Respecting the Law, Loving the Stranger

There are strongly held beliefs about the new state law targeting illegal immigration, on both sides, within the Parish. I don’t claim to speak for anyone but myself. I suspect that both sides will find something in this post with which to disagree. But my position is based on my love of country, and my love of God. That is a base I hope we can all stand on.

The United States of America is the first nation not to have been based on a common ethnic heritage. The first immigrants may have been from England. But the foundation of our country is not English blood but this: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” That’s not all Englishmen, but all men.

Countless people of all ethnic backgrounds, skin color and languages have come to this country because they believed that they too could be Americans. We have been enriched by their gifts. But earlier immigrants had to cross an ocean to get here. In the last 30-something years, millions of people have crossed the porous land border between Mexico and the U.S. They have come for the same reasons that other immigrants have come to this country: to improve themselves, and the lives of their descendants. It is the ideals that make us a nation, not race.

Anyone wishing to affirm those ideals can become an American citizen. But “We the People of the United States” are right to expect those who would be one of us to accept, not only the rights, but the responsibilities, of American citizenship. Illegal immigrants have put themselves in an unsustainable position. Their economic services are in demand, but they cannot be assimilated as American citizens. They are neither resident aliens, with the understanding that their residence here is temporary. Nor are they able to make a permanent home in this country.

It is reasonable for Americans to want to see their laws enforced, and their borders made secure. Measures to enforce the immigration laws are also reasonable. My personal opinion is that such enforcement should be coupled with a path to legalization for those immigrants who come forward, pay a penalty, and can prove that they are not a threat to society. The new law in Alabama is all stick, and no carrot.

I’ve been speaking as an American citizen. But we are also citizens of another kingdom. “In Jesus Christ our Lord you have received us as sons and daughters [and] made us citizens of your kingdom.” (Book of Common Prayer, p.381). What are our responsibilities as citizens of God’s kingdom? At least one is to accept the guidance of the Word of God spoken through Holy Scripture. This is what God spoke to the people of Israel through Moses: “The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as one of your citizens; you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I the LORD am your God. (Leviticus 19:34).

There is one difference between the U.S. and Israel. To be a citizen of Israel was to be descended from the 12 sons of Jacob. Immigrants from other lands could never become Israelites. Israelites were to treat their immigrants as citizens because they could never be citizens. But the Israelites themselves were descended from immigrants, Abraham and Sarah, who were strangers in the land of Canaan. And the Israelites were commanded to love and respect the immigrants among them in the former land of Canaan, which God had allowed them to conquer.

As Americans, we are citizens in a land which we were allowed to take from its natives. As Christians, we are citizens of a kingdom which knows no boundaries between nations. To be a citizen of the kingdom of God is to be part of a kingdom in which all races and languages are being restored to unity with God and each other. (BCP, p.855). As Paul wrote to the Ephesians: “Christ is our peace. He made both Jews and Gentiles [or Anglos and Hispanics] into one group. With his body, he broke down the barrier of hatred that divided us…So now you are no longer strangers and aliens. Rather, you are fellow citizens with God’s people, and you belong to God’s household.” (Ephesians 2:14-19).

As Americans, it is proper to enforce our immigration laws in an effective way. As Christians, we are called to love the “stranger” before us, however they got here. We are not exempt from the requirements of Leviticus 19:34, or Ephesians. As Americans, let us enforce our laws, while making it possible for those who wish to become responsible residents or citizens to do so. As Christians, let us love the stranger in need.

Trinity Sunday

“Then God said, ‘Let us make humanity in our image to resemble us’… [And so] God created humanity in God’s own image.”

Before cars and trains and planes, most human beings never traveled more than five miles from where they were born. Today, most of us travel at least five miles every single day of our lives. More than anything, what separates us from all the people who have come before us is movement. People used to stay in the same place all their lives. And so did their children, and their children, and their children, and so on and so on, generation after generation after generation.

