Of Saints and Story

The Feast of All Saints, Year B

John 11:32-44

Almighty God, you have knit together your elect in one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of your Son Christ our Lord: Give us grace so to follow your blessed saints in all virtuous and godly living, that we may come to those ineffable joys that you have prepared for those who truly love you; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.

Here in the church, we are always sanctifying things, setting them apart for God’s use. Each week, we sanctify the bread and wine: we set them apart from ordinary food and drink so that Christ can use them to become present to us in the Eucharist. Last week, you may remember that we sanctified a new fair linen for our altar. With a special prayer, I set it apart from ordinary tablecloths for God’s use alone. But we often forget that we human beings are sanctified, as well. We are set apart in baptism as living members of Christ’s Body. Holy people, sanctified people, people set apart for God’s use. That’s what “saint” means: someone who is set apart, someone who is made holy.

People, however, are not inanimate objects that can be filled with the Divine, like water is poured into a vase. People are made holy through story. All Saints’ Day is a day for stories. We remember the stories of the lives of our departed loved ones, those who are no longer with us on earth. In today’s liturgy, when we speak their names and light candles in their memories, our minds and hearts will be flooded with scenes from shared lives: the time grandpa taught you how to do that magic trick; the day that you walked down the aisle as husband and wife; the day you brought that tiny baby home from the hospital; the laughs you shared during coffee hour; even the terrible moments like a frightening car crash or the Thanksgiving dinner when everyone cried. The stories behind those memories unite us, even across the separation of death. They hold us in communion with those who have gone before us, with those who are still alive in God. They free us from the loneliness of time.

Even better, when we’re baptized, we join Jesus’ story. We have more than our own family stories to sustain us. We become part of God’s story of death and resurrection. When I sprinkle you with water in a few minutes and ask you to remember your baptism, I’m not asking you to remember the holy water that some priest sprinkled on your brow when you were a baby. I’m asking you to recall the whole amazing story of which you are now a part: the story where you die--where you die to self, to sin, to the things that you have done or left undone, to the evil done on your behalf. And the story where you rise with Jesus into light and hope and new life. It’s like Jesus goes into the smelly cave where you lie bound up like a mummy and tells you to get up. It’s like he is sending you out into the sunlight, like Lazarus, and telling the rest of us to unbind you, and to let you go free into a life of living out resurrection.

Set apart in baptism, are we to hold the rest of the world at a distance, then? Are we to shut our souls away in the sacristy cupboard with the chalices after church on Sunday? You might know Christians who think that the sinful world is somehow going to contaminate them if they venture too far from certain rigid rules and practices. Part of the warnings that new priests receive before ordination is that people are going to look at them differently once they are wearing that collar. It’s true, of course! Wear a funny white collar (especially if you’re a woman!) in the elevator at University Hospital, or at Kroger, or—heaven forbid—in a liquor store or an airport, and you are going to feel “set apart,” all right! People frown and greet you with wide-mouthed stares.

Those once-overs have never bothered me, though. I see my collar as more of a privilege. By being visually set apart, I don’t have to deal with any of society’s walls and hiding places. I can go up to someone who is hurting and ask, “What’s wrong?” without first having to make polite conversation for an hour. I am immediately invited into people’s stories. I am trusted with a glimpse into their souls. There is no greater gift on earth. Sometimes I think that I was made a priest because I need that outward sign in order to bear my baptism courageously. But as Christians, our baptism is our “collar.” In some ways, it might set you apart in the eyes of others. But if you are wearing it right, it will stand out as love when the rest of the world is full of hate. It will stand out as humility, when the rest of the world is full of pride. It will stand out as peace, when the rest of the world is filled with chaos. And most of all, it will set you free to enter into the lives of others, carrying with you the love of God. Baptism sets us apart, only that we may enter more deeply into our hurting world.

Finally, we are not alone as saints of God. We remember today the stories of the men and women lifted up by the Church throughout history as paragons of Christian virtue. Martyrs and scholars. Mystics and fools. People like St. Augustine, St. Francis, St. Clare, and St. Theresa of Avila. Their lives have been examined in great detail by popes and committees. Their stories have been cleansed of many of the mistakes that pepper our own lives. The Church has set them apart to give us stories that will lead us in “all virtuous and godly living,” as we prayed in today’s collect. Inside the thick walls of the Church, as Christian “insiders,” our statues and saintly stories pull us into God's presence. I can look at the stained glass saints in our Cathedral windows, for example, and feel held in holiness. Their lives give direction to my life. Their courage and their loving, human hearts give my story an end, a goal, toward which I can strive.

