Where’s God?
I had the great fun and joy of spending Friday with my grandbabies. You might recall that I have two, a boy and a girl, born December 23, 2021. So they are rapidly approaching their first birthday. Jaxson, the boy, is walking. Madison, the girl, was born tiny and spent her first 48 hours in the NICU, so she’s physically a bit behind him.
Nevertheless, the two of them can get into a lot of trouble together already. So… Friday I’m sitting on the couch keeping an eye on them while they travel the living room together, Jaxson walking and Madison right behind with her odd but efficient crawl method.
Now I do not understand fully the fascination that draperies hold for kids, but soon they ended up on the floor with their heads behind the living room drapes that were just long enough to cover their heads and not their bodies. And so…. a game of peekaboo ensured.
I’m sure you know how it goes. I’d call out, “Where’s Jaxon? Where’s Maddie?” And they’d push back the curtain to reveal their faces and I’d say, “There’s Maddie! There’s Jaxson!” and they would giggle, and go back under the curtain for round… umpteen.
A childish game for sure. But this morning I propose that we are a lot like those toddlers when it comes to seeing God and being seen by God. One of the ways we are like them, is that we cover our faces and think we are hiding from God. Well, we aren’t, and at some level we know that. Nevertheless, we keep trying to hide from God. But that’s a different sermon, and I’m not going there this morning.
Here's where I’m going this morning: We wear veils over our faces—fairly thick ones—most of the time. And those veils prevent us from seeing God.
Remember that two weeks ago, I preached here at Christ Church about the story of Zaccheus. I said that he was seen by God and that it transformed his life. I didn’t mention it then, but, in fact, an historian of his time records that Zaccheus went on to become the First Bishop of Caesarea. Pretty remarkable: From despised tax collector to honored Bishop.
I also noted that Zaccheus, as well as the rich young ruler, and truthfully lots of people in the New Testament, met Jesus on the road into Jericho. And then I said, “I think there’s a lesson for us in there somewhere! If church is the only place you are looking for Jesus, you’re not looking very hard!”
Today I will say, if the only place you are finding God is in church, then that veil you wear over your face most of the time is blocking your view.
See, that’s what I think today’s Gospel story is all about: It’s about looking for God in all the wrong places. More accurately, it’s about looking for the limitless, unbounded, living God.. in limited, bounded, mortal places.
God does not need this building. Any more than God needed an elaborate “tabernacle” constructed of fine wood and gilded with gold to be carried across the wilderness by our early ancestors, the Israelites. God did not need the First Temple, built of fine materials by Solomon and decked out in gold and jewels. God did not need the Second Temple, begun by Herod the Great and under construction for 46 years.
Of course, God graciously met the faithful in those temples and continues to meet people of faith in all manner of temple and synagogue and church across the face of this planet. But God does not need these buildings. Every one of them will, one day, crumble to the ground.
We need them. We humans need the buildings. Or at least we think we do!
Because the limitless, unbounded, living God does meet us in these limited, bounded, mortal places. And it is good for us to take a shower, dress up nice, put on our best behavior and come to meet God here on a weekly basis. Good on us for doing that!
The problem comes when we confuse “a house of God,” like this church, with God’s home, which is the universe and everything in it, including us. We are the home of God! How many times does the Bible tell us that? How many ways did Jesus say it? The one I remember best is when he said, “The Kingdom is among and within you.”
So what is the nature of the veil we wear that leads us into the trap of conflating our “houses of God” with the constant and ubiquitous presence of God “out there” and everywhere we turn?
Well, I think part of it is we’re not so sure we want God everywhere out there and with us constantly. Maybe this sermon is a little bit about hiding from God after all! Because if God is everywhere and within me, how can I curse and flip a bird at the guy or gal who’s driving way under the speed limit in the passing lane?
More seriously, if the home of God is the universe, how can I continue a lifestyle that produces the almost 6 pounds of trash per day that is the average per person in the U.S.A. BTW, only about 1.5 pounds of that gets recycled. The rest of it ends up in massive, smelly landfills in God’s living room, and acres of trash clogging God’s—and our—water supply and tons of plastic in the bellies of one of God’s most extraordinary creations—the whale.
In other words, we really prefer to meet God primarily on Sundays when we are scrubbed and dressed nicely and on our best behavior!
I think another thing that contributes to our tendency to seek God here and not out there is fear. Because.. what if we really did see God in the face of all other human beings? How would that change our lives? We would have to give up our most fondly held prejudices, the ones we use to reassure ourselves that we are the “good guys” and those other folks over there who do not behave or think or value as we do are the “bad guys.”
