Author Archives: mbj

Homily for Monday in Holy Week, March 25, 2013. Delivered by the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, Grace Church, Amherst, Massachusetts.

Isaiah 42:1-9Hebrews 9:11-15
Psalm 36:5-11John 12:1-11

Somewhere in the dark

“How priceless is your love, O God! */ your people take refuge under the shadow of your wings.” (Psalm 36:7)

We gather tonight in the world that Jesus knew, a world that is wracked by violence and fear.  We live in a world in which more than three thousand children are killed every year in the United States by gunfire, a world in which a man can force his way into a school and leave twenty children dead.  We live in a world of struggle and loss and sorrow, a world in which some people wrestle with despair all their lives and must exert every ounce of strength to keep hold of the desire to live.  We live in a world of drones and wars and melting glaciers, a world that seems sometimes to be spinning past anyone’s control, a world in which we can’t always hold back the forces of darkness – it is too late, they have already been unleashed.  Jesus knows this brutal, frightened, desperate world of ours.  As we move into Holy Week, the tension around Jesus is rising to a breaking point.  The civil and religious authorities are plotting to take his life and looking for a way to arrest him.  The powers of evil are gathering – relentless, implacable, and ready to strike.

Yet somewhere in the dark, in this world in which it seems sometimes that no one cares – we are lost – there is no meaning anymore, no longer any ground for hope – still, there is a house where someone is bending down to anoint another person’s feet.  The gesture is an act of blessing, an anointing for burial, and an expression of extravagant love.  Somewhere in the dark, a woman is turning to Jesus with tenderness and a gentle touch.  She has seen his goodness, and that goodness has called forth her own.  She has seen his strength, and that strength has called out hers.  She has experienced his generosity, and that generosity has awakened hers.  She has witnessed his desire to follow where divine love leads, no matter what the cost may be, and that desire has aroused her own.  In knowing Jesus, she knows someone whose very being proclaims what the psalmist sang, “Your love, O LORD, reaches to the heavens, * and your faithfulness to the clouds.  Your righteousness is like the strong mountains, your justice like the great deep; you save both man and beast, O LORD” (Psalm 36:5-6).  In Jesus, Mary of Bethany has met – just as we meet – someone who conveys the divine love that fills everything from the heights of the heavens down to the great deep, the love of God that is manifest in the evanescent, passing cloud and in the ancient, solid mountains, the love that sustains both human beings and the whole creation.  In the presence of Jesus, Mary can say with the psalmist, “How priceless is your love, O God!* / your people take refuge under the shadow of your wings” (Psalm 36:7).

We enter the darkness of Holy Week because this is where we meet Jesus, here in the darkness of the world, where the light of Christ continues to shine.  The light that we see in Jesus calls forth the light that abides within us.  Somewhere in the dark – goodness, beauty, mercy, and truth are still shining.  Somewhere in the dark, there is a house that is filling with the fragrance of perfume.  Somewhere in the dark, people who love Jesus are coming alive, rising up to bear witness to the love of God that will never die. 

You know this for yourselves.  I see so many of you reaching out a hand to visit the sick, to comfort the bereaved, to share in someone’s laughter or to ease someone’s tears!  Again and again in your lives, and in mine, I see how a small act of kindness, a decision to listen carefully and with love, a willingness to forgive or a commitment to search for reconciliation in a difficult relationship is making all the difference in opening a path to new life.  This morning I saw again the power of walking with Jesus, as bishops, clergy, and lay people from across New England and the Atlantic seaboard – including our own Doug Fisher – gathered in Washington, D.C. to pray an outdoor Stations of the Cross.  This extraordinary Holy Week Witness was organized by the bishops of Connecticut after the shooting in Newtown, and its purpose was to challenge our country’s culture of violence.  The bishops decided to take that witness to our nation’s capital in order “to say to our political leaders and to our country that we will no longer be silent while violence permeates our world, our society, our Church, our homes and ourselves.  Our faith calls us to be ministers of reconciliation, to give voice to the voiceless and to strive for justice in the name of our Lord.”

Tonight, and throughout this week, we look deeply into the darkness of the world.  With Jesus, we face the suffering, injustice, and dying that is going on around us and within us.  Yet somewhere in the dark, someone is making a gesture of loving-kindness, and a house is filling with the fragrance of perfume, the fragrance of an infinite love that darkness will never overcome.  Somewhere in the dark, those who love Jesus are already coming alive, already rising up to bear witness to the love of God that never dies. 

I want to close by reading one of the meditations that was written for the Stations of the Cross service held today in D.C.  I contributed a meditation myself, but that is not the one I want to read.  I want to close with a meditation written by Bishop Jim Curry of Connecticut.1  He writes:

“On the evening of Good Friday every year, the Anglican Church in Maputo, Mozambique gathers for the Burial of Christ.  A black casket is carried to the front of the church and laid before the altar.  Pallbearers lift the lid from the casket and put it aside.  The bishop calls the congregation into solemn prayer.  Jesus has died.  He truly is dead.  And this service is to be his funeral.

