Sermon for the Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany, February 12, 2012. Delivered by the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, Grace Church, Amherst, MA.

2 Kings 5: 1-141 Corinthians 9:24-27
Psalm 30Mark 1:40-45

The “Oh, sh*t” moment we all must have

“A leper came to him, begging him, and kneeling he said to him, ‘If you choose, you can make me clean.’”
 (Mark 1:40)

Today Grace Church is taking part in the National Preach-In on Global Warming. We’re joining more than one thousand congregations of varying faith traditions across the country who are focusing their attention this morning on the urgent reality of climate disruption. I’ve preached on this topic many times, and I’m not going to say much about the facts on the ground. You already know the science. Rapidly increasing greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of coal, gas, and oil are destabilizing “the only climate under which human civilization has flourished.” 1 Sea levels are rising; oceans are becoming warmer and more acidic; weather events are becoming more severe; species are going extinct; ecosystems are shifting; refugees are already on the move. According to NASA scientists, last year was the ninth-warmest year on record, and nine of the ten warmest years in the modern meteorological record have occurred since the year 2000. 2

Now I want to ask — what happens inside you when you hear facts like these? How does your body respond? If you’re like me, you feel something constrict or tighten up. When I think about global warming, I sometimes feel my belly squeeze and my breathing get shallow. I want to push the news away. I don’t want to think about it. Why? Because it can make me feel anxious and helpless, maybe full of despair. I’d much rather turn my attention to something pleasant, or at least something that seems more immediate and closer to home — like: time to make supper.

However, as Australian ethicist Clive Hamilton writes, “At some point — finally — the full truth of what the climate scientists are saying breaks through all of our defences. We can no longer pretend the impacts of warming are too far off to worry about, or that the scientists must be exaggerating. We realise that our apathy is rooted in fear…” He goes on to say, “For some, the realisation creeps up as the true meaning of warming leaks into consciousness. For others, the breakthrough is sudden and overwhelming.” 3 In other words, there comes a point when we finally get it, we finally grasp the enormity of the climate challenge. One journalist calls it the “Oh shoot” moment, though actually he uses a more basic expletive than that. 4 The “Oh shoot” moment is the instant when our denial breaks open and we realize that the people we’d like to ridicule as “alarmists” are bringing us news that is essential for us to hear.

I remember exactly where I was when I hit my “Oh shoot” moment. In the summer of 2001 I was on Thompson Island in Boston Harbor for an intensive weekend conference about the science and politics of climate change. After a long day of taking copious notes and trying valiantly not to go numb under the barrage of bad news, I went outside before bed and stood alone — reeling — under the stars, trying to assimilate what I’d heard, trying to find my balance again, trying to pray, trying to find my way back to God.

When we reach the “Oh shoot” moment that we all must have, we may feel as lost as the leper in today’s Gospel story, as desperate as he was, as distressed and alone, as needy for help. Anxiety is even more contagious than leprosy, and out of anxiety we may isolate ourselves and chew on our worries alone, or we may deliberately or unwittingly spread our anxiety around like an infection, making other people catch it or making them keep a safe distance when they see us coming.

What do we do with our feelings of helplessness and despair? How do we face the unraveling of life as we know it without panicking or giving up? Where do we find energy and hope to keep working toward solutions, and what spiritual practices can sustain for the long struggle ahead?

I’ve been pondering these questions for the past ten years in my efforts as a climate activist, and I’d like to offer three words, three spiritual practices, that can guide us when the world as we know it is falling apart. The words are “creation,” “crucifixion,” and “resurrection.”

“Creation” is when we root ourselves again in the love of God. If we’re reeling with anxiety, fear, anger or sorrow, we need to ground ourselves again in the basic fact of our belovedness in God. In today’s story, the leper comes to Jesus and kneels before him, begging to be healed. “If you choose,” he says, “you can make me clean” (Mark 1:40 ). And how does Jesus respond? In one of the rare moments when the Gospel writer tells us what Jesus is feeling, the text says, “moved with pity” — or, as some translations put it, “moved with compassion” — Jesus stretches out his hand to heal the suffering man. The God we know in Christ is a compassionate God, a God moved with pity who reaches out to all who suffer, to all who feel lost, afflicted, helpless, or estranged. When the news of climate change — or of any other trauma — threatens to undo us, we can remember what I call the “creation” practice: we recall our belovedness in God. God created us in love and for love, and God will never let us go, even if we die.

What helps us to stay grounded in love? Maybe we bring awareness to our breathing for a while, and consciously breathe in the love of God. Maybe we turn our attention to something beautiful that’s right beside us, maybe notice the stillness of the trees or the way the sun is shining just now against that cloud. Bringing awareness to the present moment is one way to reconnect with the love of God, for God is always and only found right now, right here. Or maybe we dip into Scripture and turn to the God who says, “I have called you by name; you are mine. You are my beloved; on you my favor rests. You abide in me, as I abide in you. I am the vine, and you are the branches. Nothing can separate you from my love.” There are many ways to come home to God’s love, and that is the first practice we need to cultivate when times are tough and everything in us wants to close down or flee.

A second spiritual practice is “crucifixion,” the willingness to stand or kneel at the cross and to let our hearts break. In today’s story, we see Jesus’ vulnerability: he stretches out his hand to touch the leper, whom society considered untouchable and ritually unclean. From this little scene at the beginning of Mark’s Gospel, it’s already evident that for the sake of giving us healing and wholeness, Jesus will move toward us and share in our pain. Jesus’ solidarity with human vulnerability reaches its fullest expression on the cross. When we pray at the foot of the cross, we discover how close God is to us in our terror and vulnerability and loss. When we look at Jesus dying an agonizing death, we gaze squarely at everything that frightens us and does us harm. We face our fear and anxiety, our sadness, anger, and guilt. And we see that all of it — all of it — has been taken up by Jesus, that all of it has been embraced by God. Even our sin, even our willfulness and greed, our apathy and despair – all of that, and more, is met on the cross by the outpouring love of God. There is nowhere we can go, nothing that we can experience, that God in Christ does not share in and redeem.

So when the latest bad news about climate change — or anything else — grips my heart, I go to the cross in prayer and let myself grieve. I let myself howl, if I need to, for we must let our hearts be broken by the things that break God’s heart. That is how we share consciously in Christ’s suffering, and how we know that he shares in ours. That is how we discover how intimately he loves us, and where we receive the resilience and zest to renew our efforts in the world with fresh energy and zeal.

And so God draws us into the third spiritual practice, “resurrection.” Through conscious sharing in Christ’s crucifixion, we are drawn by God’s grace into resurrected living. Filled with the Spirit, we share in God’s mission to restore all people and all creation to unity with God and each other in Christ. Resurrection as a spiritual practice is doing our part to heal what is broken, to resist evil with love, to be agents of justice and compassion. Like the healed leper in today’s story who can’t contain his joy, we want to proclaim the reality of hope and healing through the power of God.

Of course, what we feel sent out to do in our newly resurrected lives may take many forms. The world needs healing at every level, so wherever we feel led to begin is a good place to start. Commitment to care for the Earth will affect what we buy and what we refuse to buy, what we drive and what we refuse to drive, how we heat our homes, how much we re-use and re-cycle.

The season of Lent begins in ten days, and I hope you will participate in this year’s Ecumenical Lenten Climate Fast 5 — look for details in the written announcements. I hope you will join me during coffee hour to send Senator Scott Brown a Valentine’s Day postcard that invites him to love the Earth by opposing efforts to weaken or delay enforcement of the Clean Air Act. I hope you will read and sign The Clean Air Promise, which I will then return to Interfaith Power & Light. 6 Finally, I hope that some of you will consider joining me at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., on Earth Day, April 22, when tens of thousands of people from all walks of life and from all across the country will gather for a rally to galvanize this country’s environmental movement.

God has so much love to give us, so much vulnerability to share with us, so much energy to give us in the mission to heal and restore life. Creation — when we ground ourselves in the love of God; crucifixion — when we open our hearts and minds to the dangers we face; and resurrection — when we pass beyond anxiety and fear to take action that makes a difference: these three practices can give us the wisdom and courage to move through that “Oh shoot” moment and to relish many moments of creativity, generosity, and joy.

1. Byron Smith, “Doom, Gloom and Empty Tombs: Climate Change and Fear,” Studies in Christian Ethics, 2011, 24:77 DOI: 10.1177/0953946810389120, p. 78 (online version: http://sce.sagepub.com/content/24/1/77).

2. “NASA Finds 2011 Ninth-Warmest Year on Record,” January 19, 2012 (http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/2011-temps.html)

3. Clive Hamilton, “The ‘Oh shit’ moment we all must have,” April 27, 2010, http://www.earthscan.co.uk/blog/post/The-e2809cOh-shite2809d-moment-we-all-must-have.aspx, cited by Byron Smith, op. cit., p. 78.

4. Clive Hamilton, op. cit, p. 79, citing journalist Mark Hertsgaard.

5. Sign up on Facebook, or visit this site: http://www.macucc.org/pages/detail/2410, to receive a daily email with suggestions for reducing your carbon footprint.

6. The mission of Interfaith Power & Light, the organizer of the National Preach-In on Global Warming, is “to be faithful stewards of Creation by responding to global warming through the promotion of energy conservation, energy efficiency, and renewable energy.” (http://interfaithpowerandlight.org/)

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Advent, December 18, 2011. Delivered by the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, Grace Church, Amherst, MA

2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16Romans 16:25-27
Canticle 15Luke 1:26-38

Angel in the doorway

“Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”
 (Luke 1:38)

I want to tell an Advent story that took place six years ago.  You’ll  remember that in the fall of 2005, two hurricanes, strengthened by the unusually warm waters of the Gulf, plowed into Louisiana and Mississippi.  Millions of Americans were evacuated.  Within a matter of hours, most of an American city lay in ruins.  With characteristic generosity, a group of you from Grace Church immediately began organizing a service trip to Mississippi.  In late November we would drive down a truck full of supplies, sleep in a makeshift camp, and do whatever was needed – haul debris, dig mud, or just listen and pray.  I was eager to go, but then received an invitation to join a group of religious leaders who were planning to attend the upcoming U.N. climate change conference in Montreal — the same international gathering that just met in Durban, South Africa.