In his letter to the Thesselonians, Paul says that people should work, and if they don’t work, they shouldn’t eat. I don’t have to ask for a show of hands to be pretty sure we all agree with that. But let us not get self-righteous about it, because our very agreement raises a question we would probably all rather avoid.
That question is, if we work so we can eat, why then do we have in the United States about 38.1 million people, that’s 11.8% of us, who are classified as “working poor,” meaning that they work—real jobs, essential jobs—but live below the poverty line. They make daily choices between food for the table and repairing the only vehicle they have to get to work, or between food and medication, or food and paying the electric bill.
The veil we wear over our faces that inhibits our seeing God everywhere, in the Universe and in everything in it, including our fellow humans, protects us from uncomfortable truths. It protects us from having to consider how we might need to change our own lives so to honor God’s creation and treat it justly and to love our neighbors as ourselves.
Pulling aside that veil is not child’s play. It takes courage. As Jesus says, it will separate you from family and friends, who do not want to hear about the working poor, or how human behavior is destroying God’s creation at an alarming rate, people who prefer to keep the veil in place.
But there is also joy to be found in lifting the veil. It’s the joy of meeting God at every turn. As Jesus says, the joy of gaining your own soul.
In the name of God, father, son and Holy Spirit, AMEN.
(Year C, Pentecost 23, Malachi 4:1-2a; 2 Thesselonians 3:6-13; Luke 21:5-19)
The Rev. Dr. Bette Kauffman will lead our service at 10am Sunday, November 13th. Come early to get a good seat!
"Being Seen"
by The Rev. Deacon Dr. Bette Kauffman
A few weeks ago, I saw a cartoon in a friend’s Facebook feed that really grabbed me. I do not remember exactly what it said, but it was about something I do a lot. It poked gentle fun at people like me, who continue to buy books long after they already own many, many books they have not yet read.
It said something along the lines of, ‘Really, I am on track to read all the books I own. I should be finished by the time I’m 564 years old.’
I laughed. And then I posted a comment. “I feel seen,” I said.
I’m guessing most of us have had that experience. We look at a screen or a show or a meme, we watch a movie or read a cartoon, and we feel seen. We feel understood. We recognize our selves. Often we laugh.
And perhaps most powerful of all, we realize that we’re not alone. Someone else in the world is like us in at least some way.
Today our Gospel story is about a guy who ‘gets seen’ in the most powerful, life-changing way possible. He gets seen by God.
I think it’s important that Zaccheus gets seen by God because he goes to extraordinary lengths to get a look at God. Of course, he didn’t know it was God he was trying to see. I’m sure he thought Jesus was just an itinerant prophet passing through town.
But something he had heard or something about his own life, or maybe some combination of Jesus’ reputation and Zaccheus’ circumstances or experiences, came together and compelled him to go get a look at Jesus, indeed, to go the great indignity of climbing a tree to try to get a glimpse of him.
See, Zaccheus was not exactly just an “ordinary guy.” He was not the town drunk who climbed the tree in a stupor. He was not a kid who climbed trees for the fun of it. He was a wealthy man, very wealthy, because he was a tax collector and not just a tax collector but the chief tax collector for the town of Jericho.
And that means he might well have been the most powerful and the most despised guy in town. He had the backing of the oppressive Roman regime to collect taxes as he saw fit—lining his own pockets as he wished, as long as he gave the Romans their due. But the social price he paid for that was to be thought of pretty much as a traitor, a Jew who worked for the enemy.
I’m sure his wife dressed in finery. But I wonder how she felt about being the wife of the town pariah. I’m sure his kids had everything they wanted, but I’ll bet they got teased unbearably in school. I imagine Zaccheus knew the hard way that money and power do not bring happiness or contentment. Maybe that’s why he was so ripe for the picking.
But ripe for the picking he was. Here’s this wealthy, powerful guy climbing up a tree, risking everybody on the ground looking right up his skirt… hoping to get a glimpse of Jesus and, in all likelihood, assuming Jesus will never once look up at him.
Why would he? Why would the prophet and healer, the most righteous man he had ever heard of, take note of the biggest sinner of them all?
But of course he did. Indeed, Jesus calls out to Zaccheus before he even gets to the tree. He doesn’t just happen to look up and see this guy perched in the tree. He doesn’t wait for the fruit to fall. He calls out, “Come down, man, I’m on my way to your house!”
