-to-do, namely because she was a “dealer in purple cloth,” that is, in a luxury item that had to be imported and that only the city’s elite were allowed to wear. The fact that it she could also comfortably host Paul’s entire group - remember how “she prevailed upon us,” the author writes, to stay at her home? - this is another clue of her high status in that society. And perhaps the most fascinating part: we learn that while Lydia was one of those who regularly gathered there by the river to pray, she was largely an outsider in that group: though a Gentile (meaning, simply, not Jewish), she still gathered with Jews just outside her city’s walls because of the attraction she felt to their God: she had begun to worship and pray to the Jewish God some time ago but had not yet fully converted.

My friends, I am here to tell you what you already know: there are similar ‘God worshippers’ all around us who could benefit from our travels, from our journeys into the unfamiliar, uncomfortable places where the Easter imperative takes us. Many of them, like Lydia, are professional people: that is, traveling in the same circles as most of us. We encounter them in our work lives and our play lives. We encounter them in school settings and civic settings. In so many ways they don’t seem very different from us, but if we’re attentive, we may have a chance one day to ask them about their own spiritual life, their own sense of yearning and longing and desire for something more, something bigger, something beyond themselves. And it may be, as it was for Lydia, apparently, that God, through the Holy Spirit is already working in that person’s life, already building a receptivity: “The Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was said...,”...remember? The Holy Spirit - the very presence of the Creator-God, we have to understand, is already active out there in the hearts and minds of folks, not just of those sitting in Church.

It may just as easily be that one of these friends or acquaintances is curious about something they see in us, a particular attitude or generosity or sense of peace and well-being that strikes them as peculiar - peculiar because it’s not something the world, in all it’s striving and getting and competition, typically gives. And then suddenly it is our time to answer to that curious person, to give an account of “the hope that is in us.”

And, mainly at the cost of our attentiveness, and a certain willingness to deal in the unfamiliar and therefore uncomfortable world of places, geographical and spiritual, beyond ourselves, we may find ourselves on a true, exciting journey. A journey of sharing with the world, with the people, around us, those things which we know to have been poured out on us: the mercy, compassion, forgiveness, peace, hospitality, solidarity, healing, and hope conferred by a crucified and risen Savior. It will not be comfortable and easy. It will, indeed, look more like The Dangerous Book for Boys and Certain Women than it will look like a Boy Scout meeting. Why? Because to make the journey we will have to risk our hearts, our time, our money: that is, risk our WHOLE SELVES. And I think what we will find, oftentimes, is plenty of Lydias. Plenty of folks who were all but ready to join in the Easter chorus, just needing a little invitation from us, just needing a little sliver of our hearts.

Paul, Silas, Timothy, and friends found themselves unexpectedly crossing new boundaries, into Europe, of all places; far, far afield from their original intent. But God through the Spirit had prepared the way for them - had prepared Lydia’s heart - and ultimately her home & her hospitality birthed a new instance of the Church. May we also find the way prepared, and our hearts and minds open to the journey into the new and unknown, lying just across the border, there.

© M. Edwin Beckham, 2013

Holy Wednesday homily for Covington's ecumenical Holy Week gathering

I suppose I have U2 on the brain at the moment, given that U2: The Hype and the Feedback is coming up in Cleveland (!) in a couple weekends. So, thought I would reinvigorate my blogging life by posting this one from just two weeks ago. It was a bit nerve wracking, actually, and the bulk of Holy Week, the Great Three Days, seemed a breeze after my official debut in the broader Covington community!

Wednesday in Holy Week (Year C)

27 March 2013

Homily given at First United Methodist Church, Covington, Ga.

OT: Isaiah 50:4-9a (“I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting”)

Psalm: 70

Epistle: Hebrews 12:1-3 (“let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us”)

Gospel: John 13:21-32 (Judas at the Last Supper: “After he received the piece of bread, Satan entered into him. Jesus said to him, ‘Do quickly what you are going to do.’”)

Let us pray:

(the Collect for Monday in Holy Week)

Almighty God, whose dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified: Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other that the way of life and peace; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Well, wouldn’t you know they’d give the new guy the Wednesday of Holy Week, when the appointed Gospel passage focuses, of all things, on Judas!  ...on one of the most despised characters in all of history and on his act of betrayal that sets in motion the harrowing events of Good Friday. So . . . Judas’s betrayal. Hmmm...

