What Kind of Power?

 

PROPERS: FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT, YEAR B 

TEXT:       JEREMIAH 31:31-34; JOHN 12:20-33                             

PREACHED AT RESURRECTION, STARKVILLE, ON SUNDAY, MARCH 17, 2024 

 

ONE SENTENCE:        The concept of the gospel as power is a heresy; it is a call to servanthood and death.

 

Not far from our home in Fairhope is a billboard for an FM radio station – 88.5, I think. Its symbol is a cross, emitting bolts of lightning.  The station calls itself “Power 88.”

 

That image… that message… that sign is a heresy. Pure and simple.

 

In seminary we learned of the ancient heresies: Gnosticism, Arianism, Patripassionism, Docetism, Adoptionism, and dozens of others.  My favorite was Quartodeciminianism. 

 

But the heresy represented by that billboard is uniquely modern. The cross as a source of power.

 

Sadly, that is a source of the church losing its meaning today.  As Jesus, facing the cross, told Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world.”

 

The heresy involves the belief that Christianity is a source of worldly power, and it should be used to coerce others into believing and behaving in a certain way. That philosophy led to the Crusade’s failed attempt to hold the Holy Land for Christians and the disastrous last battle with the forces of Saladin at the Horns of Hittim.

 

That approach led to the Swiss persecution of Anabaptists in the 16^th Century and the Salem Witch Trials in Massachusetts in the 17^th Century.

 

Sadly, that temptation to meld Christianity with the lust for worldly power is never far away.

 

Christianity is not about worldly power. It IS about the power of the cross, but an entirely different power – the power and willingness to love and lay down one’s life.

 

My father used to tell me about an old, perverse saying: “The beatings will continue until morale improves.”

 

That seem to be the approach of many – pummel the concept of Christianity into people. Make them believe. Make them toe the line.

 

The prophet Jeremiah, writing 2,500 years ago, said the conversion would be of the heart. Hear his words he conveyed from the Holy One:

 

“I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.”

 

The life God calls us to follow will not be forced.  It will be written on the walls of hearts. Not through worldly power, but the power of love.

 

We follow that way through Jesus’ call to self-giving and self-sacrifice.  Hear his words today from John’s Gospel:

 

“Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.”

 

The temptation of worldly power violates the second of the Ten Commandments we heard two weeks ago.  A week from now we will hear proclaimed the eternal truth of our faith – that giving of self overcomes all power – even the power of death.

Beige Walls and the Perfect Roux

PROPERS: BURIAL OF THE DEAD, RITE 2 

TEXT:       ROMANS 8:14-19, 34-35, 37-39                                                 

PREACHED AT THE FUNERAL OF BETH BOLING BATSON AT RESURRECTION, STARKVILLE, ON SATURDAY, MARCH 9, 2024 

 

ONE SENTENCE:        The burdens we all will bear are ultimately relieved as we fall into the embrace of God’s loving arms.

 

At some time in April 1993, the Resurrection family held what was known as a “pounding” for their new rector and his family.  The concept was to bring a pound of whatever you wished to help the new clergy family settle into their new home.

 

Nora and I were the beneficiaries of those gifts. And there were some imaginative ones. A pound of nails.  A pound of golf balls.  And one of my favorites: a pound of beer (a 16 ounce “tall boy”).

 

But the one I used the longest was this one.

 

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A cookbook. Southern Legacies, by Nancy Patty Walker, mother of Jeanne Wakeman. It was given to me by Beth and Bill Batson.  And Beth told me it was the last copy available.  It was even signed by Mrs. Walker.

 

It is like a snapshot of an older and more gracious age – long before microwaves, cake mixes, home delivery, Instant Pots, and Sous Vide machines. Even before the Little Dooey!

 

I suspect each recipe had a story behind it. And, oh, if that book could talk!  Beth and Bill knew the treasure they were bestowing on us. A treasure it was.

 

Over the years, I drew on one specific recipe again and again: Kittie’s Gumbo on page 110.  It is a magnificent, complex dish that I made each time we went to the beach.

 

It had the many flavors of any good gumbo, as well as great mixture of ingredients – onion, celery, okra, chicken broth, tomatoes, garlic, bay leaves, shrimp, crabmeat, oysters, and the piece de resistance, file powder.