That kind of life is certainly stable. It can also be static, frozen and unable to change. I heard this week that the difference between a European and an American is that if a European tells you this great idea they've just thought of, and if you ask what they're going to do about it, the European will answer, "Do?" We Americans may move more and do more but as Alexis DeTocqueville warned, all our movement away from people and communities threatens to “make every man forget his ancestors, but also clouds their view of their descendants and isolates them from their contemporaries. Each man is for ever thrown back on himself alone, and there is danger that he may be shut up in the solitude of his own heart.”

What does all this have to do with the Trinity? We hear today that God created us in his image. Incredible as it sounds, we actually resemble God. So it's right for us to look at our lives and see a reflection of the life of the one God who is also three distinct persons. Previous generations of Christians saw a trinity that was stable, seated on a throne somewhere high in the sky which they took to be the heavens. From this throne they looked out over a world that seemed as stable as the heavenly throne. But today, we who are always on the move find that the one God is always moving with us. And the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit move with each other, like dancers who move so well together, with such perfect choreography, that their individual movements just flow into each other, so that in their one dance they are one perfect dancer.

The Old Testament is pretty much about the confrontation between this one small nation clinging to its faith in one God and the rest of the world which assumed that the diversity of creation meant that there had to be a diversity of gods. So no one quite knows what to make of God saying, "Let us make humanity in our image." Certainly the faithful Israelites who were inspired to write Genesis didn't intend to give us a justification for the Trinity. But perhaps there was a truth hidden in this verse, which could only be revealed over a long period of time, like a flower that becomes more beautiful hour by hour, day by day, as its blooming petals slowly but surtely unfold. It took centuries for people to come to by know God, not just as the Father of all creation, but as the Son who became a part of creation and died for it.

It took the revelation of Jesus the Christ for people to understand that the same God who created human beings in the divine image loved us so much that in the person of the Son, he was willing to die for human beings. In the revelation of a God who made us, and also died for us, was the clue that when God said, "Let us make humanity in our image to resemble us," it meant that the God who is love is one, but is never alone. This one God is also three loving persons who are completely open to each other; nothing hidden or held back from each other, acting in such complete agreement that they act as one being.

Christians have struggled over the centuries to express this truth. That particular terminology -- three persons, one substance, or being -- has been accepted by the church since the mid-400s. When he was evangelizing the Irish, St. Patrick used the three leaf clover to represent how the three leaves flowed from one source. The problem with that metaphor is that the one God is not the source from which the three persons proceed. The one trinitarian God is no less a person than the three persons that make up the Trinity.

And like the stable, static age from which these metaphors came, this Trinitarian God is removed from our experience. What difference does it make in this world that our God is three in one? In an age of movement, where human beings are constantly on the move, it has become clearer that the God who made us to resemble him moves with us. Theologians have begun to see this Trinitarian God as one dancer, who consists of three dancers who move so well together, whose moves are so flawlessly coordinated that free of missteps they are one dancer.

And as Father, Son and Spirit dance with each other, so they dance with us. Of course we flawed and sinful human beings misstep all the time. Sometimes we don’t want to dance with God, or with each other. Sometimes in our lives, life seems to be as Paul McCartney described it: “It’s a Tug of War. Though I know I musn’t grumble, it’s a Tug of War. But I can’t let go. If I do you’ll take a tumble, and the whole thing is going to crumble. It’s a Tug of War.” We’ve all known those times. I have tugged with God. And this three-personed God, who is love, has tugged with me.

Even when we're trying to dance together, we step on God's toes and each others' all the time. And sometimes, we decide that we would rather just go off and dance on our own. Sometimes, we dance for awhile in the same place, with God and with each other, and our practice makes us better, if not perfect. But comes a time when the God we dance with calls us to go and learn a new dance. It doesn't mean that the old dance, at which we've become so proficient, is to be discarded as old-fashioned. It just means that the one God wants us to learn a new way of dancing with them, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Wherever we move, the Trinity dances around us, and invites us into their dance. When someone moves away from their familiar dancing partners, those old partners must let them go to whatever new dance God is calling them to join. Sometimes, a partner insists on staying in the old dance and teaching some new steps. That learning of new steps will lead to some toes getting stepped on. But patiently dancing with us, wherever we move, is that one three-personed God who never missteps, and will always keep pace with us as we learn to dance as they dance.