Well, I certainly don’t want to make light of the stark reality of betrayal in our beautiful yet broken world, but where do we connect with this story? Am I wrong in saying that it does seem like a hard one to get up close and personal with? It seems like such grand, over-the-top kind of sin that we’re probably more inclined to think of a story of betrayal in a novel we read, or in a movie we saw, or in a favorite TV series from the mid-1980s, than to think of something we’ve been a first-hand witness to. Love - or more likely, lust - seems to often be involved. The pursuit of power and influence seems to feature regularly. Selfishness overtaking the communal ties of family, friendship, and community is often at the root of betrayal. And without a doubt, material greed has got to be THE prime motivator in the history of human beings betraying one another, right?

Now, beyond the world of fiction, I’m also thinking there is enough cumulative and varied human experience in this room to guarantee that several of us have some pretty up-close-and-personal stories of betrayal. And if so, I hope those stories are not too painful to recall. But do stay with me...there’s a good word for all of us, today.

So, in a world where, at least in our day-to-day lives, we don’t typcially experience the kind of grand betrayals of a Judas or a Benedict Arnold on anything like a regular basis . . . or even feel like we perpetrate much in the way of betrayal ourselves, perhaps there’s another way to come at this. Perhaps we need to consider the little betrayals we perpetrate - in our daily lives - betrayals of the Christ in us, and of the Christ in others. The little betrayals of that divine spark, that imago Dei or image of God, that imprint of the Divine which, as Christians, we understand resides within each of us, and not just in us, but within the heart and soul of every...single...human...being.

I’m thinking, of course, of the multitude of ways that we fail to meet our full potential as human beings and beloved children of God; the ways we fail to live whole and full and Christ-centered lives; the ways we fail ourselves and our families and neighbors, in the community and the wider world around us, by not being as compassionate, as merciful, as just, as truthful, as generous, as peaceful, and as self-giving, as God created us to be.

Now, I’m afraid that, were were to go on down that path of ‘little betrayals,’ we would be here way past lunch time! So let me share with you the thing that truly came to me FIRST, when I sat down and read today’s text.

Haven't seen you in quite a while (the song goes)

I was down the hold, just passing time.

Last time we met it was a low-lit room

We were as close together as a bride and groom.

We ate the food, we drank the wine

Everybody having a good time...except you.

You were talking about the end of the world.

The words are not mine. They are lyrics from the first verse of a 22-year-old rock ‘n’ roll song. I’m embarrassed to admit...that given the utter familiarity of this song and how it has played in my head, on repeat, over those 22 years, I don’t think I truly realized the story it tries to tell until about six weeks ago. (How nice to have a new insight after so long!) What I finally came to understand recently, you see, is that this song - yes, a rock-song! - is about the betrayal of our Lord on the night before his death; and that the speaker in the song is Judas himself, talking to the Jesus who was once his dear friend and teacher, and whose disciples he’d served as keeper of the common purse. It is today’s story, told from the perspective not of the evangelist - the narrator - nor of our Lord, the betrayed . . . but as told by Judas, the most famous betrayer of all time.

Do you hear the allusions to the scene we just heard about in John’s Gospel? The “low-lit room” sounds just about right for a cramped, rented room lit only by candles. How about, “as close together as a bride and groom” - that marital imagery so commonly used in the New Testament to describe the relationship between Christ and his followers. And, of course, the reference to that final, meaning-filled meal there in the upper room: “We ate the food, we drank the wine.” But what’s that at the end, there:  “Everybody having a good time, except you...you were talking about the end of the world?” At the end of the verse, there, the focus of the action shifts away from the plight of Judas the betrayer, directing it back to the person of Jesus and what is happening with him. That is, to the approaching end of one kind of world, and the beginning of another.

In the garden I was playing the tart (Judas continues to sing, as we moved forward in the story)

I kissed your lips and broke your heart.

You, you were acting like it was the end of the world.

Could it be, perhaps, that the Judas portrayed in this song is beginning to uncover a truth about the path Jesus was on, the path that could not be obstructed even by a betrayal by one of his closest friends?

Waves of regret and waves of joy (the song finishes)

I reached out for the one I tried to destroy.

You, you said you'd wait till the end of the world.

That’s what the Judas in this song hears our Lord saying in the end, you see. Saying that this ol’ broken world as we know it is coming to to an end, that a new world is dawning, and that he, Jesus, will wait - even until the end of time - for those who want to come along.