 

It was scrumptious served over steaming rice.

 

But like most good gumbos, it was held together by something mysterious and hard-to-achieve.  The roux.

 

Making roux is an art. It is, of course, a mixture of flour and fat (usually oil), cooked over a low heat for an extended period.  You have to get roux to the correct stage – the precise color needed for the dish.  If you don’t cook it long enough, the dish will not be right.  If you cook it too long, it will burn, ruining the recipe.

 

But if the roux is right, the dish will come together, hold together, and be a joy.

 

Beth was a perfect roux.

 

She held together many complex ingredients.  Her recipe included many shades and colors. The bold dish her life represented drew many disparate elements together to meld a joyful combination of interests, abilities, tastes, and perspectives.  

 

A lesson Nora and I learned from her: Don’t ever paint a wall beige.

 

We do have on our walls, however, a watercolor she painted. Empty wine bottles and glasses, indicating celebration with friends.

 

If we were to paint a portrait of Beth’s life it would be in broad strokes of bold colors. Anyone who met her would be impressed by her joy, her effervescent personality, and her wide smile.

 

Those of us who were blessed to share a slice of life with her were held together by the roux-like magic of her personality.

 

Sadly, the fact of human existence tells us that all joys come to some sort of conclusion in this world. Beth came face-to-face with her limits. Bill, Court, and Tray walked with her through that very dark and seemingly endless valley. Court and Tray were accompanied by Claire and Kathleen. They knew Beth as their beloved wife and mother and tenderly cared for her until she crossed to the other side. Her many friends held her in their thoughts and prayers – most from a distance.

 

St. Paul, the greatest of all missionaries, knew those limits faced us all. Despite expectations from some early Christians that the kingdom would come during his lifetime, Paul knew something much deeper and more profound. New life is assured through all circumstances.

 

That truth that he knew is summed up so well in the eighth chapter of his Letter to the Romans:

 

^8:18 I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us… ³⁷ No, in all these things we are more than victorious through him who loved us. ³⁸ For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, ³⁹ nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

 

In another place, First Corinthians, Paul says that now we see in a glass darkly and then we will see face-to-face… now we understand in part, then we will be fully understood.

 

            As hard as it is to accept that Beth has crossed the bar and entered into a world not of our own, we can take comfort that she is in that place where she sees things as they really are, that she truly understands, and is truly understood. 

Grace and Blue Laws

PROPERS: THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT, YEAR B 

TEXT:       EXODUS 20:1-17                                           

PREACHED AT RESURRECTION, STARKVILLE, ON SUNDAY, MARCH 3, 2024 (My first Sunday back at Resurrection)

 

ONE SENTENCE:        There is a higher calling than the Law; it is Love of God and our Neighbor.

 

Today’s first lesson is one of the most familiar in all of scripture.  If you are of a certain age and have watched Cecil B. DeMille’s epic, The Ten Commandments, this passage if very familiar to you. It would bring back vivid images.

 

I suspect that pulpits are thundering this morning where the lesson is being read. It’s easy to hammer people with these rules.

 

I have a different take – and that take cannot be reduced to the simple accusation that I am viewing the Ten Commandments as the Ten Suggestions.

 

To begin, let’s simply look at the fourth commandment. Remember that the commandments are divided – the first four pertain to our relationship to God, the last six govern our relationship to other people.

 

Anyway, the fourth commandment is quite clear.  It says:

 

“Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. For six days you shall labour and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.”

 

The Sabbath Day has been set aside as a day of rest – just as Genesis tells us God rested on the seventh day of Creation.  It is quite clear.  Having traveled to Israel 14 times over the years, I have seen how seriously, and literally observant Jews take this commandment. Businesses shut down; people stay home. Jerusalem is quiet.

 

Contrast that for a moment with Starkvegas. Some 50,000 people gather in Davis-Wade Stadium. People tailgate and barbeque at what used to be Dysfunction Junction.  What is happily called Baseball Water flows freely. Revelry is in the air.  On winning days, a good time is had by all.

 

And we all enter the stadium to watch young men on a field of grass break another religious prohibition – Leviticus 11:27. They touch the skin of a pig. 

 

I don’t have an issue with any of that.  I just want us to know that we are breaking the fourth commandment.