Commemoration: First Book of Common Prayer

It was on Pentecost Sunday, June 9th, 1549, that the first Book of Common Prayer was used for worship in the churches of England. English men and women were able to pray in their own language. The first BCP was largely prepared by Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury. He drew from the Latin services that had been used for centuries in the Catholic Church. But he also added from the worship liturgies of the Greek Orthodox Church, and the German services prepared by Martin Luther.

So the first Book of Common Prayer maintained continuity with the ways in which Christians had always prayed, while adapting those timeless prayers to the current spiritual needs of the people. As the British Empire spread throughout the world, so have other churches formed in many lands, all sharing the Anglican legacy. Each national church has adapted the Book of Common Prayer to its own needs. In the latest version of the American prayer book (1979), you can still hear the first 1549 Book of Common Prayer in our Rite I Eucharist during Advent before Christmas, and during Lent before Easter. Elsewhere, of course, the language is more contemporary.

The words, and our understanding of those words may change. But it is the same Spirit that has inspired those common prayers, from 1549 to 2011. Some might argue that saying set prayers from a book is contrary to what Jesus said: “true worshippers will worship in spirit and truth” (John 4:23). In other words, the Spirit of God is not present when we say prepared prayers, rather than praying “from the heart.” That is wrong. In truth, it is the Holy Spirit that has guided all those who have prepared all the Books of Common Prayer. Our set prayers are far too rich in truth and meaning for the Spirit to have been absent when they were written.

It is the Holy Spirit that breathes through us as we hear and say these prayers, which teach us how to pray to God. Every time we pray these familiar prayers, the words of those prayers seep deeper and deeper into our minds, hearts and souls. Then, with those words deeply rooted in us, we go out into the world. And wherever we go, rooted in those set prayers, our lives will be walking prayers for everything we touch. And as people of common prayer, our lives will be a blessing to all we meet. So with the Book of Common Prayer in our pews and in our hearts, let us always “pray in the Spirit and with the understanding.”

Almighty and everliving God, whose servant Thomas Cranmer, with others, restored the language of the people in the prayers of your Church: Make us always thankful for this heritage; and help us so to pray in the Spirit and with the understanding, that we may worthily magnify your holy Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Pentecost: June 12, 2011

At the Albertville Ministers Fellowship meeting this week, we began an honest, unsettling conversation. For all the many churches in this small town, participation in the Fellowship isn’t what it used to be. Some at the meeting bemoaned the Fellowship’s loss of influence. There was concern that not enough people attended the Holy Week luncheons with Bible Study at Mt. Calvary. At the first Palm Sunday community service in which I participated, back in 2009, the preacher spent most of his time complaining about all the people who weren’t coming to church in Sundays. Clearly, the pastors are worried.

And if you look at the news, they probably have reason. For years, there has been much news about the membership decline in the “mainline” denominations: Episcopal, Methodist, Presbyterian. But now even the Southern Baptists are having that problem. Just this week, it was announced that for the 8th time in 10 years, the number of people baptized declined in 2010.

The Albertville Ministers’ Fellowship is worried about the future. And it’s impossible to stay informed about goings-on in our own Episcopal Church -- declining attendance, declining budgets, program cuts, continuing conflict over church property in the courts – and not be concerned about our future. Do we even have a future? Will our church survive? Will our children have faith? Will our faith have children? And inside the walls of our churches are all those challenges I just mentioned. There’s not enough money. There seem to be so many divisions about right doctrine. So many arguments in which anxious people lash out in blame and scapegoating and pining for an easy answer. So many people on the outside, and here we few are on the inside. Won’t someone come and help us?

