Sunday, July 22, 2018

God's Dwelling Place


A Sermon preached on Sunday, July 22, at St. Augustine’s, Wiesbaden

2 Samuel 7:1-14a; Ephesians 2:11-22; Mark 6:30-34, 53-56
When you are still in the middle of a capital campaign and busy spending money on renovating a building – very visibly right now – you wonder if God is really on your side when all the readings seem to indicate that God is not overly fond of physical buildings or of houses for God.
First we heard how God asks David via the prophet Nathan: “Are you the one to build me a house to live in? I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day.” (2 Samuel 7:4) Nor it seems, does God want to live in one that day either. Then, in the Letter to the Ephesians, we hear that in fact it is the people, and not some wooden, stone, or red brick building who are the dwelling place for God. And finally, as if to add insult to injury, when Jesus wants to gather his disciples for a time of much needed rest and prayer, he calls them away to a deserted place and not the local parish synagogue.
So, shall we give this place up and just use a tent in the garden? No, it would be much too cold in the winter, though of course to make sure that this building is also not too cold in the winter, we do have to complete and fully finance our heating project! The other reason is that if we look at the readings more closely, God does not actually reject buildings as such. He just tells David that he is not the one called to build him a house, that will be his son Solomon’s job, because other types of “houses” and “households” are more important at that moment in Israel’s life: The house of David, the dynasty he will found to lead Israel and that through David’s descendant Jesus will expand to include the whole family of humanity.
But these passages are important and salient reminders not to idolize our buildings. Remember, this is not the church, we are! The people are the place. The proper home for God is in our hearts and in our lives. Paul writes that joined together in Christ we form or will grow to form God’s dwelling place. (Ephesians 2:21) Let us take a closer look at how this particular dwelling-place is constructed.
The first thing to note is that strangely and quite unlike any physical buildings it has no walls, nothing to keep people out or in. When Paul says that we are no longer strangers and aliens (2:19) – or perhaps immigrants and refugees to use a modern equivalent – he means that all people are now included. The house or household of David has been expanded through Christ so that all people will “have access in one Spirit to the Father.” Christ has “broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.” (2:14) Paul was of course referring to the hostility between Jew and Gentile, because that was his context. But we can expand this further. The new humanity Jesus creates in himself is for all peoples.
The second thing – and this appeals to the science fiction fan in me – God’s dwelling-place exists out of time and out of space. Not only are we no longer outsiders, but as “citizens with the saints” we are joined to all who have gone before us and who already form the eternal household of God. This is not just about you Ephesians, Paul says. And for us too it reminds us that God’s house is much bigger than this single church, or for that matter the Church, or this world and this life.
Thirdly, it is “built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets.” Not literally of course, this is not a mafia movie script. When we talk about the apostles as a foundation, we often use it as shorthand for the church being built on the faith of the apostles, so on the teaching they handed on, and on the historic creeds. And it is true that without the apostles and their witness as recorded in Scripture we would not know about Jesus. But I think that Paul also means that we must base our lives on the apostolic and prophetic deeds and actions.
In the passage we heard from Mark’s Gospel, the disciples, called apostles for the first time, have just returned from being sent out by Jesus. “The apostles gathered around Jesus and told him all that they had done and taught.” (Mark 6:30) At the beginning of chapter 6 (Mark 6:12) they “went out and proclaimed that all should repent. They cast out many demons and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.” Or in other words, they and we are sent to tell people about Christ in the hope that they turn to him. And we are called to bring healing: both physical and spiritual. Our society is not well, fear and hate are gaining ground. But we have the cure and that cure is Jesus.
Prophets, the other element of the foundation, are those, like Nathan, who tell the people and the powerful not what they want to hear, but what God wants them to hear. Building on their example, our job is not to reinforce existing prejudices but to introduce God’s counter-narrative, which built on sacrifice, and selfless love as embodied in Jesus Christ.
Finally, we learn that “Christ Jesus himself is the cornerstone” of the building. The cornerstone (or foundation stone) is the first stone set in construction: all other stones will be set in reference to this stone and so it will determine the position of the entire structure. Nothing then is more important than Christ Jesus. Our relationship with him, our adherence to his teaching, and our willingness to follow the path of his life is what determines whether we as a community, not just as individuals, form a holy temple in the Lord. We are the living stones that make up God’s spiritual dwelling-place and we take our direction from God’s Son. He both holds us and brings us together.
Of course, there are physical spaces where we feel God’s presence. We have been worshipping God here for over 150 years and that leaves traces. One priest wrote about her church as having “walls varnished by prayer and a floor bathed by baptisms and flowered with wedding petals and funeral lilies. Thousands of outstretched hands have received the Body of Christ at the altar. Of course God is present.” [1]
Physical buildings are neither good nor bad in themselves. They are good if they support the community in their mission. Physical buildings are bad if they become the sole focus of the community or something that people use to hide in and to keep the world out. God likes to move about and we make a mistake if we think that we can keep or restrain God in any particular space. Remember what God says to David: “I have been moving about in a tent and a tabernacle. I have moved about among all the people of Israel.” (2 Samuel 7:6-7) And don’t forget too that the word apostle, our foundation, means sent forth. God wants us to go out into the world and to bring our loving, liberating, and life-giving message!
I think our church’s four visions take this into account and strike the right balance between Paul’s blueprint for a spiritual dwelling-place and our need for a physical home:
Our church is a place where we welcome others and worship. It is where we teach and pray and seek fellowship: where we deepen our relationship with one another and with God. It is a resource that we offer, with ourselves, to support local concerns. Our fourth vision is perhaps the most important and apostolic: The church building is also the place we leave when we go out into the world to “act as a beacon of hope, embracing the stranger with openness, kindness, and acceptance and bearing witness to our faith by our lives and actions.”
God dwells in all our hearts, not exclusively in Christian ones … we just have to help others discover this joyous truth.
Amen.


