St. Peter's By The Sea

June 29, 2008

St. Peter’s Day

Good morning. It’s good to see you all and to welcome you to the celebration of the Feast of St. Peter. It is especially meaningful to me this morning because it will be my last St. Peter’s Day with you, and next year at this time there will be a whole new exciting thing happening here.

I’ve had the privilege of preaching on St. Peter’s Day twice before. The first time was in 2004 and it was my last Sunday here as an Assistant Priest with Russ. It was a special day for me and it was difficult to leave a parish and a people who had opened their arms and hearts to me, and who had come to mean so much.

However, the Spirit works in strange ways, and after two years as Priest-in-charge at St. John’s Ashton and St. Martin’s in Pawtucket I found myself back here as your Interim Rector. And last year on St. Peter’s Day we had a very special service, as Russ came back for a visit and for the formal dedication of Ruffino Hall, and we celebrated and remembered his 17 wonderful years here as your Rector.

So this is my 3rd St. Peter’s Day with you, and it too is special in it’s own way.

You may notice that the altar looks different this morning than it usually does for St. Peter’s Day. Some years ago Russ started the custom of having bowls with live fish for St. Peter’s Day. However, last year after the service and after the fish were returned to the fish store and the bowls were cleaned and just sitting in the kitchen, suddenly one of them simply burst apart.

Now, I believe that God or the Spirit speaks to us in many different ways and even in simple things or strange coincidences – what the psychologist Carl Jung calls synchronistic events, which is the meaningful significance of causally unconnected events. In this instance I took it as a sign that it is time to move on – so there are no fish bowls this morning.

Now, that may annoy some of you, or even anger you, and I can understand that change is difficult and often emotionally very painful, and sometimes it is the small things, like no fish bowls, that trigger those feelings.

It was a real privilege and honor for me to work with Russ at a key time in my life when I was returning to parish ministry. I will always be indebted to him for his many kindnesses and for all that he taught me, both directly and by example. I treasure Russ as many of you do, so believe me that I mean no disrespect here.

So this morning I would like to share a few thoughts with you about change and about the Spirit working in our lives and in the midst of us here. And about the future of St. Peter’s-by-the-Sea. Now, as I’ve said, change can be difficult, but what is coming is so exciting.

My three year old daughter Ava captured this wonderful sense of anticipation of what is to come when she announced at dinner the other day, “I don’t want to eat too much of my dinner, so I don’t spoil my treat.” Now there is a girl with priorities.

And the treat that is coming is the new thing that God will be doing in this place, and even more than that, Jesus’ whole life and ministry was to tell us and to show us the treat that is coming, the Realm of God, the Kingdom of God.

We read in the 43rd chapter of the prophet Isaiah, “Thus says the Lord, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters. Who brings forth chariot and horse, army and warrior: they lie down, they cannot rise, they are extinguished, quenched like a wick.” (Isaiah 43:16-17)

Clearly the reference here is to mighty acts of salvation that God has done in the past when he led the Israelites out of bondage in Egypt and he parted the waters of the Red Sea so that they could escape from the army of Pharaoh that pursued them. This is one of the most significant events in our sacred history – but then God goes on to say to Isaiah: “Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” (Isaiah 43:18-19)

What a remarkable statement: “Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old.”

Does that mean we are to forget the history of God’s relationships with mankind? Does it mean that we are to forget what God has done in our lives, and specifically what he has done here at St. Peter’s in the past?

I think the answer is both yes and no. On the one hand, of course we are to remember the past, to honor it, learn from it, and be guided by it. Not to remember the past is to forget who we are and where we came from. Can you imagine God telling us to forget about Jesus, or the crucifixion and resurrection? Or, on a more personal and parochial level, are we to forget the past here at St. Peter’s? Of course not!

Yet as it says in Ecclesiastes, “To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.” (Eccl. 3:1) What the Lord is telling us in Isaiah is that, as there is a time to remember, there is also a time not to: “Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old.”

That doesn’t mean to disrespect or to diminish in any way what has gone on before. No, it means that there are times in our life when we need to make the effort to let go of the past for a bit so that we can look to the future, we can anticipate with hope what is to come, and we can begin to perceive a whole new thing.

For God said to Isaiah and he is saying to us today, both individually and as a parish, “Behold I am doing a new thing: now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” (Isaiah 43:19)

I believe the reality is that God is always doing a new thing in our lives, but we get stuck in the past, or in the way things are, or worse, we may think we have all the answers, or even worse, we become like those who Ezekiel calls “The fat and the strong.” The fat – that is us when we fill ourselves with everything but God; and the strong, that is us when we are temporarily in positions of power, and we think we are somehow better or more deserving than other people.

The new thing that God is doing, that God is always doing, is seeking us out, seeking the lost, the injured, and the strayed, and calling us back into relationship with Him.