The trips to Mississippi and Montreal overlapped, and I couldn’t take both.  I decided to go to Montreal, so for several days in Advent I mingled with delegates of the World Council of Churches, listened to speeches, wrote editorials, and joined thousands of citizens in marching through the city’s streets.  It was the most vigorous celebration of Advent I could imagine, for the placards and banners rang out the season’s urgent themes: Now is the time to wake from sleep, to clean up our act, to sort out our lives, to cast away the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.

That exuberant march was one of the Advent gifts that I received, a glimpse of the burgeoning worldwide movement that draws on humanity’s deepest reserves of hope.  The other gift came as a surprise, when I was alone in my hotel.  By then I was steeped in the stark reality of climate change.  I had studied the aerial photographs of Mount Kilimanjaro without any snow, listened to climate reports from the Arctic to Argentina, heard survivors of Katrina describe the vulnerability of the poor.  As for my government, it seemed incapable of taking the issue seriously.

After a restless night, I woke up filled with anger and sorrow, needing badly to pray.  I pulled a chair over to the window and let my anguish spill out before God – grief for what is irreparably lost, rage at the inertia that kills with such abandon.  I felt helpless.  Dear Lord, what can I do?  What can anyone do?  Then I heard something.

I put my trust in you

Startled, I opened my eyes and looked around.  Who said that?  I had heard the sentence as clearly as if someone were standing in the room.  I often say those very words to God, but now the message was addressed to me.  Its meaning was: Fear not.  Keep going.  I am with you. 

I was incredulous.  Was there some mistake?  How could God trust me?  I had a choice: to accept or reject that assurance, to believe it or to blow it off.  What I heard seemed as unlikely as what Mary heard from the  angel: the Lord is with you; do not be afraid; by the power of the Holy Spirit you will conceive and bear a son; and he will be the savior of the world. 

Absurd!  Yet God’s hope for the future hung on Mary’s willingness to consent.  Maybe it hangs on our willingness, too.  Who knows how many messages God delivers daily to the countless faithful of every religion, and of none?  Trust the good, wherever you find it.  I know you are afraid, but trust the truth.  Trust love.  Trust yourself.  Above all, trust me.  Let my life be born in you.  Who knows what power will be released in us when we dare to believe those unseen encounters that offer a divine word of love?

Here on the Fourth Sunday of Advent, on the brink of Christmas, there is a Love that wants to be born within us and among us, a love that knows no bounds.  It begins as a whisper in the ear, a tug at the heart, a message from an angel inviting us to welcome a Divine Guest whose effect on our lives we can neither predict nor control.  What will happen if we truly give ourselves to this love?  What will we do?  Who will we become?  “Really,” we may say to ourselves, “I’m kind of used to being who I am.  Sure, I want God to come into my life, but let’s not get carried away!  There’s something to be said for staying in control.  It’s risky to let go.  I’m not sure.  Let me get back to you on that.”

Can you feel the pull between attraction and fear, between trust and hesitation?  Like every love song, the love song between God and the soul is about longing and resistance, about desire and holding back.  If we could put words to it, the conversation might go something like this.  Here is a poem (“Covenant”) by Margaraet Halaska, a Franciscan nun:

                   The Father
          knocks at my door
seeking a home for his son:

          Rent is cheap, I say.

I don’t want to rent, I want to buy, says God.

          I’m not sure I want to sell,
but you might come in to look around.

I think I will, says God.

I might let you have a room or two.

I like it, says God.  I’ll take the two.
You might decide to give me more some day.
          I can wait, says God.

          I’d like to give you more,
but it’s a bit difficult.  I need some space for me.

I know, says God, but I’ll wait.  I like what I see.

Hmm, maybe I can let you have another room.
          I really don’t need that much.

Thanks, says God.  I’ll take it.  I like what I see.

I’d like to give you the whole house
          but I’m not sure —

Think on it, says God.  I wouldn’t put you out.
Your house would be mine and my son would live in it.
You’d have more space than you’d ever had before.

          I don’t understand at all.

I know, says God, but I can’t tell you about that.
          You’ll have to discover it for yourself.
That can only happen if you let him have the whole house.

          A bit risky, I say.

Yes, says God, but try me.

          I’m not sure-
          I’ll let you know.

I can wait, says God.  I like what I see.

You will notice that God does not force or compel, because that is not the language of love.  God simply longs and waits and asks to draw close.  When we dare to say Yes, Christ is born again.  Two thousand years ago God entered human history and became one ­of us, one with us.  God came then, and God comes now, because God longs to join us on our journey, in our daily life and relationships, in our pain and worry and hope.  Will we consent to God’s birth within us?  Like Mary, will we say, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word”? 

Right now, can we close our eyes and silently say to the Holy Spirit, “Come.  Come into my life, just as it is, and help me find my way to You.  Help me step through my fear, my anxiety, my worry, my need to be in control.  Help me find You in my ordinary, everyday living.  I trust You more than I trust myself, and I thank you for your trust in me”?

Sermon for the First Sunday of Advent, November 27, 2011. Delivered by the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, Grace Church, Amherst, MA

Isaiah 64:1-91 Corinthians 1:3-9
Psalm 80:1-7, 16-18Mark 13:24-37

Longing for God

Gracious God, stir up your strength and come to help us. Restore us, o God of hosts; show the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved.
Amen.

Welcome to Advent and the beginning of a new church year. As you can see, the frontal hanging over the pulpit, the clergy stoles, and our brand-new Advent chasuble are all blue. Like me, you may associate Advent with the color purple, for the four Sundays before Christmas have often been called a “mini-Lent,” or “little Lent.” Lent is the long season of repentance as we prepare for the joy of Easter; it has a solemn, somber tone, and its color is purple. But that’s not quite the mood of Advent. There is a movement afoot in the Episcopal Church to re-claim the other ancient color for Advent: the color blue — a color associated with Mary, the mother of Jesus, with whom we wait this season for the birth of the Christ child. Blue is also the color for hope, expectation, and confident anticipation. Advent does include elements of repentance, but above all Advent is a season for hope. Ahead of us is the celebration of Christ’s birth, and beyond that we look forward to the Second Coming of God in Christ, to the consummation of history, to the Last Great Day when all things will be gathered up in love.

So here on the First Sunday of Advent, we ask ourselves: What are we waiting for? What is it that sets our heart on fire with longing? What is it that we await with eagerness and hope? When we ask ourselves such questions, no doubt all sorts of answers spring to mind, for all sorts of things may seem desirable in the course of a day. Maybe we look with hope toward getting a job or getting a better job, to going on vacation or retiring. Maybe we long for the next family reunion or for our family to get along better. Maybe we long for good health for ourselves or someone we love, or for Congress to get its act together, for some piece of wild land to be protected from development, or for an end to poverty and hunger. At certain moments, sometimes our most ardent hope is simply for the traffic light to turn green.

All kinds of longings flow through us in a given day, desires large and small, petty and noble. But within all our desires streams one basic desire, a desire that God has planted in our depths and that awakens and sings through us whenever we dare to give it voice. Here on this First Sunday of Advent, we open ourselves to our deepest desire, our deepest hope: the desire for the fullness of God, who is the fulfillment of our lives.

“O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence!” cries the prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 64:1). The fullness of God’s presence is like a fire that kindles brushwood, a flame that causes water to boil. It is not enough for God to look down from the heavens, remote and impassive: God must split the heavens apart, and reveal God’s self, so that everyone may know that this alone is God, who responds actively to those who wait for God, who meets those who repent and those who prepare a place for God in their hearts.

The prophet’s passion is echoed in today’s psalm, with its urgent, pleading verse, “Stir up your strength and come to help us… Show the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved” (Psalm 80:2b, 3b). Advent is given to us because we are a waiting people, an expectant people, a longing people. We are restless with the status quo, impatient with business as usual, because God has planted within us a vision and hope of what life could be. Advent is the season to claim our desire for God and for the fullness of God’s reign upon this broken, lovely earth. Christians stand open-heartedly in the present, but we are oriented toward the future. We turn toward the future and long for God to come in power and great glory. We look ahead with hope to the future of who we will be — of what the world will be — when everything in us and around us is reconciled, when everything that has grown old is made new, everything cast down is lifted up, everything hurt is healed, everything unjust has been made right, and the love that gave birth to the universe is visible at last in all its glory.

Advent invites us to become people who dare, as Walter Wink puts it, 1 to “believe the future into being.” “This,” he says, “is the politics of hope. Hope envisages its future and then acts as if that future is now irresistible, thus helping to create the future for which it longs. The future,” he says, “is not closed… Even a small number of people, firmly committed to the new inevitability on which they have fixed their imaginations, can decisively affect the shape the future takes. These shapers of the future… call out of the future the longed-for new present. In the New Testament…the name and texture and aura of that future is [called] the reign of God.”

The simplest Advent prayer is the ancient prayer found in its original Aramaic in Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians: “Maranatha. Come, Lord Jesus” (1 Corinthians 16:22). We are hungry for you, Jesus. We long for your love. We yearn for your justice. It is you who came to cast fire upon the earth, you who longed to set us ablaze with your love. It is you who gave us the parable of the doorkeeper, commanded by his master to be on watch until the master’s return, so that when the master comes back and knocks on the door, the doorkeeper can fling it open and let him in. “Watch,” you tell us. “Keep awake.” For you will come again.

How do we stay awake? How do we wait well? I will give you two small words that can help us this Advent to wait for the fullness of God, to keep awake for the coming of the Lord: prayer and generosity.

Advent is a time for prayer. Our hearts must be open if we are to hear new things and see new things, and so we pray the basic Advent prayer of desire and hope: “Come, Lord Jesus.” In prayer we listen carefully to the voice of God who calls us beloved. Roman Catholic priest and writer Henri Nouwen used to say that if you think you are worthless, you can’t wait well. You won’t see the One who is coming, because you won’t think you are worth coming to! So we listen to that gentle, inner voice that is always saying to us, “I love you. I created you. I sent you into this world. I want to come closer to you — because you are worth it!”