So at the risk of getting ahead of ourselves, at getting to Sunday before Thursday night, when we’ve fallen asleep in the Garden, stood dumbfounded at Judas’s kiss, and denied our friendship with Jesus to others; before we’ve watched on Friday from the side alleyways and the neighboring hillsides - watched fearfully and shamefully as our friend Jesus struggles up to Calvary to meet a tortuous death; before we’ve sat on Saturday in the utter silence of the tomb, at the bottom of the pit of despair and loss, wondering just how it all went so wrong for our teacher, the wise-cracking rabbi, our fearless leader and apparently also for us, his little band of brothers and sisters out to heal and remake the world . . . at the risk of jumping ahead in the story, this old song reminds us today that in his Passion, our Lord has shown us that this ol’ broken world, as we know it, has come to an end, that a new world - his kingdom - has dawned, and that he will wait - even until the end of time - for those who want to come along . . . even, and especially, those like you and me, who fall into little - and sometimes big - betrayals now and then, of the Christ-like people we were created to be.  Amen.

Archbishop's New Year Message: appreciate the ‘silent conspiracy of generous dedication'

It's really quite stunning to now be facing the fact of Archbishop Rowan's transition away from the Chair of St. Augustine of Canterbury, a position he's held in such a crucial period of my own life in the Church: namely the 'beginning of the end' of my vocational discernment process, then seminary, then ordination, and then my first cure.

So in the name of grieving Abp. Rowan - of which there will be more here, I feel certain - not to mention honoring his ministry and presence and leadership among us, I wanted to save and share this link to his final New Year's message. More to come soon...

Archbishop's New Year Message: appreciate the ‘silent conspiracy of generous dedication'

Sermon for the 24th Sunday after Pentecost, 2012

Proper 27B
11 November 2012
Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Athens, Ga.
Old Testament: Ruth 3:1-5; 4:13-17
Psalm: 127
Epistle: Hebrews 9:24-28
Gospel: Mark 12:38-44 (“beware of the scribes” who “devour widow’s houses;” the widow’s mite)

Story of the Pentecostal revival service & the offering plate being sent back through the congregation until the pastor was satisfied:

• First more money into the plates, then jewelry:  a wedding ring, even
• Then, on the third circulation, several sets of car keys into the plates!

But what’s the point for us, really? Am I trying to make excuses for corrupt TV-preacher types who will keep making the teary-eyed appeals, who will keep the band playing the sappy songs, who will keep the 800 number prominently displayed along the bottom of the screen . . . who will send the plate back around until they’re satisfied they’ve wrung everything possible out of the faithful? Not at all.

Are we going to change things up here, perhaps? Lengthen the offertory anthems so the plates can go around several times? I confess I know of no such plans. This doesn’t mean I’m not confident, though, that God can work with gold & silver jewelry, and precious stones, and even with a Toyota minivan and a Mercedes sedan. I can’t speak to any donated jewelry, but those two cars have, in fact, been given over to God’s work in the community right here, by members of this very congregation.

No . . . this is not about guilt and it’s not about alerting you to an upcoming change in our liturgy or stewardship campaign. It’s simply one image, an image from a world different from ours but not too different - still church - an image of what it might look like to be so caught up in prayer and praise, in gratitude for what God has done in your life and is doing in the lives of others in and through the life of the Church, to be so excited - at least for a moment in time - about your relationship with your Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer . . . to be so ready and anxious and expectant for the good things to come as to be “all...in...” To bet, to risk, to give yourself and the things under your control over to a work that you know is trustworthy.

You know this phrase “all in” of course. If nothing else you know it from the famous card game of poker. Seems to me it didn’t really come to prominence until Texas Hold ‘Em took the poker world by storm - is this me talking all expert-like about poker? several seminary classmates of mine, perhaps, men AND women, I might add, but this guy is assuredly no expert - and ESPN started televising the Poker National Championships and the winners got advertising contracts and reality TV gigs and...and “all in” became an iconic phrase, uttered by the player so confident in his position, so assured of being on the right track, so excited about the winnings that were to be reaped at the play of the next card, as to be ready to put everything on the line right then and there.