This is what is so wonderful about the example of our patron saint Peter. Peter is a lost soul. As Jesus told him he would do, he denied him three times, and he goes back to his old life as a fisherman, all his hopes and dreams shattered by the death of Jesus and his own personal failures and humiliations.

But Jesus seeks him out, Jesus comes to him and calls to him from the beach while he’s fishing and he says to Peter “Come and have breakfast.”

In our reading from Ezekiel this morning we heard “For thus says the Lord God: I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out … I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep.” (Ezekiel 34:11, 14)

So God is always searching for us. Jesus, our shepherd is always here and he is always calling to us and issuing an invitation to come to him. “Come and have breakfast” or “Come to me you who are burdened and heavy laden and I will refresh you.”

But the problem is, we have to recognize that we are lost, and injured, and weak, or we never hear him calling. When we think we are okay you know, on top of things and pretty pleased with ourselves, well then that’s being fat and strong, and as God tells Ezekiel, “The fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with justice.”

Sounds scary and awful, but necessary. You see, our illusions of superiority have to be destroyed. Then we see we are all of us in the same boat – we’re all a bunch of Peters – screw-ups who are in need of being found, and loved, and fed.

So I think that’s why we have to at times forget the former things, so we can see the new thing that God is doing in our lives right now.

And I think that is where we are at St. Peter’s right now. God is here, and God is already doing a new thing, and our job is, like my daughter Ava, to save some room for the treat that is to come, even if we have no idea what it will look like.

In His Name. Amen.

Posted on: Sun, 29 Jun 2008 7:15 am
Category: Sermons

June 22, 2008

Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

Good morning. As the summer solstice has come I want to wish you all a joyful and blessed summer. I love the summer and it is a very special thing to be here in Narragansett for the summer.

So I was hoping to give an upbeat and maybe lighter sermon for the beginning of summer, and then early this past week I read this morning’s Gospel lesson in which Jesus tells us, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth: I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.”

And then he goes on to tell us about setting family members against one another, saying “one’s foes will be members of one’s own family.” And as if this weren’t hard enough, Jesus tells us that if we want to follow him we must take up our cross and lose our life in order to find it. So at first, I thought: not my favorite topics for summer: family warfare and crosses and dying …

I count on my 3 year old daughter Ava sometimes for an inspiration, so what does she say? One day this week, while I was driving, little Ava pipes up from the back seat and tells me: “Daddy, I know one thing it’s good not to talk about … dying.” I thought to myself “Oh, great!” of course now we have to talk about dying, and how right here at the center of our spiritual lives is the reality of the cross and of dying.

So this morning I would like to share a few actually happy thoughts about the sword of Christ, the cross of Christ, and about dying …

I love the summer here in R.I. partly because of the long days, the warmth, and the beach and the ocean. But also just because of the wonder of the earth’s renewal and abundance, and the renewal of life here and now.

Our ancient ancestors were also impressed with the cycles of nature and our earliest religions centered on the fertility of the land and the eternal cycle of death and rebirth. And even our major church holidays, Christmas and Easter, come where they do because of the ancient connection with the Winter Solstice and the renewal of the earth in the Spring and Summer.

The reality of dying and the cycle of death and rebirth is part of our very nature. It is an archetypal pattern that embodies a central truth not only of the world of nature, but also of our psychological development, and our spiritual transformation. Our very lives are a series of deaths and rebirths, we are in a continual process of an old identity dying and a new one being born.

The other day my four year old son Rafe showed me a bit of this reality of change, of the stages of our lives and how soon we become aware of them. Rafe said to me: “Last summer was a great summer. It was my best summer.” Then he added, somewhat wistfully: “Last year was a really good year. Being 3 was the best year of all.” And when I asked him, he said being 4 was pretty great so far, but clearly he could feel that his three year old identity and experience was already passing, that he was a new guy at 4. That’s part of our natural cycle of death and rebirth, our natural cycle of change and transformation.

Marcus Borg shares a story he was told about a three-year old girl. He says, “Several years ago I was told a story about a three-year old girl. She was the firstborn and only child in her family, but now her mother was pregnant again, and the little girl was very excited about having a new brother or sister. Within a few hours of the parents bringing a new baby boy home from the hospital, the girl made a request: she wanted to be alone with her new brother in his room with the door shut. Her insistence about being alone with the baby with the door shut made her parents a bit uneasy, but then they remembered that they had installed an intercom system in anticipation of the baby’s arrival, so they realized they could let their daughter do this, and if they heard the slightest indication that anything strange was happening, they could be in the baby’s room in an instant. So they let the little girl go into the baby’s room, shut the door, and raced to the intercom listening station. They heard their daughter’s footsteps moving across the baby’s room, imagined her standing over the baby’s crib, and then they heard her saying to her three-day-old brother, ‘Tell me about God – I’ve almost forgotten.’ ”1

In Zen Buddhism the master will ask his pupil to meditate on the statement: “Show me your face before you were born.” And in the gospel of Thomas Jesus tells the disciples of this inner knowledge we have forgotten. He says: “The kingdom is inside you and outside you. When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will understand that you are children of the living Father.”