This brings to mind a story by Richard Foster from his book about prayer. As Foster tells it, “One day a friend of mine was walking through a shopping mall with his two-year-old son. The child was in a particularly cantankerous mood, fussing and fuming. The frustrated father tried everything to quiet his son, but nothing seemed to help. The child simply would not obey. Then, under some special inspiration, the father scooped up his son, and, holding him close to his chest, began singing an impromptu love song. None of the words rhymed. He sang off key. And yet, as best he could, the father began sharing his heart. “I love you,” he sang. “I’m so glad you’re my boy. You make me happy. I like the way you laugh.” On they went from one store to the next. Quietly the father continued singing off-key and making up words that did not rhyme. The child relaxed and became still, listening to this strange and wonderful song. Finally, they finished shopping and went to the car. As the father opened the door and prepared to buckle his son into the carseat, the child lifted his head and said simply, “Sing it to me again, Daddy! Sing it to me again!” 2

In Advent, we take time to pray, to “let ourselves be gathered up into the arms” of the Father, the Mother, of our souls, and to let her “sing a love song over us.” 3

If one way of staying awake is to be faithful in prayer, another is to be generous to those whose needs are greater than our own. The root of the word “generosity” is the Latin “genus,” which means “race, kind, or kin.” When we are generous, we make others kin. Do you know anyone who is lonely? Do you know anyone who feels bereft, forgotten, or rejected? Do you know someone who might have woken up this morning wondering if it was worth trying to get through one more day, and whether anyone cares? Think about it. Maybe you are just the person who can give that person a word of support, a visit, or a phone call. Maybe you can give someone a good listening-to, like they’ve never been listened to before!

When we are generous, we do what is ours to do. We don’t have to do it all or do it perfectly. We need only to offer the gift that we alone can offer in the midst of the particulars of our lives. Have you ever noticed how particular Jesus’s gifts are? “This is my body,” he said. “This is my blood.” 4 We offer what we in particular can offer — and who knows what will happen then, what creative next step will then be possible? Who knows how God will make use of that gift, so that it multiplies in ways we could never have imagined?

If we do these things — if we’re faithful in prayer and generous in love — then we can rest assured that Christmas is coming. God is coming. For Christ was not just born long ago, but is even now being born in our hearts.

God is with us in our hope and longing. To quote Brian Swimme (“Canticle of the Cosmos”):

The longing that gave birth to the stars
The longing that gave birth to life
Who knows what this longing can give birth to now?

1. Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination, Minneapolis; Fortress Press, p. 299.

2. Richard J. Foster, Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home, HarperSanfrancisco, 1992, pp. 3-4.

3. Ibid., p. 4.

4. Ann and Barry Ulanov, Primary Speech: A Psychology of Prayer, Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1982, p. 96.

Sermon for the Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 23A), October 9, 2011. Delivered by the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, Grace Church, Amherst, MA

Isaiah 25:1-9Psalm 23
Philippians 4:1-9Matthew 22:1-14

Will you come to the feast?

Jesus’ parable of the wedding feast has been interpreted in all kinds of ways, some of them helpful, some of them — not so much. Over the years, commentators have read the parable as an angry rebuke of the Jewish religious authorities who rejected Jesus; as an allegory to justify the destruction of Jerusalem by Roman soldiers in the year 70 C.E.; and as an account of why the early Christian communities opened their doors to Gentiles as well as Jews. At their worst, interpretations of the parable can smack of conscious or unconscious anti-Semitism; at their best — well, that is what I’d like to explore with you this morning. What meaning can this parable have for us today? In particular, what can it tell us about our interior experiences of God, and what spiritual guidance can it give?

Let’s take it from the top. Once upon a time there was a king — a wise and all-powerful king who decided to hold a wedding banquet for his son. He got everything ready and prepared a feast of the finest foods. He sent out invitations to his chosen guests, saying “Everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet” (Matthew 22:4). But the guests would not come. Twice they were asked, and twice they turned him down. They “made light” of the invitation, the story tells us, and some “went away, one to his farm, another to his business” (Matthew 22:5), while the rest attacked and killed the messengers.

When we read this through the lens of spiritual experience, what might this part of the story mean? I think at once of all the times that I refuse those invitations to the feast. Too often I act like one of those guests who is handed a beautiful, hand-engraved wedding invitation and I cross my arms and say “No thanks; not interested.” Has this ever happened to you? Maybe you’re sitting inside, and you’ve been inside all day, getting some work done, and you look up and notice that the sun is now low in the sky, casting a marvelous golden light across the purple underbelly of the clouds, and some part of you stares and says Oh! And you want to get up and gaze out the window for a while. But you don’t.

Or maybe there’s a man with a loose gray coat and an unshaven face who is standing on the sidewalk where you just parked your car, and as you put a quarter in the meter, he mumbles a request: could you give him money to buy a cup of coffee? You look across the street and sure enough, there’s a coffee shop right there; even if you don’t want to give the man cash, you could perfectly well walk across the street and get him a cup of coffee. But you don’t.

Or maybe you feel distracted and harassed, or maybe depressed and discouraged, and you sense a deep tug to prayer. You know that new life would blossom in you if only you could get yourself to sit down for a while and pay attention to what is going on inside, if only you could just let yourself rest for a while in God’s embrace. You know that this is what you really want and need, but do you let yourself pause to take in that nourishment? You don’t. You’ve got other things to do — good things, important things. That inner tug can wait. If you ignore it long enough, maybe it will go away.

Invitations to love’s banquet can take many forms, and they come not just once, but every day, and many times a day — maybe as an invitation to gaze at the beauty of the world, or as an invitation to be generous, or as an invitation to pause for while to give the lover of our souls our full and undivided attention in prayer. Yet how easy it is to say no! I have a million excuses — I’m too busy, too focused on my own agenda, too scattered or overloaded to relinquish my worried, busy mind, to let my awareness open, and to drop down to my heart.

And that’s a loss, because deep at the center of our being is an unquenchable thirst for union with the divine. Deep in our guts, our bones, our very DNA, is an irrepressible yearning to move toward the Source of life, the All, the Ultimate, the Holy One. Call it what you will — human beings the world over, whatever their religion, share a desire for what one writer calls “the union on this earth and in this body of the human with the divine. This is the true spiritual marriage, the consummation of love that in one way or another is the aim of every ritual and every practice in every religion.” 1

It’s no wonder that the Bible so often uses wedding imagery as a way to express the complete and intimate union of God and God’s people, or of God and the individual soul. Sometimes the Bible depicts the bridegroom as God; sometimes the bridegroom is Christ. Sometimes, as in this parable, we are invited to be guests at the wedding, and sometimes we ourselves are the bridegroom, we ourselves are the bride.

Love poets and mystics know all about the ecstasy of spiritual marriage. Take, for instance, St. Francis of Assisi, whose feast day we celebrated a few days ago. Francis gazed deeply into the natural world as if into a mirror, and saw reflected back to him the outpouring love of God. For him, God was not an entity “out there” — God was within him and around him; God infused and sustained and shone out from all things. Here is a little something that St. Francis wrote: 2

Such love does
the sky now pour,
that whenever I stand in a field,

I have to wring out the light
when I get
home.

The human longing for union with God is universal, but how quickly we repress it, ignore it, or push it away! Who knows why? Maybe we don’t want to feel our need and vulnerability; maybe we’re afraid to relinquish control; maybe we’re convinced we’re not good enough, we can’t possibly be loved that much. But if we keep pushing God away, if we keep shutting ourselves off from the invitation to love and to be loved, then before long we will start to experience God as the enemy, and that’s the next part of the parable: some guests mock the messengers and blow them off, and other guests seize, mistreat, and kill them. The text tells us that “the king was enraged” (Matthew 22:7). He sends in his troops, destroys the murderers, and burns their city down.

As a spiritual story, this parable is quite accurate and exact: when we turn ourselves into the enemy of God, eventually we begin to experience God as an enemy. God has not changed, but we have — we have pushed God away, and deliberately alienated ourselves from the divine. Before any spiritual union can possibly take place, maybe that stubborn, resisting part of the self needs to be brought low and to fall away, like a city set on fire. All of us who at some point have made a mess of our lives, who have made terrible mistakes and headed too far down a willful, self-centered, and defiant path, know what it is like to find ourselves sitting in the ruins of a smoldering city. Sometimes the ego must be crucified before the soul can be born.

Yet the invitation to love never ceases. In fact, it gets wider than ever, deeper and more expansive, more inclusive. There is no guest list now. The king’s love reaches out to everyone. The wedding is ready, he says; the feast is about to be served and the food is hot. He sends messengers into the streets to invite everyone to come, both good and bad, and they stream into the wedding hall until it is filled at last.

If you read this as a story of the interior life, it seems that only now — after our pride and defiance have been humbled and brought low — only now can we understand that every part of ourselves is being invited to the feast, that everything in us that we have cast away, abandoned, and rejected is being invited into the presence of God to be welcomed and healed and made whole. Our whole selves are invited to the feast, and everybody is invited with us. There is no need now to shrug hopelessly and to say that we have to settle for being alienated from each other, that we have keep living driven, restless, distracted lives, that we have to make peace with poverty or economic injustice, that we have to condone destroying the earth, or that we have to tolerate an endless succession of wars – we have been invited to feast at the table of divine life. We have been invited into the very heart of God, and in the strength of that divine presence we are sent out into the world to bear witness to God’s justice and mercy and love.

The parable ends with the startling little story of the guest who comes to the feast without a wedding robe and who is summarily bound hand and foot and thrown into the outer darkness (Matthew 22:11-14). I hear this as a reminder to stay humble: God loves us completely, and invites everyone to the feast, but we have our own work to do: to clothe ourselves day by day with the intention to love. As we hear in Colossians, our job is to “[strip] off the old self with its practices and [to clothe ourselves] with the new self…” The passage continues: “As God’s chosen ones… clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and…forgive each other… Above all, clothe yourselves with love” (Colossians 3:9-10, 12-14). In short, we wear the right clothes to the wedding feast of life when we clothe ourselves with love.

In two weeks I turn sixty, and at this decisive juncture, here is what I want to tell you. When love’s holy invitation comes, I want to say yes. When love calls me to marvel at the sunset, to stop and gape at the beauty of the world, I want to say yes. When love calls me to walk across the street to bring someone a cup of hot coffee and to add some honey to it, and some milk, as well, because that’s the way he says he likes it, I want to say yes. When the divine call comes to sit down in prayer and to give the lover of my soul my full and undivided attention, I want to say yes. As Mary Oliver writes in her poem, “When Death Comes,” 3

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.

I want to say yes to life, yes to God, yes to the dear one in whose invisible, irresistible presence we step fully into life, daring to connect deeply with ourselves and each other, refusing to be spectators, refusing to hold back, stepping out to create a world in which everyone has a chance to experience how deeply he or she is loved by God.

Here’s another poem4 about the marriage between God and the soul, written by Anna Swir, a poet from Poland. I don’t know whether or not she was married, but I do know that the “dear one” to whom she refers in this poem might well be God. Here goes:

She is sixty. She lives the greatest love of her life.