“Two by two the members of the congregation are invited forward with these words:  Come and see the one who has died and will rise from the dead. Acolytes stand near the casket to hand flowers to each person who comes forward.  Everyone knows these flowers are to decorate his grave.  Jesus is truly dead.

“Two by two the congregants make their way to the casket to look on the one who has died and who will rise from the dead.  A thousand people come forward accompanied by the singing of a cappella choirs.  Two by two people stop at the casket, bow, and look upon the one who has died and who will rise from the dead.  Finally,” he writes, “it is my turn to come to the casket, flower in hand.  It is a holy moment.  I bow and look into casket.  And there, in a mirror, I see my own face.  I am the one who has died and will rise from the dead.

“St. Paul wrote to the Romans: ‘Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so too we might walk in newness of life’ (Romans 6:3-4).”

As we enter Holy Week, may we discover afresh that walking the way of the cross is none other than the way of life and peace, through Jesus Christ.

1. The Rt. Rev. James E. Curry, Bishop of Connecticut, Meditation for the Thirteenth and Fourteen Stations of “The Way of the Cross: Challenging a Culture of Violence,” March 25, 2013, in Washington, D.C.

The fourth of four short video meditations on prayer and spirituality, videotaped and edited by Dr. Robert A. Jonas in the spring of 2013.

The third of four short video meditations on prayer and spirituality, videotaped and edited by Dr. Robert A. Jonas in the spring of 2013.

The second of four short video meditations on prayer and spirituality, videotaped and edited by Dr. Robert A. Jonas in the spring of 2013.

One of four short video meditations on prayer and spirituality, videotaped and edited by Dr. Robert A. Jonas in the spring of 2013.

Sermon for the Third Sunday in Lent, March 3, 2013. Delivered by the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, Grace Church, Amherst, Massachusetts.

Exodus 3:1-151 Corinthians 10:1-13
Psalm 63:1-8Luke 13:1-9

Repent or perish

Here on the Third Sunday in Lent we have reached the center of this season of penitence and self-examination, and it is fitting that today’s Gospel passage conveys Jesus’ urgent call to repentance.  We hear the message twice, in fact: “Unless you repent, you will all perish” (Luke 13:3,5).  Let’s pause for a moment to consider the word ‘repent’ and what images it conjures up.  Mention the word ‘repent,’ and most of us flash instantly to an image of an angry, Bible-thumping preacher – no doubt a man – who stands in a pulpit or at a street corner, angrily accosting his listeners with threats of judgment and doom.  Most of us probably associate the word ‘repent’ with folks who claim with self-righteous self-assurance that they, and they alone, speak for God when they condemn whole groups of people outright, and when they threaten other people with hell-fire and damnation.  The cry “Repent!” has often been used – and is often still used – as a cudgel to bully people into submission and to force upon them a particular worldview and set of values.

So when we hear Jesus say, “Unless you repent, you will perish,” many of us probably wince and pull back.  We don’t want to be party to a religious faith that seems to promote self-righteousness, on the one hand, or abject fear, on the other.  We don’t want to be like that imagined street preacher who has an angry, judging mind that is perpetually finding fault with other people and insisting that they repent and shape up.  And we certainly don’t want to be his listeners, either, the people who cower before his words and who shiver with the anxious, glance-over-the-shoulder uneasiness that maybe there really is something basically wrong with us, that maybe we are not good enough, and will never be good enough, to please an angry God. 

It is ironic that Jesus’ call to repentance is so often proclaimed and heard within that tight little framework, for his call to repentance means something else entirely.  As Marcus Borg explains in his book, The Heart of Christianity, and as Cynthia Bourgeault argues in her own fine book, The Wisdom Jesus, repentance does not meaning closing in on yourself and being gripped by introspective guilt.  Repentance doesn’t just mean “feeling really sorry for what you have done or left undone, [or] feeling really bad about the horrible person that you are.”1 The Greek word that we translate as “repentance” is metanoia.  Meta means “beyond” or “large,” and noia means “mind.”  The repentance – the metanoia – that Jesus is talking about means to go “beyond the mind” or to go “into the larger mind.”2  In other words, Jesus’ call to repentance is a call to a change in consciousness – a call to step out of the small frame of reference in which my ego dominates my perception of things and my ego determines what’s valuable and what’s not, what’s good and what’s not, depending on whether I like it or not, on whether it promotes my survival and security or not.  The small self, the ego-based self, is all about me: What about me?  What’s in it for me?  Repentance, metanoia, is when we move out of that small operating system and into the larger mind of Christ, when our consciousness expands and we experience our larger Self in Christ, the consciousness that views ourselves and everyone else with compassion, the consciousness that does not divide this from that, but that views things everything whole.