I think Jesus came to tell us about this other reality, the reality of the Spirit, the reality of the presence of God at the core of our being and our true (if forgotten) identity as children of light, children of the living presence of God. And he explains over and over that the way to this new reality and new identity is the way of the cross, that is, a process of death and rebirth.

Jesus says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” He is telling us that our death, like that of the seed, is part of a process of transformation, leading us to a new life.

In the gospel of Mark Jesus tells his followers “If anyone wants to be my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” (Mark 8:34) Marcus Borg writes that “At the heart of the … wisdom of Jesus was the path of death and resurrection understood as a metaphor for an internal psychological and spiritual process. It involved dying to an old identity and being born into a new way of being. The new identity and new way of being was a life radically centered in God …”2

Jesus is calling us to wake up to the kingdom of God, to the presence of God, and his way to the kingdom is a path of transformation that leads through death and resurrection.

Paul speaks very clearly about his own experience of dying and rising with Christ. He writes, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.” (Galatians 2:19b-20a) And he tells us “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see everything has become new.” (2 Cor. 5:17)

So for Jesus and for Paul the dying process was a letting go of an old identity, of truly being changed, becoming a new person. The great German mystic Meister Eckhardt says that this death takes place when we let go of our old self, and abandon ourselves to God. He says then, “God must pour out the whole of himself with all his might totally into everyone who has utterly abandoned himself.”

This death to the old self and the revealing of the new self can happen very suddenly, as it did to the English clergyman Leslie Wheatherhead, who was suddenly filled with the glory of God and who saw that all of us are shining and glorious beings who in the end would enter incredible joy. And as in all true experiences of the divine, his was marked by love … He says “I loved everybody … It sounds silly now, and indeed I blush to write it, but at that moment I think I would have died for any one of the people (on that train car with me).”

I remember the summer before I went to Seminary I worked as a construction laborer lugging steel rods to the steel layers. They were a very seasoned and rough group of guys. One day at the lunch break they were asking me why I or anyone would even think about going to Seminary. So I told them or reminded them of the story of St. Francis of Assisi, of how as a young man Francis was rich and enjoyed wine and women and led a rather wild life. Then one day he saw the other reality, the reality of God’s presence. And Francis gave up everything, he went through a death and rebirth, a spiritual transformation.

So I said to them, look it practically: Francis saw that there was a much greater beauty and joy and peace to be found and he gave up everything for it, and he became for the world from that day to this an example of love not only for all people, but for the whole of creation.

Jesus tells us that it is God’s great pleasure to give us the kingdom and he tells us over and over not to be afraid, because he knows we are destined to be transformed in God’s love. In order to have this experience, though, we must be willing to die small deaths: to allow old parts of ourselves to be sloughed off so that new parts can find air and grow. This happens bit by bit, perhaps even unnoticeably; until one day, we realize that a whole new thing has taken root within.

May prayer is that this might be the best summer of your life and that you might find a new you.

In His Name. Amen.

1 Marcus Borg, Heart of Christianity, pp. 113-114.
2 Marcus Borg, Heart of Christianity, p. 90.

Posted on: Sun, 22 Jun 2008 11:26 am
Category: Sermons

June 15, 2008

Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

Good morning and Happy Father’s Day.

The other day I was at CVS with my 3 year old daughter Ava and we were waiting in line at the prescription pick-up counter. Ava got bored standing there and so she went over to sit in the waiting area and she sat next to a young woman who was reading a magazine. After a little bit the woman can feel Ava looking at her and they both say hi to each other. Then the woman turns back to her magazine. And I hear Ava say to her, “Did you know that my name is Ava?” And there is no response at all from the young woman, who clearly doesn’t want to be engaged. And Ava looks over to me and goes “I don’t think she hears me.” So I call her over to me so she won’t pester the other woman. What I find amazing and delightful is Ava’s openness to strangers, and her assumption that they are as open and interested in her as she is in them.

This morning I would like to share a few thoughts with you about the strangers at our doors and being open to letting God into our lives. In this morning’s gospel we heard the story of Jesus sending out his first followers in pairs to the houses in the countryside. He gives “them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness.”