She walks arm-in-arm with her dear one,
her hair streams in the wind. Her dear one says,
“You have hair like pearls.”

Her children say:
“Old fool.”

A fool for Christ? You bet. That’s who we are, if we’re lucky: a bride married to amazement, a bridegroom taking the world into our arms. Will you come and follow me, Jesus asks us every day — in fact, in every moment. Will you come to the banquet table and take in my presence with the bread and wine? Will you let my love shine out in your life?

I will give the last word to Rumi, a Sufi poet who ends one of his poems like this: 5

On a day when the wind is perfect,
the sail just needs to open
and the love starts.

Today is such a day.

1. Roger Housden, For Lovers of God Everywhere: Poems of the Christian Mystics, New York City: Hay House, Inc., 2009, p. xiii.

2. St. Francis of Assisi, “Wring Out My Clothes,” in Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West, translated by Daniel Ladinsky, New York, Penguin Compass, 2002, p. 48

3. Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems, Boston: Beacon Press, 1992, p. 10.

4. Anna Swir, “The Greatest Love,” translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Leonard Nathan, in Risking Everything: 110 Poems of Love and Revelation, edited by Roger Housden, New York: Harmony Books, p, 43.

5. Jalaludin Rumi, “On a Day When the Wind is Perfect,” in Love Poems from God, op. cit., p. 80.

Sermon for the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 20A), September 18, 2011. Delivered by the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, Grace Church, Amherst, MA

Jonah 3:10-4:11Psalm 145:1-8
Philippians 1:21-40Matthew 20:1-16

Grumbling in the vineyard

The LORD is gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger and of great kindness. (Psalm 145:8)

Here’s a question. How do we bear witness to God in a society that is increasingly secular and pluralistic? That’s the question we’re invited to discuss with Rob Hirschfeld after today’s service, in our first Sunday Forum of the season. It’s a great question, and in some ways a perennial one, too. How do we bear witness to the sacred in a society that is so driven by other values, and in which speaking about quote-unquote “God” can seem like so much empty chatter? Jesus faced this question, too, and it’s interesting to notice that he often spoke about God, and the kingdom of God, not in direct terms, as if he were giving a linear, logical lecture, but sideways — in parables and stories that are full of paradox and surprise, in periods of silence, in embodied acts and gestures — as if the reality and mystery of the divine can never be captured directly in ordinary speech, but only conveyed indirectly, maybe in a story that catches us off-guard or in a question or an action that suddenly pierces our heart.

Take today’s Gospel, for example. “The kingdom of heaven is like…” Jesus begins, and off he goes into a story that looks perfectly ordinary. A landowner goes out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard, agrees with the laborers to pay them the usual daily wage, and sends them out into his vineyard to work. The day goes by, and at different intervals — at around 9 o’clock and noon, at about 3 o’clock and 5, the owner goes back to the marketplace and hires more workers, promising to pay what is fair. So far, so good — and I must say that we who listen to this story, we who have been experiencing in this country a soaring rate of unemployment and underemployment, and a growing disparity between the wealthy and the poor — we probably find it satisfying to hear a story about an employer who can hire so many workers, and who can relieve so much anxiety and give so many people and their families the promise at the end of the day of a nourishing meal and a good night’s sleep.

But then the story takes an unexpected twist: the landowner pays the fellows who were hired at the eleventh hour a full day’s pay. He gives a full day’s pay to the folks who worked for one hour and for three hours, for six hours and for nine. Everyone gets a full day’s pay. No exceptions. And the laborers who worked the longest hours start to grumble. “Hey,” they object. “That’s not fair! We’re entitled to more! If you give those who worked only a short time a full day’s pay, then you should give us — I don’t know — two day’s pay!” Actually, if you look closely at the text, you’ll notice that it’s not only, or maybe even mainly, the equality in pay that most irks the laborers who complain — it’s the equality in value that the landowner seems to be assigning to the workers themselves. “You have made them equal to us” (Matthew 20:12), object the angry workers, as if to say, “We’re better than they are, can’t you understand that?”

I don’t know about you, but I can identify with that voice of envy and entitlement. Any child who has vied with a sibling for their mother’s love and attention can understand the anxious and sometimes petulant concern that everything be divvied up fairly. If Tommy got to have two cookies, then I should get two cookies, too. If I raked the lawn for three hours, and Tommy raked for one — plus half the time he was horsing around — well, I should get paid a whole lot more than he does!

That is how our usual transactions work: we invest such-and-such an amount of time and effort, and we expect to be paid accordingly. The resources of love and money are limited, and we’ve got to hustle to get what we want. We’ve got to earn it and compete for it, and if necessary to push our neighbor out of the way, so that — bring it on! — we can finally receive our just desserts.

But along comes this generous landowner, and our notions of merit and entitlement are thrown out the window. In God’s economy, everyone receives the full love of God. God’s love isn’t parceled out in dribs and drabs, so that a person over here receives this much, and a person over there receives that much. No, God’s love and grace are given entirely and fully to each and every person without regard for merit or achievement. God doesn’t care about merit — God loves you completely. God doesn’t care about achievement — God loves you completely. God doesn’t even care about time. You may have spent a lifetime in the earnest search for God and to do God’s will. Or until this moment you may have spent your whole life running away from God, frittering away your days on trivia and distractions, wasting yourself on selfish or malicious pursuits. In a way, it doesn’t matter. God’s love is always available now, in each present moment. Right here, on this very spot, right now, in this very breath, here is God’s love, reaching out to embrace us and to call us home, welling up within us to fill every aching, empty, and desolate place.

That is the love we want to experience and to which we want to bear witness in the world: a divine love that cannot be earned or achieved, but only received, a love that from moment to moment is always circulating within us, and to which we can always return whenever we get lost or forget who we are. Tap into that stream of love, and we can relinquish our compulsive drive to prove ourselves and promote ourselves. We don’t have to any more: we are complete. We have everything we need. We breathe in God’s love, taking it into our depths, and we breathe it out, so that it can be fully expressed in the world.

Knowing that we are completely loved by God can give us a deep serenity, but it’s not going to make us lie down and eat grapes. No, it’s going to send us out to do the work that God has given us to do: to love and serve God with gladness and singleness of heart.

As I look at next weekend, I see that we have plenty of opportunities for expressing that love, for bringing it more fully into the world. Some of you will be coming to Grace Church on Saturday morning to offer several hours of much-needed clean-up work. On Saturday afternoon some of you will gather at 4 o’clock for a fundraiser and book event to benefit the little school in Haiti, St. Mathieu de Bayonnais, whose students and families and faculty we’ve taken under our wing, and who in turn are giving us the gift of their hope and faith. Some of you will have personal things to attend to that I know nothing about.

And next Saturday some of you — I hope many of you — will carpool with me to join a climate rally at a park on the Boston waterfront. It turns out that September has been a rousing month for the climate movement. September began with the so-called Tar Sands Action in Washington, D.C., in which more than 1200 people, including our own Lucy Robinson, were arrested for an act of peaceful civil disobedience at the White House to protest the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, which would carry dirty tar sand oil from Canada down to Texas at a potentially disastrous environmental cost.

Next Saturday, the last weekend of the month, thousands of climate rallies will be held around the world as part of what’s being called Moving Planet day (), a day to get us moving beyond fossil fuels. For people living in New England the most important rally to attend is the one in Boston, one of five cities nationwide that climate organizers have targeted as the best site for a massive demonstration (

I have been asked to give an interfaith prayer both at the rally in Boston on Saturday and at the rally in Northampton on Sunday. And I’ve been wondering what to say. When I look out at the crowds, how can I convey the love of God? How can I let them know that within them and among them is a source of energy that is always clean and always renewed? How can I let them know that their struggle to create a sustainable world will be strengthened and renewed if it is guided by the divine love that sustains all things? As far as I know, I could be the only person in the line-up of speakers who communicates a religious perspective, and I know that I will be addressing a crowd of folks from a range of faiths, and no faith at all — “spiritual but not religious”; “post-Christian.” I can’t use the language of our tradition, for traditional Christian words only shut some people down and drive them away. I can’t mention Jesus, or the power of the cross and the resurrection, or the gift of the Eucharist. I can’t say much about the power of meditation and prayer, much less refer to the story of the laborers in the vineyard. But, God willing, the love of God in Christ will still inform what I do, and will still give me words to speak. Whether we acknowledge it or not, and whether we perceive it or not, God’s love is always being poured out to us, right here, right now, in full abundance, with nothing held back.

Maybe it will be enough to ask everyone to feel their feet on the ground, and to make conscious contact with the earth. Maybe it will be enough to ask everyone to stretch out their hands, and to sense the hands of everyone the world over who is fighting with us for a better world. Maybe it will be enough to ask everyone to take a deep breath, and to remember that with every breath we are exchanging the elements of life with all green-growing things. How good it is to wake up to the present moment, and to sense our connection with the earth and all its creatures! How good it is to marvel for a moment at the sheer gift of being alive!

I won’t be saying this out loud at the rally, but secretly I’ll be giving thanks for the kingdom of God. Secretly I’ll be giving thanks for God’s absurd generosity, for being like an extravagant employer who gives everyone a full day’s wages, no matter how much or how little each person has worked. Secretly I’ll be praising the LORD who “is gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger and of great kindness” (Psalm 145:8).

Sermon for the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 14A), August 7, 2011. Delivered by the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, Grace Church, Amherst, MA

1 Kings 19:9-18Romans 10:5-15
Psalm 85:8-13Matthew 14:22-33

Walking on water

Among the items that sometimes circulate on the Internet are bloopers from parish bulletins — you know, those odd juxtapositions or quirky phrases that are inadvertently funny. Here is one. Title of Sunday morning sermon: “Jesus walks on water.” Title of Sunday evening program: “Searching for Jesus.”

We grin because it’s so reasonable. If someone strode down a beach, waded into the surf, and tried to walk along the surface of the sea, you and I would dismiss the person as delusional. It would be absurd: you can’t do it; you can’t violate the laws of physics like that. Yet here we have a story in which not only Jesus walks on the water, but also — if briefly — his disciple Peter, as well. What do we make of it? What is this story about?