Take a look at today’s Gospel passage and you’ll see what I mean.  The background to the passage is this: it was assumed in ancient times, just as it’s often assumed today, that sin and suffering are directly correlated.  If something bad happens to you and you suffer, that must be because you did something wrong and God is punishing you.  If Pilate massacred some Galileans, the Galileans must have had it coming – right?  If the tower of Siloam fell down and killed eighteen people, they must have deserved it – right?  No, Jesus says in reply, people who suffer because of human violence, because of accident, natural disaster, or any other cause, are no more sinful than anyone else.  A similar question arises in the Gospel of John, when Jesus’ disciples notice a man blind from birth, and they ask Jesus, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” And Jesus answers, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him” (John 9:2-3).  And then Jesus heals the eyes of the blind man and opens the eyes of the people who were judging him.

The ego-based operating system wants so much to be able to say: good things happen to good people, and bad things to bad people.  If other people are suffering, it’s their own damn fault.  If I’m financially secure and comfortable and in good health, then I’m safe and God loves me; if I’m poor or ill or blind or going through a really hard time, then it’s my fault, or someone’s fault, and God is punishing me.    

I remember a moment years ago when I was sick and about to faint, and just before I lost consciousness, I heard myself say to myself, “Hey, this can’t be happening! I’m a nice person!”  I laughed about it later, after I came to: obviously at some deep level of my psyche, I believed that if I were a really nice person, nothing bad would ever happen to me.  My ego likes to be in control – that’s what egos do – and it must have assumed that the way to stay safe and to survive was to be a good person and be nice.  The ego is all about promoting and protecting itself, and it likes to think that it’s in charge.  But – surprise!  That is not the way the world works.  That is not reality.  Life is actually precarious.  In real life, accidents occur, tragedies take place, innocent people suffer, and things don’t go the way the ego planned.  As my stepdaughter Chris posted yesterday on her Facebook page: “The universe must not have gotten the memo about my agenda.”

The good news about disappointment, loss, and failure is that it can shake us loose from the domination of the ego and can lead us to trust in God alone.  Sometimes only great love or great suffering has the power to break open the doors of perception so that, in the words of William Blake, “everything appears… as it is, Infinite.” For, as the poet goes on to say, “man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.”3 

Into that closed-up world in which we see through “narrow chinks,” a world in which each of us tends to be out for ourselves, anxiously looking out for Number One, quick to make ourselves the center of the universe and to blame ourselves or someone else if we feel threatened or if things don’t go our way, Jesus comes to say “Repent or perish.  Step into a larger consciousness, or else stay stuck in a small, fearful, and death-obsessed world.  Repent and discover that the Kingdom of Heaven is within you.  That is what I’ve come to share with you,” he says.  “Let’s step into that larger mind, where we let go of fear and blame, of self-seeking and self-concern, and discover that everyone and everything, without exception, is sustained moment to moment by the ongoing love of God.” 

Here at the center of Lent, I encourage you, and I encourage myself, to step more deeply into our own metanoia, to repent and day by day to put on the mind of Christ.  As Paul writes in Romans, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Romans 12:2).  How do we encourage that metanoia, that change of consciousness?   I’ll make just two suggestions. 

First, we can take time for solitude and silence.  We live in a noisy world, a world of bustle, frenzy, and haste.  Only if we become like Moses, only if we spend regular time alone and in silence, will we come to see the bush that is aflame with God – come to see that in fact every bush is filled with God’s presence and lit up with God’s radiance.  A quiet mind is a spacious mind, a mind that begins to perceive what we might call the hidden vastness or hidden depths of things.  The change of consciousness that Moses experienced on the mountain, that opening of the doors of perception, is available to everyone who takes time to pray in silence and who learns some practices for quieting the mind.  I encourage everyone to come to the Monday night contemplative prayer group, not just in Lent, as we prepare for the Paschal mystery, but also through Eastertide and beyond, as we explore together how silence can open us to the vast, living mystery of God.

Second, we can find a way today, and every day, to do something kind.  Why do something kind?  Because when the doors of perception are cleansed, we see that everything is connected.  When Moses sees the burning bush, when he sees the divine Presence shining out toward him, when he hears the divine Presence addressing him intimately by name, he discovers that he is called to become, not only a mystic, but also a prophet, a healer, a liberator.  The message he receives from God isn’t meant just for him alone, but for his beloved community – indeed, for all creation.  Moses discovers – and we discover the same thing, too – that being close to God is not just a solitary, ecstatic experience, but also an experience that brings to awareness the suffering of other people and of the earth itself, and that calls us to engage in the liberation struggles of the world. 