[1] Sallie Schisler in http://prayer.forwardmovement.org/forward_day_by_day.php?d=3&m=1&y=2017


Sunday, July 1, 2018

Sandwiches


A Sermon preached on Sunday, July 1 (Proper 8), at St. Augustine’s, Wiesbaden
2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27; 2 Corinthians 8:7-15; Mark 5:21-43

In this morning’s Gospel, you heard a “Markan Sandwich.” No I don’t mean a marmite sandwich which contains a mysterious sticky black savory substance much beloved of some English, and strongly disliked by the rest of the world, but Markan, from Mark. It describes his technique of placing one story inside another. They are supposed to reinforce each other, often one story acts as a commentary on the other. For example, in a later “sandwich” (Mark 11:12-21) Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple is inserted in a story of how he curses fig tree for not bearing fruit, which then withers and dies: clearly a commentary on the fate of the Temple because its guardians have not borne the fruit God intended.
But today for example, the healing of the woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for 12 years is sandwiched between two halves of another healing event, the story of how Jesus brings Jairus’ 12-year old daughter back to life. The two anonymous protagonists have a couple of things in common: they share the last 12 years, both are healed by Jesus, both are female sufferers and described as daughters. One has a loving father, the other seems to be alone, but both know God’s love. And putting these two episodes together reminds us that Jesus came for everyone, for the powerful and the powerless, for the leader of the community and for the outcast woman. All are welcome, all are recipients of God’s grace.
On his way to Jairus’ house to heal his daughter, Jesus heals the woman simply by touch, her touch. Both out of desperation, 12 years is a long time to suffer and as we heard she had endured much under many physicians, and out of hope sustained by her faith in Jesus’ power she reaches out to him, convinced that “If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.” (Mark 5:28) And she is. But her healing is not yet complete. Only when Jesus looks into her eyes and says the words, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease,” (5:34) is she truly healed. Before she was an outcast, unclean and unwelcome, now she is a beloved child of God. When Jesus says, “Go in peace,” he us using the word “shalom,” which means much more than a lack of war. This peace is health, well-being, and wholeness. Her body has been healed and her relationships have been restored. Once again, she is part of her community. She was not physical dead, but socially. And so, in one sense she was also brought back to life.
What does Jesus mean with the words, “your faith has made you well?” Did she heal herself? No, but her faith opened a channel for Jesus’ healing power, even when he had not intended to heal her. We see the reverse effect in the next chapter of Mark’s Gospel, when Jesus visits his hometown and due to their unbelief, “he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them.” (Mark 6:5) His power was as strong in Nazareth as elsewhere. But they were not open, their minds and bodies were closed, they saw no need for healing.
Jairus on the other hand, the loving father, was moved by a strong faith. Faith allowed him to overcome the embarrassment of asking, begging an itinerant rabbi for help. “Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live.” (5:23) Faith sustains him even after everyone tells him his daughter is dead. He has just seen a demonstration of Jesus’ power. Can it work for her too, can it bring her back from the dead? “Do not fear, only believe,” (5:36) Jesus says, reassuring him. It is rewarded. With the words ‘little girl get up’ or rise up, the same verb used for Jesus’ own rising from the dead, she is restored to life.