Jesus has just finished feeding the five thousand, which is the Gospel story that we heard last week. Now he puts the disciples into the boat and tells them to go on ahead to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, while he dismisses the crowds and goes up the mountain by himself to pray. This seems to have been characteristic of Jesus: he regularly withdrew from the circle of disciples and from his ministry to the crowds to take time alone in silent prayer, listening (as I imagine it) to the inner voice of love, letting himself steep in the same “sound of sheer silence” that Elijah heard on the mountain-top (1 Kings 19:12) and that all of us hear when in contemplative prayer we drop below the chatty commentaries of the mind and experience the love that is always being poured into our hearts (Romans 5:5).

So Jesus is alone in prayer as evening comes, and in the meantime the disciples are becoming increasingly frightened, for their boat, “battered by the waves,” is still “far from the land,” with the wind blowing hard against them (Matthew 14:14). The sea in this story — as in many parts of the Bible — is a symbol of chaos (c.f. Genesis 1:1; Jonah 1:4-16), and it is easy to imagine ourselves thrown into that little boat with the disciples, clinging to the gunwales for dear life. Who in this room doesn’t know what it’s like to feel overwhelmed? We’ve all had times of being caught up in waves — waves of trouble, waves of danger. The stock market plunging; a helicopter going down in Afghanistan; extreme weather events pointing to an unstable climate — pick your peril, there is plenty to go around. Some hazards are close to home. Last night, just as I was writing these words, my husband and I discovered that while we were out, a burglar had thrown a rock through a first-floor window of our house and had ransacked my mother’s apartment. Turbulence is around us — there’s no question about that. And turbulence may be inside us, too, bringing on waves of uneasiness and fear. No wonder we often feel swamped.

And then, early in the morning, sometime after 3 a.m., the disciples looked out into the darkness, and through the spray and surging water, they spotted something approaching them, walking on the sea. What could it be? Was it a ghost? “And they cried out in fear” (Matthew 14:26). But no — it was Jesus himself, who immediately spoke to them, saying, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid” (Matthew 14:27). “It is I” — or, literally “I am”: this is the very name of God, the name of the One who is the source of light and life, the very Ground of Being. “I am” is approaching; he is here; he is speaking to us. “Take heart,” he says. “Do not be afraid.”

Right in the middle of the whirlwind of our lives, right when we’re awash with worry and anxiety, our jaw clenched tight, and all our energy applied to the desperate attempt to keep ourselves afloat — we hear a calm, clear voice within us saying, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.” We may be struggling with our selves. We may be struggling with our circumstances, struggling with sorrows and temptations, with regrets and fears, but then that voice sounds within us, the voice of Jesus, calling us to take heart. “Do not be afraid.”

You might think that this would be the end of the story, this story of Jesus calming the troubled waters of fear and anxiety that so often dominate our lives, but of course there is more. Peter, dear Peter — you can always count on him to be impetuous and impulsive, he is such an ardent soul! “Lord,” he says boldly, “if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” And Jesus says, “Come” (Matthew 14:28-29).

And out Peter steps — out of the security of the boat, out of that small world where everyone is narrowly focused on staying alive — and he walks toward Jesus across the open waves. Apparently it’s not enough for Peter to experience the inward calm that Jesus gives, not enough for him to know that he is safe, not enough for him to experience the relief of understanding that the Lord of life is with him and will guide his boat safely to shore. No, Peter’s love for Jesus is too strong and too personal for that. He wants to meet Jesus where Jesus is — out in the turbulence of the world. He wants to do what Jesus does — to proclaim and bear witness to the love and mercy of God. He wants to follow where Jesus leads — to risk all, to venture all, to make his life not a concerted effort to stay cautious and safe, but rather a grand adventure in which moment to moment he gives himself in love, holding nothing back.

And so Peter gets out of the boat and starts walking on the water toward Jesus. When have you gotten out of the boat? For I’m sure you have. We get out of the boat and walk on the water whenever we venture a brave thing in love. We get out of the boat and walk on the water whenever we care less for our own comfort and security and more for the possibility of responding to human need. We get out of the boat and walk on the water whenever we head toward Jesus, whenever we put our trust in a divine power that is greater than ourselves and turn our eyes and hands and feet toward love. I’m not talking about defying the law of gravity. I’m talking about responding to the lure of love, about staying connected with the One who calls us out beyond ourselves, beyond our own small boat, giving us courage to do more than we ever thought possible.

The only way to awaken faith is to do something that requires it. Walking on water is as good an image as any for what it is like to step out in faith, and of course we fail all the time. Like Peter, we get frightened and lose our equanimity, lose our confidence, lose heart. Or conversely, we notice what a great job we’ve been doing (how special we are to be walking on water! we must be hot stuff!) — and lose our contact with love. Self-consciousness can fell us either way, whether it’s caused by fear or pride, and we begin to sink. But all we need to do is what Peter did next, to exclaim, “Lord, save me” (Matthew 14:30), and immediately Jesus will reach out his hand to catch us, just as he caught Peter, chiding us in a voice that is filled with affection, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” (Matthew 14:31)

When the disciples cried out in fear, “immediately” Jesus revealed his identity and spoke a word of encouragement and calm. When Peter cried out, “immediately” Jesus stretched out his arm to grasp him and to lift him from the waves. The waves of the world are perilous and real, but Jesus is close at hand, a holy, living presence ready to save.

Where do you find yourself in this story? Are you tossing about in stormy seas? Are you feeling frightened and alone? Do you long to feel the strong hand of Jesus lifting you out of the waves? Right now, in the silence, can you hear his calm voice saying, “Take heart, it is I: do not be afraid”? Or, as you listen deeply to your life, do you hear Jesus inviting you out of your safe hiding-place and out on the water? Is he saying to you, as he said to Peter, “Come. Trust me. Don’t look down. Just keep walking toward me. Love will hold you up. If you sink, I will catch you. Come.”

Sermon for the Sermon for the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 11A) , July 17, 2011. Delivered by the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, Grace Church, Amherst, MA

Isaiah 44:6-8Psalm 86:11-17
Romans 8:12-25Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

Weeds among the wheat

Did you know that Americans spend tens of billions of dollars every year on lawn and garden care? For the last century or so, green grass has been the American dream — sometimes, in fact, the American obsession. Grass is apparently the United States’ biggest crop, and it sucks up a substantial percentage of the water consumed on the East Coast. Not only that: every year Americans hire gleaming tankers full of herbicides to cruise up and down our suburban streets, and we pay them to apply tons of expensive chemicals to our lawns. The enemy? Weeds. Crabgrass. Dandelions. Anything that interferes with that smooth expanse of lawn. Sure, chemical sprays clean out the weeds, all right, but they destroy a lot more than weeds. A few days ago we heard about a lawsuit filed against Dupont over a new herbicide that may inadvertently be killing spruce, pine, and other evergreen trees. 1 Our herbicidal effort to be rid of weeds comes at a heavy cost to the natural world. As columnist Chet Raymo once put it, “in dousing our landscape with chemicals we also rid ourselves of garden snakes, spring peepers, glowworms… ladybugs, toads, frogs… salamanders, bluebirds, [and] cicadas.” 2

“Time for a truce with dandelions.” That is what Chet Raymo concluded, regarding the natural world, and that is what Jesus concluded, too, regarding the life of the spirit. In Matthew’s parable of the weeds and the wheat, the householder’s servants are eager to tear out the worthless weeds that the evil one has planted in the field. But the householder tells them, “No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them” (Matthew 13:29). It seems that the weeds — possibly a local Middle Eastern variety known as darnel — look very much like wheat when they are young. In fact, it is impossible to distinguish the two in their early stages. By the time the plants bear grain, it is easy to tell the one from the other, but by then their roots have become intertwined: you can’t pull out the weeds without uprooting the wheat at the same time. And so, says the householder, both weeds and wheat must be left to grow together until the time of the harvest.

I leave it to you to consider how you want to handle the weeds in whatever stretch of lawn or garden may be in your care. But I invite you to imagine that your life, your soul, is a garden and that all sorts of things are growing in it. As you gaze out over the landscape of your life, what do you see? Can you see any wheat — qualities in yourself and aspects of your life that you like and value and want to keep? Can you see any weeds — shortcomings, failings, behaviors that you don’t much like?

As we take a look within, we may reach polar opposite conclusions. One assessment goes like this: I look inside and I say to myself, “Whoa! No weeds here! I have no weeds! My inner life contains nothing but wheat — it’s all good stuff, really, all sweet-smelling flowers. I’m a totally good person — no flies on me. But you, on the other hand — you, my unfortunate father or mother, you, my poor brother or sister, my less than perfect spouse or co-worker or friend — you have some serious weeds to contend with, some serious flaws. And my job, in case you wondered, is to point out your weeds to you, and to help you, maybe even force you, to root them up.” That’s one way we can go, that place of pride and self-righteousness, when we stare at someone else’s weeds and find fault, and judge, and criticize, or maybe get busy rolling up our sleeves and trying to yank those annoying weeds out.

Or maybe we go the other way: we survey the landscape of our life and we decide, “Yikes, when I look inside myself, all I see are weeds. I am pretty much nothing but weeds. When it comes to getting rid of them, I don’t even know where to begin. They are everywhere I look. I must be a hopeless case, completely unworthy. You, on the other hand — you are all flowers. Unlike me…”

Whether we take one position or the other, or fall somewhere in between, the point is that most of us feel even less affection for the weeds in our lives and in the lives of the people around us than we do for the weeds in our lawns. Both good and worthless seeds have been sown within us: the good seed by God, and the bad seed by some other force — what this passage calls “the enemy” or “the evil one.” Wherever that bad stuff comes from, we may spend a lot of energy trying to root it out, or at least wishing it weren’t there. What’s so intriguing about this parable is that Jesus tells us that at least some of the weeds within us will — and should! — remain where they are until the harvest time of death. The mysterious fact is that we must allow the weeds within us to grow until the harvest, “for in gathering the weeds [we] would uproot the wheat along with them” (Matthew13:29).

What’s up with that? Why should we learn to tolerate the weeds in our lives? Well, for starters, some of our personal weeds may serve a useful function in the ecology of our soul. I think, for instance, of a woman I knew years ago who wondered why God hadn’t answered her prayers and taken away her anger about the abuse that she had suffered from her former husband. Both of us knew that her anger was causing her to suffer, and both of us knew that in the long run, anger could be corrosive to her soul, and to her relationships with other people. Yet as we talked it over, it became clear to both of us that for now, at least, the woman’s anger was helping her to maintain clear boundaries and was protecting her from being abused again. God, it seemed, was not willing to uproot the weed of her fury if in so doing, the wheat of her survival was put in jeopardy.