So – is there someone you know who is hurting or lonely?  Is there someone you know who could use a kind word, an invitation to coffee, or a friendly phone call?  Do something kind every day – volunteer at Craig’s Doors or spend time with a child – and look and see if that self-centered grip of the ego doesn’t begin to let go just a bit.  Like that barren fig tree in today’s parable, there are people right now who feel bereft and empty, people who need the tending of a loving gardener.  Maybe you are just the person to offer strength and support until the other person is able to bear fruit.  

Repent – step into that big mind that is ours in Jesus Christ – and we will not perish, but right here, right now, we will have eternal life.

1. Marcus J. Borg, The Heart of Christianity (HarperSanFrancisco, 2003), p. 180.

2. Cynthia Bourgeault, The Wisdom Jesus (Boston & London: Shambhala, 2008), p. 37.

3. William Blake, “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell”, Plate 14.

Sermon for the Second Sunday in Lent, February 24, 2013. Delivered by the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, Grace St. Paul’s Church, Tucson, Arizona. Listen to an audio recording.

 
Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18 Philippians 3:17-4:1
Psalm 27 Luke 13:31-35
 

“Look toward the heaven and count the stars”

 

“The word of Yahweh came to Abram in a vision, ‘Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield…’…God brought him outside and said, ‘Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them… So shall your descendants be.’ And [Abram] believed Yahweh.” (Genesis 15:1, 5-6a)

 

It is wonderful to be back at Grace St. Paul’s and to worship with you again.  I am delighted that today’s readings bring us the story of our brother Abram, this man who longed so much for life to flow through him.  You know the story – Abram and his wife Sarai were old, and they had no children.  Although the couple yearned to bear a child, Sarai was unable to conceive, and to all intents and purposes it seemed impossible that they would ever have biological descendants.  Yet the word of God came to Abram in a vision, and Abram received that mysterious assurance that only comes when our minds grow quiet and we listen attentively in the silence.  “Do not be afraid,” God whispered in Abram’s heart. “I am your shield.” And then, on that memorable night, “God brought [Abram] outside and said, ‘Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them’” (Gen 15:5).

 

You live right here in the Tucson desert, so you know what that’s like: you go out into the desert on a quiet night, you stand in the company of ancient mountains, you look up, and you see a sky brimful of stars.  Even if you’ve seen it many times before, you can’t help but be seized by amazement.  Wherever you look, there they are: stars and more stars – more constellations than you could possibly name.  Abram couldn’t count them any more than we can, and in that moment of silent wonder, he heard God’s promise: “So shall your descendants be.”  Now comes the story’s pivotal sentence, the sentence on which everything depends: “Abram believed Yahweh.”  He believed Yahweh.  He trusted that somehow his longing to give life would be fulfilled.  In the silence of his heart, he heard the divine promise, and he believed what he heard.  He accepted it.  He put his trust in it.  No, let’s put it in stronger terms – he committed himself to that promise, even though there was no tangible evidence to back it up.

 

I relish this story of Abram because he is the archetype of every person of faith.  Abram is a spiritual companion to everyone who feels a deep longing to be fruitful and who dares to trust that somehow that longing will be fulfilled.  Of course the desire to give life can be expressed in all kinds of ways.  Sometimes it takes a literal form, as it did with Abram and Sarai, in our desire to conceive and bear children, and to raise a family.  But the desire to give life is expressed in many other ways, too – by the desire to heal or to reconcile, by the desire to speak truthfully and kindly, to be patient and to listen more carefully, by the desire to create something beautiful, to tend a garden, feed the hungry, work for justice, or in some other way to make the world a better place.  Whoever we are, whatever our age or circumstances, God has planted deep within us a desire to bear fruit, a longing for our lives to be a blessing to those who come after us.  We want to bless the future by the choices that we make today.  We want life to flow through us – through our hands and words and thoughts and actions.

 

That’s no surprise, really, for that is what Jesus came to do: to give us a path to life.  “I have come that you may have life,” he tells us, “and have it to the full” – or, as another translation puts it, “I have come that you may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10).  “I am the bread of life,” he says (John 6:35).  “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life” (John 14:6).  And whatever Jesus has, he wants to share with us (c.f. John 14:20, 15:4, 14:27, 15:9, and 17:21-26).

 

Lent is a season that calls us to reclaim our God-given longing to be fully alive and to be bearers of life.  During these forty days we are invited to pause and take stock of our personal lives and of our life together on this planet.  In Lent we have an opportunity to confess where we have gone off-track, and to repent and ask God for strength to amend our ways.  It turns out that Lent is a season that we dearly need, for it is crystal clear that the present path on which our species is headed is a path that leads to death, not life.  Whether we are keenly aware of it, or are able only to glimpse it out of the corner of our eye, to some degree all of us are conscious that the web of life on this planet is unraveling.  We humans are destroying wildlife habitat on land, sea, and air at an alarming pace, and we have already burned enough coal, gas, and oil to raise the planet’s average temperature by more than one degree.  If we stick to our present course, business as usual, the earth will be an average of four or five degrees hotter before the century is out.  Nine of the ten warmest years occurred in the last decade, and scientists recently confirmed that 2012 was the hottest year in U.S. history.  At the end of last summer, scientists reported that Arctic sea ice had melted to a record low – as one headline crisply put it: “Half of Polar Ice Cap Missing.”