In the Gospels, only she and two other people are brought back to life: the widow’s son at Nain (Luke 7:11-17) and most famously Lazarus (John 11:1-44). Why only these three? Why does Jesus often leave a town or area before everyone there has been healed? While Jesus was moved by compassion to help, or in the case of the woman with hemorrhages that help is taken even when not explicitly offered, he did not come into the world to be a one-man National Health Service. His purpose was something much greater. He came to heal the breach between us and God, to heal the division between one another. In his letter to the Corinthians Paul writes: “For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.” (2 Cor. 8:9) In his letter to the Philippians (2:7) Paul uses a different analogy, Christ Jesus “emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.” In both cases Paul is describing what we call kenosis, Jesus emptying himself of his divinity to become human, to share our humanity and to show us that we all share this humanity, and deification, his offer of transformation, of taking us up with him into God.
As I am reminded just before the beginning of General Convention, sometimes our Episcopal Church is a little prone to focusing purely on the physical healing and on matters of social justice. There is a tendency to political activism, and to passing lots of well-meaning resolutions, which will have little to no impact outside of the convention center. The motto of ERD is “Healing a hurting world.” None of this is wrong, but we won’t be able to truly and fully and completely heal the world without bringing God into it.
But it would equally be wrong to focus solely on the spiritual. This seems to be problem of the Corinthians. They take great pride in their spiritual endowments. They excel, Paul says, “in everything—in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in eagerness and love.” (2 Cor. 8:7) But not it appears in putting all these qualities into action! Therefore, Paul talks about testing the genuineness of their love. The action Paul wants them to complete is an act of generosity and financial support for their beleaguered brothers and sisters in Jerusalem. It is wonderful, Paul goes on, that you want to help: “now finish doing it!” (8:11)
Now I don’t want to overdo the sandwich metaphor. But just as a sandwich needs both the flavor of the filling and the protection and extra nourishment of the bread covering, so to faith and action must go together. Action – or works to use that term so beloved of Reformation era Protestants – without faith will not have a long-term impact and will not bring about the transformation that God offers us. Faith without works is dry and without effect. To claim to be a faithful Christian without the visible marks of our faith, without acting as our Lord acted and taught is just not plausible, just not convincing.
All Anglicans share what are called the Five Marks of Mission. They express, and I quote, “the Anglican Communion’s common commitment to, and understanding of, God’s holistic and integral mission.”[1] They are holistic as they cover both our faith, and our call to transport and transmit that faith, as well as the different ways in which we are called to heal: people, society, and creation. Here they are:

  1. To proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom
  2.  To teach, baptize and nurture new believers
  3. To respond to human need by loving service
  4. To seek to transform unjust structures of society, to challenge violence of every kind and to pursue peace and reconciliation
  5. To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth

This is – borrowing Paul’s phrase – a fair balance. Our faith makes us well, and our faith calls us to make all things well in and through Jesus’ name.
Amen.


[1] http://www.anglicancommunion.org/mission/marks-of-mission.aspx