I wonder, though, what becomes of  those saintly statues out in the secular world? In the world where their stories aren't known? One hot summer day, I sat on a bench at the convent at Loretto, Kentucky, on retreat. I was surrounded by the glory of God in nature. God's Spirit flowed through the water, sparkling on the top of every wave; it sang in the birds' joyful chorus, and danced in the ballet of bobbing turtles. There, in the midst of light and shadow, surrounded by an abundance of life, I saw a chalk-white statue of the Virgin Mary. In contrast to the life around me, she seemed dead. She was trapped on a concrete block in the middle of the lake, dwarfed by the majestic pine trees at her back. She looked both resigned and unhappy under the hot sun. She seemed to know that she was too heavy to float, that if she were to step off of her small island perch, she would sink into the water of oblivion forever. I worried about her. Like faith unmoored from story, she seemed out of place out here in the woods.   

Then, all of a sudden, I could imagine her shedding her heavy stone body with a sigh of relief. I could see her swimming to shore and padding softly through the fields. Her robes were now supple and bent back the tall grasses; her scarf blew in the cool breeze; her kind eyes smiled in greeting at the world around her. “St. Mary needs me to free her,” I thought as I pondered the statue on the bench. She needs me to take her holy story outside, and give it the words and the freedom to live. She needs an invitation to walk with me out into the world.

          No wonder the story of Jesus and Lazarus appears in our All Saints’ Day lectionary. In all of our stories, Jesus arrives (not always when we want him to) and ventures into the darkness of sin and death. He rouses us and pushes us out into the light where a whole community of fellow saints awaits to unbind us and set us free. For what are we saints “set apart?” We are set apart for freedom: Freedom to love and to live. Freedom from solitude; freedom from sin and death; even freedom from the walls that we build around God and Jesus himself.

The Courage to See

Pentecost 22, Year B

Mark 10:46-52
Almighty and everlasting God, increase in us the gifts of faith, hope, and charity; and, that we may obtain what you promise, make us love what you command; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

A little girl nervously chews the collar of her school uniform and taps the eraser of her pencil on her desk. Brows furrowed, heart thumping, she tries to work out the math problem in her book. She doesn’t want to ask for help. She doesn’t want to admit to the teacher that she doesn’t get it. She doesn’t understand these crazy fractions at all. There seems to be some kind of system to these numbers. There seems to be something significant about the patterns, but she can’t quite grasp it. Erasing, re-erasing, scratching wildly with her pencil all over the paper, she finally makes the numbers work. “Oh, yes, I SEE!” she thinks with relief, as her body relaxes and a smile spreads over her face. “Now I SEE.” The patterns make sense. The pieces fit into their fraction of the whole. “Seeing!” What a relief! What a marvel!

          Years later, this little girl, now a young woman, sits beside the bed of her critically ill child. She frantically chews her fingernails and weeps silently at the doctor’s incomprehensible diagnosis. Her world is dark and foggy. Nothing makes sense anymore. How can this be happening? Where is God? How has life become this chaos, this problem with no acceptable solution? “Jesus, have mercy on my baby!” she shouts in her heart, over and over again. Or is she squawking her desperation out loud? Nurses are rushing over to her, telling her to hush and to calm down, offering to call someone to take her home to rest. But her legs won’t work. Her mind won’t work. For goodness’ sake, the universe itself no longer works. She can’t see her way forward. She can’t see anything. “Jesus, have mercy!” is the only thing she has left in the darkness.

          Seeing is so much more than merely the seeing that we do with our eyes, isn’t it? When we “see” something, we understand it. We grasp it. If only all of life were as easy to see as a math problem or a word puzzle! If only all frustrations could be reasoned out and all inconsistencies smoothed away with a well-placed answer. Sometimes we pretend that our own mental gymnastics or right actions can bring us the understanding that we seek. But blindness always lurks in the corners and beside the way.