But there’s a story just like that in the Bible: a few men and women who believed that a man who had been executed only a few weeks earlier was in fact the Messiah and the Son of God. But how much more successful could they hope to be than he was? Sure he had been raised from the dead. Of that they were witnesses. But there were so few of them. And there were still thousands on the outside who had arranged and supported his execution. And when they had asked him, “Lord, are you going to restore the kingdom to Israel now?” Jesus’ non-answer, just before he was taken away from them was “It isn’t for you to know the times or seasons that the Father has set by his own authority. Rather, 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 end of the earth.”

Only a few were left. They were inside a room where the doors were locked, for fear of the Jews, while everybody else was on the outside. And then it happened: rushing wind, flames all around them, roaring, and then, silence. Now it was their turn. No one came to take away their problems. Instead the Spirit came and gave them a new problem. They couldn’t stay inside. Something drove them outside. All that wind, fire and roaring was inside them, and it would have burst inside them if they didn’t rush outside and start preaching, serving, caring, teaching, witnessing, praying, inviting, and loving. They had to tell their story, or it would burst inside them.

We have strength, courage, compassion. And most of all, we have a story to tell. Our problem isn’t money, divisions or arguments. Our problem is that each of us has a story to tell and we can’t help but tell it. I’ve tried to tell my story in bits and pieces over the past two years. It’s a life story in which I learned that the love of God is far bigger than my, or anyone else’s piece of the truth. It’s a life story in which the loving Spirit of God has broken through every wall I’ve ever erected to protect myself. In my youth, it was a wall of grief and anger which God’s love broke through. In my early adulthood, it was a wall of ideological and religious certitude that God’s love broke through: my ideology had nothing on the love of God.

What walls of sin and alienation have you hidden behind, only to see them broken through by the love of God in Christ Jesus crucified? What is your story which you have to tell or else it will burst? I trust that all our stories are simply parts of one great story. It started with God and one man and woman, Abraham and Sarah. That story grew to include one nation. And now it includes all people, those inside this church, and those outside. We have a story to tell, and a story to listen to. We need to hear the stories of those on the outside. Listening to those unfamiliar stories, we may hear learn something new about our own story, as hopefully they learn something new about their stories. And then we will understand that there aren’t stories, but one great story of God’s love for all.

Jesus Christ told this story, and his failure was nailed to the cross. But that failure was not the last word. On this day of Pentecost, as on that first Pentecost, the Holy Spirit invites us to tell our story of what God is doing inside these walls. The Holy Spirit is inviting us to go outside and do our best to tell that story. Might we fail? If we follow the crucified Christ, at least some of the time we will. Read enough of the New Testament, and you will see their failures in black and white: persecution, lack of money, divisions, arguments. But the successes that followed those failures are there to see as well.

So, let us dream of what we might do here on Sand Mountain. Let us plan as best we can. Let us tell the story of God’s love. Let us learn from our successes and failures. And when we fail, let us rejoice that the Holy Spirit has blown us that much closer to success. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

This sermon was largely inspired by this video

Saint Barnabas (transferred)

The Feast of St. Barnabas is on June 11th. For Christ Church in Albertville, I'm transferring it to today for our midweek Eucharist.

“Barnabas” is the name given by the first Christian apostles to Joseph, a Israelite priest who accepted Jesus as the Christ, the Messiah. “Barnabas” means, “son of encouragement." And the Book of Acts contains much evidence of his encouragement. When Saul, the former persecutor of Christians, couldn’t meet the Church in Jerusalem because no one trusted him, it was Barnabas who put his life on the line, trusted Saul and brought him to his fellow Christians. When Jewish Christians in Antioch began bringing Gentiles to faith in Christ; it was Barnabas who brought Saul (now known as Paul) to Antioch where the two of them could encourage these new Christians together. Then Barnabas and Paul travelled together on the first mission trip of Paul.