Again, if we look closely at what we condemn within ourselves as a weed, we may discover that this supposed weed is in fact another strain of wheat. So many people judge themselves harshly! For instance, some of us feel sad and instantly condemn ourselves for self-pity. Some of us turn down a request to do something and instantly accuse ourselves of being selfish, when in fact what we’re doing is respecting the limits of our energy and time. Some of us find it all too easy to lash out at ourselves, like some desperate gardener who, seeing nothing but weeds, decides to tear everything out and to pave it all over with asphalt.

But that is not how God treats us, nor how God longs for us to treat each other and ourselves. The parable of the weeds and the wheat asks that we learn to accept ourselves and to value spiritual biodiversity. We must learn to live with our weeds, for their roots are often intertwined with our wheat. Think, for a moment, about the parts of yourself that you really don’t like. Isn’t it possible that if you trace that aspect of yourself down to its roots, it connects with something good and essential? Take bitterness, for instance, or cynicism. Most of us would agree that these qualities are weeds — they don’t feed anyone; they don’t contribute to building life. But if you trace bitterness down to its roots, what you may find is nothing bad but something neutral, or even good, like grief — the sorrow of someone who has felt a loss that has never been fully expressed or released. Isn’t it possible that the roots of bitterness or cynicism may be intertwined with a person’s unfelt grief and unmet longing to love and be loved? That unfinished business may be showing up in a twisted or harmful way in the person’s life — it may be expressing itself as a terrible weed — but at its source, its root, it is something good. The more closely we come to know ourselves, and our inner landscape, the more we can sort out these strands of ourselves. Through the power of being understood and accepted, some of our inner weeds will disappear, so that we no longer find ourselves so plagued by bitterness or cynicism, by fear or anger or self-doubt, or by whatever other weed has been causing mayhem in our lives.

Still, some inner weeds will never go away, and, if nothing else, these persistent weeds can serve as a powerful reminder of our dependence on God. As Jesuit writer Thomas Green says in his lovely book, Weeds Among Wheat, God leaves weeds within us in order “to keep us humble, to make us realize how totally we depend on [God] and how helpless we are to do good without [God’s] grace and [God’s] power. The wheat of our virtues — trust, humility, gratitude, zeal — could not come to full maturity, it seems, without the weeds” of our faults and failings. 3 When we see the weeds within us with the eyes of discerning love — when the weeds within us remind us of our dependence on God, and God alone — then our weeds become “the instrument of our deepening trust and humility. They purify us.” 4

So, just think for a moment of whatever it is about yourself that you like least. Whatever the weeds in your particular wheat field, what would happen if you allowed those parts of yourself to remind you of your dependence on God? What if, day in and day out, you let those “weeds” become your teacher, teaching you to depend entirely on God’s forgiveness and mercy? Isn’t it possible that one day you would come to understand that one of the most precious plants in your soul’s garden was the weed, which taught you to surrender yourself to God?

At the end of time, all our weeds will indeed be rooted out. That’s what the parable tells us with a dramatic flourish in its imagery of angel-reapers gathering up the weeds and throwing them into a furnace of fire (Matthew 13:41). We can thank God for the time when everything will be sorted out at last, the good from the bad, and God’s cleansing, purifying, liberating power will burn away everything in us that is less than love! But in the meantime, here we are, invited by God to notice, to investigate, and, if necessary, to accept the weeds in our lives.

I will close by telling a story from the Sufi tradition about a character named Nasrudin. In this story, Nasrudin decides to start a flower garden. He prepares the soil carefully, and plants the seeds. But when his flowers come up, they are overrun by dandelions. After trying every method he can think of to eliminate the weeds, he finally walks to the capital to speak to the royal gardener. The wise old man suggests a number of remedies to eradicate the dandelions, but Nasrudin has tried them all already. They sit in silence for a time, pondering dandelions, until at last the royal gardener looks at Nasrudin and says, “Well, I suggest you learn to love them.”

That’s the message I hear in today’s parable. And by the way — if you want to take a good look at weeds, step into the garth, for the place is a riot of weeds, some of them waist high. In the next week or two, those weeds will be mowed down, dug up, or otherwise removed, and some hard-working folks will install in their place a lovely, curved stone wall, a patio, some groundcover and shrubs — something, in short, that appeals to our sense of harmony, order, and beauty. But don’t be surprised — some weeds will come back, and there may even be a space in the garth deliberately set aside for wildflowers. They will have their own wild beauty to contribute, and I hope that their presence will keep us humble, and remind us of the gentleness with which God cares for our wild and weedy souls.

1. DuPont sued over herbicide suspected to kill trees, by Jonathan Stempel (viewed 7/15/11).

2. Chet Raymo, The Boston Globe, July 12, 1993.

3. Thomas H. Green, S.J., Weeds among the Wheat, Notre Dame, Indiana: Ave Maria Press, p. 145.

4. Ibid., p.146.

Sermon for the Day of Pentecost , June 12, 2011. Delivered by the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, Grace Church, Amherst, MA

Acts 21:1-21Psalm 104:25-35, 37b
1 Corinthians 12:3b-13John 20:19-23

Spirit, wind, and fire

Come, Holy Spirit. Take our minds and think through them. Take our mouths and speak through them. Take our hearts and set them on fire. Amen.

Who has seen the wind?
Neither I nor you:
but when the leaves hang trembling,
the wind is passing through.
Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I:
but when the trees bow down their heads,
the wind is passing by.

Do you remember that poem? Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) wrote it years ago, and it’s a poem that I often read as a child. I share it now because today is Pentecost, the day we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit as the wind and breath and power of God. Who has seen the wind? No one! Unseen, invisible, free of human meddling and control, the wind comes and goes as it wills. We can’t see it, we can’t hold it in our hands as it passes by, and yet we recognize it by its effects: the leaves hang trembling; the trees bow down their heads.

According to the story we heard from the Book of Acts, it was on Pentecost, a Jewish festival that is celebrated fifty days after Passover, that the Holy Spirit came upon the apostles with tremendous power. They couldn’t have predicted when the Spirit would come, and they couldn’t have known what form it would take, but they had prayed eagerly that the Spirit would come. Jesus had made them a promise. Just before the Ascension, when the Risen Christ withdrew from his disciples’ sight, he had promised his followers that he would send the Holy Spirit to them. Jesus told them not to scatter but to stay together, to remain in Jerusalem, and to be steadfast in prayer. “Stay here in the city,” Jesus says at the end of Luke’s Gospel, “until you have been clothed with power from on high” (Luke 24:49). In the Book of Acts, which picks up the story, Jesus promises his followers, “You will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now… You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:5,8).

So Jesus’ friends are gathered together in one place on the day of Pentecost — presumably to pray — when “suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability” (Acts 2:2-4).

I hear these words and at once I can’t help thinking of our own very recent experience of “a sound like the rush of a violent wind” and “divided tongues, as of fire.” Just ten days ago, severe tornado winds — whose deafening sound people often compare to the roar of a freight train — accompanied by thunder and lightning swept through this region, destroying or damaging thousands of homes, killing several people and upending the lives of many thousands more. When we think of wind and fire, many of us probably flinch: we think of extreme weather events, of the massive wildfires blazing right now on the east side of Arizona, and of the hurricanes, droughts and floods that are likely to become the new normal because of climate change. Or we may think of the metaphoric winds and fires that threaten to undo us: the winds of war, for instance, or the fires of hate.

It is just because we so easily — and justifiably — link wind and fire with internal and external forces that are violent, death-dealing, and destructive that I welcome the imagery of Pentecost. Into this violent and turbulent world comes another sort of wind, another sort of fire: the wind and fire of God’s Spirit. It is the very gift we need.

Wind is an ancient biblical image for the presence of God. In Genesis, the creative wind of God moves over the waters of the deep. During the Exodus, the liberating wind of God blows back the sea and gives the Israelites a safe path on which to walk. In the book of Ezekiel, the life-giving wind of God blows across the valley of dry bones and breathes life back into them. At Pentecost, the empowering wind of God sweeps through the house where the disciples are gathered.

Those of us of a certain age grew up praying not to the Holy Spirit but to the Holy Ghost. The word “ghost” goes back to an Anglo-Saxon word “gast,” which is the root of another word, “gust.” The Holy Ghost, the Holy Spirit is like a holy gust of wind, a creative, life-giving and sacred Presence that blows where it wills and that comes upon us unexpectedly and with power. God’s Spirit may enter us like a strong gust of wind, filling the entire house of our being, or the Spirit may come as quietly and gently as the breath. As we heard in today’s reading from the Gospel of John, the Risen Jesus breathes on his disciples and says, “Receive the Holy Spirit” (John 20:22). In that very intimate and quiet gesture, the Holy Spirit is given with enduring power.

Wind is one image of the Holy Spirit, and another is fire, a divine fire that flames forth and shines out from all things. God is manifest as fire throughout the Bible — in the burning bush confronting Moses, in the pillar of fire that leads the Israelites to freedom, in the flaming chariots of Elijah and Elisha. The Desert Fathers and Mothers of the 3rd and 4th centuries who went into the wilderness to pray were well acquainted with the fire of the Spirit. As one story tells it, a young Desert Father went to see an older, wiser one in search of spiritual advice. “Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said to him, ‘Abba, as far as I can, I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?’ Then the old man stood up and stretched his hands toward heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, ‘If you will, you can become all flame.’” 1

Jesus came to bring fire to the earth (Luke 3:16, Luke 12:49, Matthew 3:11), and his life, death, and resurrection led to the great outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost, when the disciples were baptized with the Spirit and with fire. And what does the fire do? The flame of the Holy Spirit burns away the barriers and tensions that divide people from each other, and releases among the disciples a capacity to communicate with all the peoples of the earth. The languages that pour forth from the disciples are not an incoherent “speaking in tongues,” but easily identifiable languages “from every nation under heaven” (Acts 2:5). The Holy Spirit creates community. The Spirit opens the way for all the peoples of the earth to communicate in love with one another, even across our differences.

In a time of tension, when conflicts and wars threaten to tear communities apart, the Spirit sends us out into the world, giving us words that heal, words of love and blessing, words that connect us with each other and that honor our shared humanity. As one commentator [Lionel McGehee] puts it, “Once more the gifts of the Spirit are poured upon us: the gift of tongues — not Arabic or Greek or Hebrew or Coptic — but the language of love, the language of justice and dignity, the language of humble longings” — the very languages that are needed to transform the world into God’s community of love.

