Rapture and Renewal
Saint Paul’s Cathedral, San Diego
Proper 11C (BCP)
July 22, 2007
Scott Richardson +
Rapture and Renewal
Gracious God,
Let these words be more than words and give us the spirit of Jesus.
Amen.
I graduated from college thirty years ago this year. That doesn’t sound or feel right to me but it is statistically true. I was a Religious Studies major at UC Santa Barbara and I had the most extraordinary experience while there. Our coursework was divided into thirds – Eastern Religion, Western Religion, and the impact of religion on culture. It was an intellectual feast and, in time, even this rich offering did not fully satisfy.
I’ll never forget walking through the campus one evening and coming to terms with my problem: I knew a lot about God but I wanted to know God and I needed to be known by God. The academic approach delighted my mind but my heart yearned for a more direct connection. I ached for relationship, not just facts or history or comparative analysis. I craved mercy and love, power and joy. So, in addition to all the good things I was learning in class, I also took up worship in earnest, and prayer, reflection, retreat, and silence. Gradually, over time, the disparate parts of my life fell into place and linked up at a deeper level.
Mary, the quiet sister of busy Martha, shares this same need. She is, for a moment, in a direct relationship with Jesus and, for that moment, immovable. Her sister’s badgering won’t budge her. She’s being fed in the deepest possible way so the tasks that Martha brays on about don’t concern her. She’s soaking up love and wisdom - precisely what her thirsty soul needs. Food? Who cares? Dirty dishes? Later. Make up the beds? Not just now. Right now, she says through her enthralled silence, I’m bonding with the One who mesmerizes and saves me.
I’ve recently had several conversations with faithful friends who tell me that church isn’t working for them right now. In a recent e-mail, the author Nora Gallagher shared a draft of the opening chapter of a new book she’s working on and put it like this: “The truth is, that now, and for several years, I have been bored in church. Bored the way I was as a child, standing on one foot and then the other, my skin itching, bored as a child having to repeat the same grade. I stole that line from a friend, who, when I talked about my boredom said, ‘I know what you mean. It’s like repeating the fifth grade over and over again.’”
Nora and I chewed on this for an hour after worshipping at Trinity Church in Santa Barbara two weeks ago. Trinity is one of the best churches in Southern California and Nora has written about it in glowing terms; the problem she’s identifying isn’t particular to a specific faith community. As I said a moment ago, this same concern has been raised by various friends in several different congregations. Speaking personally, it was very hard for me to think of a place to worship during my vacation if I wasn’t going to be here with you. It’s good to be back.
But contrast the posture I’m describing with Mary in today’s gospel; she’s not bored but riveted. So what happened? How did we go from rapturously sitting at the feet of Jesus to shifty feet and itchy skin and analogies to grammar school? Some suggest that western worship has been seriously damaged by post-Enlightenment sensibilities and values. Aesthetics and education became our preeminent concerns; attending church began to feel like going to a concert and a lecture. Concerts and lectures are good things, of course, but they don’t always invite vital and direct relationships with our creating and saving God, or a sense of mystery, power, allure, hope, wonder, mysticism, and deep connection.
Small irony: here I am lecturing you right now about the limitations of the form. I do it to make a simple point – the purpose of our faith is to emulate Mary of Bethany, to allow ourselves to be touched and taught by Jesus of Nazareth. He is living water; if direct relationship with Jesus is absent then all the accoutrement of church will soon seem dry as dust. That’s not all there is to say, that doesn’t let church leaders off the hook – we still have a lot of work to do to bring things round right – but it is the beginning point.
And remembering in detail what it is that people are seeking when they settle into a pew is an important second step. Nora is again helpful here: “People drag themselves and their families to church because they are in search of a deeper meaning in their lives, because they want their children to grow up as decent human beings, because someone had died leaving them bereaved and broken, because something has happened, some calamity, cancer or divorce or betrayal, because they heard a voice and couldn’t name its source, because they know that there is something out there for them and they want to find it, because they already know a whole lot about God or the Holy or Deep Reality and they need help to suss it out of the layers of daily static that stands between us and deep meaning in our lives.”
There have been plenty of times in my own life when I’ve needed that kind of sussing help. Sometimes it came to me while sitting in church and sometimes I had to look beyond the walls, past the nave and narthex. I’ve mentioned before my experience of spiritual direction with Brother Timothy at Mount Calvary Monastery in Santa Barbara. I sought him out over ten years ago because my sense of connection with God had lapsed. After twirling in circles for some time, I finally admitted that I needed help. No sitting at the feet here, he wouldn’t have it that way; we sat face-to-face on rocks, equals before the Lord. Timothy asked me fundamental questions about my deepest hope and my deepest fear. He also gave me homework – prayers to say, psalms to read, parables to think about. That homework, in retrospect, was critical; we moved beyond vague ideals and abstract generalities to reclaim the specific technologies of faith. Timothy wasn’t trying to jolly me out of my funk, he was helping me become a better Christian and a holier, happier, healthier human being by calling me back to age-old disciplines.
This was practical, not theoretical, Christianity. It was a program of action, not fluffy words. Whenever I got too heady, he cut me off. Whenever I expressed intellectual doubt, he stopped me cold. He was himself an impeccably educated man but he knew that my mind could be a spiritual cul-de-sac. So God’s truth was our common theme, not human wisdom. Love and mercy took precedence over analysis and judgment. Trusting became more important than knowing. It was exactly what I required at the time, precisely what my thirsty soul needed, and over time, gradually, things shifted for me and I came back into right alignment with God in Christ. My close relationship with Jesus Christ was directly supported by my close relationship with Timothy. I couldn’t do the Christian life by myself and – joy! - I didn’t have to. The wise love of Jesus was mid-wifed by another broken and redeemed soul – manna from heaven.
And now let me tell you about another type of manna; I testify that my personal sense of spiritual vitality has been deepened over the years by the faithful witness of gay and lesbian friends in the church. This is Pride Weekend, as you may know, and it’s the perfect time to acknowledge and honor the gifts the gay community brings to the church, renewing gifts that might be completely inaccessible if not offered with such courage and grace.
The creation theologian Matthew Fox observes that gay and lesbian people must, early on, let go of narrow social definitions and, sadly sometimes, of family members and others who reject them. That’s hard to do but the holy result of that deep letting go is freedom, creativity, the formation of new communities and new families, and an enhanced ability to reach out to others similarly slighted. That new creation perfectly parallels the experience of the infant church; solidarity and compassion being the good fruit of this initially painful experience.
Gay and lesbian believers then witness to the virtues of persistence, steadfastness, mercy, humanism, patience, and tolerance of institutional imperfection, cruelty, and sloth. They call the church back to the culture and to the deepest strains of the gospel. We do well to humbly sit at the feet of these friends this weekend and listen intently, we thank them today for their revitalizing witness, and we do both in the name of our common Savior, Jesus Christ – the very one in whose spirit I’ve said these things to you.
Amen.
Saint Paul’s Cathedral, San Diego
Proper 11C (BCP)
July 22, 2007
Scott Richardson +