 

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The irony for us is that the sabbath is on Saturday – he seventh day of the week.  The first day of the week, Sunday, is much quieter – but that is not an issue for the Ten Commandments.

 

Which takes me back a ways. I recall one of the hottest political debates of the mid-1960s was whether Blue Lawsshould be eliminated – the state laws which prohibited businesses from operating on Sundays.  The misguided reason was that Sundays were the Sabbath.

 

If you recall those days, you know how quiet Sundays were.  The Mississippi Legislature hotly debated this controversial issue.  It was, for some, the third rail of politics in those days – and there was no shortage of third rails.

 

I was a Methodist then. And burned indelibly into my memory is a sermon our small, quiet, unassuming pastor preached on a Sunday in the midst of that controversy.

 

John Cook, the gentle Methodist pastor who molded me more than he will ever know, preached his sermon from Mark 2:27 where Jesus said, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.”

 

In my young mind, enough said.

 

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            The Hebrew Laws largely found in Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy were viewed by early believers as a gift from God.  They were aimed at guiding a large, migrating, meandering people, wandering through a dry wilderness.  Those statutes brought order to chaos. Many people still view them as a gift – but the many, many laws and their interpretations are hard to live by.

 

            Jesus took it one step further.  He emphasized love for one another and love for God as the standard by which his followers would be guided.  He gave us the summary of the Law – to love God and your neighbor. He was not alone in simplifying the Law for his first century listeners.

 

In a sense, it is both a harder and easier standard.  But it is the challenge before us.  It is the reason leaders of the church debate some issues so hotly. 

 

            That is why we are given a heart and a conscience and are guided by the Holy Spirit. It is so that we may walk through a minefield of ethical choices, making our best decisions.  And when we stumble, having made heartfelt decisions, grace will be there for us. 

The Substance of Lent

PROPERS: SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT, YEAR B 

TEXT:       MARK 8:31-38                                              

PREACHED AT ST. JOHN’S, PASCAGOULA, ON SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2024

 

ONE SENTENCE:        Lent invites us into a deeper, more sacrificial relationship to God.

 

            It is easy, in a reductive way, to directly connect Jesus’ time in the wilderness with today’s season of Lent.

 

            It is easy for us, too, to feel that giving up chocolate connects us to the ancient practices of Lent.

 

            Not so.

 

            When we traverse the mists of time, and enter into the earliest stages of the church, we see something quite different from Lent today.

 

            The Ash Wednesday liturgy described it subtly but soundly:

 

“The first Christians observed with great devotion the days of our Lord's passion and resurrection, and it became the custom of the Church to prepare for them by a season of penitence and fasting. This season of Lent provided a time in which converts to the faith were prepared for Holy Baptism. It was also a time when those who, because of notorious sins, had been separated from the body of the faithful were reconciled by penitence and forgiveness, and restored to the fellowship of the Church.”

 

            The early Lents were a very serious matter to the early church.  We are speaking of the first few centuries – before Emperor Constantine’s Edict of Milan made being a Christian legal.

 

            Entry into the counter-cultural church was required much. Likewise, those whose mortal sins had shattered their connection to the church were challenged in returning.

 

            Each group had its own path toward entry or reentry into the community of faith, known by many as simply “The Way.”

 

            Those who aspired to join the underground church went through a very thorough process of catechesis. Allowed in only to the first part of the service, the Liturgy of the Word, they would be led out of the service as the second part of the service, Holy Communion, approached. They would undertake their study and instruction. In many cases, their period of catechesis would be three years. Three years before they were allowed into communion.

 

            Likewise, the notorious sinners. Lent was their time for penitence.  They, too, would be led out of the service after the first portion, and not allowed to receive communion. The second half of the service, leading to the receiving of Communion, was known as the Liturgy of the Faithful. Those who had sinned egregiously could not participate.

 

            Jesus told his followers:

 

“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”

 

Early Christians – and those seeking to be Christians, and those wishing to return to the Church – knew the meaning of Jesus’ words. Being a Christian required risk and commitment.  It was foundational to their identity.  They risked it all – for the sake of the Gospel.