Pentecost comes again whenever people are inspired to seek reconciliation and mutual understanding, and discover anew their shared humanity. And Pentecost comes again whenever the frightened and forgotten, the oppressed and the outcast find their voice. Scholars tell us that the long list of languages that the disciples at Pentecost could suddenly speak was a list of the people whose identities had been “overrun by the languages and customs of a long line of conquerors and empires.” 2 It is a list of the peoples forced to live under the rule of the Roman Empire, and who, through the power of the Spirit, have now found their voice and their God-given identity. By speaking to each person in his or her own language, the Holy Spirit celebrates not only the unity of human beings, but also our precious diversity and individuality. Wherever the frightened or oppressed person finds her voice and takes her place within the human community, there the Holy Spirit is at work again in our midst.

How has the Holy Spirit been moving in your life? In visible ways and in secret, hidden ways that may be known only to you and God, members of this community are already letting the wind and fire of the Holy Spirit transform them. Maybe the Holy Spirit is opening your eyes to your belovedness in God, and has been sweeping over you, giving you courage to say yes to life, despite all the good reasons for cynicism and despair. Maybe the wind of the Spirit is already winnowing through your memories and judgments and opinions, working to set you free from everything that is petty and self-serving and small, opening you to a greater vision and a larger love. Maybe the Spirit is cutting through any frantic busyness and self-absorption, and catching you up at unexpected moments in the breathtaking beauty of music or nature or a child’s face, giving you joy in the midst of humdrum routine, joy even in the depths of sorrow. And maybe the Holy Spirit is sending you out to be a channel of God’s love, urging you to serve, and heal, and bless in the world outside, so that you can spread the gifts of grace that you have received. Thanks to the power of the Holy Spirit, your generosity has made it possible to build and to pay for our beautiful new buildings. Thanks to the power of the Holy Spirit, many of us are already responding to the wind and fire of the tornadoes and storms by casting our lot with love and by offering prayers, and clothes, and food, and labor as we reach out to our neighbors in Springfield and Monson and other communities, and help them to rebuild their lives.

“I can’t believe I just did that!” That’s the sort of cry that springs from our lips as we give ourselves over to the Holy Spirit. I can’t believe that I just spoke up and told the truth in love! I can’t believe that I just pulled myself out of my daily routine and spent several hours helping a neighbor in need! I can’t believe that I took some time for silence and listened to the voice of love that dwells within me! I can’t believe how connected I feel with myself and with other people!

At Pentecost the wind and fire of God came upon the disciples, and it comes upon us today in the baptism of David Nunnelly at Puffer’s Pond this morning and in the renewal of our own baptismal vows, in the gift of bread and wine at the Eucharist, and — in a little while — in the simple pleasure of enjoying each other’s company over a meal, as we listen with attentiveness for what is new, and welcome the loving Spirit into our midst.

Do we want the holy wind of God to blow through us now with fresh power? Do we want God’s holy flame to set our souls on fire? Then let us ask for the Holy Spirit, ask for it to come with power into our lives, into our community, and into the world.

Send forth your Holy Spirit, O God, and renew the face of the earth. Come, holy wind, holy breath, holy fire of God: blow through our hearts and make all things new. Amen.

1. Joseph of Panephysis 7, Sayings, p. 103, quoted by Roberta C. Bondi, To Pray and To Love: Conversations on Prayer with the Early Church, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991, p. 7.

2. Homiletics, April/June, 1995, p. 39.

Sermon for the Sixth Sunday of Easter, May 29, 2011. Delivered by the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, Grace Church, Amherst, Massachusetts.

Acts 17:22-31Psalm 66:7-18
1 Peter 3:13-22John 14:15-21

Practicing love: you in me,
and I in you

Today’s Gospel passage begins where last Sunday’s left off, in the middle of that rich and rather intricate section of John’s Gospel that scholars call Jesus’ farewell discourse. Jesus is saying goodbye to his friends, and we can imagine that if we were about to die, we might feel a strong impulse to share with the people around us what was most important to us. We might have some last words that we wanted to say, some final message that summed up everything we had been trying to express — words of wisdom or words of blessing.

And so it is for Jesus, who has lived his entire life in a relationship of extraordinary intimacy with God. As Jesus prepares to die and to go back to the loving Creator who sent him into the world, he wants above all to convey to his friends the fact that we, too, can share in the same intimate experience of union with God that he experienced. We, too, can learn to love as he loved — in fact, he will empower us to love; he will show us the way.

Today seems a good day to say a few words about love, especially on this Memorial Day weekend when we honor the sacrifice of those who gave their lives in military service to this country, and when we mourn the tragedy of war, which, however noble its objectives may be, to some extent always represents a failure of love on all sides.

Love can be so elusive, such a difficult art to practice. Maybe it’s late in the day and I am tired; or I’m doing too much and feeling stressed; or I’m at the end of my rope, impatient and irritable — well, in times like these my capacity to love, even my willingness to love, can quickly shut down. When it comes to love, we are all apprentices. So as we consider today’s Gospel, what insights can we glean? What word of truth does Jesus bring us today?

“Jesus said to his disciples, ‘If you love me, you will keep my commandments’” (John 14:15). OK — got it: if we love Jesus, we will keep his commandments. But what are his commandments? If you search the Gospels, you will find some twenty, thirty, forty statements by Jesus that we might consider commandments — for example: do not judge; turn the other cheek; be merciful; love your enemies; whatever causes you to sin, get rid of it; do unto others as you would have them do unto you; and so on. When asked what was the greatest commandment, Jesus replied that it was to love the LORD our God with all our heart and soul and mind, and to love our neighbor as ourselves (Matthew 22:36-40). In the chapter from John’s Gospel that precedes today’s reading, Jesus gives his friends a new commandment: to love one another. “Just as I have loved you,” he says, “you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35).

You will notice that Jesus is speaking in the language of commandment, but most of us resist that kind of term. By its very nature love can’t be forced. It can’t be “commanded.” Love arises only in freedom, right? Love is freely given and freely received — otherwise it really isn’t love at all, but only duty and obligation, a usually grim kind of “should.” Yet I am grateful for the strong language of commandment, for Jesus is giving us permission to listen to the deep longing that God has planted in our hearts, our deep longing to love and be loved, our desire to connect in a vital, authentic, and loving way with ourselves and one another, and with the world around us. There are so many voices inside us and outside us that tell us to lay low and hide out, not to trust, not to feel, not to risk opening our hearts. So I say: let’s take hold of that commandment! Let’s renew our intention to love God, and each other, and the world! For that is God’s desire: that we keep opening ourselves to love. Even in the midst of life’s disappointments and failures and frustrations — no, especially in the midst of life’s disappointments and failures and frustrations — God urges us to open ourselves again to the flow of divine love that is circulating at the center of things, inviting us to join in.

Today’s Gospel passage gives us a wonderful line that suggests what love will look like when it is fulfilled: “On that day,” says Jesus, “you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you” (John 14:20). On that day when we know love in all its completeness — which is every day that we are fully awake, fully present to our lives — we will turn to each other, and we will see Christ in each other’s faces. Whenever we meet someone, even if that person is a stranger, we will know at some deep level of our being that we share an unbreakable connection: Christ dwells within the other person, just as Christ dwells within us — “you in me, and I in you.” As individuals, we share a deep union, and yet we are not identical. When we love well, we sense both our loving connection and our distinctiveness.

One way to think about this is to notice the two extremes of love gone awry. At one end of the spectrum, we can say to each other: you are just like me; we are exactly the same. It’s no longer “you in me and I in you,” but “you are me, and I am you.” In psychological terms, this might be called an experience of fusion. If I am in that mind-set, I don’t know who I am as a distinctive self; I have no separate place to stand. I may be quite codependent, with my attention so focused on somebody else — maybe my child, or my partner, or my parent — that I lose track of my own life. I heard a joke about that, years ago: one way to tell if you are codependent is that when you are about to die, somebody else’s life flashes before your eyes. That would be a clue.

In spiritual terms, this condition has been called “pernicious oneness” — a refusal to accept the marvelous differentiation and diversity of life, so that everything has to be the same. When we are in this state of mind, what passes for love glosses over any differences. It’s like taking a blob of Vaseline and smearing it on the lens of a camera: everything comes out blurry.

So that’s one extreme: fusion. The other extreme is to perceive no connection at all between ourselves and someone else: “You are not me, and I am not you, and we have nothing at all in common.” This is the stance of hostility and alienation. When I go there, I build the walls, dig the moat, close the door, and pull up the drawbridge. It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there, and I plan to go it alone. I am a rock; I am an island. I am full of judgment and moral righteousness, and love is for sissies; love is a four-letter word.

Can we find our way back to that creative middle ground: you in me, and I in you? In that dance of connection and differentiation, of unity and separateness, we experience how similar we are, and yet we recognize our differences, too. We intend to see each other clearly, as distinct and separate selves, and yet we also want to keep our hearts open, so that we keep meeting each other with love.

There are practices that can help us to cultivate this kind of consciousness, and I will suggest just two. First, when we are with other people we can encourage in ourselves an attitude of inquiry and openness, an attitude of gentle curiosity. A priest and life-coach friend of mine tells me that whenever she speaks with someone, she holds the inner question, “What’s it like to be you?”1 Often our attention is focused on ourselves — maybe on the question, “How am I doing? What do you think of me?” or maybe “How can I get you to give me what I want, and to do what I want?” Holding instead the inward question “What’s it like to be you?” helps us turn our attention toward the other person and to listen closely. It can be such a tender question, a question that in our often frantic and harried world we rarely pause to ask each other, and one whose answer we even more rarely pause to hear: “What’s it like to be you?”

A second practice is to reflect on a quote by Jewish philosopher Martin Buber from his classic book I and Thou. I have been meditating for months on this single sentence, and I continue to find it deeply moving and challenging in my own search to love well. Here is what Buber writes: “Let us love the actual world that never wishes to be annulled, but love it in all its terror, but dare to embrace it with our spirit’s arms — and our hands encounter the hands that hold it.”2 Let us love the actual world — not our fantasies about the world, not our ideas about the world, not our judgments and opinions of the world, but the actual world that never wishes to be annulled, any more than we ourselves wish to be annulled. Let us love it in all its terror — and not just in its terror. I substitute other words, sometimes, depending on what is going on: can I love the world in all its boredom? In all its annoyance and pettiness? In all its imperfection and messiness? That is the challenge: to accept and to love reality as it is, for that is how God loves it: as it is. Only from that stance of clear seeing and complete acceptance can I begin to sense how love may be calling me to change what is here.