 

Meanwhile we are seeing around the world a chaotic array of weather extremes – intense flooding, droughts, and storms – maybe including this week’s snowfall in the desert.  Although any given day may be cold, the long-term trend is going in one direction: toward heat.  The drought here in Arizona and other Western states, one of the worst in American history, was front-page news in yesterday’s New York Times.1

 

We’ve never had a Lent in which the choice before us has been so clear: will we stay true to our heart’s deep call to be bearers of life?  Will we cast our lot with Abram and trust that even if the task before us seems impossible, even if preventing runaway climate change seems beyond our reach, nevertheless we will “stand firm in the Lord” (Philippians 4:1) whose love sustains us, who tells us again and again, “Do not be afraid,” and who urges us to believe that our acts of love and justice will bear fruit in ways we cannot even begin to imagine?  “Look toward the heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.  So shall your descendants be.”

 

I was thrilled to learn ten days ago that on Ash Wednesday more than forty activists from all over the country were arrested outside the White House in a peaceful act of civil disobedience.  Why did they decide to break the law?  Because they were challenging the President to confront the climate crisis and to reject the Keystone XL pipeline, a pipeline that would carry what some people are calling the dirtiest oil on the planet from Canada’s tar sands to the Gulf of Mexico.  Many of those arrested carried on their foreheads the smudge of ashes.  As a friend of mine, Jim Antal,2 wrote in an eloquent statement to explain his arrest, “Repentance is essential if we are to find a way forward.  Ash Wednesday is a good day to be arrested because civil disobedience is a form of repentance…  Our generation must now repent of the sin of wrecking God’s creation.”

 

Then, a few days later, on the first Sunday in Lent – last Sunday! – somewhere between 35,000 and 50,000 people gathered on the Mall in Washington, DC, in the largest climate rally in history, to voice their opposition to the Keystone pipeline and to urge a swift transition to clean, safe, renewable sources of energy.  Can it be that the climate movement in this country has finally sprung to life?  Can it be that the God who lures and coaxes us to become agents of life is speaking now in the hearts of men and women all over the country – and indeed, all over world – inviting us to stand up and speak out and change course?

 

The battle for life to flourish on this planet is just that – a battle.  Energy companies already own a pool of fossil fuels that is five times larger than the amount of fossil fuels that – if burned – would catapult the global climate into catastrophic, runaway change.  So we are fighting to keep that carbon in the ground, where it belongs.  We are fighting for our future.  We are fighting for a habitable planet, and for the survival and flourishing of life – not just human life, but life as it has evolved around the world.

 

Standing up for life can be risky, as Jesus well knew.  In today’s Gospel passage, some friendly Pharisees warn him to turn back, because Herod Antipas wants to kill him.  But Jesus refuses to step away from the life-giving path along which God is leading him, whatever the cost may be.  “Today, tomorrow, and the next day,” he replies, “I must be on my way” (Luke 13:33).  In short, he won’t be stopped.  Like Abram, Jesus chooses to live by faith.  He puts his trust in the unseen God and keeps going.  No wonder it’s so inadequate to think that we who follow Jesus are a fixed institution or cling to a rigid set of beliefs!  The Church is not a building – we’re a movement!  We’re a community of people joined with Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit, and we are on the move – like Abram, like Jesus – to stand up for life in an often death-dealing world.

 

How is God inviting Grace St. Paul’s to take a leadership role in this city and in this diocese in addressing climate change?  I know that you already have a strong Creation Spirituality Ministry here, and I salute you for that!  Maybe there is more you would like to do.  Maybe you will want to join the Annual Ecumenical Lenten Carbon Fast, which delivers free daily emails during Lent, with suggestions for reducing your carbon footprint.  Maybe you’ll want to discuss divesting from fossil fuel companies as a symbol of your commitment to heal the earth. Maybe you’ll want to convene conversations among lay people and clergy in the diocese about how to create a political economy that does not depend on ravaging the earth, or how to build emotional resilience in the face of almost inconceivable loss, or how to help each other move past our fear and despair and to keep listening for the voice of a loving God.

 

Now is the perfect moment to stand up for life, for we’re living at a pivotal moment in human history when our choices really matter.  As philosopher Joanna Macy points out, we live between two competing possibilities: the possibility of life unraveling on this planet and the possibility of creating a life-sustaining society.  We don’t know how the story will end, so it matters what we do.  It matters whether or not we are growing in love for ourselves, for our neighbors, and for the earth on which all life depends.  It matters whether or not we are finding a way to become healers and transformers in a troubled world.