Wouldn’t you love to have seen Zaccheus come down from that tree? I’m betting it took a fraction of the time it took to climb up. I’m guessing he grabbed a limb and swung to the ground, because there he is in the blink of an eye, face to face with Jesus.
I said earlier that Zaccheus was “ripe for the picking.” At this point it is worth comparing this story to another well known story about a man who goes looking for Jesus.
I’m speaking of the man known as the “rich young ruler” in the story told in Matthew. So there’s similarity right away. Both Zaccheus and the young ruler are wealthy.
And there’s a second similarity: They both go to encounter Jesus on a road Jesus is traveling, Zaccheus on the road into Jerisho, the young ruler while Jesus is traveling about Judea healing and teaching.
Neither of them, you will notice, goes to church or the synagogue to find Jesus. Indeed, the people Jesus encountered in the synagogue mostly criticized him, argued with him, or chased him out of town!
I think there’s a lesson for us in there somewhere! If church is the only place you are looking for Jesus, well… you’re not looking very hard! You’re taking the easy way out. However hard it is for us to drag ourselves out of bed on a Sunday morning, it’s nothing like actually following Jesus out into the world where he carried out his ministry and called upon us to follow him!
As the Franciscan friar and priest Richard Rohr has somewhat famously said, “It’s a whole lot easier to go to church than it is to follow Jesus.” It’s perhaps my favorite of his sayings.
But back to the rich young ruler and Zaccheus the tax collector: there the similarity ends. The rich young ruler walks away shaking his head. He encountered God with a capital “G,” but it did not change him. He already had his god with a small “g,” namely his wealth.
Zaccheus is transformed. He does not wait to be told what he needed to do. The words tumble out of his mouth. He has been seen by God and he knows he has been seen. He is humbled, and he knows what to do.
Again, notice the contrast. The rich young ruler asks, “Teacher, what must I do…” “What must I do…” He had an agenda. He was looking for another rule to follow. He did not expect or want to be seen for who he really was.
Zaccheus came with no agenda other than to see. And he got more than he bargained for. He seeks God with an open heart and mind, and so he accepts the gift of being seen. You’ve seen me Lord, he acknowledges, now here’s what I’m going to do.
And that’s the most powerful lesson of all: Being seen by God can transform us. It can heal us. It can change our lives.
But we must be ripe for the picking. We must put our own agendas aside. We must know that we have been seen as the sinners we really are, not as “the good church people” we imagine ourselves to be. Only then will we be transformed.
In the name of God, father, son and Holy Spirit, AMEN.
30 October 2022, Christ Episcopal, St. Joseph
(Isaiah 1:10-18; 2 Thessalonians 1:1-4, 11-12; Luke 19:1-10)
Sunday November 6, The Rev. Paul Martin, 10am
Check out the Care of Creation blog at:
You Have All You Need
The Rev. Deacon Bette Kauffman
2 October 2022,
Season of Creation Week 4 (Year C, Pentecost 17)
Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4; 2 Timothy 1:1-14; Luke 17:5-10
In today’s Gospel lesson, the disciples ask Jesus to increase their faith. It’s like they think faith is some kind of magic potion, or some kind of credit account—and if they could just get their hands on more of it—drink more of the potion, build up more credit in the account—they’d “have more faith.”
I’m not sure what they thought “having more faith” would look like. Maybe they are thinking that if they could somehow accumulate more faith they would no longer have questions about who Jesus was, and what he was here on earth to do.
Maybe if they could accumulate more faith they could answer the difficult questions of their religious traditions. Like, is this man the Messiah, or are we to wait for another/
Maybe if they had more faith, they could quit wondering about the strange and radical teachings and, frankly, demands of this man and just accept them and live by them. Maybe they would understand why he insisted on eating with notorious crooks and women of ill-repute.
Maybe more faith would enable them to forgive and forgive again and forgive some more, as Jesus said they must. Maybe with more faith they would be able to understand and accept the disabled, the highly contagious, the dirt poor, and the foreigner, like Jesus did and asked them to do.
Today I think we often associate increasing our faith with talking ourselves into intellectual agreement with something we actually find to be quite preposterous, or that we are persuading ourselves—as one author put it—to believe 6 impossible things before breakfast.
That’s not faith; that’s self-deception. And probably not very successful self-deception. I think some perfectly good Christians suffer a bit of embarrassment and discomfort every time they say the creeds.
I had an interesting
discussion with my women’s bible study group in
But I don’t think what we believe, what we intellectually agree to, has anything to do with faith. Faith is not about some process we go through to accumulate all the “right beliefs and doctrines.”