So I ask myself — What would it be like to give myself fully to love in this moment, whatever the moment may bring? Jesus never withdrew from the world in safe isolation, looking down from above. He never held back from love until he saw something that happened to please him. He didn’t check out, space out, tune out, close down, or withdraw. He never got so busy or so crazed that he put his head down and barreled ahead without noticing the people and the world around him. No, he showed up at every moment ready to encounter each person and situation as it was, and to meet that person or situation with love. That is why, when we love the actual world that never wishes to be annulled, but love it in all its terror, but dare to embrace it with our spirit’s arms — our hands encounter the hands that hold it.

Yes, we are apprentices when it comes to love, and we look ahead with hope to the gift of the Holy Spirit. We wait for the coming of the Advocate, the Helper, the Spirit of truth who will teach us everything we need to know. The Spirit enlivens and animates our quest to love, and when the Holy Spirit comes in all her fullness, on that day we will see each other and all the world with eyes of love, you in me and I in you.

1. Maria de Carvalho & Associates, www.unleashspirit.com.

2. Martin Buber, I and Thou, A new translation, with prologue and notes, by Walter Kaufman, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1970, pp. 142-143.

Sermon for the Fifth Sunday of Easter, May 22, 2011. Delivered by the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, St. Columba’s Episcopal Church, Washington, DC.

Acts 7:55-60Psalm 31:1-5,15-16
1 Peter 2:2-10John 14:1-14

The Way, the Truth, and the Life

I would like to thank my long-time friend and colleague Martin Smith for inviting me to preach here this morning, and to thank your Environmental Committee, which, as far as I can tell — given what it has been up to in just the last few months: planting trees, hosting a film festival, organizing a nature walk — is an unusually dedicated and talented group.

I want to speak about reclaiming the sacredness of God’s creation, but right off the bat I have to admit that at first glance the phrase may sound absurdly naïve or sentimental. The sacredness of creation? As soon as I say these words, I imagine someone wincing and I hear the wry, even cynical voices of people who say dismissive things like — tree hugger, whacko New Age devotee, pagan. I think of Oscar Wilde, who observed: “Nature is a damp place over which large numbers of ducks fly, uncooked.” Or of someone else’s remark that “Animals may be our friends, but they won’t pick you up at the airport.”

Fair enough. I’m not going to go all gushy on you.

But actually, when it comes to the natural world, many of us don’t feel sentimental or cynical. We feel uneasy, even anxious. There are times when I wake up at night thinking about what the future will hold. We have already burned enough coal and gas and oil to raise the planet’s average temperature by more than one degree, and if we keep 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. 2010 tied 2005 as the hottest year in 131 years of recordkeeping. Do you know how many countries endured unprecedented heat last year? Nineteen. Temperatures in Burma reached 117 degrees Fahrenheit, setting a record for Southeast Asia, while the ancient city of Mohenjo-daro in Pakistan hit 128.3 degrees Fahrenheit — a record not only for the country but for all of Asia. 1

How serious is the threat to God’s creation? Here is what one mainstream environmental lawyer, Gus Speth, has to say: “…all we have to do to destroy the planet’s climate and [organisms] and leave a ruined world to our children and grandchildren is to keep doing exactly what we are doing today, with no growth in the human population or the world economy. Just continue to release greenhouse gases at current rates, just continue to impoverish ecosystems and release toxic chemicals at current rates, and the world in the latter part of this century won’t be fit to live in. But, of course, human activities are not holding at current levels — they are accelerating, dramatically.” 2

In a situation that speaks so much of death, of fear and hopelessness, it is astonishing — maybe even shocking — to hear Jesus say, “Do not let your hearts be troubled” (John 14:1). For of course they are troubled! We fear for our children and our children’s children. We know only too well that if we just keep doing what we’re doing, keep carrying out our usual daily activities in our usual way, then within two, three, four generations we will bring an end to creation as we know it.

And yet Jesus tells us, “Do not let your hearts be troubled.” It’s a message that runs through Scripture — do not fear; be not afraid. What I like so much about this way of putting it — “do not let your hearts be troubled” — is that it reminds me that to some degree I have power over whether or not I am beset with fear. You and I have the power to guard our hearts, the power to exercise what we might call “spiritual warriorship,” so that rather than be mesmerized by the forces of death and swallowed up by the latest terrifying statistics, we can tune our awareness again and again to the love of God that is always being poured into our hearts by the power of the Holy Spirit (Romans 5:5). As spiritual warriors, we don’t turn away from the problems we face; we turn toward them and we engage with them, while consciously breathing in God’s love.

Jesus was hardly in denial about the fact of evil, suffering, and death. In today’s Gospel passage, he knew full well that he was on the brink of being arrested, tortured, and killed. And yet he could say to his friends, “Do not let your hearts be troubled.” How was he able to say this? Because he knew that he was rooted in the love of God. Because he knew that nothing could separate him — or us — from the love of God. Because he knew that we, too, have been drawn, as he was drawn, into the divine life that circulates at the center of everything and that can never be destroyed.

That is the great promise of today’s Gospel passage: at the deepest level of our being we belong to God; we abide in God and God abides in us. As we read in the First Letter of John, “…All who abide in love, abide in God, and God in them” (1 John 4:16). And the love of God extends not only to us, not only to human beings — it extends to the whole created world and to its diversity of buzzing, blooming, finned, and feathered creatures. In Jesus, God took on flesh, and the incarnation tells us that God comes to us in and through our bodies and through the “body” of the earth. So maybe it’s no wonder that the risen Jesus came back for a time in a body. After he died and rose again, he didn’t just vanish into thin air, into some ethereal, disembodied realm of light. He came back first in the flesh, as if to say: look for me here, in the body of this world. Look for me in the sights, sounds, and smells, the tastes and touch of the world. Here is where you will find me, for I am everywhere present. The created world is good — so says Scripture all the way back to Genesis. What is holy and what is natural, what is divine and what is physical — these apparent opposites are embraced and interwoven in the incarnation of Christ, and all of it shines with God’s glory.

That is the vision that animates us as we rise up to protect God’s creation. We have touched the deep truth that we are God’s beloved; we have breathed in again the love and presence of the divine Mystery that dwells within us and around us, who shines out in the waves of the Potomac, in the breeze on our faces, in the touch of a child’s hand. Fired by that love, we are set free to love as generously and boldly as Jesus did, and to live through a time of turmoil with creativity and even joy.

“I am the way,” Jesus said to his friends. “I am the truth and the life.” And from his words and actions, from his passion, death, and resurrection, a movement sprang up – a movement of passionate men and women who were convinced of the way of generosity and kindness, committed to the truth of love, and dedicated to a life of praising and serving God, whatever the cost might be.

In a time when the planet’s living systems are in peril, now is the time to reclaim our God-given connection with the earth. Now is the time to renew our union with God and all God’s creation — which includes not just our human fellows but all living creatures and the larger eco-systems on which all of us depend. As a society we have to change course, for our present way of life is unsustainable. Depending on non-renewable energy and resources is by definition unsustainable. Consuming more resources than the planet can provide is by definition unsustainable. Wiping out wilderness habitat and the innumerable species upon which our species depends is by definition unsustainable. Producing a killing level of greenhouse gases is by definition unsustainable. We are living beyond our ecological means.

If ever there were a time to bear witness to our faith, now would be the time. If ever there were a moment to hold fast to our vision of a world in which human beings live in right relationship with each other and with our fellow creatures, now would be the time. Now is the time, as theologian Sallie McFague would say, to recognize that the world is not a hotel, but our home. 3 When we visit a hotel, we may feel entitled to use copious amount of hot water, to throw towels on the floor, to use and discard everything in sight and then to head to the next hotel – in short, to exercise what she calls the “Kleenex perspective” of the world. But when we realize that in fact the earth is our home – that God created it and loves every inch of it and entrusts it to our care – then everything changes. We realize that we live here; we belong here; we can no longer tolerate a life-style that exhausts the planet’s resources and that treats land, sea, and sky alike as receptacles for waste.

What can we do to simplify our lives? I invite you to think of one way you can listen more deeply to the land and to learn from it. Maybe you want to start a compost pile, to plant a garden, or to check out a farmer’s market. If you have some money to invest, you might invest in socially responsible funds or in local, green businesses. You might invest in your local land trust, seeking ways to protect some of the few remaining wild areas and local farms that we still have. You might get an energy audit, or invite the neighbor you’ve never met to come over for a cup of tea. We need to build up our local communities, to live in ways that are closer to the earth, more about sharing than about consuming, more about self-restraint than about self-aggrandizement, more about generosity than about fearful survivalism, so that we can take care of each other when the hard times come. There is joy that comes in living like this — a joy that springs up simply from being true to the basic goodness that God has planted in us. And because individual actions are necessary but not sufficient to the challenge that confronts us, together we need to create the boldest, most visionary, wide-ranging, powerful, hope-filled, hands-on, feet-on-the-ground, shoulder-to-the-wheel political and social movement that humanity has ever seen.

It is you for whom Christ came into the world, you for whom he died, you whom he now would fill with his presence and his Spirit. In a few moments we will share the bread and wine of the Eucharist, given to us by God in Christ with such tenderness and at such great cost. We will gather at that holy table, as we always do, so that everything in us and around us can be lifted up and blessed — not only the bread and the wine, but also we ourselves, and the whole creation, every leaf of it and every speck of sand. Sharing the Eucharist helps us to perceive at last not only our own belovedness, our own blessedness in God, but also the fact that everyone is beloved, all beings are blessed. Everyone and everything is part of a sacred whole, and all living things are kin. In the strength of the blessed and broken bread, and of the blessed and poured-out wine, we dare to hope that human beings will respond with grateful hearts and come to treat the world not as an object to exploit, but as a gift to receive, as something perishable and precious. We dare to hope that we will become at last who we were made to be, a blessing on the earth.

The risen Christ is among us and beside us and within us.

Do not let your hearts be troubled.

1. Facts in this paragraph are from research posted by Lester R. Brown’s Earth Policy Institute, www.earth-policy.org.

2. James Gustave Speth, The Bridge on the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008, p. x (Preface).

3. Sallie McFague, A New Climate for Theology: God, the World, and Global Warming, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008, p. 53.