And there are other images, of course. Look no further than the Old Testament lesson and the proclamation of the Mark’s Gospel we just heard.
Ruth, we learn, in the book that bears her name, went “all in” with her mother-in-law Naomi, and with Naomi’s people, the Hebrews. Left widowed and without even brothers-in-law - therefore without the traditional family system of support - Ruth took up with her mother-in-law Naomi, a Hebrew. Against Naomi’s will, even, she clung to her and promised to be her companion, even as Naomi set out to return to her own people.  Even knowing the animosity that existed between Ruth’s Moabite people and Naomi’s Hebrew kinsmen. Yet, these Hebrews, they were the people of Yahweh. And great things were to come; great things were to follow, in God’s own time, from Ruth’s commitment to her new family, from her willingness to be “all in” - not with the tribe she’d been born into - but with the one she’d come to love, the one that had adopted her as it’s own.

And then from St. Mark we get to overhear Jesus observing, for the benefit of the apostles, the goings and comings at the Temple treasury there in the Holy City of Jerusalem. Jesus first notes how the wealthy are contributing - and let’s be clear: he does not condemn them. He merely observes that they are giving from a position of abundance. Their giving, that is, even if it’s at the expected level of their 1st-century Jewish context, is not likely to cause any discomfort to their standard of living; it’s not a risk of their assets; it’s . . . it’s almost like they have given without much expectation of a return on investment. Given out of obligation, perhaps given without much expectation of a return on investment; given without much of a stake in what will become of their gift; given without much trust - much faith that God will multiply and work wonders with their gifts. 

But the widow . . . and her mite - as the KJV puts it. Jesus observes that “she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.” The widow, shall we say, is “all in,” all in for the community of the faithful. All in for what God can do with our gifts. All in for investing in the community knowing that the returns will not only go out to others, but also through the goodness of God will multiply and return blessings to her - someone without a family to care for her, one of the most vulnerable of the whole society. Casting all her hope on God.

So, dear ones, we’re left, then, with a question: what does it look like, for you, in your life at this point in time, to be “all in” with God, and “all in” for the common life of Christ’s Body, the Church? Can you imagine yourself caught up in prayer and praise, in gratitude for what God has done in your life and is doing in the lives of others in and through the life of the Church, to be so excited - at least for a moment in time - about your relationship with your Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer . . . to be so ready and anxious and expectant for the good things to come as to be “all...in...”?

Those of us who were blessed to represent you Friday and Saturday, at the annual gathering of Episcopalians from all over north Georgia, heard a good bit from our new bishop about being expectant for good things to come, about the exciting possibilities when we intentionally engage God’s mission in the world. Bishop Wright cited a text from Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus as a key inspiration for his episcopate: “Now to Him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to Him be glory in the church....”  “It reminds us,” the bishop said, “of the dynamic partnership that God initiates with us.  It reminds us that God’s power is available through the conduit of our faith to achieve real results, results that exceed our thinking and praying.  And, that the climax of this process is God’s church increasing God’s celebrity in the world.

The verse reminds us (he said) that we should be expecting, more from God and more from each other.  Implicit also is that the world should expect more from a church with such a readily available power source.  ...we are expecting in the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta! Through our faith we are expecting more from God. By our faith God can expect more from us.”

My hope and prayer this morning, friends, is that you are able to agree, to say, “Yes, Bishop, I, too, am expecting something...expecting something from my commitment to Christ and his Church. I’m “all in,” and I’m expecting something from God, and from God’s people, from those who have gathered here with me in THIS place, at THIS moment in time.” There is so much we can do together right on the horizon - in mission, in formation, in works of mercy, peace, hospitality, and justice, in study, in praise - and I want to be a part of it. I want to invest my time, talent, and treasure. I want my kids to be a part of it. I want my neighbors to know how much it means to me. I want it to transform lives in my community. With Ruth, with the widow in Jerusalem . . . I’m all in.

Sermon for the 18th Sunday after Pentecost 2012

Proper 21B
30 September 2012
Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Athens, Ga.
Old Testament: Esther 7:1-6, 9-10; 9:20-22
Psalm: 124
Epistle: James 5:13-20
Gospel: Mark 9:38-50 (“Whoever is not against us is for us;” and on not putting stumbling blocks before “these little ones who believe in me”)

Today marks our third week of reading in Mark’s Gospel since Jesus’ first prediction of his Passion, and accordingly the third week since the focus switched from Jesus’ deeds of power to the character and the COST, of discipleship:  switching to a focus on what it looks like to be on the road with Jesus, to believe, to trust, to obey, even . . . on what it means to “take up your cross and follow me,” and inevitably, given human pride and vanity, to what it looks like to be “in” the group of disciples or “outside” of it. Remember last week the 12 arguing about who among them was the greatest, who was the “best disciple?” This week they seem more united, do they not, but perhaps only because they’ve found a common enemy: “someone [namely, not one of the 12] casting out demons in [Jesus’] name” who “was not following us.”