When I read the lesson this week my first thought was how scientists tell us we use only a fraction of our brains, and that there was a parallel with how we use only a fraction of our spiritual gifts. The New Testament scholar John Dominic Crossan in his wonderful book on Jesus says that, “The kingdom of God was not, for Jesus, a divine monopoly exclusively bound to his own person … (rather) one entered the kingdom as a way of life and anyone who could live it could bring it to others.”1

Imagine that – living the kingdom as a way of life and brining it to others. Crossan also says that these first missionaries … “were predominantly healed healers, part of whose continuing healing was precisely their empowerment to heal others.”2

So these first apostles are examples to us of the amazing possibilities of our spiritual gifts and depths. Like them, we too are called to be healed, to live the kingdom of God as a way of life, and to be empowered to bring it to others.

But first we need to answer the door. As Jesus continues his instructions to the apostles, he tells them “whatever house you enter say, ‘Peace be to this house.’ And if a child of peace is there, your peace will rest upon him. But if not let your peace return to you.” And he says “Heal the sick and say to them, ‘God’s kingdom has come near to you.’ But if you enter a town and they do not receive you, as you leave, shake the dust from your feet and say, ‘Nevertheless, be sure of this, the realm of God has come near you.’ ” (Luke 10:6-11)

The key here is that we are the house that the Lord comes to, whether we understand that collectively as the church, or individually as God comes into our lives.

You know, I find this story of the apostles difficult when I try to imagine people coming to my door. When the doorbell rings unexpectedly at my house, I’m not all that excited like my daughter Ava, who thinks “Oh, who is this interesting person?” I usually think “Uh-oh – who’s this.” And when I go to the door and see two nicely dressed people then I think “Oh no – here are some evangelists.” I admit, I’m immediately suspicious and I think, here are some people who want to tell me what I should think and feel and want … they want my soul. So how were the first apostles different from this?

I think the biggest difference is that they come to bring something to you – if you want it. It’s an offering and not a conversion. And what is this something that they bring? Jesus calls it the peace of the Lord and it is a very real spiritual reality that can rest on people or depart from them. And I think this gift that the apostles received from Jesus and bring to others is twofold: it is an immediate and real experience of the Spirit, of the presence of God. And in this experience of the reality of the presence of God, we are healed and made whole.

Who among us would not feel patronized, annoyed, and even offended, by the experience of someone coming to our door and saying, “I have the answer! I’m here to save you!” But who among us would not welcome with all our hearts an authentic experience of the Spirit – of being touched and known and transformed in a very direct and personal way by God or by one of his emissaries.

This truth is that God is always coming into our lives. God may speak to us in a still small voice, or in dreams, or in other people, or even in the events of our lives.

There is an inner door of our heart or of our soul that we keep closed tight most of the time because it is the door to our most intimate, most real self, and we are afraid to open it. And it is at this door of our house, of ourselves, that Jesus stands and knocks. As he says to us in the Book of Revelation: “Behold I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come to him and eat with him, and he with me.” (Rev. 3:20)

So our job is to inwardly open the door of our hearts and let the Lord in, so that we may be healed by his love and filled with his peace and his joy. And our job is to open our outer doors, the doors of our houses and of our churches and welcome the stranger who stands there.

Paul says in his letter to the Hebrews, “Let mutual love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.” Paul is making an allusion to the story of Abraham that we heard this morning, about how “The Lord appeared to Abraham … as he sat at the entrance to his tent in the heat of the day. He looked up and saw three men standing there.” And then Abraham gives us an example of hospitality as he invites the strangers to rest and refresh themselves while a meal is prepared for them. And as the visit continues it becomes clear that these three strangers are angels, that is, messengers of the Lord. And they foretell that Sarah, who is barren, will give birth to a child. And here comes one of my favorite parts: When Sarah hears this, she laughs at God. Now, one might imagine that she laughs because she can’t bear the thought of having a baby in her 90’s – but more probably she laughs because it is so hard to believe in the reality of God and that He can come into our lives and transform it.

So Paul tells us to show hospitality to strangers because we might be entertaining angels in disguise. But as I have shared with you before, I think Jesus’ teaching here is much more radical, in that he affirms the reality of the sacredness of each person, including you and me. It is not that we might be entertaining angels without knowing it, it is that each person, each stranger who comes through our doors is sacred, is an angel of God, is a messenger of God, whether they know it or not, and whether we know it or not.

Jesus is very clear on this when he says, “Come you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.”

Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink?” And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” (Matthew 25:31-40)

So it’s not that you want to be careful because someone might be an angel in disguise, but rather that we all are, and until we really take that in we are missing what he is revealing to us.

When we answer the door, whether it is the door of our heart, or the door of our house, or the door of our churches, and we let God come into our lives, we begin to realize not only our own sacredness, but the sacredness of each person. And then we begin to live in the Kingdom.

In His Name. Amen.

1 John Dominic Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, p. 113.
2 Ibid, p. 109.

Posted on: Sun, 15 Jun 2008 9:27 am
Category: Sermons

---

---