 

After making the covenant with Abram, God says to him, “To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates” (Genesis 15:18).  Moved by the love of God in Christ, we, too, want to be able to say to our descendants: I give you a flourishing world.  To quote another climate activist (Eban Goodstein), we want to be able to say to our children and to our children’s children:

 
I give you – polar bears. I give you – glaciers. I give you – coral reefs. I give you – ice shelves as big as a continent. I give you – moderate weather. I give you – a stable climate.
 

May God sustain and bless our efforts in the years ahead.

 

1. “Thin Snowpack in West Signals Summer of Fire and Drought,” by Jack Healy, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/23/us/in-drought-stricken-heartland-snow-is-no-savior.html.

 

2. “Ash Wednesday 2013: A Good Day To Be Arrested as an Advocate for God’s Creation and for Future Generations,” by the Rev. Dr. Jim Antal, Minister and President of the Massachusetts Conference of the United Church of Christ.

 
 
 
 

Originally published at http://clearstorycollective.org

Arctic air has been streaming south all week, holding us in its grip.  My husband bursts through the back door, his eyes sparkling.  He pulls off his hat, stamps snow off his boots, and rubs his hands, barely containing his glee.  The sun has only just risen, but already he’s been wandering outside for nearly an hour, taking photos of fox and wild turkey tracks.  It’s like old-time winters in Wisconsin, he tells me; it’s exhilarating to trudge through snow and to feel the wind’s sting.

In this corner of New England we revel in the cold, the glint of sunshine on fields of snow, the pleasure of returning to a warm house.  But we live in more than the immediacy of the present moment — we live in the big picture, too.  Scientists tell us that the sudden cold snap we’ve been experiencing across much of the U.S. is not just another old-fashioned winter, but actually something new.  Because the Arctic is rapidly warming, frigid air that once circulated mostly at the pole has broken free and is flowing south.  Journalists offer different images for these so-called “sudden stratospheric warming events”: it’s like someone leaving the refrigerator door open; it’s like the collapse of a fence that used to hold the cold air in. 1

I will never grasp the intricacies of physics or meteorology, but I know enough to know that climate change is real and that the loss of Arctic sea ice because of a heating planet may account for this week’s deep freeze further south.  An increasingly unstable climate makes different parts of the world undergo extreme storms, droughts and floods, record heat waves and unusual bouts of cold weather.  No wonder global warming is sometimes dubbed “global weirding.” 

I gaze for a while at an animation of how temperatures have been fluctuating at the polar stratosphere over the past few weeks.  I ponder the complicated movement of red areas (warm temperatures) and blue (cold), trying to make sense of the patterns.  I feel like a first-year medical student peering haplessly into a patient’s throbbing lungs and heart: what the heck is going on here, and how in the world can I help? 

And then I turn in prayer to an icon of Christ bending down to hold the world in his loving arms.  I will never fathom the love of God, but I know that God’s love embraces all Creation.  I will never be a doctor, but I know that everyone can be a healer. 

So I take myself out into the cold.  Along with a dozen other hardy souls, I brave a stiff wind and 16 degree temperatures to stand in front of an Exxon/Mobil gas station on a busy highway.  We hold up signs to protest the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, and we wave at the drivers who honk back in support.  Small protests like ours are erupting all over the country as people mobilize to stop Big Oil from throwing our climate into chaos.  On Sunday, February 17, tens of thousands of people are expected to converge on Washington, DC, in what we hope will be the biggest push for climate action that this country has ever seen.

It takes a fire inside to send a person out into the cold.  My husband wanders alone outside with his camera to revel in beauty and to bring back images of God’s Creation: bare twigs and frozen pond, fox tracks and gleaming snow.  I stand outside in a rally on a city street to bear witness to the God whose beauty fills the earth and whose justice calls us to protect the fox, the wild turkey, the snow, and the refugee scrambling for safety from a super-storm. 

Baby, it’s cold outside, but the fires of love burn bright.

http://www.climatecentral.org/news/stratospheric-phenomenon-is-bringing-frigid-cold-to-us-15479

Selected MP3s of Sermons

Transfiguration and a radiant Earth. February 23, 2020 (Grace St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Tucson, AZ)

Rooted and rising: We shall not be moved. February 17, 2019 (St. James Episcopal Church, New London, CT). The sermon is preceded by a brief introduction by the Rev. Ranjit K. Mathews, Rector of St. James.

Saving Planet Earth: “Arise, my love, my fair one.” September 2, 2018 (Christ Church Cathedral, Vancouver, BC, Canada). The sermon is preceded by a brief introduction and a minute or two of Robert A. Jonas improvising on shakuhachi (Japanese bamboo flute).