Here’s a wonderful statement about faith from the lectionary blog of a woman by the name of Sarah Dylan Breuer. She says, “Faith is relationship -- a relationship of trust, of allegiance. When Jesus talks about ‘faith,’ he's not talking about what you do in your head; he's talking about what you do with your hands and your feet, your wallet and your privilege, your power and your time. Faith in Jesus is not shown by saying or thinking things about him, but by following him.”
I can’t say it better than that. And following Jesus is a day to day, moment to moment thing. It’s doing what he calls us to do and not expecting great accolades and high praise for doing what we ought to do.
Faith is less in the grand gestures, less in reciting the creed in a loud voice, less in making a big showy gift to the church, than in the moment to moment being true to Jesus and his call to us to love the unlovable, to forgive even the boneheads who will never change, to reconcile with those we would rather duke it out with.
Sometimes when life’s pains and sorrows hit us hardest, faith is just putting one foot in front of the other, getting through the next hour, the next day. Trusting God even when there’s no evidence that God gives a hoot.
I’m going to have a bit
of coffee with you right after the service, and then I’m heading straight back
to
A young man, early 40s, died of an overdose. His parents are long-time members. He served as our sexton for a number of years. He had been through rehab many years ago and was sober for 16 years. Then he and his wife, whom he had met in rehab, came into some money when her father died. The temptation was too much. They spent it on heroin.
They got arrested, were sent back into rehab and after about a month, he got out. He had dinner with his parents and his own children; a lovely evening together, by all accounts. Then he went to his own house and promptly overdosed. His wife, still in rehab, called his parents and said, ‘Something’s wrong. He’s not answering the phone.” They went; he was dead.
When I spoke with his mother on the phone a few days ago, she said, “We’re getting through a half day at a time.” That’s faith. It’s putting one foot in front of the other. It’s keeping your eyes on Jesus in the midst of agony. It’s not escaping the agony with glib declarations of what you believe. It is plodding through the agony, and the mundane, but especially the agony, keeping your eyes on Jesus.
I used to think the saying, “What would Jesus do?” was pretty hokey, a cliché, for sure. But more and more I think it is exactly the right question to ask. What would Jesus do?
By and large, we know what Jesus would do. We know Jesus would choose love, reconciliation, inclusion of all.
Sometimes the church likes to portray Jesus as obsessed with wrong and with people’s sin, as judgmental, as morally smug. That would be us, friends. We’re the ones obsessed with people’s sin; we’re judgmental and morally smug.
God understands that we are wounded, irascible, quarrelsome beings who inevitably fall far short of the standards God sets for us. That’s why God became one of us and lived among us and continues to dwell in our hearts. We are not in this alone.
Nurture that mustard seed of God in your heart. It’s everything you need.
In the name of God, father, son and Holy Spirit, AMEN.
The Cost of Discipleship
It’s a 2-panel cartoon. The left panel depicts a guy—a rather nerdy, hapless looking guy—walking down a street beside a tall brick building. Two or three stories up the side of the building, right over the spot he will walk through momentarily, an old-fashioned upright piano is being lowered from a window by a rickety rope sling and pulley apparatus.
In the righthand panel, God sits at his computer. You can tell it’s God because he is an old white guy with long white hair and beard! The image on God’s computer screen is of the scene we see in the left panel: the same hapless looking guy walking down a street completely oblivious that he is about to walk under a piano dangling from a rickety contraption.
God’s computer has just two buttons: A big, green “Save” button and a big, red “Smite” button. In this cartoon, God’s finger hovers over the “Smite” button.
Of course, the cartoon is open-ended. We are left wondering: Does God smite the poor schmuck? And what in heaven’s name has he done to deserve God dropping a piano on him?
I collected that cartoon because it so accurately and humorously depicts how millions of humans throughout the centuries have imagined God’s role in the universe. The OT is rife with stories of God visiting disaster upon people for behaving badly. Certainly Moses, the presumed author of Deuteronomy, thought it.
It’s as if God sits at a massive control panel somewhere, watches our behavior, rewards us if we are good and smites us if we are bad. From Sodom and Gomorrah to New Orleans, Louisiana, God sends disasters like hurricanes and floods to punish sinful cities, and according to the preachers of the prosperity Gospel, if you are sufficiently pious and give enough money to the televangelist, you will be rewarded with great wealth yourself—and if you aren’t wealthy, it’s because you haven’t yet sent enough to the televangelist.