Though a priest of the House of Israel, Barnabas valued all people as children of God and worked tirelessly to show them the eternal value they had in God’s eyes. His valuing of all people led him to support a compromise in which male Gentile Christians were not required to be circumcised, as male Jews were, but were asked not to eat meat that had been sacrificed to idols out of respect for their fellow Christians of Jewish descent. Paul, however, valued truth above all, in this case the truth that God had brought all people together in Jesus Christ. Thus, there should be no barriers that would make it harder for Gentiles to embrace Christianity.

Paul challenged Barnabas over the issue of food laws in Antioch. They argued so violently over this that on their next mission trip, they had to separate. And so it always seems to be in the Church, which is called to both encourage and challenge. When should one encourage people by meeting them where they are? When is it time to issue a challenge based on Jesus Christ, the way, the truth and the life? The debates continue, sometimes in a more civil manner than others.

We also know this. Late in his life, long after their violent argument, Paul and Barnabas apparently reconciled. Barnabas’s cousin, Mark, whom Paul had refused to take with him on the second mission trip, was with Paul when he wrote to the Colossians. “If he comes to you, welcome him,” Paul wrote of Mark, the cousin of Barnabas. Eventually, the Encourager who valued people, and the Challenger who valued truth, were reconciled and were friends once again.

Let the encouragers work for unity. Let the challengers work for truth. Do not fear the disagreements, and don’t let that fear silence you. Be assured and at peace; because in the end, God will win the argument, and all will be in agreement in God’s good time.

Christ Under Our Skin: The Ascension of our Lord

“After Jesus said these things, as they were watching, he was lifted up and a cloud took him out of their sight. While he was going away and as they were staring toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood next to them. They said, “Galileans, why are you standing here, looking toward heaven?” (Acts 1:9-11a)

Today is the Feast of the Ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ. Some communities are still able to observe this holy day with the attention and reverence it deserves. We are told in Acts of the Apostles that the risen Jesus appeared to his disciples at various times for 40 days, and then he was taken from this earth, which begs the question: where did he go?

In the Gospel of Mark, we are told that Jesus was “lifted up into heaven and sat down on the right side of God.” Luke describes the Ascension twice, in his Gospel and at the beginning of Acts. And in John’s Gospel, Jesus tells Mary Magdalene not to hold on to him in her joy, because he must still ascend to his Father and our Father. Interestingly, Matthew doesn’t mention the Ascension at all.

Luke and Mark both pain the picture of Jesus being lifted up into the sky. And I don’t doubt that the Ascension appeared that way to the disciples, at least until “a cloud took him out of their sight.” Without telescopes and the knowledge they give us today of the space above us, people reasonably assumed that Jesus ascended to a place somewhere in the sky, or perhaps among the many lights in the night sky.

Today, however, we can reasonably assume that “Heaven” is not located in a particular place between the planets of Mars and Jupiter. Indeed, we really don’t want it that way. If Heaven is only in a particular place, and if God the Father and the Son are located in that particular place, then they are not in any other place. They look upon us from some distant place. They can see us, but we can’t see them. And if they’re in that distant place, then how can they touch us, or help us?

At some point, Jesus passed from the world of place and time, where he could be seen by our eyes, to a “place” that really isn’t a “place” in the way that we understand “place.” God, the creator of all things, is beyond all things, and cannot be contained within our limited powers of observation. But that does not mean that Jesus is now so far beyond us that he is at an infinite distance from us.

In fact, he is as close to us as the trillions of cells in our body. Look at Salvador Dali’s painting of the Ascension. What is that yellow thing with the bumps that Jesus seems to be ascending into? It’s Dali’s conception of an atom, one of the smallest things in all creation. Jesus Christ the incarnate God ascends away from this created world so that the same Jesus Christ may come back and be with us in all things.

In the words of the collect for the Ascension, “our Savior Jesus Christ ascended far above all heavens that he might fill all things.” There is no place where Jesus “is” today, because he is everywhere. He is not far away from us. He is with us in every cell of our bodies, and he is with us in the depths of our soul. And his Spirit is coming. Don’t keep staring up into the sky. Get ready.