Keep the faith. February 25, 2018 (Grace St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Tucson, AZ)

Rooted and rising: Spiritual resilience. October 29, 2017 (St. Mark’s Cathedral, Seattle, WA)

March for jobs, justice and climate: “Were not our hearts burning within us?” April 30, 2017 (St. Columba’s Episcopal Church, Washington, D.C.)

You have kept the good wine until now. January 20, 2013 (Grace Church, Amherst, MA)

A heart for healing. November 18, 2012 (Grace Church, Amherst, MA)

National Preach-In on Global Warming: The ‘oh shit’ moment we all must have. February 12, 2012 (Grace Church, Amherst, MA)

Angel in the doorway. December 18, 2011 (Grace Church, Amherst, MA)

Grumbling in the vineyard. Sept. 18, 2011 (Grace Church, Amherst, MA)

Creation Sunday: Hands on faith. May 1, 2011 (Grace Church, Amherst, MA)

Creation Sunday: Good shepherd, good earth. April 25, 2010 (Grace Church, Amherst, MA)

A voice in the wilderness. December 5, 2009 (Grace Church, Amherst, MA)

Sermon for the Second Sunday after Epiphany, January 20, 2013. Delivered by the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, Grace Church, Amherst, Massachusetts.

Isaiah 62:1-51 Corinthians 12:1-11
Psalm 36:5-10John 2:1-11

You have kept the good wine until now

“When the steward tasted the water that had become wine… the steward called the bridegroom and said to him, “…You have kept the good wine until now.” (John 2:9-10)

A few weeks ago I came across an essay on the editorial pages of the New York Times in which – as I remember it – the author described the personal and professional hardships of turning 40.  He listed all the reasons why the decade of your 40’s is particularly difficult, but it turns out that he wasn’t looking back nostalgically at a happier time in his youth – he had found every decade of his life unsatisfying.  His essay laid out the reasons why being in your 30’s was pretty awful, too; why it was a burden to be in your 20’s; and why it was so tough to be a teenager.  The essay did not go unanswered.  Before long a letter showed up, in which a reader was keen to carry on the line of reasoning and to inventory all the difficulties we face in our 50’s and 60’s.  I am waiting for a letter that comments on the decades after that. 

Now I don’t have a problem with being clear about the challenges of life, but isn’t it true that something in us hungers for more than a life filled with complaints and regret?  Isn’t it true that we want more out of life – and to give more to life – than to find ourselves perpetually hemmed in by frustration and disappointment?  It is so easy to settle for being only half here, to be caught up in anxiety about the future or weighed down by bitterness about the past.  We can look as if we’re alive – we can go through the motions: we can walk, talk, drive to work, deal with the kids and the grandkids, run the errands – but inside we can be irritable, depressed, worried, and only barely present.  Deep down, isn’t it true that we long for so much more?  The truth is that we’d like our days to be brimming with wonder, not with worry.  We want to be able to rise to the challenge of whatever life brings, to find a way to live with zest and creativity, with curiosity and compassion, no matter what the circumstances of our lives may be.  We don’t want to succumb to cynicism or despair.  We want to be fully alive, not partially alive. 

I can’t help but turn to a poem by Mary Oliver that expresses the determination not to settle for anything less than fullness of life.  It’s called “When Death Comes,”1 and the poet writes, at the end:

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement. 
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. 

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real. 
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument. 

I don’t want to end up simply having visited the world.

Jesus would understand a declaration like that.  Jesus came to show us a path to fullness of life.  “I have come that you may have life,” he tells us in what sounds to me like a mission statement, “and have it to the full” – or, as another translation puts it, “I have come that you may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10).  “I am the bread of life,” he says (John 6:35).  “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life” (John 14:6).
And so his first miracle – the first of the seven so-called “signs” in the Gospel of John that disclose Jesus’ true nature and reveal his glory – is to turn water into wine.  You know the story: during a wedding at Cana, while the festivities are in full swing, the wine runs out.  Jesus points out six large stone jars, all of them empty, and has them filled with water; then he turns their contents into the finest, most delicious wine that anyone has ever tasted.  Jesus is an agent of change, a transformer.  By his words, at his touch, in his presence, what is ordinary and lackluster, “same old same old,” becomes vital and sparkling, as delicious and joy-inducing as the very best – well, choose whatever most pleases you – cabernet sauvignon, merlot, champagne… 

What the story suggests is that there is a river of divine creativity at the very center of things, ready to pour into the most ordinary moments of our lives so that we are filled again with reverence and wonder, with a sense of courage and fresh possibility.  Jesus turns water into wine, not only once, at a long ago wedding in a far away place, but whenever we find ourselves caught up in that mysterious transformation of despair into hope, of fear into gratefulness, of sorrow into joy.  I know what it’s like – you know what it’s like – we all know what it’s like – to find ourselves standing motionless like those empty stone jars, stuck in our old habits and fixed ways of thinking, hopelessly repeating our endless stories of worry, argument, and lament – and then along comes Jesus to wake us up and to fill us with his wine.  Carl Jung once suggested that an alcoholic’s addiction to spirits might be a misplaced search for the Holy Spirit, that intoxicating presence that gladdens our hearts and draws us out of ourselves and gathers us up in love. 