But our Lord will have none of this bickering about the new guy, the new kid on the block who seems to be performing real and effective deeds of healing and restoration - by calling on the authority of Jesus - yet isn’t welcome in the club because … well, because he’s so new. He’s the suspect ‘new guy.’ But it’s almost shockingly clear in Jesus’ rebuke, isn’t it, (“Whoever is not against us is for us”) - clear that the new guy’s discipleship is mainly defined by WHAT HIS ACTIONS DO TO LIBERATE OTHERS from the oppressive forces that beset them. And don’t miss how Jesus draws a very clear line between acting in his name and believing in him: someone healing in his name “will not be able to speak ill of me for long,” he says. To DO - that is, to work for positive change in the lives of others, or in our own lives, for that matter - in the name of our Lord, is, in itself, to come to BELIEVE. Doing and believing cannot be separated. Disciples, those trying to follow the Way, those trying to stay on the sometimes narrow path, Jesus says to the apostles - and to us - are those who are coming to believe because they are coming to know the transformation of human lives made possible through the power of God’s unconditional love.

So how often, how consistently, at what commitment level - today’s text seems to challenge us - do WE ACT like we BELIEVE in this Jesus, as we claim we do? Like we really believe that calling on and imitating and enacting God’s love can heal? or reconcile? or lead to personal growth? or drive out demons? If we’re mainly focused on worrying about others’ credentials, on whether they are good enough to be called one of us, Jesus seems to say, then chances are we’re getting in the way...creating stumbling blocks to their health and wholeness, to their own encounter with the living God - and he’s shockingly clear - with this talk of hellfire and of millstones taking one to the bottom - about how bad that is, is he not?

Oddly enough, we just heard from the Book of Esther the bulk of the origin story for the Jewish holy day of Purim. This past Mon. sundown to Tu. sundown was Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement (at-ONE-ment), for our Jewish bros. and sisters

1. Conclusion to Jewish high holy days, most holy & solemn day of year
2. Day marking reconciliation, reunification - if you will - with God; the human reconciling with the divine; the temporal reconciling with the eternal; the mortal reconciling with the immortal:  the day of returning our most important relationship - the one with our creator - to the way it was meant to be
3. Day of atoning for sins against God, not for sins against other people: to observe Yom Kippur one must first seek reconciliation with anyone you have wronged over the previous year, and if at all possible, put things right with them in material, concrete way
4. When this has happened, Jews understand, then on Yom Kippur God actually comes OUT...to US; God comes out to meet us and removes our stumbling blocks, wipes away those things that have accumulated between us and God over the past year . . . crowding the space, fogging up the windows, blocking the pathway.

Rabbi in Wash. Post:  “Most people want to do the right thing.  But sometimes life gets in the way.  On a daily basis, stumbling blocks disturb our path.  As the year moves along, we begin to see more and more stumbling blocks.”  Ah, yes, we know how this goes, don’t we? We know as well as anybody how our own selfishness, pride, envy, sloth, or just plain fear of the unknown, gets in between us and others, and between us and our lives of intentional discipleship. How it snowballs, even, and before long we feel powerless to recover, to bless anything about our busy lives, much less to bless the lives of others.

Rabbi: “On Yom Kippur, Jews believe that [G-d] removes our stumbling blocks. Normally when someone makes a commitment it comes from a person deciding on their own that they want to commit.  But on Yom Kippur, it is different.  On Yom Kippur, God comes out to meet us and helps us take that extra step of commitment to Him.”

Isn’t that a great image, God rising up, as if from a chair or a couch, walking out the front door of the mansion, with hand outstretched, to meet us - as we stagger and stumble up the path, vaguely in God’s direction - steadying us by grabbing us by the arm, and leading us into the house?

For us Christians, then, it is IN CHRIST that God has done this very thing - both once and for all 2000 years ago, and continually in the sacraments, and in our life together in the Spirit - to emerge into the midst of our human pain and suffering and greed and pride - into our simple, sheer exasperation with everyday life - to take the initiative to come to us and to remove the stumbling blocks. And if Christ’s sacrifice and vindication has removed the final stumbling blocks between the human and the divine, in a way that we here in the Church claim to recognize uniquely - that is, if GOD has come out to us FIRST - then how much more weight is on our shoulders - as Jesus suggests today - not to put barriers and hardships and doubts and curses between ourselves, or in front of those “little ones,” those just beginning to wonder about this Jesus . . . those who through OUR witness might yet come to believe?