 

Today, I am sad to say that we have lost the counter-cultural nature of Christianity.  It has been so reduced that Russell Moore, resigned president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (and native of Biloxi), told of a church member hearing Jesus’ words of the Beatitudes.  The man told Moore the church should not proclaim such radical ideas.

 

Being truly Christian has always been risky.  It is risky today.

 

            If we care to be Jesus’ presence today, we need to take up our cross and follow him. 

The Shadow of the Wilderness

 

PROPERS: FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT, YEAR B 

TEXT:       MARK 1:9-15                                                

PREACHED AT ST. JOHN’S, PASCAGOULA, ON SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 2024

 

ONE SENTENCE:        The invitation to Lent is to go within and examine the shadows within.

 

What does one do in the stark wilderness for 40 days?

 

I have seen the wilderness.  It is largely outside and north of Jericho.  It is truly barren. The only life it will support are the rock badgers, the hawks, and the deer-like ibex that wander the cliffs and ravines.

 

For years, early aesthetics sought to withdraw from society and recreate Jesus’ experience in the wilderness. The cavern walls bear witness to those efforts, with the numerous cave dwellings through the dry creek beds known as wadis. Some monastics still do that today.

 

But what is the purpose?  And what was Jesus seeking during his 40 days of solitude? I think, in a sense, they were seeking both the same and different things.

 

            My guess: They were looking deep within, but for entirely different purposes.

 

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            I can’t believe I’m doing this, but I guess there’s a first time for everything.

 

            In the 1960s, the Rolling Stones had a hit entitled Paint It Black. A single line in the lyrics had vocalist Mick Jagger sing these words: “I look inside myself and see my heart is black.”

 

            There were a number of remarkable aspects to that song, including the basic lyrics, the various musical influences and the instrumentation.  But I doubt that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, who penned the lyrics, were mindful of the link to a thoughtful psychiatrist and introspective theology.

 

            The psychiatrist: Swiss psychiatric theorist Carl Jung wrote of a concept called the shadow. It is a sound bit of theory.  It pertains to that part of ourselves that exists deep within us, but we deny it.  It could be anger, lust, envy, ambition, jealousy, covetousness, or any other number of hidden motivations. The irony is that we may not even know those aspects of our spirit exist.

 

            Yet they do exist.  And as long as we deny them and as long as they stay in the background of our spirits, they control us.  It leads us to the point where St. Paul found himself in his Letter to the Romans: “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” 

 

            I suspect to a greater or lesser degree, we can all identify with that experience… and that we can, on some level, acknowledge the existence of the shadow within us.

 

            Though they certainly would not have put it in those words, I suspect those early desert fathers, climbing into the spartan caves in which they would live for weeks, were seeking to find the shadow within, wrestle with it, and eliminate it.  Simply stated, they were seeking a purer heart.

 

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            As Christians, we profess belief that Jesus’ heart was already pure as he entered the wilderness.  He was, we think, seeking something different: Guidance on the course of his budding ministry. He knew he would need purpose.  He knew he would need courage. And he knew his heart needed to be pure.

 

            He would face demons and temptations in those 40 days.  He would emerge with his mission in mind and his face set toward Jerusalem.

 

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            You and I have a little less complicated and more basic task during this Lent: To look deep within… to examine our hearts and spirits… and name those dark places which need the light of Easter morning.

 

            Habits of quiet, prayer, fasting, and solitude will take us along that road.  This is the day to begin.

 

            In response to my initial question:  There is a lot to do in the Wilderness.

Coming Out of the Closet

PROPERS: ASH WEDNESDAY 

TEXT:       MATTHEW 6:1-6,16-21                                                   

PREACHED AT ST. JOHN’S, PASCAGOULA, ON WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2024

 

ONE SENTENCE:        The irony of Ash Wednesday.

 

            The ironical nature of Ash Wednesday has always interested me.

 

            In a few moments, you will come forward, to join me, as we are smeared with the ashes from last year’s Palm Sunday branches, as a sign of our faithfulness and penitence.

 

            We will go forth from here, wearing our crosses on our foreheads – and the world will see.

 

            And we will do so just a few moments after hearing Jesus’ words:

 

“…whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”

 

In fact, in all of this passage, Jesus cautions us about wearing our faithfulness on our sleeves.  At the root of all this, is the sin of pride – pride of who we are, pride of what we do, pride in what we profess to believe.