Professor Gordon Lathrop presents an interesting take on this problem in his interpretation of today’s Gospel. Lathrop reminds us that the Timaeus is the Greek philosopher Plato’s most famous dialogue. Interestingly, it too features a blind man. The Timaeus is about the cosmos and the mathematical beauty and wholeness of the universe—the perfect pattern of all things. The blind man in Plato’s work is left out of that wholeness, unimportant and cast aside in his imperfection. Lathrop believes that the blind beggar in Mark’s Gospel, given the specific name, “Son of Timaeus,” is a direct contrast to Plato’s blind man. Lathrop believes that Mark is poking a deep hole in Plato’s perfect universe. Where the suffering have no place in Plato’s harmonious system, the suffering are directly engaged in Mark’s Gospel. God pierces the heavens and comes down to earth in the form of Jesus: Jesus who dives down into suffering with a love that leads to his own crucifixion.[1] In the Christian Gospel, the “perfect sphere [of the cosmos] is torn as the Triune mercy of God is made known on the earth.”[2]

In Mark, Bartimaeus, the Son of Timaeus sits beside the Way, a beggar rejected by a society that won’t even abide his cries for help. But Bartimaeus is courageous enough to risk the taunts and jeers of those who exclude him. In complete humility, he cries out to a savior that he cannot see, a savior who rips open the heavens and comes to him in his small dark corner of the world.

“What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus asks Bartimaeus—using the exact same words that he offers James and John in our Gospel two weeks ago. In that exchange, James and John are still trying to figure out how God works. They think that life has an answer that will lead them straight to a place at Jesus’ right hand in glory. Bartimaeus, however, asks only to see. His suffering has taught him that the way to eternal life lies on the way that Jesus is walking, on the perilous road to Jerusalem. He asks to see a road that the disciples are still too blind to grasp. As soon as Jesus heals him and gives him sight, Bartimaeus takes off to follow Jesus, on the Way—no longer beside it—on the way that leads to the Cross. Given sight, what Bartimaeus sees is not the cosmic mystery. He doesn’t learn why he was born blind. He doesn’t find out the answers to all of our curious questions about God and the universe. He doesn’t look down to find his beggar’s cloak turned into a king’s crimson robe. All he sees … is Jesus. When the light enters his eyes, he looks straight into the face of Jesus, crucified Son of David, living Son of God.

And that’s not all. Mark tells us that this encounter takes place in Jericho. Just as Mark’s readers knew the Greek story of the Timaeus, they also knew the Hebrew story of Joshua. We know it, too, in all of its shocking violence. Joshua fights the battle of Jericho, and those walls come tumbling down. The Hebrew armies parade around the walled city of Jericho during their terrible conquest of the Promised Land, shouting at the top of their lungs and beating their drums. God causes the walls to fall so that the soldiers can enter. They kill the Canaanites inside and claim the Land that God is giving them. Some scholars believe that Mark is turning this violent story inside out, too, just as he turned the story of the Timaeus on its head. Writes Scott Hoezee, “After all, here is Jesus—the new Joshua--outside the walls of Jericho… Bartimaeus shouts in Jericho, but this time the result of all the shouting is not bloody battle and loss of life but a restoration of [peace/] shalom. Salvation happens this time. A man is restored and joins Jesus’ larger band of followers. [As it says in the well-known hymn, ‘For not with swords’ loud clashing, nor roll of stirring drums, with deeds of love and mercy, the heavenly kingdom comes.’”[3] Jesus is always taking our stories and turning them inside out. Every time we think we have life and the universe figured out, he turns our solid answers into a vulnerable, loving face. Every time we think that we are peering into certainty, he presents a picture of mercy, instead.

Once I was troubled by a recurring image that frustrated me to no end. I saw myself alone and unhappy in a desert, standing beside a winding path. I could see buildings and people on the left, and I could see life-giving water and green trees behind me. Ahead, I only saw the path, stretching into the horizon. But I couldn’t move forward or even step sideways onto the path, because on the right, I was blind. I couldn’t see anything to the right of the path, no matter how hard I stared. It was as blank as an empty page. Like the little girl trying to solve the math problem alone, I was distraught. For the life of me, I couldn’t see “what was right.”