Speaking of love, it’s no accident that the story of Jesus turning water into wine takes place in the context of a wedding.  One commentary2 I read on this Gospel passage argues that it’s strictly incidental that the setting of this miracle story is a wedding, but personally I think that the wedding imagery is crucial.  The wedding is an image of erotic love, of passionate commitment and fidelity.  The poet’s words echo again in my ears:

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement. 
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. 

What transforms the water of our lives into wine?  Discovering that we are deeply loved, discovering that there is an unshakable, eternal Something at the heart of reality that is always giving itself to us in love and always inviting our passionate response.  God is looking for us and longing for us with the ardor and tenderness of a bridegroom looking for his bride.  How else are we transformed except by love?  We can’t turn the water of our life into wine by ourselves.  We can’t force ourselves to change.  Brute willpower can never accomplish deep and lasting transformation of our hearts and minds.  What changes us – what transforms the water of our lives into wine – is the experience of being deeply loved.  So if we want our lives to be transformed, and if we, too, like Jesus, want to be healers and transformers, people who are themselves fully alive and who bring life to others, then we can do what Jesus did: we can listen patiently and faithfully to the inner voice of love.  We can make ourselves vulnerable to the divine touch of God.
You could do worse than to sit down this week and to read through today’s first reading very slowly, receiving the words as if they were personally directed to you – not only to Zion, not only to Jerusalem, but also to you.  “You shall be called by a new name that the mouth of the LORD will give.  You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the LORD, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God.  You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land” – that is, the living, natural world around you – “shall no more be termed Desolate; but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her, and your land Married; for the LORD delights in you, and your land shall be married.”  Now here’s the finish: “For as a young man marries a young woman, so shall your builder” – that is, God – “marry you, and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you” (Isaiah 62:2b-5).
Can you take this in?  It doesn’t matter how old you are or how young you are.  It doesn’t matter if you’re in your teens, your 30’s, 40’s, or 90’s.  It doesn’t matter if you’re single or divorced, partnered, married, dating or widowed.  None of that matters.  God is longing to take you, and us, and all God’s creation, into God’s heart.  God wants to give you, and us, and all Creation, a new name, a new identity.  We are no longer to be called Forsaken, but rather My Delight Is In You; we are no longer to be called Desolate, but rather Married.  Whenever we glimpse that union between the soul and God, whenever we taste that marriage between heaven and earth, whenever we discover again how precious we are, and how precious the whole of God’s Creation is, what can we do but come to life?  

Now is the perfect moment to come to life, for we’re living at a pivotal moment in human history when our choices really matter.  As philosopher Joanna Macy points out, we live between two competing possibilities: the possibility of life unraveling on this planet and the possibility of creating a life-sustaining society.  We don’t know how the story will end, so it matters whether or not we are awake.  It matters whether or not we are growing in love for ourselves, for our neighbors, and for the earth on which all life depends.  It matters whether or not we are finding some way to become healers and transformers in a troubled world.  Howard Thurman, the spiritual mentor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., used to say, “Don’t ask what the world needs.  Ask what makes you come alive and go out and do it.  Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

We may say to ourselves, “Oh, it’s too late for me and for the world; I’m too set in my ways, and the world is too far gone.  After all, the Arctic is melting, there is a mega-drought in the Amazon, and some scientists say that we’re past the point where the world’s warming can be limited to 2 degrees.”  Yet here comes the steward, reaching out to take a sip of Jesus’ wine, and saying with astonishment, “You have kept the good wine until now!” (John 2:10b).  What if we are on the brink of – and are in fact already caught up in – a process of radical transformation, in which hate is already being turned to love, despair to hope, and water into wine?  Are we willing to become a bride married to amazement, a bridegroom who takes the world into his arms?

I’ll end with some lines by Adrienne Rich from the last section of her poem, “Dreams Before Waking” (1983):

What would it mean to live
in a city whose people were changing
each other’s despair into hope? —
You yourself must change it. —
what would it feel like to know
your country was changing? —
You yourself must change it. —
Though your life felt arduous
new and unmapped and strange
what would it mean to stand on the first
page of the end of despair?

1. Mary Oliver, “When Death Comes,” New and Selected Poems, Boston: Beacon Press, 1992.

2. Reginald H. Fuller, Preaching the Lectionary, revised edition, Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1984, p. 450.