“Therefore confess your sins to one another,” says the writer in the letter of James to the Church, describing how we are to live together, “and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective.” For us it’s almost the reverse of how the rabbi described Yom Kippur, isn’t it:  God has come to us FIRST, while we were yet sinners, as Paul says, and BECAUSE OF THAT ACTION we are called to respond, with a discipleship of upholding one another, of looking not only to avoid or break down the everyday barriers that prevent US from experiencing the presence of God, but being careful not to unwittingly put UP the same barriers for our families, our friends, and our neighbors. Let us continually act, even when it seems hard or even impossible, like we believe. Let us be that salt that does not lose its saltiness.


Sermon for the 18th Sunday after Pentecost, 30 September 2012 by M. Edwin Beckham is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Sermon for the 12th Sunday after Pentecost 2012

Proper 15B
Emmanuel Episcopal Church
19 August 2012
Old Testament: 1 Kings 2:10-12; 3:3-14
Psalm: 111
Epistle: Ephesians 5:15-20
Gospel: John 6:51-58

Today’s Gospel passage, again from the sixth chapter of John’s account, continues John’s commentary on the signs Jesus of Nazareth performed at the beginning of the chapter, the feeding of the 5000 and the walking on water that immediately followed. And the question for us, as for the crowd of those following Jesus back and forth across the Sea of Galilee, remains essentially the same: Who is this Jesus and what does he uncover about God?

Jesus’ statements to the crowd of followers have become ever more provocative, culminating in what we heard in conclusion last week, and what we opened with today, in verse 51: “the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” It was already difficult enough, it seems, for the crowds to hear Jesus identifying himself with the God of the Exodus, who alone, according to the tradition, had provided the manna, the life-sustaining food for the Hebrew people wandering in the wilderness of Sinai. And now, as his discourse goes deeper, pushing folks to think less about physical hunger and more about the eternal, universal human longing for ABUNDANT LIFE, Jesus provokes them further: referring to his own flesh & bones as bread; referring to his own blood as thirst-quenching drink; speaking of himself as something that can be eaten, something that can be consumed for the receiving and sustaining of life.

Are we to take this, Lord, metaphorically, or literally?

Despite the directness of this language, of this talk of eating flesh and drinking blood (and as for us today, clearly it was difficult for the crowds in the story, who literally “fought” with one another about it, in the Greek), one approach here could be to take Jesus’s words entirely metaphorically. The great Church reformer Martin Luther took this approach in a sermon in the 16th century, saying that Jesus, in using these phrases, was essentially just provoking the crowd to think deeper: deeper about just what, and who, made the difference to the sustaining of abundant life. The important thing was not some nonsensical call to consume Jesus’ own flesh and blood, but the provocative claim about who he was, about his relationship to the God and Father of all: MY flesh is true food; MY blood is true drink. No one else’s bread - or body - can compare. Not surprisingly, Luther found a way to use BEER to explain. This is not about Annaberg beer being just as good at quenching the thirst as Wittenberg beer, Luther said, but rather more like: “If you do not drink Wittenberg beer, you will find no other beer to slake your thirst!” It was JESUS’ life alone - no one else’s - that revealed the life of the ages, the abundant life, to be had in God.

But, to listen carefully to Jesus words today and imbue them purely, and only, with metaphorical meaning, would be to ignore 2000 years of Christian sacramental practice and theology around the Holy Eucharist. To not engage, as best we can, with the so-called literal meaning of Jesus’ words - “those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them” - would be to miss the human physicality of God incarnate in Jesus, the real intimacy with God we have access to in Jesus, the sharing in Christ not only of our joy but of our suffering and pain, all these things that Christians throughout the ages have come to encounter in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.

Indeed the Johannine community, that is, the group of Jewish Christians who produced John’s Gospel- by the very late 1st century when this book was written down - already would have been decades into observing the Lord’s Supper as the centerpiece of their own life of communal worship and fellowship. They would have looked back on Jesus words here almost certainly with that sacrament in mind, with Christ’s own words said at that table in the Upper Room, and so familiar from their weekly routine, words first taken, well before any of the Gospels were composed, from Paul’s report to the Corinthians: “Jesus on the night in which he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ‘This is my body that is given for you. … In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood...’”