“Maybe you are afraid to see it,” suggested my spiritual director. “Maybe you don’t want to know what is right, because it is difficult.” Yes, she spoke the truth. After reading today’s Gospel, I think that I could have stopped straining to make sense of my dream. I could have stopped trying to write my own story.  Instead, if I had cried out to Jesus, for all that I was worth: “Lord, have mercy on me!” Jesus might have immediately bestowed on me the healing gift of courage. The courage to see what is right: the self-giving love that leads to eternal life, the sacrifice that leads to peace, the healing joy that comes only in the morning. 

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[1] Gordon Lathrop, Holy Ground: A Liturgical Cosmology (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress Press, 2003), 33.

                [2] Ibid., 35.

[3]Scott Hoezee, “The Lectionary Gospel,” found at http://cep.calvinseminary.edu/sermon-starters/proper-25b/?type=the_lectionary_gospel

Following Jesus

Pentecost 20, Year B

Mark 10:17-31

Lord, we pray that your grace may always precede and follow us, that we may continually be given to good works; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Today’s scriptures about wealth seem like every rector’s dream in stewardship season. Unfortunately, when you look closely, it’s clear that today’s Gospel is a discipleship story, not a “stewardship” story. As a colleague points out, “Jesus did not say to the man in Mark, ‘[Sell all of your possessions, then]Take the proceeds and hand them over to Judas, our Treasurer, who will use them to facilitate this very important ministry we’re doing.’”[1] Today’s sermon isn’t about financing St. Thomas. But it is about following Jesus on a lifelong journey.

Riches, of course, can get in our way as we try to follow Jesus. Riches aren’t just the huge pile of wealth belonging to other people, like movie stars and Wall Street traders. Even the modest riches in the midst of which we all live can get in our way. Last Sunday afternoon, we set up a table outside PetSmart, right down Westport Road from St. Thomas. We were offering pet blessings in the tradition of St. Francis of Assisi.  Some busy people in fancy workout gear drove up in their cars. Others came out of the store pushing shopping carts overflowing with pet supplies. I watched their faces as those with pets approached our group. We didn’t have a sign, but I was standing there in my collar, with my strange-looking black and white “choir dress” billowing in the breeze. A few folks who had heard about us on TV earlier in the week came right up to us, all smiles. But mainly I watched eyes narrow with doubt as strangers sized up the unusual situation. When we called out to them, “Want a free pet blessing?” some people looked down at their feet and fled rapidly. Most came forward, yet quite tentatively. I could see them wondering what the “catch” was. Were we going to try to sell them something? Take up their valuable time? Rip them off in some way?

I wonder: If Jesus were there offering eternal life, I imagine that even he would have gotten similar reactions of suspicion from us rich Americans out for a long afternoon of Sabbath shopping. We might have been too busy buying things to stop and listen to him. We might have been too jaded by the constant bombardment of advertising in our lives even to check out what Jesus was offering. If the eye of the needle were a measure of time, rather than space, a hole in our working, earning, purchasing consumer day, we would indeed have trouble passing through it with our bulging schedules and crammed lives intact.

In contrast, this past Wednesday evening, we took our pet blessings over to one of the parking lots off River Road. There, each week, several organizations serve the homeless men, women, and children living in nearby camps. When we arrived with our basket full of donated pet supplies, homeless adults ran up to us and began to plead and grab for the bags of pet food. In the chaos that ensued, I felt like a substitute kindergarten teacher walking into a classroom with a basket from ToysRUs. The people’s desperation was shocking …. But so was their gratitude. I saw absolutely no suspicion in their eyes. No hesitancy. When we asked if their pets wanted a blessing, every single one of them agreed eagerly. Afterwards, they stuck around. They chatted with us about their pets. They told us about their lives. And they didn’t just thank us. “Bless you. God bless you,” they said, over and over again. We had come to bless the poor and their pets, but the poor knew that their job was rather to bless us.

I imagine that if Jesus had come to that parking lot with a basket of eternal life, these folks would have had no trouble grabbing desperately for it. They wouldn’t have worried about looking dignified and self-sufficient. They’re used to living on the edge. They know how to recognize their need. They have nowhere else to rush off to. They know all too well that they are alive by the grace of God. They know the value of a blessing.