It's a popular belief. It’s all over the Old Testament. But it’s not how it works. God does not micromanage the universe. Indeed, Genesis makes it pretty clear that humankind was left in charge of caring for planet earth.
Nevertheless, our lessons this morning have something important to say to us about the consequences of action and the cost of following Jesus. I’ll get to that in a minute, but first I must make a brief detour to share something I just learned about.
In 1989, the Ecumenical Patriarch of the Orthodox Church—Dimitrios the First by name—declared Sept. 1 to be “World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation” and called on people of faith worldwide to join in honoring God’s Creation and praying for humankind to actively seek to restore our seriously neglected and damaged relationship with Creation.
The World Council of Churches jumped on board quickly and energetically, and soon a day of prayer became a Season of Creation, to be celebrated by a long list of denominations and organizational partners from Sept. 1 until Oct. 4, which is the feast of St. Francis of Assisi, patron saint of ecology. The Episcopal Church is a partner in the movement. We are represented on the Advisory Committee by Bishop Mark Andrus of California.
Every year the Season of Creation movement chooses a theme and leads individuals and churches worldwide in celebrating and taking action to restore our relationship with Creation and thereby with the God of Creation. Their website is a myriad of creative and compelling resources for worship and action on behalf of Creation.
Here’s what’s a bit shocking to me: I became an Episcopalian in 1998—9 years after the founding event—and I’ve been an ordained deacon since 2008, and never once in all that time and in all of the many Episcopal churches and hundreds of services I’ve attended.. have I heard mention of the Season of Creation. I found out about it a couple of weeks ago in an email from Mthr Meg Lovejoy, who serves the little church down in Moss Bluff.
So, Brothers and Sisters, we are in Week 1 of the Season of Creation 2022, and what you will hear from me this morning is a Care of Creation take on today’s lessons. For week 2 of the Season of Creation I’ll be preaching at Grace in Monroe and they will get same song, second verse!
Now let’s return to Deuteronomy, even better Jeremiah, the alternative OT reading for today, and think about it in terms of today’s escalating disastrous climate events, which a massive body of science tells us is due largely to our own behavior, to our overconsumption, our fossil-fuel addiction, destruction of nature, and—as one who earned her keep as a kid washing dishes for a family of 8—what looks to me like pure laziness in our addiction to the Styrofoam and plastic that are choking our oceans, killing critters and creating mountains of landfill!
Now let’s reread and know that the next disastrous storm about to tear our coastline apart is not God sitting at his computer hitting the smite button, but our own reckless disregard for and estrangement from the very Creation that is our home and life-breath—the dirt of which we are made.
But Jeremiah and Moses also give us hope. They both say we can repent of our evil ways and reform our ways and actions. God has not given up on us. We can restore our right relation with God and Creation and turn away from the disastrous path we are on.
In today’s Gospel lesson, Luke is talking about the cost of following Jesus, and he is making it clear that the Gospel is not cheap. Grace and forgiveness are readily offered and freely received, but following Jesus comes with a price tag.
If we are to be disciples, to really follow Jesus, we are called to put him, and his Kingdom values, before all else. The examples Jesus gives fall in two areas which, then and now, can easily distract us from or get between us and our desire to follow Jesus: family and material possessions.
Importantly, I do not believe that Jesus literally means we should “hate” our family, or anyone else. Jesus taught love above all else. Here he is using hyperbole to make the point that our focus on following him must be single-minded and highest of our priorities.
And to follow Jesus is to walk humbly. It is to see God in all of Creation. It is to reject consumerism and to recognize that from those who have much, much more is expected. It is to reject reckless exploitation of Creation for profit motives and to fight against the injustice caused by greed and over-consumption.
To put it in the most down to earth terms I can think of, it is to swear off all those “disposables” and wash the cotton pickin’ dishes! Yes, there you have it: I think washing dishes is a sacred act of following Jesus!
Jesus’ words here calling us to give up everything we have to follow him might well be our biggest challenge. And please note, in Luke’s account, Jesus delivers these words while in the house of a prominent, and no doubt wealthy, Pharisee. So they have particular relevance to those of us from affluent and religiously devout backgrounds.
Friends, we are called to follow Jesus, whatever the cost. Today, his challenging words on family, money and possessions call us to follow Jesus to a life of greater simplicity, to repenting from our selfish consumerism, and to uniting with all Creation in building community that models the way of God’s kingdom.
In the name of God, father, son and Holy Spirit, AMEN.
[Season of Creation Week 1 (Year C, Pentecost 13), Jeremiah 18:1-11; Philemon 1-21; Luke 14:25-33]