 

As a contrast, he uses a metaphor.  He urges us to go inside a closet to pray. This is a season of going within. It is turning so inward so that your right hand does not even know what your left hand is doing.

 

This season – and Jesus’ admonitions – are so contrary to the modern world.  They may have been more doable in AD 30, in the remote area of Galilee.  But today we are drawn away by so much that is immediately demanding of our attention – social media, television, telephone which go wherever we go. There is little silence, and less solitude.

 

Jesus’ call is still the same… maybe even more so. Maybe even more urgent, more applicable.

 

All of the busy-ness we face on a daily basis is like a drug. It anesthetizes our senses, making us numb and resistant to quiet and solitude. In a medical sense, we are releasing dopamine – getting a sense of pleasure by staying on the fast track.

 

Lent is the response. Slow down. Turn off the phone.  Stay away from the news. Resist the siren’s call of social media.  Read… pray… be quiet… be still… be alone.

 

            If you do that daily as a discipline during the great 40 days of Lent, I suspect you will find what Jesus found during his time in the wilderness – the still, quiet voice of God, deep within. 

Serving a Gracious Master

PROPERS: FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY 

TEXT:       1 CORINTHIANS 9:16-23                                               

PREACHED AT ST. JOHN’S, PASCAGOULA, ON SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2024

 

ONE SENTENCE:        In our many roles in life, the challenge is for our core identity to be Christian.

 

            One of the great ironies of my vocation is the eight years I served in Starkville.

 

            There was significant irony in that time because I had been reared an inveterate Ole Miss fan.  And I had become rector of the Episcopal Church at the home of Mississippi State University.

 

The irony was lost on no one.

 

            I had grown up cheering for the Rebels.  The first college football game I attended was Jake Gibbs’ last as quarterback.  I would attend freshman football games – when that was still a thing.  I remember Bill Goodrich and Stan Torgeson as game-day radio announcers.

 

            I recall the greatest football game I ever saw was when Ole Miss lost to Alabama, 33-32. Archie Manning had 436 yards of passing and 104 yards of rushing in a losing effort.

 

            I still say the darkest day of my life was the Saturday in October 1970 when the undefeated and second-ranked Rebels lost to unranked Southern Mississippi, 30-14.  I was in Hemingway Stadium the next week when Archie Manning broke his arm.

 

            Suffice it to say, Head Coach Johnny Vaught was a god in our household.

 

            I got my college education there, too. In May 1975, I graduated from Ole Miss, with majors in political science and journalism.

 

            From that point on, the football gods did not smile on my university for several years.  I was not pleasant to be around during fall weekends in the late ‘70s.

 

            I have long said that a major part of my spiritual maturity was being healed of football.

 

            But the red and blue ran deep.

 

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            So, it was with some degree of reluctance… and a great deal of ribbing from my friends… when I was called as rector to Church of the Resurrection in 1993. At my celebration of new ministry, MSU’s president Don Zacharias – one of my parishioners – gifted me a maroon blazer.

 

            I swallowed hard.  But I had changed.

 

            Over the years, I would face good-natured kidding from folks in Starkville. I decided to respond with scripture written by St. Paul, from the second lesson today: “I have become all things to all people that some might be saved.”

 

            Paul knew my experience, but he knew it in even more graphic terms.  Hear his words:

 

“I have made myself a slave to all, so that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though I myself am not under the law) so that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (though I am not free from God's law but am under Christ's law) so that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak.”

 

            Paul lived as a slave, so he could reach out to those who were enslaved. Paul observed the law, so Jews would relate to his message.  He lived as a Gentile, so those outside the chosen people would believe. He became weak, so he could relate to those without power.

 

            Paul’s missionary journeys took him many places and into many roles. Many cities… many ports… many roles. But his core identity was as a follower of Jesus.  That was his primary purpose.

 

            Many hats, but only one crown. He wore that crown to his own martyrdom.

 

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            You and I face many situations – many roles in life: individual, spouse, parent, grandparent, friend, colleague, confidant, employee, supervisor… on and on.

 

            But, like Paul, we are called, beckoned, nudged toward one role – A child of God and a follower of Jesus.  That is our core identity, and it should be the essence of who we are.