Our riches can actually prevent us from having gratitude for our lives. Have you ever stood motionless in the cereal aisle at Kroger, frozen in place by the sheer number of cereal choices confronting you? Or in the soda aisle? Or in the clothing department of your favorite store? Or in your very own closet? It’s somehow humanly impossible to treasure something when we are overwhelmed by too many choices. There was once a little boy who loved a little red Matchbox car. He played with it night and day, so smitten with it that his well-meaning parents decided to buy him lots more Matchbox cars for his birthday. With a basket full of cars, the little boy stopped playing with all of them entirely. When his mother asked him why he didn’t even touch all of the nice cars they gave him, he replied with deep pain in his voice, “But Mommy, I don’t know how to love so many cars.”[2]

 Our wealth doesn’t make it easy for us to follow Jesus, but more than wealth can stand in our way. I’m not saying that Jesus played poker, but if he had, he might have asked the man kneeling before him: “Are you ‘all in?’” Are you ready to put all of your chips on the table and push them in Jesus’ direction? Back in Viking days, a Viking king was converted to Christianity.  In the way of kings, he ordered all of his people to get baptized, too. Soon it was time for his warriors to enter the river and immerse themselves in the baptismal waters. They all waded into the stream holding one of their arms high above their heads. Why did they make this strange gesture? They didn’t want the arms and hands that carried their swords to go under the water! They had been taught that whatever got wet would belong to God, and they still wanted to be able to fight and kill with their swords.[3] Today it would be our trigger fingers, perhaps, that we would keep carefully dry? I

This story has always made me think. I say that I want to be immersed in my baptismal covenant. I say that I want my life to belong to God. I say that I want to follow Jesus. But I know that there are parts of myself that I try to keep out of that holy and life-changing water. For some of us, like the man in our Gospel, it might indeed be our wallets that we try hard to keep dry and safe from Jesus’ demands. For others, it might be our schedules. Or our careers. Or a relationship. Or even a dearly held self-perception such as perfection or independence. Think for a moment: What do you try to hold up and away from your baptismal covenant so that it won’t get wet? Do your arms ever get tired? Whatever it is, loving us, Jesus tells us: “Put it down. Let my cleansing waters cover you from head to toe. Go under the water so that you may rise free to become my disciples—and truly live.”

“Seek the Lord and live,” cries the fiery prophet Amos. We all want to live--to live fully, truly, deeply, abundantly. We long for a meaningful life, a life filled with God, with love, with joy. We’re tired of superficial pleasures. We’re tired of the rat race. We’re tired of trying to be good. We know that all of our things and all of our choices don’t bring us the lasting joy that we seek. Like Luther sings, “Did we in our own strength confide, our striving would be losing. Were not the right man on our side, the man of God’s own choosing.” There is nothing for us to earn, or buy, or accumulate—including goodness—that will secure for us the Life for which we long. To secure that life, we must let Jesus set us free from whatever inner or outer burdens we or our world have laid upon us.

In my mind, the story of the man in our Gospel doesn’t end with him going away grieving into the sunset. In my mind, he goes home to his splendid home and full, busy life and ponders what Jesus has told him. He realizes, like the little boy with the Matchbox car, that he can’t love so many things. He realizes that his true joy is in Jesus’ presence. So he puts his younger brother in charge of his household, and he goes after Jesus. And that’s not all. Maybe the busy shopper at PetSmart throws away her shopping list and heads home to spend the afternoon playing fetch with her dog. Maybe the middle-aged priest even gathers the courage to leave her fears behind and follow Jesus. Maybe the homeless man puts down his beer bottles and goes into rehab so that he can be present for his children. Maybe the homeless woman heads down the street after Jesus, too, offering homeless kittens and blessings to lonely passers-by. And Jesus smiles, loving them all.

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[1] Steve Pankey, “Why Mark 10:17-31 isn’t a Stewardship Text.” Found at https://draughtingtheology.wordpress.com/2015/10/06

[2] Rachel Remen, My Grandfather’s Blessings

[3] CK Robertson, Transforming Stewardship (New York: Church Publishing, 2009), 14.