If these ancient, ancient words of our Lord sound familiar to us, too, and resonate in our hearts and minds when we hear Jesus’ talk today of himself as living bread, of his own body as something to be consumed so that we may have abundant life, it is because the Church for eons has understood the sacrament of Holy Eucharist to be at the heart of what it looks like to partake of, to participate in the life of the God of all Creation. It is intimate, it is physical, it involves our bodies, and mysteriously it also involves the Body of our Lord, sacrificed once for all on a cross. It is not about having the correct knowledge, or having the correct metaphor. It is not symbolic. It is consumption of “the living bread that came down from heaven” so that we may be formed in Christ’s image, and enjoy the life of the ages.

So school is back in session. The summer vacation season, at least in this part of the world, is more-or-less behind us. It is a time for fresh starts. A time to make a new beginning. A time to eagerly embrace fresh routines, altered schedules, and new encounters: new teachers for our young people, new sets of students for our teachers, new chances for self-education and community service for so many of our seniors - new traffic jams and lines at the Kroger. And despite the headaches, all of this newness does seem, at a very visceral, intuitive way, to be full of promise. And here in this setting of a parish community, as a group of people bound together in common worship; in common desire for growing in holiness; in common cause to participate in God’s mission of healing and reconciliation in the world; and ultimately in common purpose to form ourselves and those in our care into Christ’s likeness, shouldn’t it also be a time to make a new start, to eagerly embrace a new beginning, a fresh routine of sharing in ministry and sacrament - neither of them independent of the other - a routine that recommits us to our own formation more perfectly into the very Body of Christ we, as the Church, claim to be?

So for our life as the Church it is also a time full of promise. And today our Lord calls us to take him in, to consume him, in Word and in Sacrament, to both be LIKE him - as metaphor would have it - and to abide in him, and he in us - as the mystery of the sacraments would have it. We take him in - we draw as close as humanly possible - in the word heard and proclaimed, and in the wafer and the cup offered. We take him in in study and at play: in the hands-on style of the Catechesis atria, in the playful storytelling about our own daily lives in The Catacombs, and in the exchange of heart and mind in adult fellowship and Bible study. And as we consume the person of Christ in all these ways are we not formed into the one whom we consume? And is the bread that is given for the very “life of the world” not to be desired above all else?

To me that sounds like something worth recommitting to.

Sermon for Proper 21B, 30 September 2012

18th Sunday After Pentecost
Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Athens, Ga.
Old Testament: Esther 7:1-6, 9-10; 9:20-22
Psalm: 124
Epistle: James 5:13-20
Gospel: Mark 9:38-50 (“Whoever is not against us is for us;” and on not putting stumbling blocks before “these little ones who believe in me”)

        Today marks our third week of reading in Mark’s Gospel since Jesus’ first prediction of his Passion, and accordingly the third week since the focus switched from Jesus’ deeds of power to the character and the COST, of discipleship:  switching to a focus on what it looks like to be on the road with Jesus, to believe, to trust, to obey, even . . . on what it means to “take up your cross and follow me,” and inevitably, given human pride and vanity, to what it looks like to be “in” the group of disciples or “outside” of it. Remember last week the 12 arguing about who among them was the greatest, who was the “best disciple?” This week they seem more united, do they not, but perhaps only because they’ve found a common enemy: “someone [namely, not one of the 12] casting out demons in [Jesus’] name” who “was not following us.”
        But our Lord will have none of this bickering about the new guy, the new kid on the block who seems to be performing real and effective deeds of healing and restoration - by calling on the authority of Jesus - yet isn’t welcome in the club because … well, because he’s so new. He’s the suspect ‘new guy.’ But it’s almost shockingly clear in Jesus’ rebuke, isn’t it, (“Whoever is not against us is for us”) - clear that the new guy’s discipleship is mainly defined by WHAT HIS ACTIONS DO TO LIBERATE OTHERS from the oppressive forces that beset them. And don’t miss how Jesus draws a very clear line between acting in his name and believing in him: someone healing in his name “will not be able to speak ill of me for long,” he says. To DO - that is, to work for positive change in the lives of others, or in our own lives, for that matter - in the name of our Lord, is, in itself, to come to BELIEVE. Doing and believing cannot be separated. Disciples, those trying to follow the Way, those trying to stay on the sometimes narrow path, Jesus says to the apostles - and to us - are those who are coming to believe because they are coming to know the transformation of human lives made possible through the power of God’s unconditional love.
So how often, how consistently, at what commitment level - today’s text seems to challenge us - do WE ACT like we BELIEVE in this Jesus, as we claim we do? Like we really believe that calling on and imitating and enacting God’s love can heal? or reconcile? or lead to personal growth? or drive out demons? If we’re mainly focused on worrying about others’ credentials, on whether they are good enough to be called one of us, Jesus seems to say, then chances are we’re getting in the way...creating stumbling blocks to their health and wholeness, to their own encounter with the living God - and he’s shockingly clear - with this talk of hellfire and of millstones taking one to the bottom - about how bad that is, is he not?
        Oddly enough, we just heard from the Book of Esther the bulk of the origin story for the Jewish holy day of Purim. This past Mon. sundown to Tu. sundown was Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement (at-one-ment), for our Jewish brothers and sisters:
1. Conclusion to Jewish high holy days, most holy & solemn day of year
2. Day marking reconciliation, reunification - if you will - with God; the human reconciling with the divine; the temporal reconciling with the eternal; the mortal reconciling with the immortal:  the day of returning our most important relationship - the one with our creator - to the way it was meant to be
3. Day of atoning for sins against God, not for sins against other people: to observe Yom Kippur one must first seek reconciliation with anyone you have wronged over the previous year, and if at all possible, put things right with them in material, concrete way
4. When this has happened, Jews understand, then on Yom Kippur God actually comes OUT...to US; God comes out to meet us and removes our stumbling blocks, wipes away those things that have accumulated between us and God over the past year . . . crowding the space, fogging up the windows, blocking the pathway.

        Rabbi in Wash. Post:  “Most people want to do the right thing.  But sometimes life gets in the way.  On a daily basis, stumbling blocks disturb our path.  As the year moves along, we begin to see more and more stumbling blocks.”  Ah, yes, we know how this goes, don’t we? We know as well as anybody how our own selfishness, pride, envy, sloth, or just plain fear of the unknown, gets in between us and others, and between us and our lives of intentional discipleship. How it snowballs, even, and before long we feel powerless to recover, to bless anything about our busy lives, much less to bless the lives of others.

        Rabbi: “On Yom Kippur, Jews believe that [G-d] removes our stumbling blocks. Normally when someone makes a commitment it comes from a person deciding on their own that they want to commit.  But on Yom Kippur, it is different.  On Yom Kippur, God comes out to meet us and helps us take that extra step of commitment to Him.”
Isn’t that a great image, God rising up, as if from a chair or a couch, walking out the front door of the mansion, with hand outstretched, to meet us - as we stagger and stumble up the path, vaguely in God’s direction - steadying us by grabbing us by the arm, and leading us into the house?
        For us Christians, then, it is IN CHRIST that God has done this very thing - both once and for all 2000 years ago, and continually in the sacraments, and in our life together in the Spirit - to emerge into the midst of our human pain and suffering and greed and pride - into our simple, sheer exasperation with everyday life - to take the initiative to come to us and to remove the stumbling blocks. And if Christ’s sacrifice and vindication has removed the final stumbling blocks between the human and the divine, in a way that we here in the Church claim to recognize uniquely - that is, if GOD has come out to us FIRST - then how much more weight is on our shoulders - as Jesus suggests today - not to put barriers and hardships and doubts and curses between ourselves, or in front of those “little ones,” those just beginning to wonder about this Jesus . . . those who through OUR witness might yet come to believe?
“Therefore confess your sins to one another,” says the writer in the letter of James to the Church, describing how we are to live together, “and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective.” For us it’s almost the reverse of how the rabbi described Yom Kippur, isn’t it:  God has come to us FIRST, while we were yet sinners, as Paul says, and BECAUSE OF THAT ACTION we are called to respond, with a discipleship of upholding one another, of looking not only to avoid or break down the everyday barriers that prevent US from experiencing the presence of God, but being careful not to unwittingly put UP the same barriers for our families, our friends, and our neighbors. Let us continually act, even when it seems hard or even impossible, like we believe. Let us be that salt that does not lose its saltiness. Amen.


Sermon for Proper 21B, 30 September 2012 by M. Edwin Beckham is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.